America's Anti-scientific Standards for Psychotherapeutic Medicine
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
December 6, 2020
lcohol can kill tens of thousands of Americans a year and we consider it a bargain price to pay for a little harmless fun. But if a demonized psychoactive plant from Mother Nature is merely REPORTED as being somehow related to one single solitary death -- one single solitary death -- the Drug Warrior considers it to be a knock-down argument that the plant medicine in question should be made unavailable, not just to Americans but to everyone around the world, including drug researchers studying Alzheimer's, and that we should even send our army overseas to burn those plants, no matter how many millennia they may have been used responsibly by other cultures.
That's why enemies of the Drug War should think twice before turning the regulation of plant medicine over to the healthcare state. The system is hypocritically rigged to pillory therapeutic plant medicine for statistical trifles while it gladly lets non-therapeutic drugs like alcohol and cigarettes ravage the population at will. That's why Americans are depressed in record numbers. Because we're determined to ban the effective drugs over trifles while ignoring the enormities perpetrated by our go-to drugs of alcohol and tobacco.
Author's Follow-up: September 20, 2022
There's another reason why science and the healthcare state should only play a peripheral role when it comes to psychoactive medicine. That's because, when it comes to such nostrums, the user is often looking for self-transcendence and an ability to maximize one's potential, as the coca leaf provides the endurance and opium, the creativity, to allow one to succeed in life. In other words, use of such substances is often an attempt, conscious or otherwise, to achieve self-actualization in life. For many of us, that is the prime directive. If we were stereotypical robots, we would be walking around saying: "Must have a meaningful life," whereas the robots of the medical tribe would be saying something quite different, namely: "Must maximize safety."
Wrong. That makes enough sense in the realm of physical medicine, but it is a purblind maxim when it comes to psychoactive substances. Yes, safety is a consideration when it comes to using psychoactive medicine, so give me all the facts about actual use -- including the subjective reports of actual users -- but at the end of the day, as the Brits would have it, I would rather live a potentially shorter life in which I am achieving my goals than become a centenarian purely for the satisfaction of chart-wielding doctors.
Of course, historians like Paul Johnson ("The Birth of the Modern") cherry-pick a few cases of opium misuse (as in the case of the drug-friendly but hypocritical Samuel Taylor Coleridge) to conclude that drugs like opium probably do not help creativity -- but Johnson makes the usual mistake of expecting such drugs to act like aspirin. Just as we take an aspirin to ease a headache, we should, he feels, be able to take opium to improve creativity. Otherwise, the drug does not "work." But the efficacy of psychoactive drugs involves a great host of contextual and psychological factors that Johnson ignores. They are not one-size-fits all drugs. The question is not whether opium, say, increases creativity in general, but whether it improves creativity in the case of a given person of a given history with a given desire for a given outcome using a given dose at a given frequency in a given situation. It seems to have worked in these ways for Marcus Aurelius and Benjamin Franklin, not to mention Poe and Lovecraft, the latter's work in particular being full of unapologetic opiate imagery.
Johnson goes on to spitefully GUESS that Franklin "probably" became an addict in his old age, but it's not quite clear why even this should be problematic, unless we want to subject opium use to a moral scrutiny that we never apply to Big Pharma meds, let alone to the coffee that Johnson no doubt drank every day of his adult life, or the alcohol that he imbibed, etc. One wonders what uncharitable future historian will look back on Johnson's life and self-righteously conclude that "he was probably addicted to alcohol."
Those of us who have friends and family that smoke are used to said individuals suddenly disappearing from parties and such. We're originally like, "Where is so-and-so?" until the penny finally drops, and we realize that said person has gone outside for a smoke. If we're going to get on high horses about potentially useful drugs like opium, then by rights we should be indignant about smokers. But again, the Drug War is political, and so we only invoke moral disdain when it suits us for non-health-related reasons.
I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.
Prohibitionists have nothing to say about all other dangerous activities: nothing about hunting, free climbing, hang-gliding, sword swallowing, free diving, skateboarding, sky-diving, chug-a-lug competitions, chain-smoking. Their "logic" is incoherent.
My approach to withdrawal: incrementally reduce daily doses over 6 months, or even a year, meanwhile using all the legal entheogens and psychedelics that you can find in a way likely to boost your endurance and "sense of purpose" to make withdrawal successful.
Here are some political terms that are extremely problematic in the age of the drug war:
"clean," "junk," "dope," "recreational"... and most of all the word "drugs" itself, which is as biased and loaded as the word "scab."
To understand why the western world is blind to the benefits of "drugs," read "The Concept of Nature" by Whitehead. He unveils the scientific schizophrenia of the west, according to which the "real" world is invisible to us while our perceptions are mere "secondary" qualities.
Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.
This is why "rock stars" use drugs: not just for performance anxiety (which, BTW, is a completely UNDERSTANDABLE reason for drug use), but because they want to fully experience the music, even tho' they may be currently short on money and being hassled by creditors, etc.
Morphine can provide a vivid appreciation of mother nature in properly disposed minds. That should be seen as a benefit. Instead, dogma tells us that we must hate morphine for any use.
Imagine if we held sports to the same safety standard as drugs. There would be no sports at all. And yet even free climbing is legal. Why? Because with sports, we recognize the benefits and not just the downsides.
It's just plain totalitarian nonsense to outlaw mother nature and to outlaw moods and mental states thru drug law. These truths can't be said enough by us "little people" because the people in power are simply not saying them.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, America's Anti-scientific Standards for Psychotherapeutic Medicine published on December 6, 2020 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
lcohol can kill tens of thousands of Americans a year and we consider it a bargain price to pay for a little harmless fun. But if a demonized psychoactive plant from Mother Nature is merely REPORTED as being somehow related to one single solitary death -- one single solitary death -- the Drug Warrior considers it to be a knock-down argument that the plant medicine in question should be made unavailable, not just to Americans but to everyone around the world, including drug researchers studying Alzheimer's, and that we should even send our army overseas to burn those plants, no matter how many millennia they may have been used responsibly by other cultures. 
You have been reading an article entitled, America's Anti-scientific Standards for Psychotherapeutic Medicine published on December 6, 2020 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)