Another non-fiction author reckons without the drug war
open letter to Greg Epstein, author of Tech Agnostic
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 9, 2025
Hi, Greg.
You're obviously a great writer and researcher. I recognize that after listening to the first six tracks of your book1 on Downpour.com.
With respect, however, you are like almost every other non-fiction author today in that you reckon without the Drug War.
The fact that AI seeks to give us "transcendence" takes on a very different meaning when we recognize that we live in a world in which all drugs that can facilitate human transcendence have been outlawed by government, everything from the godsend phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin234 to the erstwhile panacea called opium5, to the deified coca plant of the Peruvians67, not to mention, of course, the Soma 8 juice of the Vedic people9 or the psychedelic kykeon at Eleusis10, which some drug pundits believe inspired Plato's views of the afterlife11.
This is the reason why I am so bothered by AI triumphalists. Before we rewire our brains to become one with AI, we should have the right to use the plants and fungi that grow at our very feet -- and the elating and insight-bringing medicines inspired thereby. I don't want an implant for depression from Elon Musk12 -- not until I have been allowed to first see what the myriad of potential psychoactive therapies hold in store for those who use them wisely and for good purposes (notwithstanding our government's superstitious and racist-motivated attempts to portray safe drug use as a contradiction in terms). And yet America even is now outlawing laughing gas 13 , a substance which elates and inspires and which William James himself told us to study in order to learn about the nature of reality1415.
You are in good company, however, in ignoring this tyrannical context. Even today's science magazines ignore the implications of drug prohibition. That's why Science News and Scientific American still pretend that depression is a hard nut to crack, never acknowledging the fact that we have outlawed all drugs that could end depression in a trice (albeit not in a way that passion-scorning behaviorists and materialists would understand)16.
The result? We literally prefer that people commit suicide 17 than to use "drugs"18 -- and we prefer that they undergo shock therapy rather than to use "drugs."19 My depressed uncle was a victim of this sick mindset, by the way. His materialist shock "treatment" was a blessing only for his care staff, for whom he was henceforth less obstreperous.
You mentioned a guy who said that Science was his God. That sounds like a rash conclusion in a world in which his government has purposefully outlawed all substances that provide human transcendence. That is about the only thing that Schedule I drugs have in common, after all: their ability to inspire and elate -- with the "worst" of them having the potential to inspire entire new religions. Does this guy really think that he has enough data to rule out other kinds of spirituality? or is he not rather brainwashed like almost every other westerner into assuming that drug prohibition is a natural baseline for human societies?
I can understand why you ignore this drug angle, however; because Americans are brainwashed about drugs -- having been shielded for a lifetime from positive reports of drug use -- and so writing openly on the subject no doubt runs the risk of losing your audience.
Best Wishes,
Brian Quass
abolishthedea.com
PS Wise drug use has the potential to make people comfortable in their own skins, appreciative of Mother Nature, etc.20 This fact alone suggests why a tech-centered world is in no hurry to re-legalize psychoactive substances. Big Tech wants a world in which we continually want to "keep up with the Joneses," not one in which we're happy with the simple things in life.
PPS For more on the relevance of drugs to the subject of Big Tech triumphalism, I invite you to see my articles describing the link between drug prohibition and materialism 21.2223242526 I hold that it was always a category error to place materialists27 in charge of creating and approving mind and mood medicine in the first place -- and that the proof of that conclusion is that it leads to absurd and inhumane outcomes, a few of which I have hinted at above.
Check out the 2021 article in Forbes in which a materialist doctor professes to doubt whether laughing gas could help the depressed. Materialists are committed to seeing the world from the POV of Spock from Star Trek.
Q: Why are we never told about the potential benefits of drugs?
A: Follow the money.
The FDA will be accepting comments through September 20th on the subject of ways to fight PTSD.
PTSD@reaganudall.org
Ask them why they support brain-damaging shock therapy but won't approve drugs like MDMA that could make ECT unnecessary.
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for those who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
Q: Where can you find almost-verbatim copies of the descriptions of religious experiences described by William James? A: In descriptions of user reports of "trips" on drugs ranging from coca to opium, from MDMA to laughing gas.
This is why I call the drug war 'fanatical Christian Science.' People would rather have grandpa die than to let him use laughing gas or coca or opium or MDMA, etc. etc.
Someone should stand outside Jefferson's estate and hand out leaflets describing the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello to confiscate poppy plants. That raid was against everything Jefferson stood for. The TJ Foundation DISHONORED JEFFERSON and their visitors should know that!
If the depressed patient laughs, that means nothing. Materialists have to see results under a microscopic or they will never sign off on a therapy.
Attention People's magazine editorial staff:
Matthew Perry was a big boy who made his own decisions. He didn't die because of ketamine or because of evil rotten drug dealers, he died because of America's enforced ignorance about psychoactive drugs.
There's more than set and setting: there's fundamental beliefs about the meaning of life and about why mother nature herself is full of psychoactive substances. Tribal peoples associate some drugs with actual sentient entities -- that is far beyond "set and setting."
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
(up)