How online entrepreneurs set themselves up as the experts on what the depressed need in the age of drug prohibition
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 27, 2026
I fear that the charge of "cultural appropriation" gets invoked too easily when it comes to artistic creation. There is nothing wrong with writing about a group to which one does not belong. There are both upsides and downsides to being an outsider, just as there are upsides and downsides to being an insider. Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" was written by a white American Jew. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was written by a white female northerner. And the most popular and informative book about Americans as a people was written by a Frenchman. True cultural appropriation, for me, is just a subset, or instance, of a larger literary sin known as "writing about something that one knows nothing about," especially when one's goal in doing so is to promote their own reputation as a writer and/or to make money. I don't say, then, that cultural appropriation does not exist, merely that the term should be used carefully lest we discourage well-meaning people in their attempt to make valid and useful points merely because they do not belong to the group about which they are writing.
With this qualification in mind, I would like to complain this morning about a kind of cultural appropriation that I am the very first to notice. (I find that I'm racking up a lot of "firsts" as a drug-war philosopher simply because I'm willing to speak up on those subjects about which my tenured colleagues do not dare say a word.) I am referring to the as-yet unacknowledged culture of the millions of med-dependent patients in America, who, like myself, have been turned into wards of the healthcare state by drug prohibition. Our story and our plight has been co-opted by non-profit agencies and entrepreneurs who claim to be the experts on what we are going through in life while yet ignoring the gorilla in the room: the fact that we would not be suffering at all were it not for the drug prohibition which these very agencies and entrepreneurs are completely ignoring! Groups like Right to Heal, Surviving Antidepressants, and Mad in America will provide us online sandboxes in which we can complain about our depressed status quo, but these sites will never allow us to make the connection between drug prohibition and our disempowerment, certainly not in any forceful way. These sites have to appeal to a mainstream audience, after all, in order to raise operating funds and/or push product, like herbal aids and meditation courses and virtual therapy sessions: in other words, all sorts of Christian Science "cures" for depression.
These sites want to teach the depressed but they do not want to learn from them.
This is real cultural appropriation. Robert Whitaker's depression-free staff at Mad in America sets themself up as the experts in their privileged intellectual substacks while the depressed themselves get to chat about their woes in a free-for-all sandbox, and will even be censored there if they so much as give the impression that outlawed drugs could be of use to them. To say such things is to give medical advice, after all, don't you see? And so we are told they we must visit doctors for our problems, the very doctors who are treating us with the dependence-causing meds that we came to the site to complain about! These sites want to teach the depressed, but they do not want to learn from them. If they did, they would have a person like myself in their intellectual substack who represented the interests of the depressed as a depressed person. For you see, here is a case where the biography of the writer really matters enormously: the case where their point of view is not even being represented, but rather distorted by those who do not feel the downsides of policy, as we do, in their daily lives. Here is a case of real cultural appropriation.
Whitaker's site is all about antidepressant downsides, and yet he tells me that I have no standing after taking such "meds" for over 45 years, after living on the receiving end of drug policy for an entire lifetime now. If he were to ask me, I would say that he is the one who has no standing on the subject of depression. Granted, he wrote some excellent books about the bogus scientific claims of pharmaceutical companies viz. antidepressants, but that does not make him an expert on depression. Nor does it make him a philosopher. In my view, Robert is an excellent reporter but a very poor philosopher. He seems to see no connection between assisted suicide for the depressed and drug prohibition, a connection that would be clear to any philosopher, assuming that they were familiar with the state of the art in ethnobotany and pharmacology. They would know that there exist drugs that can inspire and elate, and that it is therefore wrong to discuss suicide for the depressed without discussing the outlawing of such substances. Apparently that common-sense fact has to be established by a biochemical determinist before it will register for the mainstream with its mania for medicalization and the professionalization of the subject of human feelings.
And so depressed westerners like Claire Brosseau must die because I have no standing. We must wait for an academic to protest drug prohibition on behalf of the depressed -- which is kind of like waiting for a Maga supporter to write a position paper welcoming the LGBTQ community into the fold. It's certainly not going to happen in time to keep Claire from unnecessarily exercising her right to die as a Canadian, in spite of the fact that there are drugs that could cheer her up in a trice. This is hardcore cultural appropriation for the depressed community in North America. This is cultural appropriation with a body count. A community of self-styled "experts" has set themselves up online to "teach" us what we need; it is our job to sit back and learn from our betters, as they gaslight us about the common-sense fix to our whole problem: the eradication of the drug prohibition which so clearly outlaws our right to heal. We may give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they are not writing for personal gain, but they are still guilty of cultural appropriation when they write as outsiders about what the depressed community needs, while ignoring the input from one of that community's most senior members, namely myself. Like society as a whole, such groups are just telling myself and the rest of the depressed to "shut up and take your meds."
Key Takeaways:
Cultural appropriation occurs when one writes about something that they know nothing about.
The story of the depressed has been co-opted by entrepreneurs claiming to be the experts on what's best for us.
Online sites want to teach the depressed, not learn from them.
It is wrong to discuss assisted suicide for the depressed without discussing drug prohibition.
The experts gaslight the depressed, ignoring the role of drug prohibition in outlawing mood-elevating medicines.
Materialist scientists cannot triumph over addiction because their reductive focus blinds them to the obvious: namely, that drugs which cheer us up ACTUALLY DO cheer us up. Hence they keep looking for REAL cures while folks kill themselves for want of laughing gas and MDMA.
Ann Lemke's case studies make the usual assumptions: getting free from addiction is a morality tale. No reference to how the drug war promotes addiction and how banned drugs could solve such problems. She does not say why daily SSRI use is acceptable while daily opium use is not. Etc.
Self-medicating has always been the most basic of human rights, until the medical industry demonized the practice for obvious financial reasons.
Alcohol makes me sleepy. But NOT coca wine. The wine gives you an upbeat feeling of controlled energy, without the jitters of coffee and without the fury of steroids. It increases rather than dulls mental focus.
Alexander Shulgin is a typical westerner when he speaks about cocaine. He moralizes about the drug, telling us that it does not give him "real" power. But so what? Does coffee give him "real" power? Coke helps some, others not. Stop holding it to this weird metaphysical standard.
The drug war is a slow-motion coup against democracy.
I have nothing against science, BTW (altho' I might feel differently after a nuclear war!) I just want scientists to "stay in their lane" and stop pretending to be experts on my own personal mood and consciousness.
I'm interested in CBD myself, because I want to gain benefits at times without experiencing intoxication. So I think it's great. But I like it as part of an overall strategy toward mental health. I do not think of CBD, as some do, as a way to avoid using naughty drugs.
If fearmongering drug warriors were right about the weakness of humankind, there would be no social drinkers, only drunkards.
Psychiatrists never acknowledge the biggest downside to modern antidepressants: the fact that they turn you into a patient for life. That's demoralizing, especially since the best drugs for depression are outlawed by the government.
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