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.
If Americans want less government, they should get rid of the Drug War Industrial Complex, rather than abandoning democracies around the world and leaving a vacuum for Russia and China to fill.
There are neither "drugs" nor "meds" as those terms are used today. All substances have potential good uses and bad uses. The terms as used today carry value judgements, as in meds good, drugs bad.
Here's the first step in the FDA process for evaluating a psychoactive drug:
Ignore all glaringly obvious benefits.
The prohibitionist motto: "Billions for arrest, not one cent for education."
Drugs like opium and cocaine should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."
I don't have a problem with CBD. But I find that many people like it for the wrong reasons: they assume there is something slightly "dirty" about getting high and that all "cures" should be effected via direct materialist causes, not holistically a la time-honored tribal use.
Drug testing labs should give high marks for those who manage to use drugs responsibly, notwithstanding the efforts of law enforcement to ruin their lives. The lab guy would be like: "Wow, you are using opium wisely, my friend! Congratulations! Your boss is lucky to have you!"
"The Oprah Winfrey Fallacy": the idea that a statistically insignificant number of cases constitutes a crisis, provided ONLY that the villain of the piece is something that racist politicians have demonized as a "drug."
Drug war pundits need to stop using the word "snorts" when it comes to cocaine. We "take" our "meds," and yet we "snort" cocaine, just like a pig. That is NOT neutral language, folks!
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