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Drug Prohibition and the Metaphysical Search for 'Real' Religious Inspiration

a review of essay number 6 in Hallucinogens: A Reader, edited by Charles Grob

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





June 26, 2025



The following remarks are part of a series of responses to the essays contained in the 2001 book "Hallucinogens: A Reader," edited by Charles Grob1. The comments below are in response to essay number 6: "Chemical and Contemplative Ecstasy: Similarities and Differences" by Roger Walsh, M.D., Ph.D.


Walsh confronts the metaphysical question of whether drugs "really" increase religiosity, but I contend that this is an ill-conceived question. It is based on the presumption that there is an identifiable one-size-fits-all "sober" state against which we are to judge the effects of psychedelics. There is no such paradigmatic ideal and baseline state however. Each individual has a unique biochemistry and psychology and life story that renders their reactions to life very different from those of their fellows. They already have drugs in their "systems," even if we consider them to be stone sober. Everybody has drugs in their system. That is their biochemistry. To ask about the role that chemicals play in producing a specific behavior or impulse is therefore misconceived -- for behavior is produced by the totality of inputs -- chemical and otherwise -- and the unique way that they interact in an individual at a certain time and in a certain environment and so on. The very term "biochemistry" reminds us that we are all on drugs all the time. The question is therefore NOT: how do those drugs effect us -- but rather how does the wide array of chemical and non-chemical incentives combine (with our upbringing, our psychology, our default biochemistry, etc.) to influence behavior?

Does mescaline increase religiosity? That is a meaningless question. The drug experience is dependent on a vast array of factors besides the use of mescaline by itself. This is why Sartre2 experienced hell on mescaline while many others (most notably Aldous Huxley) experienced pure joy. The outcome of drug use always depends on the unique combination of a vast array of inputs. We should therefore resist the temptation to reify psychoactive drugs as all-powerful causative agents that have one specific outcome of use.

Meanwhile, the idea that drug-aided religiosity is not "real" is highly problematic. It begs endless philosophical questions, such as:

1) If I sharpen my mind with the use of cocaine 3 4 and feel closer to nature for having done so (and therefore feel more "religious" according to my definition of that term), is that somehow not a "valid" religious benefit? Why not, exactly?

2) If morphine 5 gives me a deep appreciation of the intricacies of Mother Nature and I view this as a religious advancement on my part, in what sense am I "wrong"?

The moralist's attempt to say that drug-aided religiosity is not "real" reminds me of the materialist's attempt to tell us that drugs like laughing gas 6 and morphine 7 and coca and phenethylamines cannot "really" help the depressed. Both moralist and materialist are blinded to the obvious. The moralists are blinded by their preconceived ideas about what constitutes a "real" religion. In the case of the materialist, they are biased by the Behaviorist doctrine that real benefits must be discovered under a microscope and can never be seen by the naked eye -- or divined easily by common sense. Common sense tells me that laughter would help the depressed and that states of extreme concentration would help a writer -- and yet Drug War morality and materialist ideology both teach us to pretend that no such help is available, that such help is somehow illusory.

Of course, exceptions are made when money is at stake. Thus speed is rebranded as Ritalin so that we can give it to grade schoolers to improve their concentration levels -- but if we tried to improve the concentration levels of adults with speed, it is considered wrong and demonized as the use of "meth." It makes you wonder how stupid Drug Warriors think we are... and if they might be right about that, at least when it comes to substances that we demonize as "drugs."



Notes:

1: Hallucinogens: a reader Grob, M.D., editor, Charles, Penguin Putnam, 2002 (up)
2: Sartre and Speed: a review of essay number 4 in Hallucinogens: A Reader, edited by Charles Grob DWP (up)
3: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
4: On Cocaine Freud, Sigmund (up)
5: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
6: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
7: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)


Hallucinogens: a Reader, edited by Charles Grob




Essays about the opinions expressed in Hallucinogens by Charles Grob.

  • Cocaine and Ecstasy are not evil
  • Drug Prohibition and the Metaphysical Search for 'Real' Religious Inspiration
  • How Ralph Metzner was bamboozled by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization
  • Sartre and Speed
  • The Drug War is One Big Branding Operation to Demonize Mind and Mood Medicine
  • The metaphysics of drug use and how the drug war outlaws religious liberty
  • The thin line between honesty and fearmongering in the age of the War on Drugs
  • Want to end freedom in America? Just terrify philosophically clueless parents about the boogieman called drugs
  • Why America cracked down on LSD





    • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    The book "Plants of the Gods" is full of plants and fungi that could help addicts and alcoholics, sometimes in the plant's existing form, sometimes in combinations, sometimes via extracting alkaloids, etc. But drug warriors need addiction to sell their prohibition ideology.

    We live in a make-believe world in the US. We created it by outlawing all potentially helpful psychological meds, after which the number-one cause of arrest soon became "drugs." We then made movies to enjoy our crackdown on TV... after a tough day of being drug tested at work.

    Talking about being in denial: drug warriors blame all of the problems that they cause on "drugs" and then insist that the entire WORLD accept their jaundiced view of the natural bounty that God himself told us was good.

    Just saw a People's magazine article with the headline: "JUSTICE FOR MATTHEW PERRY." If there was true justice, their editorial staff would be in jail for promoting user ignorance and a contaminated drug supply. It's the prohibition, stupid!!!

    It's because of such reductive pseudoscience that America will allow us to shock the brains of the depressed but won't allow us to let them use the plant medicines that grow at their feet.

    Drugs are not the enemy, ignorance is -- the ignorance that the Drug War encourages by teaching us to fear drugs rather than to understand them.

    When folks banned opium, they did not just ban a drug: they banned the philosophical and artistic insights that the drug has been known to inspire in writers like Poe, Lovecraft and De Quincey.

    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.

    In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort shows how science damns (i.e. excludes) facts that it cannot assimilate into a system of knowledge. Fort could never have guessed, however, how thoroughly science would eventually "damn" all positive facts about "drugs."

    The healthcare industry turns all the emotional downsides of drug prohibition into "illnesses."


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






    Want to end freedom in America? Just terrify philosophically clueless parents about the boogieman called drugs
    Sartre and Speed


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