Hi, Julian. Thanks for the refreshing honesty about drug testing. I'd like to add just a few thoughts to expand on what you've said.
First, I would stress that "drug testing" only makes sense to the average person because "drugs" is a politically created word meaning "substances that have no value whatsoever and therefore should be completely avoided." The fact is, there are no substances of this kind in the world: even the highly toxic Botox has legitimate uses. In the cases of psychoactive substances, all of them have potential uses in some dosage, for some reason, in some therapeutic, religious or psychosocial setting. Drug war hysteria notwithstanding, substances like morphine, opium and coca (and indeed even crack cocaine) can be used non-addictively, if an educated person sets out to use them in that way. But the Drug Warrior never explains how to use drugs safely since the party line is to insist that such a thing is not possible. Joe Biden's Office of National Drug Policy actually worked by a rule that beneficial uses of criminalized "drugs" were never even to be considered. But to think that substances can be bad without regard for how they are used is to adopt the view of Mary Baker Eddy toward drugs, which is that they are morally wrong, period, full stop. But this is a religious view, not a scientific one.
The real problem is that the Drug Warrior completely ignores the most obvious reason for drug use: and that is the human desire for self-transcendence. Only by ignoring this "primum mobile" for drug use can they seem to plausibly maintain such use has no positive purpose. Having drawn that misguided conclusion, they then feel justified in "treating" the "substance user" as a sick person, one who is to be cured by forcing him or her to become "sober" (at least as that term is hypocritically defined in a pill-popping and booze-swilling country). Recidivism is the natural result of such "cures" because the treatment fails to acknowledge, let alone cater to, the "user's" original motivation for "using": namely to acquire self-transcendence. Why? So that they could escape the limitations imposed upon them by their own personal psychology, as well as the stark perceptual limitations imposed upon human beings in general by what Maupassant called our five "miserable senses":
"...our eyes which are unable to perceive what
is either too small or too great, too near to, or too far from us...
our sense of smell which is smaller than that of a dog ...
our sense of taste which can scarcely distinguish the age of a wine!"
- Le Horla, Maupassant
The drug users know (at least at some level) that there are substances in this world that let us see and feel more in life - and even help us BE more by quieting those niggling inner voices (arising from nature and/or nurture) that have otherwise continually told us to "hang it up," that "the likes of YOU can never accomplish that!"
Far from being pathological, this desire for pharmacological self-transcendence has been the inspiration for entire religions, including the Vedic religion in the Indus Valley, the mushroom cults in Mesoamerica, and the psychedelic Eleusinian Mysteries, from which Plato is thought to have gleaned his concepts of an afterlife.
Seen in this light, drug-testing is the tool of a Christian Science inquisition, designed to "out" those who seek transcendence in ways that are unacceptable to WASP westerners, which is another way of saying that the Drug War is a war on religion - indeed, a war on the very wellspring of the religious impulse. It is not just a way to shield alcohol and liquor from competition; it is a way to shield Christianity itself from competition - Christianity, that is, as practiced in the politically non-threatening way that western capitalists are familiar with.
Related tweet: October 14, 2022
Drug testing (in the rare cases that it's needed) should be for identifying impairment. It should not be a fishing expedition to find traces of substances that are hated by botanically clueless politicians.
Drug Testing
Drug Testing is an anti-American attack on freedom. It destroyed the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution. Its existence means that enemies of the drug war are not allowed to work in the United States of America. That is cruel and unusual punishment, especially when you consider that it's handed down, not by a court, but by a faceless process that has been outsourced by the government to American business.
Sure, it is acceptable to test for actual impairment in certain well-defined situations, but that is not what drug testing is about these days. Drug testing is all about rooting out good workers who happen to use substances about which colonialist politicians disapprove. It is so manifestly evil from a freedom-loving point of view that one scarcely knows how to begin arguing against it. But it's apparently what the drug warriors want: they want to leverage our fear of drugs to destroy American freedoms. They've destroyed the 4th Amendment with drug testing. Meanwhile our religious rights are being trampled by DC bureaucrats who absurdly claim to know whether our religions are "sincere" or not. And Oregon pols launched a plan in early 2024 to outlaw free speech about drugs.
WAKE UP! Drug testing and the drug war in general is all about destroying American democracy -- and democracy around the world, while we're at it. It is Christian Science Uber Alles -- even if the vast majority of drug warriors have never even heard of the drug-hating religion of Mary Baker Eddy.
The Drug War violates religious freedom by putting bureaucrats in charge of deciding if a religion is 'sincere' or not. That is so absurd that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. No one in government is capable of determining whether the inner states that I achieve with psychoactive medicine are religious or not. This is why Milton Friedman was so wrong when he said in 1972 that there are good people on both sides of the drug war debate. WRONG! There are those who are more than ready to take away my religious liberty and those who are not. If the former wish to be called 'good,' they will first need a refresher course in American democracy and religious freedom. They need to renounce their Christian Science theocracy and let folks like myself worship using the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions in the past. Until they do that, do not expect me to praise the very people who have launched an inquisition against my form of experiencing the divine.
It's funny to hear fans of sacred plants indignantly insisting that their meds are not "drugs." They're right in a way, but actually NO substances are "drugs." Calling substances "drugs" is like referring to striking workers as "scabs." It's biased terminology.
I could tell my psychiatrist EXACTLY what would "cure" my depression, even without getting addicted, but everything involved is illegal. It has to be. Otherwise I would have no need of the psychiatrist.
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.
LA Police Chief Daryl Gates said drug users should be summarily executed. William Bennett said drug dealers should be beheaded. These are the attitudes that the drug war inculcates. This racist and brutal ideology must be wiped out.
Americans believe scientists when they say that drugs like MDMA are not proven effective. That's false. They are super effective and obviously so. It's just that science holds entheogenic medicines to the standards of reductive materialism. That's unfair and inappropriate.
Every video about science and psilocybin is funny. It shows nerds trying to catch up with common sense. But psychedelics work, whether the FDA thinks so or not. It's proven by what James Fadiman calls "citizen science," i.e. everyday experience.
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.
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands? Prohibitionists, j'accuse!
If there is an epidemic of "self-harm," prohibitionists never think of outlawing razor blades. They ask: "Why the self-harm?" But if there is an epidemic of drug use which they CLAIM is self-harm, they never ask "Why the self-harm?" They say: "Let's prohibit and punish!"
This hysterical reaction to rare negative events actually creates more rare negative events. This is why the DEA publicizes "drug problems," because by making them well known, they make the problems more prevalent and can thereby justify their huge budget.
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, Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition: how the drug war protects Christianity from competition, published on July 9, 2022 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition: how the drug war protects Christianity from competition, published on July 9, 2022 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)