Learn the lost art of clear thinking in the age of drug hysteria
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
December 2, 2025
SENSEI: Welcome, Grasshopper. Today, I teach you the Five Stages of Enlightenment when it comes to psychoactive substances.
Visit the Drug War Dojo at abolishthedea.com and learn the lost art of thinking straight in the age of drug hysteria
GRASSHOPPER: Psychoactive substances, Sensei? You mean drugs, don't you?
SENSEI: No, Grasshopper. YOU mean drugs, I mean potential godsend medicines.
GRASSHOPPER: Aha! [Grasshopper enlightened, bell chimes]
SENSEI: For you see, Grasshopper, the first step toward enlightenment is to recognize that there are no such things as drugs in the pejorative sense in which western racists employ that term.
GRASSHOPPER: Ah, yes. You mean that all substances have potential uses for somebody, at some dose, for some reason, in some circumstance, and so forth.
SENSEI: Grasshopper shoot, Grasshopper score.
GRASSHOPPER: And that it is anti-scientific and inhumane to rule out any medicine in advance based on a politically inspired branding operation.
SENSEI: You have two ears and one mouth, Grasshopper. Be pleased to use them in that proportion.
GRASSHOPPER: Oh, sorry about that. Tell me, He Who Knows: what are the Five Stages of Enlightenment when it comes to drugs-- er, I mean, psychoactive substances.
STAGE FIVE
SENSEI: For many, the road to Enlightenment begins with the befuddled Stage Five, in which the novitiate feels that all drugs should be outlawed -- with the selfish exception of alcohol, caffeine, Red Bull, Monster Energy Drinks, antidepressants, and so forth. They hold the drug-hating views that they have been force-fed since childhood thanks to a lifetime of drug-war propaganda, especially in the form of the total censorship of all positive reports of drug use in the media, including magazines, books, movies and TV shows, along with the media's lopsided, morbid and highly hypocritical focus on what they call misuse and abuse.
GRASSHOPPER: In other words, such Americans are Grade-A jerks, determined to make their own ignorance the law of the land -- even to the point of going around the world burning plants and fungi to bring the physical world itself inline with their laughable prejudices.
SENSEI: Indeed, we liken the logically challenged tenderfoot to a baby.
STAGE FOUR
GRASSHOPPER: So, I guess that the seeker of Stage Four is considered a child, then?
SENSEI: Exactly. The Stage Four novitiates are almost as bamboozled as their Stage Five counterparts. How could they not be when proselytizing adults have bribed them with free teddy bears in grade school to extort from them a Christian Science disdain for psychoactive substances?
GRASSHOPPER: Christian Science being the drug-hating religion of American Mary Baker Eddy, I believe.
SENSEI: Quite.
GRASSHOPPER: But how are these logically challenged Stage Four morons any better than the Stage Five morons?
SENSEI: Both groups believe that so-called "drug use" is wrong....
GRASSHOPPER: Yessss....
SENSIE: ...however, the Stage Four novitiates believe that drug prohibition is not working as advertised and so they are in favor of a new approach.
GRASSHOPPER: Oh, yeah.
SENSEI: They favor a sort of Drug War Lite, in which drug users are no longer arrested and yet they are not free either. Instead, they are taken to see doctors and psychiatrists who will "treat them" for the supposed illness of desiring to use godsend medicines.
GRASSHOPPER: That's rich. First the government outlaws time-honored panaceas, and then they say that you have a disease if you insist on using them!
SENSEI: Remind me to give you application form for salaried Sensei position after today's session. You keep stealing words out of mouth of honorable Sensei.
STAGE THREE
GRASSHOPPER: So the Stage Five novitiate is a baby and the Stage Four novitiate is a child. I'm guessing then that the Stage Three novitiate is a teenager?
SENSEI: Precisely. The Stage Three seeker also believes that drug prohibition has failed.
GRASSHOPPER: As if it had a right to succeed in the first place, to turn the world into one big Christian Science planet!
SENSEI: Correction, please. Drug prohibition has succeeded beyond the Drug Warriors' wildest dreams.
GRASSHOPPER: How so, Sensei?
SENSEI: Drug prohibition has succeeded insofar as its goal was to disempower minorities and thereby hand elections to fascists.
GRASSHOPPER: Aha! [Grasshopper enlightened, bell chimes]
SENSEI: However, the Stage Three novitiate has come to agree that some drugs can be used appropriately.
GRASSHOPPER: With an emphasis on SOME, no doubt.
SENSEI: Exactly. Unfortunately, this seems to be the category to which most opponents of drug prohibition belong. They fail to realize that drug prohibition is the problem, not drugs. They agree with the Drug Warrior's idea that some substances are beyond the pale -- they just want to come up with a list of their own "evil" substances, that's all.
GRASSHOPPER: A list that almost always includes the two closest things to panaceas in the psychoactive world, namely, cocaine1 and opium2.
SENSEI: Touché, Grasshopper. This is why life in Capitalist34 America was sure to eventually become medicalized to the hilt: because the medical establishment realized that they could earn trillions if those drugs were outlawed -- hence they judged them based on their worst imaginable uses, exactly as if they were to judge alcohol by studying only alcoholics.
GRASSHOPPER: And so now the medical industry is treating all the endless illnesses and indispositions that necessarily arise after the outlawing of panaceas. How's that for a lucrative arrangement?!
SENSEI: Do you know, Grasshopper, that depression would scarcely be a "thing" in America if cocaine were re-legalized...
GRASSHOPPER: Word.
SENSEI: ...and that the re-legalization of opium smoking would bring longed-for peace to hospice sufferers who cannot get adequate relief today -- and why? Because their doctors are being watched like a hawk by drug-hating D.C. bureaucrats, whom they know will throw them in jail if they do not respect America's puritanical sensibilities in prescribing pain medication.
GRASSHOPPER: Okay, so the Stage Three dudes have at least learned that some so-called drugs have valid uses. They are on the ROAD to enlightenment.
SENSEI: Potentially, yes. Although these "Teenage" novitiates generally believe that drug use is for recreational purposes only, which is a psychologically shallow view, to put it mildly. Actually, the psychological and physical worlds work together -- as indigenous people have known for millennia now -- for more on which, I recommend that the interested Grasshopper read the following, wherein they will also discover why it was a category error to put materialist scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place:
GRASSHOPPER: So I take it then that the Stage Two novitiate no longer blames drugs at all for social problems?
SENSEI: Exactly. Stage Two initiates can be seen as bona fide Adults -- albeit young ones. They are finally mature enough to see that drugs have never been the problem: that drug prohibition brings about all sorts of problems by outlawing education, refusing to regulate drugs as to dosage and quality, and so forth.
GRASSHOPPER: That sounds progressive to me. What are these novitiates missing, then?
SENSEI: These Young Adults, as we may call them, might fool you into thinking that they are truly enlightened about psychoactive substances, but if you listen to them long enough, you will eventually discover a problem with their point of view.
GRASSHOPPER: I'm all ears.
SENSEI: Check again, Grasshopper. I think you'll find that you have two ears and one mouth.
GRASSHOPPER: Fair cop, Sensei. Fair cop.
SENSEI: These Young Adults of Stage Two believe that we need to "follow the science" when it comes to drug policy.
GRASSHOPPER: And that would be wrong becauuuuuuuse...
SENSEI: Those who want to "follow the science" are thereby implying that there is an objective way to judge psychoactive substances and that is just not true, Grasshopper. Materialist scientists can only tell us one thing about drug use: namely, what the physical risks are when the use of a given drug is considered outside of all context. They can never tell us if drug use makes sense in any given circumstance, because that involves many more factors than just drug-specific risks, factors that scientists qua scientists are not even qualified to evaluate.
GRASSOHPPER: I'm not sure I understand.
SENSEI: I'm not sure anybody does, Grasshopper -- or that anybody HAS since Thomas Szasz5 was around -- or else GK Chesterton6.
GRASSHOPPER: Can you give me a "for instance"?
SENSEI: Let us suppose that we turn to the "scientists" and ask them if cocaine should be legal -- or rather if cocaine should be legal once again. If the scientists were to really do a fair examination of that question, they would have to consider ALL imaginable risks and benefits of cocaine use, and I do mean ALL, something they have never even come close to doing before. Now, we all know that our scientists are excellent at considering the RISKS of drug use -- as scientists that is pretty much all they study these days -- indeed, we have entire agencies devoted to the search for the downsides of drug use -- but these same scientists are terrible at considering the BENEFITS of drug use -- and they are even worse than that when it comes to considering the risks of NOT using a drug7.
GRASSHOPPER: So you're saying that a scientific evaluation of the question is inherently unfair and biased.
SENSEI: Exactly. It is unfair to simply point out the downsides of use outside of all context. A case in point is the article by Wade Davis about "The Secret History of Coca8," published in Rolling Stone magazine in April 2025. It might appear to be a progressive feature insofar as Davis quite properly takes racists to task for demonizing the coca leaf, and yet Davis does not stop to question the decision to outlaw cocaine, a decision that has denied me godsend medicine for a lifetime now. No, for Davis, the drug was justifiably outlawed. And why? Davis implies that cocaine was outlawed because it was associated with 400 toxicity-related deaths around the world. 400. To which I say, "So what?" Aspirin kills 3,000 a year in the U.K. alone9, and alcohol kills 178,000 in the United States each year10. Why is 400 such a prohibition-provoking number for Wade? Moreover, there are 49,000 suicides a year in the United States alone11 -- many of which would clearly not have taken place if cocaine were relegalized, for Sigmund Freud knew from personal experience that it was a quick-acting godsend for the depressed12.
We do not need a scientist to analyze these facts about cocaine: we simply need a fair-minded and unbiased human being who does not have a prior commitment to the drug-demonizing ideology of substance prohibition. We just need someone -- anyone -- who has just enough math skills to realize that numbers like 3,000 and 178,000 are much greater than 400 -- and someone who will actually dare to say so in public! In other words, we need someone who will be fair and honest about drugs, not someone who can wear a white lab coat and claim to be objective, like Dr. Spock of the original Star Trek, as if it were objective to judge drugs by ignoring all but a handful of handpicked negative evidence. In other words, we need to follow the common sense, not the science.
Drug use is all about subjectivity, remember, it's all about what the drug use means for the user, and that is a consideration that our lawmakers ruthlessly ignore. This is why many Stage Three Chicken Littles like Kevin Sabet13 claim that they too want to follow the science: because they know that scientists are unfair in the age of the Drug War, that they refuse to take into account a vast array of factors -- like, for instance, the price that we pay when we do NOT legalize a substance as, for instance, when the depressed commit suicide because we have outlawed a drug that could cheer them up in a trice!
GRASSHOPPER: Aha! [Grasshopper enlightened, bell chimes]
SENSEI: Of course, this whole hypothetical case illustrates why it was such madness to outlaw drugs in the first place. Health is the outcome of a balance of a wide array of factors, and we would have to be God him or herself in order to judge whether a given individual is "right" in using a given drug at a given time for a given reason at a given dose in a given environment, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We would have to get inside their mind. And so the Drug Warrior simplifies things: they have us consider only drug-use downsides in evaluating a drug. Details be damned, the Drug Warriors demand a show trial. And so our scientists judge drugs while dogmatically ignoring the very existence of the kinds of multitudinous variables to which I am alluding here.
But then this is just the sort of absurd outcome that we should expect when we put the government in charge of our personal health as citizens. For as GK Chesterton wrote in "Eugenics and Other Evils":
"It is said that the Government must safeguard the health of the community. And the moment that is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between beer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all." --GK Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils14
In other words, you were right, Grasshopper: Drug prohibition necessarily devolves into one big branding operation 1516 to make us feel a certain way about the substances that our self-interested politicians would have us hate. We are not supposed to understand those drugs, we are supposed to hate and fear them. This is the "Fire bad" mentality that we invoke every time we shout "Fentanyl kills!" or "Crack kills!" No, even those drugs can be used wisely, as Carl Hart has reminded us17. It is drug policy that kills, not drugs.
STAGE ONE
GRASSHOPPER: It follows then that the true grown-up, the true enlightened one, is he or she who recognizes the once-obvious fact that so-called drugs are inanimate objects and that they are only made dangerous by misguided social policies.
SENSEI: Spoken like a budding Sensei!
GRASSHOPPER: So, let me see if I've got this straight.
SENSEI: Proceed.
RECAP
GRASSHOPPER: Stage Five Americans think that all so-called drug use is wrong in an absolute sort of moral sense. These are the gun-toting, beer-swilling, lock-'em-up types who have a vested -- and often racist -- interest in locking up minorities, and indeed all those people whom they personally file under the category of "riffraff" in the dust-covered cabinet of their minds.
SENSEI: Bingo.
GRASSHOPPER: The Stage Four dudes agree that drug use is wrong, but they are the self-styled softies of the crack-down movement: they feel that drug use should be treated as an illness rather than a crime.
SENSEI: Yes, apparently we are sick if we want to have creative dreams or to sharpen our minds a la Sherlock Holmes. Who knew, right, Grasshopper?
GRASSHOPPER: The Stage Three folk are your lukewarm worrywarts: they think that some drug use is PROBABLY okay (they're like, "Eh...") but they still insist that certain so-called "hard drugs" -- meaning drugs that were always considered panaceas in the past -- should indeed be outlawed, now and for all times -- in all circumstances, without regard for any details whatsoever!
SENSEI: Yes. Even if that means that hundreds of thousands must go without a godsend cure for depression or without godsend pain relief, et cetera. Say on.
GRASSHOPPER: The Stage Two folks are "getting there" viz. enlightenment. They have come to see that drugs are not the problem at all. They know that drug use, like any other activity on Planet Earth, has its risks, and that we only heighten those risks when we attempt to get rid of them altogether via drug prohibition.
SENSEI. Yes, indeedy, Grasshopper. Since the 1970s, white suburban parents have been pestering politicians to outlaw drugs as a way to outsource drug-related risks to minority communities, thereby saving their white kids from their own potential mistakes, and look at the carnage and destruction that these selfish parents have thereby inflicted on the world! But, of course, those parents were motivated by a Stage Five mindset.
GRASSHOPPPER: Unfortunately, the Stage Two novitiates lack true enlightenment, for they want to place drug-related decisions in the hands of scientists, failing to realize that drug use is about so much more than the physiological effects of psychoactive substances.
SENSEI: Speaking of which, did the Rishi of the Punjab need a scientist to tell them that drinking Soma juice was important for them? Did they need a scientist to sign off on their creation of the drug-inspired Vedic religion? Would I myself need a scientist to tell me if cocaine made sense for me as a depressed individual, especially if I were otherwise on the brink of committing suicide thanks to the mal-adaptive nature of my current so-called SOBER state? Nay, I would not even dare to ASK a scientist such a question today because their official party line in the age of the Drug War is that folks like myself should undergo brain-damaging shock therapy rather than use a drug that could cheer them up in a trice, wherefore I say that the Drug War represents the inversion of all humane values.
GRASSHOPPER: Aha! [Grasshopper enlightened, bell chimes]
SENSEI: That's epiphany number four today, if I am not mistaken, Grasshopper, a new record for you. But you have yet to reiterate the blessings of Stage One.
GRASSHOPPER: Ah, yes, Stage One, enlightenment itself. This is the stage in which we recognize that it is tyranny for any government to decide how and how much one is allowed to think and feel in this life, a stage in which we realize that it is tyrannical absurdity to claim to outlaw Mother Nature herself, a stage in which we realize that drug misuse does not tell us anything whatsoever about drugs -- but that it tells us plenty about the society in which we live. This may be a lesson that we do not want to hear, of course, but we should not project our own shortcomings as a country on other nations by insisting that they too blame drugs for every social problem in the world. That's the Mother of all cases of denial!
SENSEI: Aha! [Sensei enlightened, bell chimes]
Hey, what's the big idea, Grasshopper? I'm supposed to enlighten YOU, remember? not the other way around!
GRASSHOPPER: And how many people have actually attained Stage One Enlightenment towards psychoactive substances in America today, Sensei?
SENSEI: None that I am aware of. But then we must remember that most people would pay a very high price for publicly professing such a viewpoint.
GRASSHOPPER: Then how did YOU see the light, SENSEI? How did YOU ultimately attain Enlightenment?
SENSEI: I have three factors working for me, Grasshopper:
1) I am in a position where I can afford to be honest.
2) I am of a philosophical turn of mind. As such, I am irked by the staying power of such an illogical, counterproductive and hypocritical drugs policy in a supposedly free country.
3) Drug prohibition is not just another social problem for me. I have skin in this game. Drug prohibition has turned me into a patient for life. It has denied me godsend medicines while shunting me off onto an underperforming and highly dependence-causing drug that is much, much harder to kick than heroin 181920!
Had any one of these three factors been absent, I would probably be just as bamboozled as the next guy, in which case I never would have passed my first SAT, aka my Sensei Aptitude Test. Speaking of which, hold on while I get you that Sensei application form that I promised you. You've got Sensei written all over you, Grasshopper! But then you had a good teacher, didn't you? Wait till I tell the Dojocho that you actually enlightened ME!
The UK just legalized assisted dying. This means that you can use drugs to kill a person, but you still can't use drugs to make that person want to live.
"All these anti-opium articles... are based upon the same model. They assume certain statements as existing and acknowledged facts which have never been proved to be such, and then proceed to draw deductions from those alleged facts." --William Brereton
It is a crime against humanity to withhold cocaine from the depressed and those with impaired cognition.
If Fentanyl kills, then alcohol massacres. The problem is drug prohibition, not drugs.
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.
How else will they scare us enough to convince us to give up all our freedoms for the purpose of fighting horrible awful evil DRUGS? DRUGS is the sledgehammer with which they are destroying American democracy.
We should hold the DEA criminally responsible for withholding spirit-lifting drugs from the depressed. Responsible for what, you ask? For suicides and lobotomies, for starters.
Rather than protesting prohibition as a crackdown on academic freedom, today's scientists are collaborating with the drug war by promoting shock therapy and SSRIs, thereby profiting from the monopoly that the drug war gives them in selling mind and mood medicine.
The main form of drug war propaganda is censorship. That's why most Americans cannot imagine any positive uses for psychoactive substances, because the media and the government won't allow that.
After over a hundred years of prohibition, America has developed a kind of faux science in which despised substances are completely ignored. This is why Sci Am is making a new argument for shock therapy in 2023, because they ignore all the stuff that OBVIOUSLY cheers one up.
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