a little well-intentioned feedback from a victim of America's war on mind medicine
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 12, 2022
Editor's Comments:
May 28, 2025
Don't look at me, I told the Herr Philosopher that he should delete this post. But he told me, "Ellen" he said -- my name is Ellen -- "Ellen," he said, "this post should rather remain online as testimony to the fact that I, too, am human, that I, too, am subject to mercurial moods, for..." and here he raised his right index finger into the air by way of emphasis, "...I come from a race that has been noted, time out of mind, for vigour of fancy and ardour of passion." I was like, wow! What can one say to THAT? Of course, I later realized that Brian was just facetiously quoting the opening to "Eleonora" by Edgar Allan Poe, but his response really impressed me at the time -- I figured for the moment that he actually did come from a race of tempestuous visionaries. Why not? But you had to be there, I guess, confronted as I was by his lofty forehead and his scintillating orbs. "Those eyes! Those large, those shining, those divine orbs! They became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them devoutest of astrologers." Or so I thought at the time. It later occurred to me that the boss was just joking, however -- except for the bit about his simple humanity, of course. I think the Human League said it best: Brian is only human, born to make mistakes, in light of which bombshell I ask the reader to place the most generous possible construction on the perhaps somewhat unhinged harangue that follows.
DISCUSSION QUESTION:
Is the term "unhinged harangue" redundant? Why or why not?
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Dear Drug Warrior:
You've made me live my whole life without godsend medicine that grows at my very feet. You've made sure that newly discovered godsends for depression like MDMA 1 and nitrous oxide are unavailable to me. You've forced me to rely on the psychiatric pill mill 2 with its expensive and ineffective meds that cause chemical dependency, thanks to which I have to take these mind-numbing pills every day of my life for the rest of my life. You have overthrown natural law by denying me the freely given bounty of Mother Nature and established America as a drug-hating Christian Science republic, completely ignorant of the fact that psychoactive medicines spawned entire religions, that Benjamin Franklin enjoyed opium 3 , that HG Wells enjoyed coca wine, and that Plato's views of the afterlife were inspired by the psychedelic mysteries at Eleusis.
You've ensured, in short, that I've been unnecessarily depressed my entire life thanks to your unprecedented hubris in outlawing godsend medicines.
But wait, there's more: while screwing me over royally like this, you have created a world of violence out of whole cloth, including civil wars overseas and thousands of deaths a year in the States, with almost 800 a year in Chicago alone -- all caused by the prohibition of substances about which you lie lie lie, insisting against all evidence that they can only be used for evil.
No, you are the evil, Drug Warrior -- you and your anti-patient, anti-nature, anti-scientific war against Godsend medicines.
And what has your Drug War accomplished? There were no young people dying on our streets when opiates were legal. It took drug prohibition to accomplish that. How? By refusing to teach safe use, refusing to regulate product as to quantity and quality, and refusing to re-legalize the endless alternative substances that could keep using from obsessing about one substance in the first place.
Oh, did I mention that you have stolen elections for fascist conservatives like Trump because you wrote your hateful unconstitutional anti-medicine laws with an eye toward disfranchising millions of minorities?
I think what I'm trying to say here, Drug Warrior, is, um... Oh, yes here's what I'm driving at: Go to hell!
Conservatives say they're against Big Government -- but they let bureaucrats decide what medicines they can use.
Opium could be a godsend for talk therapy. It can help the user step outside themselves and view their problems from novel viewpoints.
We need to stop using the fact that people like opiates as an excuse to launch a crackdown on inner cities. We need to re-legalize popular meds, teach safe use, and come up with common sense ways to combat addictions by using drugs to fight drugs.
We've got to take the fight TO the drug warriors by starting to hold them legally responsible for having spread "Big Lies" about "drugs." Anyone involved in producing the "brain frying" PSA of the 1980s should be put on trial for willfully spreading a toxic lie.
"The Legislature deliberately determines to distrust the very people who are legally responsible for the physical well-being of the nation, and puts them under the thumb of the police, as if they were potential criminals."
-- Aleister Crowley on drug laws
Everyone's biggest concern is the economy? Is nobody concerned that Trump has promised to pardon insurrectionists and get revenge on critics? Is no one concerned that Trump taught Americans to doubt democracy by questioning our election fairness before one single vote was cast?
It's just plain totalitarian nonsense to outlaw mother nature and to outlaw moods and mental states thru drug law. These truths can't be said enough by us "little people" because the people in power are simply not saying them.
To say that psilocybin has not been proven to work is like saying that a hammer has not yet been proven to smash glass. Why not? Because the process has not yet been studied under a microscope.
My depression would disappear overnight if religiously intolerant America would just allow me to live as freely as Benjamin Franklin.
The FDA approves of shock therapy and the psychiatric pill mill, but they cannot see the benefits in MDMA, a drug that brought peace, love and understanding to the dance floor in 1990s Britain.
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