I was just about to call it quits for the day, when I made the mistake of checking my Twitter feed. Someone had taken exception to my idea of giving godsend medicines to the elderly. They claimed that the elderly are already given way too many drugs.
Sure, that latter statement is true, but to use that as a reason for not using drugs at all is absurd.
Anyone who claims that "drugs" are the problem has been thoroughly brainwashed by the War on Drugs. "Drugs" is not a scientific term -- it's a political term as used today, meaning "substances that are not really needed and should be avoided" -- as distinguished from the equally make-believe category called "meds," meaning "substances that have the blessings of materialist science and that it is our actual duty to use as good citizens.1"
I've lived this stuff over the last ten years with my mother and I resent when people try to tell me what would have worked for my mother and what would have not worked. I was there. I lived it. And the fact that Big Pharma pummeled her with one set of drugs tells us absolutely nothing about drugs themselves but rather about the failures of Big Pharma and American drug policy in general -- most importantly, the absurd idea that materialist doctors are specialists when it comes to mood and mentation (as opposed to shamans and preachers and other empaths).
Alexander Shulgin2 designed non-addictive drugs that helped him feel that he was literally "touched by God"... and yet you're going to sit back and tell me that there are no drugs out there that could have kept my mother from suffering unnecessarily?
It hurts to know that people feel this way, because they seem to be good people, generally speaking. They just have truly come to believe that "drugs" are a problem. In short, they have been brainwashed by a lifetime of propaganda -- above all, the total censorship in the States of all positive talk about psychoactive substances.
Anyway, I'm going to kick off now in spite of that irritating tweet, but I just have to say it loud and clear here:
The fact that materialist doctors over-prescribe Big Pharma drugs tells us nothing about drugs -- but rather about drug laws and social policy.
It's as if someone were to receive a car model kit containing too many parts and drew the conclusion that the best kit should have no parts whatsoever.
No, the best kit would have parts that actually worked and were needed.
Yes, Big Pharma is profiting from bedside over-prescribing -- but that is entirely BECAUSE of the Drug War which gives them a monopoly on mood and mind medicine -- and you can bet that much of that will be addictive for the simple reason that the Drug War has outlawed everything that is not.
Yet, I'm accused of not being objective?
Is the FDA objective about costs and benefits when it fails to approve MDMA for trifles while disregarding the fact that it can help end school shootings and bring the world together as one -- as it did in the 90s with the Summer of Love in the UK?
That's not starry-eyed dreaming -- that's just a reality that materialist haters and Christian Scientists do not want to see. They would rather have death and dying than the use of "drugs."
What hateful nonsense.
And yet I'm told I'm not objective? Is the FDA objective when they decide that MDMA cannot be used safely -- while they yet approve of brain-damaging shock therapy and Big Pharma meds whose side effects include death itself 34?
That's not objective. That's not even scientific. It's just plain hateful Christian Science and kowtowing to the vested interests of Big Pharma 56 .
Author's Follow-up: October 26, 2024
It's rich when Americans outlaw drugs and then insist that those drugs did not have much to offer in any case. Aren't you happy with prohibition? Do you have to rub it in by making derisive claims that cannot even be verified thanks to your hateful Drug War? Usage reports for psilocybin, MDMA 7 and ayahuasca (to name a few persecuted holistic medicines) are full of praise -- not from folks like myself but from the folks who actually used them.
So typical that this would not count for anything with the Drug Warrior. They don't want us to just "feel good." They want us to "REALLY" feel good -- that is, with the blessing of materialist science. This is why we're told that laughing gas 8 cannot help the depressed -- because materialist science always ignores all the OBVIOUS benefits and looks under a microscope instead9. This is just the colonialization of mind medicine and a way to disguise the anti-indigenous mindsets of the Francisco Pizarros of the world.
Here are a couple of tweets that I cranked out on this topic:
It's rich when Americans outlaw drugs and then insist that those drugs did not have much to offer in any case. It's like I took away your car and then told you that car ownership was overrated.
How would we even KNOW that outlawed drugs have no positive uses? We first have to incorporate them in a sane, empathic and creative way to find that out, and the Drug War makes such a sensible approach absolutely impossible.
We should be encouraging certain drug use by the elderly. Many Indigenous drugs have been shown to grow new neurons and increase neural connectivity -- to refuse to use them makes us complicit in the dementia of our loved ones!
Sure, it's an interesting question: What are the limits of benefits that we can derive from outlawed medicines? But we have no idea yet what that limit is. And there is plenty of reason for optimism, not based on starry-eyed dreaming but on simple facts. The Hindu religion was inspired by a "drug" -- Ecstasy brought unprecedented peace, love and understanding to the British dance floors in the 1990s (until the police cracked down on Ecstasy, dancers switched to alcohol, and special forces troops were suddenly required to keep the peace). Then there are endless anecdotal reports of lives that have been rebooted with the help of drugs like psilocybin and ayahuasca.
If anyone is being NON-objective, it is the Drug Warrior and agencies like the FDA, which refuse to recognize any GLARINGLY OBVIOUS BENEFITS of psychoactive drugs. Even cocaine 1011 has glaringly obvious benefits -- and yet the FDA never takes benefits into account -- or if they do, they have a very skewed value system, according to which one single potential downside for one demographic means a substance cannot be used by anyone, ever, at any dose, for any reason. It's hard to think of a more anti-patient, anti-scientific and anti-objective approach to deciding about drugs. This is why it was folly to outlaw drugs in the first place: because every substance has downsides in some situations. The question is, are those downsides worth it considering the benefits -- and that's a question that the FDA cannot answer. They have no special knowledge of human hopes and dreams, of our desire for self-transcendence in life. Had they been around in the Vedic valley 3,500 years ago, there would be no Hindu religion today, because they surely would have found some potential problem with the use of Soma.
Finally, it seems bizarre and even evil to hate on drugs that could help us avoid armageddon 12 . In the decade of the sixties, when America was increasingly blaming drugs for social problems, the US was almost NUKED TWICE -- once by Russia and once by our stumblebum Air Force! And yet the Drug Warrior refuses to admit that there are any benefits to substances that inspire peaceful coexistence? Please!
Author's Follow-up:
September 13, 2025
The drug companies want to get a piece of the action when it comes to human suffering. They know that they would be cut out of the loop if we had access to plant medicine like opium 13 and coca. That is why we have been taught to hate those drugs. That's why we have so many drugs today in nursing homes -- because the panaceas have been outlawed -- and so materialist medicine is left to devise expensive pharmaceutical "cures" for all the problems that it stopped us from treating with the godsend medicines of Mother Nature.
Author's Follow-up:
December 19, 2025
The elderly should be free to treat their cognitive disabilities with the strategic use of cocaine, amphetamines, and any other substance that focuses the mind. They should likewise be free to use those psychedelic substances that have been shown to grow new neurons in the brain. They should be free to use opium strategically to help them escape the worries of the present, those worries that are so overwhelming and disabling in the face of cognitive challenges. To refuse them the right to do this is a crime against humanity. It is the outlawing of their right to heal.
And why do Americans think this is a just policy? Answer: Because they are part of a western culture that refuses to see anything positive in the use of psychoactive substances, a culture that has the superstitious view that drugs are bad without regard for how, why, when or where they are used. This is the "Fire bad!" mentality that would have us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them wisely for the benefit of humanity. This is superstitious nonsense, and yet that is what the Drug War is all about: judging drugs up or down outside of all context.
The Drug War, in fact, is based on the following heartless racist and imperialist algorithm: namely, that a drug that can be misused, even in theory, by a white American young person, must not be used by anyone, anywhere, for any reason, at any dose, in any circumstance.
That is the hateful belief behind America's hateful drug prohibition.
Let me finally return to the Twitter comment that motivated this essay in the first place. It was said that doctors prescribe too many medicines already -- to which I say that doctors should not be prescribing any drugs at all for emotional and mental improvement! These sorts of substances should be chosen or shunned based on the desires and goals of specific individuals: in other words, we should renew the freedom for people to take care of their own health as they see fit. Once we return to that time-honored status quo, the elderly will have just as many drugs as they think they need: no more, no less.
Google founders used to enthuse about the power of free speech, but Google is actively shutting down videos that tell us how to grow mushrooms -- MUSHROOMS, for God's sake. End the drug war and this hateful censorship of a free people.
It's really an insurance concern, however, disguised as a concern for public health. Because of America's distrust of "drugs," a company will be put out of business if someone happens to die while using "drugs," even if the drug was not really responsible for the death.
Folks like Sabet accuse folks like myself of ignoring the "facts." No, it is Sabet who is ignoring the facts -- facts about dangerous horses and free climbing. He's also ignoring all the downsides of prohibition, whose laws lead to the election of tyrants.
Freud found that cocaine CURED most people's depression and he "got off it" without trouble.
Just think how many ayahuasca-like godsends that we are going without because we dogmatically refuse to even look for them, out of our materialist disdain for mixing drugs with drugs.
Almost all of today's magazine articles about human psychology should come with the following disclaimer:
"This article was written from the standpoint of Drug War ideology, which holds that outlawed substances can have no beneficial uses whatsoever."
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.
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.
Check out the 2021 article in Forbes in which a materialist doctor professes to doubt whether laughing gas could help the depressed. Materialists are committed to seeing the world from the POV of Spock from Star Trek.
Capitalism naturally results in disease-mongering by a self-interested medically establishment -- and disease-mongering requires the suppression of medicines that work holistically.