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 itself3?
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.
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 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 cannot help the depressed -- because materialist science always ignores all the OBVIOUS benefits and looks under a microscope instead4. 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 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. 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!
Open Letters
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
If anyone manages to die during an ayahuasca ceremony, it is considered a knockdown argument against "drugs." If anyone dies during a hunting club get-together, it is considered the victim's own damn fault. The Drug War is the triumph of hypocritical idiocy.
Here's the first step in the FDA process for evaluating a psychoactive drug:
Ignore all glaringly obvious benefits
I don't believe in the materialist paradigm upon which SSRIs were created, according to which humans are interchangeable chemical robots amenable to the same treatment for human sadness. Let me use laughing gas and MDMA and coca and let the materialists use SSRIs.
I've been told by many that I should have seen "my doctor" before withdrawing from Effexor. But, A) My doctor got me hooked on the junk in the first place, and, B) That doctor completely ignores the OBVIOUS benefits of indigenous meds and focuses only on theoretical downsides.
John Halpern wrote a book about opium, subtitled "the ancient flower that poisoned our world." What nonsense! Bad laws and ignorance poison our world, NOT FLOWERS!
It's "convenient" for scientists that their "REAL" cures happen to be the ones that racist politicians will allow. Scientists thus normalize prohibition by pretending that outlawed substances have no therapeutic value. It's materialism collaborating with the drug war.
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.
Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.
What prohibitionists forget is that every popular but dangerous activity, from horseback riding to drug use, will have its victims. You cannot save everybody, and when you try to do so by law, you kill far more than you save, meanwhile destroying democracy in the process.
Science keeps telling us that godsends have not been "proven" to work. What? 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.
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, Drugs are not the problem: no, not even in nursing homes, published on October 26, 2024 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)