more obvious uses for the substances that Americans love to hate
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 29, 2025
Hercules had it easy. Cleaning the Augean stables may not have been a cakewalk, and it's no doubt difficult for even the strongest of men to kill a man-eating bird or a triple-headed dog. But if King Eurystheus had REALLY wanted to play hardball with the Greco-Roman hero in response to his god-inspired murder of Megara and her kids, he would have tasked the hero with transferring a database-driven website from one hosting platform to another. Now THAT is a challenge! I know this all too well, for that is the Herculean labor over which I myself have been slaving over the last week and which I have found to require the firing of every single available neuron in my brain, including many which I fear have grown dusty over the years with non-use.
This, of course, has everything to do with drug prohibition, insofar as anti-scientific and racist politicians have outlawed all the medicines that could have helped me to improve my brain power and so to handle this host-switching task with relative ease, that is, both calmly and in an organized manner. This is the evil of the Drug War: it allows these self-interested demagogues called "Drug Warriors" to dictate the limits of my mental power -- all in the name of protecting white American young people from so-called "drugs," the same young people whom America refuses on principle to educate about safe use. What kind of moronic principle is that?!
It is amazing to me that Americans do not see this for the anti-scientific evil that it is. Both common sense and a scientific mindset tell us that a drug that can increase mental focus has all manner of beneficial uses, especially when we actually teach how to use them wisely -- and yet the Drug Warrior tells us that we all must go without godsend benefits from drugs -- merely because the drugs could, in theory, be misused by a white American young person, whom we refuse to educate about safe use.
This is paleolithic nonsense, a mindset that is inherently racist and xenophobic. Americans have yet to understand that saying things like "Fentanyl 1 kills" is philosophically identical to shouting "Fire bad!" Those who utter such inane bromides are counseling us to fear dangerous substances rather than to learn to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of human beings. This is superstitious fearmongering.
We are surrounded by all sorts of possible godsend medicines for achieving mental focus -- not just cocaine 23 and Ritalin but drugs like Harmaline and the kinds of phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin. And yet we are not allowed to use any of them! This is an outrageous state of affairs, especially given the astonishing fact that the vast majority of Americans have no problem with this hateful status quo whatsoever. How depressing is THAT?! They fail to realize that this status quo represents nothing less than the outlawing of human progress. Let me repeat: drug prohibition is the outlawing of human progress.
We will only leave this Prehistoric mindset behind when we start responding to the downsides of drug use in the way that we now respond to the downsides of liquor consumption: calmly, and with an eye toward educating people rather than arresting them!
Drugs that activate the mind's neural networks have prima facie potential in the fight against dementia and yet Drug Warriors show by their actions that they prefer dementia to the use of drugs -- that they prefer suicide 4 to the use of drugs, that they prefer brain-damaging shock therapy to the use of drugs. This is why we have make-believe healthcare in the United States. This is why we have entire make-believe libraries these days, full of books whose authors have dutifully ignored drug prohibition. These authors completely ignore what drug use could tell us about the topics which they pretend to cover so thoroughly -- for after a century of politically inspired propaganda, Americans now consider drug prohibition to be a natural baseline from which to research and study the world around us.
Switching web hosts would not have been a Herculean task if I had lived in a world wherein individuals like myself had sovereignty over their own mental and emotional states. In such a world, I would be able to wisely use substances for the purposes of focusing my mind in the times and circumstances where such focus was beneficial for me. In the absence of those time-honored freedoms, however -- that is, in the age of the unprecedented, superstitious and racist war on mind medicine -- I can only envy Hercules for having gotten off so easily when it comes to his appointed tasks. Capturing the Cretan Bull may have had its challenges and it no doubt takes a real diplomat to steal a girdle worn by the Queen of the Amazons -- but just you try focusing laser-like on creating successful PHP code when your government has outlawed every possible substance in the world that might help you to do so. Now, that is a challenge worthy of Hercules himself.
Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."
Drug Warriors should be legally banned from watching or reading Sherlock Holmes stories, since in their world, it is a crime for such people as Sherlock Holmes to exist, i.e., people who use medicines to improve their mind and mood.
Drug prohibition is the perfect racist crime. It brought gunfire to inner cities, yet those who seek to end the gunfire pretend that drug prohibition has nothing to do with it.
After watching my mother suffer because of the drug war, I hate to hear people tell me that the problem is drugs. WRONG! That's a western colonialist viewpoint. God loved his creation (see Genesis). He did not make trash. We need to use entheogenic medicines wisely.
The Drug Warriors say: "Don't tread on me! (That said, please continue to tell me what plants I can use, how much pain relief I can get, and whether my religion is true or not.)"
When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.
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.
One merely has to look at any issue of Psychology Today to see articles in which the author reckons without the Drug War, in which they pretend that banned substances do not exist and so fail to incorporate any topic-related insights that might otherwise come from user reports.
"Now, now, Sherlock, that coca preparation is not helping you a jot. Why can't you get 'high on sunshine,' like good old Watson here?" To which Sherlock replies: "But my good fellow, then I would no longer BE Sherlock Holmes."
People magazine should be fighting for justice on behalf of the thousands of American young people who are dying on the streets because of the drug war.
Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."
