Every Day and in every way, you are getting more and more bamboozled by drug war propaganda

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Every Day and in every way, you are getting more and more bamboozled by drug war propaganda

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 3, 2025

Every time I hear Emile Coué's classic phrase ¹, I think of the scene in 'The Pink Panther Strikes Again' when the mad Charles Dreyfus is ejected from his seat on a park bench and into a pond.

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This mishap, of course, is a result of the absent-minded carelessness of Inspector Clouseau, the man who drove Dreyfus crazy in the first place. 'Are you all right, Former Chief Inspector?' asks Clouseau, as he ineptly attempts to extract his former boss from the muck, only to render him more deeply submerged. 'Yes, I'm perfectly all right,' splutters Dreyfus with a crazed look on his face. 'I'm fine, I'm perfect,' he continues, his eyes twitching spasmodically. 'Every day, and in every way...' he concludes while clambering up the bank, 'I'm getting better and better,' after which he launches into a maniacal performance of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.'

In other words, I associate Coué's bromide with comedy. I consider the use of affirmations to be a comically insufficient way to address life problems. And the purpose of this essay is to explain why I feel this way.

First, I must remind the reader that there are two ways to consider almost every topic these days: one is by considering the topic in light of drug prohibition and the other is considering the topic while pretending that substance prohibition does not exist. I need hardly add that the latter option is the one that almost all Americans choose in discussing almost any topic these days. This explains why Francis Fukuyama never mentions the Drug War in 'Liberalism and Its Discontents.'² This explains why Howard Zinn never mentions the Drug War in 'A People's History of the United States.'³ This explains why Paul Johnson never mentions the Drug War in 'Birth of the Modern.'⁴ In fact, the latter author only mentions drugs when he is talking about addiction, by which he shows himself to be a board-certified Drug Warrior, one who tries to make out that erstwhile panaceas have no positive uses for anybody, anywhere, ever.

Paul implies that laudanum should be outlawed because Samuel Taylor Coleridge used it irresponsibly. 'It ruined his life,' Paul implies. 'Sammy said so himself!' Indeed, Coleridge was all too happy to blame his own uneducated behavior on the laudanum itself. It let him off the hook for his own lack of common sense and self-discipline. But if we embrace Paul's implicit criterion for regulating risky activities, thousands of activities would be immediately outlawed since someone somewhere has been destroyed by them. Beer drinking would be outlawed immediately, horseback riding and free climbing would be a thing of the past, and guns would be confiscated by the government faster than you can say, 'Over my dead body,' something that conservatives like Paul would have considered to be an abomination. This shows that Paul is either inconsistent or that he flunked logic class. But then what do you expect from a so-called historian who does not think that the unprecedented outlawing of Mother Nature even merits mentioning in a history book about the 20th century?! Paul Johnson's license to practice history should be revoked posthumously, if such a thing were possible. What, were you absolutely BLIND, Paul?

No country has ever had the superstitious chutzpah to outlaw Mother Nature, as did America in the 20th century, and no meaningful history books can be written which ignore that fact. And yet the vast majority of books on this timeframe do precisely that, Paul Johnson's included. If one learned their history from these tomes, they would believe either that substance prohibition does not exist, or that drug prohibition is a natural baseline and that it is somehow the normal state of human beings to do without the godsends that grow all around them. They would conclude that they were living in a theocracy governed by the principles of Christian Science ⁵ (assuming that they had heard of the anti-drug religion established by Mary Baker-Eddy in 19th-century America). This is why the Drug War has such staying power, because it is hidden in plain sight, and so is never blamed for the endless problems that it causes. We see this in the cluelessness of news reporters when it comes to violence in today's inner cities. They cast about for explanations from global warming to lack of jobs, failing to realize the glaringly obvious truth that drug prohibition created drug gangs for the exact same reason that liquor prohibition created the Mafia: it's the prohibition, stupid!

But I digress. My hatred of the self-censorship implied above has sidetracked me, which is understandable, by the way, since such purblind attitudes have helped clear the way for legislation that has denied me godsends for the last 50+ years. But back to the topic at hand ⁶.

My point here is that Emile Coué's affirmations must be considered in light of the fact that we have outlawed almost every beneficial psychoactive medicine in the world. It is with this in mind that I find Emile's bromides to be ridiculous and condescending. When someone tells the depressed, for instance, to use affirmations - while simultaneously denying them their once-obvious right to godsend medicines - then it is like a jailer denying meals to the prisoners but offering them scraps instead. Yes, the scraps are PART of a full meal and so have some small value... but when considered in the context of forced starvation, they mean very little, indeed, and are, in fact, an insult, for the starving individuals know that the jailer is denying them all the food that would REALLY benefit them.

To be fair to Coué, he lived before America had gone full-bore down the path of substance demonization, while bringing the world's citizens along with it, would they or no. But then again Coué was a pharmacist. He might have known that certain drugs could help users profit from affirmations in a way that the non-intoxicated human could never reliably expect. This is why I say that Coué's affirmations are ridiculous, but ONLY when considered in the context of substance prohibition. There is a possible role for affirmations of some kind when using psychedelics and other drugs that powerfully influence human psychology. Even then, however, I dislike the purely pragmatic nature of Coué's affirmations. This is because I view 'altered states' in the same light that William James viewed them: as gateways to new realities and as ways of seeing the world ⁷. I would rather go into such states with the goal of finding out about myself and what life means than just trying to hard-code my mind with the incredibly abstract belief that I am getting 'better and better,' whatever that means.

I would rather say with Plato, 'Every day and in every way, I am getting closer to achieving the Delphic Oracle's goal of knowing myself.'⁸ And that is a task that requires work. It requires learning from great philosophers and mystics. It requires meditation. And for many of us, it requires the use of medicines that help facilitate human transcendence, since not everyone is born with the spiritual receptivity (and/or the unique biochemistry) of Meister Eckhart (the 14th-century German mystic who, for aught we know, may have ingested substances that we would disparage as 'drugs' today, in any case)⁹. I cannot leap-frog this process of self-discovery merely by declaring victory in advance and insisting that improvement is taking place absent of any effort on my part. For the fact is, I am NOT getting better and better... unless I am growing in self-knowledge. That is the first principle from which I start, and that is why I consider Emile Coué's bromide to be a shallow trick abstracted from profound religious and philosophical observances. It is a shortcut appropriate only for materialists who think that the self is all that matters in life and that deeper meanings to reality do not exist -- a thesis which the Drug War helps such materialists to 'prove' by outlawing all drugs whose use conduces to an holistic understanding of the world.

Author's Follow-up: March 4, 2025

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It is an indictment of the western way of thinking that Emile's ideas were considered revolutionary in the early 20th century. It shows how a devotion to misplaced materialism ¹⁰ can blind the world to obvious truths. Everyone has known since prehistoric times that attitude matters, and yet materialists, in their mad claim to omniscience, had lost track of this obvious truth. Materialists considered the human being to be a one-size-fits-all widget, amenable to pharmacological cures in the same predictable way as a mouse or an amoeba. That is why they were surprised by the hitherto obvious truth that attitude could have an affect on the physical world. Emile had not discovered some new and non-obvious law of nature; instead he had simply reminded the slow learners in the class, i.e. the materialists, that mind matters. Had the materialists truly absorbed the message, they would have realized that the revelation was a damning one, for it implied that materialists are not the experts when it comes to matters of mind and mood, nor could they ever be -- for their forte is quantity, not quality. They can tell the human being how to build a Brooklyn Bridge or how to fix a curling iron, but they cannot tell a human being why they should bother getting out of bed in the morning to do such things.

Needless to say, the materialists were not chastened by Emile's 're-discovery' of the fact that mind matters. By the time of Coué's death in 1926, the reductionist principles of materialism were already formulated into the inhumane tenets of Behaviorism, according to which all that mattered in psychology was quantifiable data. According to JB Watson ¹¹ ¹², we could safely dismiss the testimony of the individual as to their own likes and dislikes. What do THEY know about such matters? The materialists were henceforth to be the authorities when it came to our mind and mood. They were going to be the ones to tell us what we need, psychologically speaking -- hence the modern mental-healthcare establishment, which is comprised of one part materialism and one part substance prohibition -- and a whole world full of disempowerment for the human sufferers whom it turned into passive patients.

Discussion Topics

May 23, 2025

Attention Teachers and Professors: Brian is not writing these essays for his health. (Well, in a way he is, actually, but that's not important now.) His goal is to get the world thinking about the anti-democratic and anti-scientific idiocy of the War on Drugs. You can stimulate your students' brainwashed grey matter on this topic by having them read the above essay and then discuss the following questions as a group!

What are the two ways to consider topics like affirmations?

Why does Brian claim that 'Paul Johnson's license to practice history should be revoked posthumously'?

Brian says he is not 'getting better and better unless he is growing in self-knowledge.' Explain.

Materialism

Notes for essay entitled Every Day and in every way, you are getting more and more bamboozled by drug war propaganda :

1: French pharmacist Emil Coué popularized the phrase "Every day and in every way, I am getting better and better." Learn more here. (up)
2: “Liberalism and Its Discontents.” 2025. Francis Fukuyama. Stanford University. 2025. https://fukuyama.people.stanford.edu/liberalismanditsdiscontents. (up)
3: Howard Zinn. Collins, Harper. 2015. “A People’s History of the United States: 1492 – Present.” HowardZinn.org. 2015. https://www.howardzinn.org/collection/peoples-history/. (up)
4: The Birth of the Modern Johnson, Paul, Harper Collins, New York, 1991 (up)
5: America's Imperialist Christian Science War on Drugs DWP (up)
6: How the Drug War Blinds us to Godsend Medicine DWP (up)
7: The Varieties of Religious Experience James, William, Goodreads, New York, 1902 (up)
8: Plato's Republic MIT (up)
9: Meister Eckhart The Internet Archive (up)
10: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)
11: JB Watson Britannica (up)
12: The purblind coldness of the Behaviorist doctrine is made clear in the following words of its founder, JB Watson, as quoted in the 2015 book "Paradox" by Margaret Cuonzo: "Concepts such as belief and desire are heritages of a timid savage past akin to concepts referring to magic." (Surely, Watson was proactively channeling Dr. Spock of the original Star Trek series.) (up)

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Rick Strassman isn't sure that DMT should be legal. Really?! Does he not realize how dangerous it is to chemically extract DMT from plants? In the name of safety, prohibitionists have encouraged dangerous ignorance and turned local police into busybody Nazis.

Americans are far more fearful of psychoactive drugs than is warranted by either anecdote or history. We require 100% safety before we will re-legalize any "drug" -- which is a safety standard that we do not enforce for any other risky activity on earth.

People say shrooms should not be used by those with a history of "mental illness." But that's one of the greatest potential benefits of shrooms! (They cured Stamets' teenage stuttering.) Some folks place safety first, but if I did that, I'd die long before using mother nature.

The drug war is a way for conservatives to keep America's eyes OFF the prize. The right-wing motto is, "Billions for law enforcement, but not one cent for social programs."

Med-dependent patients of the world, unite -- to end drug prohibition, that is. You have nothing to lose but your prescription bottles and your status as a ward of the healthcare state.

Brits have a right to die, but they do not have the right to use drugs that might make them want to live. Bad policy is indicated by absurd outcomes, and this is but one of the many absurd outcomes that the policy of prohibition foists upon the world.

Typical materialist protocol. Take all the "wonder" out of the drug and sell it as a one-size-fits all "reductionist" cure for anxiety. Notice that they refer to hallucinations and euphoria as "adverse effects." What next? Communion wine with the religion taken out of it?

Racist drug warriors make cities dangerous with drug prohibition -- then they use that danger as an excuse to send in the National Guard.

When psychiatrists write about heroin, they characterize dependency as enslavement. When they write about antidepressants, they characterize dependency as a medical duty.

There's more than set and setting: there's fundamental beliefs about the meaning of life and about why mother nature herself is full of psychoactive substances. Tribal peoples associate some drugs with actual sentient entities -- that is far beyond "set and setting."

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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Every Day and in every way, you are getting more and more bamboozled by drug war propaganda

Author's Follow-up: March 4, 2025

Discussion Topics

May 23, 2025

Materialism

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Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend