Forbidden Quotations about the beneficial use of drugs
Things that you're not supposed to know about outlawed substances
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 9, 2026
AMT
"Before my eyes, the fractals started to morph into all sorts of beautiful and colorful things, I saw Chinese dragons floating all over the place, with a large blue window that shone an intense, but comfortable amount of colour from it; these colours would change every few seconds or so."
Perhaps you cannot teach creativity, but results like these prove that you can definitely "egg it on." There is prima facie potential here for overcoming mental blocks of all kinds, especially when one sets out with that benefit in mind.
"No visuals, just the feeling of being in a movie and knowing what everyone else is going to say or do before they do it. "
Such results invite speculation about the powers of the human mind when it encounters the raw atomic quanta of the "real" world absent Bergsonian filters and the restrictions imposed by the Kantian categories of rational thought.
"I realized that I could control what I saw. I could talk to people and they would hold still. But if I decided that I wanted them to morph into a dragon, they would do it without question. "
Drugs that produce such results are antidepressants. They work by leveraging anticipation rather than by adjusting brain chemistry according to biomedical theory. I would be cheered up by merely having such a "trip" to look forward to.
"The depression lifted from my mind like the sun coming out of the clouds.
"
Drugs like cocaine can prevent suicides. We should be teaching safe use, not militarizing police forces and destroying the Bill of Rights, while depriving the depressed of their right to heal.
"My brain was extraordinarily clear. My self-confidence was boundless. I felt inspired. I saw the way out."
It is a crime that we are withholding such medicine from the suicidal. We should be teaching safe use and providing counseling to help folks choose substances wisely. Instead, we demonize honest education and call in the military to ruin lives.
"All reports are in complete agreement that the state of euphoria caused by coca is not followed by any condition of weariness or other form of depression. On the contrary I tend to believe that a part of the effect of coca taken in moderate doses (0.05-0.10 grams) can last for over twenty-four hours. "
How frustrating it must be for the puritan Drug Warriors that they can't make a morality tale out of the "morning after" effects of cocaine.
"My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..."
This was written before self-interested doctors began judging cocaine only by misuse... and by whom? By people who had already shown a predisposition to become addicted to morphine. No one asked the millions of depressed what they thought about cocaine.
"The sun felt so warm and I felt so at peace, so comfortable. Any problems that plagued my normal life felt unimportant. What was important was the now. The light on the blades of grass, the flowers dropping from the tree. I didn't see objects so much as the way they fit into the world around them, there was no chair, there was the line it made contrasting the grass on one side, and the light reflecting its edges."
In a free world (dozens of centuries away, perhaps), we will have Walt Whitman day, a day when friends and family are encouraged to go out in nature under the influence of such substances to gain a deep appreciation of both nature and life itself.
And yet we are withholding drugs like these from the suicidal. Think about that. We truly feel that death itself is better than drug use. Mary Baker Eddy would be proud.
"I shuddered with bliss at the simple facts of my existence. I bathed in that bliss for a moment, and wriggled comfortably as one does in bed on a lazy Sunday morning, feeling like a child. "
The very existence of substances that produce such results gives the lie to our whole mental health system, which is based on the idea that depression can only be beat by the long-term use of Big Pharma meds combined with talk therapy.
"This is great fun, I feel jovial and in good spirits. There are striped bands of deep blues and hearty reds spinning and streaming faintly across my vision, tracing the surfaces around me. Textures on the walls begin to flow, like water running down a window, glitchy static in pink and turquoise. "
Shakespeare praised sleep because he understood the downsides of ratiocination. Even if substances like the above provided nothing but escapes from rational thought, they would be therapeutic for that very reason.
"I am in a daze under a great violet sun. I want to go on my laptop, read about the world around me, I feel ravenous to take in information and to be filled with all the energy that information carries."
"My curiosity is insatiable- every nugget of information I stumble upon becomes a deep rabbit hole of reading and taking in as much information as possible, even the most mundane little things on the internet, the most one-off mentions of anything I scroll by on social media attract immense fascination. "
The pedagogic value of such substances is so obvious, it takes years of medical school to become blinded to them.
"My curiosity is insatiable- every nugget of information I stumble upon becomes a deep rabbit hole of reading and taking in as much information as possible, even the most mundane little things on the internet, the most one-off mentions of anything I scroll by on social media attract immense fascination. "
It's amazing that no one talks about the potential of such substances to help those with trouble concentrating-- aka the "disease" called ADHD. Psychiatry is better at naming and classifying problems than in fixing them.
"In the meantime the morphine had its customary effect- that of enduing all the external world with an intensity of interest. In the quivering of a leaf- in the hue of a blade of grass- in the shape of a trefoil- in the humming of a bee- in the gleaming of a dew-drop- in the breathing of the wind- in the faint odors that came from the forest- there came a whole universe of suggestion- a gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical thought."
One wonders if Walt Whitman used a substance of this kind. It would seem that anyone with the desire to do so could become Walt Whitman for a day (in a free world, I mean).
"It is said that every excitation is followed by a commensurate exhaustion. The excitation caused by nitrous oxide is an exception at least, it leaves no exhaustion on the bursting of the bubble."
Americans like to place a "puritanical read" on the "day after" side effects of drugs. And yet: 1) not all substances have such downsides 2) such downsides can be obfuscated or transcended with the wise use of other substances.
"I lost all connection with external things; trains of vivid visible images rapidly passed through my mind and were connected with words in such a manner, as to produce perceptions perfectly novel. I existed in a world of newly connected and newly modified ideas. I theorized; I imagined I'd made discoveries."
Oliver Wendell Holmes mocked N two oh, for failing to produce "useful" results. The use of N2O could prevent suicides. It raises questions about the supposed universal applicability of the Kantian categories. Is that not useful enough for him?
"Whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession: opium greatly invigorates it. "
Keep in mind that it is all about details of use. The more educated you are, the more open you are to new experiences, the more you'll benefit from such substances. Opium does not create genius, but it can facilitate it.
I can't believe that no one at UVA is bothered by the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello. It was, after all, a sort of coup against the Natural Law upon which Jefferson had founded America, asserting as it did the government's right to outlaw Mother Nature.
"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda
(There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.)
Ug! Fire bad!
There were 4,731 fire-related deaths in America in 2023.
Learn more at the Partnership for a Death Free America.
Most enemies of inner-city gun violence refuse to protest against the drug prohibition which caused the violence in the first place.
Almost every mainstream article about psychology and consciousness is nonsense these days because it ignores the way that drug prohibition has stymied our investigation of such subjects.
When we place the FDA in charge of deciding whether a psychoactive drug should be re-legalized or not, we are asking them to decide on things like the relative importance of appreciating a sunset, a task for which the FDA has no expertise whatsoever.
Musk and co. want to make us more robot-like with AI, when they should be trying to make us more human-like with sacred medicine. Only humans can gain creativity from plant medicine. All AI can do is harvest the knowledge that eventually results from that creativity.
Materialist scientists are drug war collaborators. They are more than happy to have their fight against idealism rigged by drug law, which outlaws precisely those substances whose use serves to cast their materialism into question.
Q: Why are we never told about the potential benefits of drugs?
A: Follow the money.
"When two men who have been in an aggressive mood toward each other take part in the ritual, one is able to say to the other, 'Come, let us drink, for there is something between us.' " re: the Mayan use of the balche drink in Encyc of Psych Plants, by Ratsch & Hofmann
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