I'm a 65-year-old Virginia man, and I have written hundreds of essays about the philosophical problems with the War on Drugs at my website, abolishthedea.com. I saw the interview with Tom Riedlinger and was fascinated to hear that Ligare actually exists, especially being a somewhat lapsed protestant myself. I've thought for years that Christianity needed to employ these sacred substances in order to become relevant again and to stir hearts and not just minds. For I think Quanah Parker was right when he said,
"The White Man goes into his church house and talks about Jesus, but the Indian goes into his tipi and talks to Jesus."2
I will be using psilocybin on a guided basis over the coming year as I taper entirely off of the SNRIs that I have been on for the last 35 years. The research that I have done on user reports gives me hope that my experience can reignite at least the mature part of my neglected faith.
I just don't understand, though. How does the DEA get away with it? It is so clear to me that the Drug War denies us our freedom of religion by outlawing sacred medicines of Mother Nature. Merely knowing about your group and what it stands for should be a wakeup call to any politicians who still believe in the freedom of religion. I wonder that you're not suing the DEA even as we speak. (Though the courts seem ready to trot out any ad-hoc argument when challenged on this topic. A court in the '70s ruled that a church could not use psychedelics because the members' ancestors had no religious history of such use, which is basically a law against human progress, let alone religious liberty.)
Best wishes!
Author's Follow-up: October 31, 2024
See, folks, this is why I do not get on wagon trains: nobody let's this poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games. Ligare's like, "Best wishes, indeed! Who are you, exactly?" They apparently reserve the right to ignore me entirely. Fair enough. I guess God never explicitly said: "Do not ghost your neighbor."
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.
The Drug War violates religious freedom by putting bureaucrats in charge of deciding if a religion is 'sincere' or not. That is so absurd that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. No one in government is capable of determining whether the inner states that I achieve with psychoactive medicine are religious or not. This is why Milton Friedman was so wrong when he said in 1972 that there are good people on both sides of the drug war debate. WRONG! There are those who are more than ready to take away my religious liberty and those who are not. If the former wish to be called 'good,' they will first need a refresher course in American democracy and religious freedom. They need to renounce their Christian Science theocracy and let folks like myself worship using the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions in the past. Until they do that, do not expect me to praise the very people who have launched an inquisition against my form of experiencing the divine.
The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.
The DEA should be tried for crimes against humanity. They have been lying about drugs for 50 years and running interference between human beings and Mother Nature in violation of natural law, depriving us of countless potential and known godsends in order to create more DEA jobs.
I'd like to become a guinea pig for researchers to test the ability of psychoactive drugs to make aging as psychologically healthy as possible. If such drugs cannot completely ward off decrepitude, they can surely make it more palatable. The catch? Researchers have to be free.
The Drug War treats doctors like potential criminals and it treats the rest of us like children. Prohibition does not end drug risks: it just outsources them to minorities and other vulnerable populations.
Drug Warriors rail against drugs as if they were one specific thing. They may as well rail against penicillin because cyanide can kill.
So much harm could be reduced by shunting people off onto safer alternative drugs -- but they're all outlawed! Reducing harm should ultimately mean ending this prohibition that denies us endless godsends, like the phenethylamines of Alexander Shulgin.
Even fans of sacred medicine have been brainwashed to believe that we do not know if such drugs "really" work: they want microscopic proof. But that's a western bias, used strategically by drug warriors to make the psychotropic drug approval process as glacial as possible.
We have to deny the FDA the right to judge psychoactive medicines in the first place. Their materialist outlook obliges them to ignore all obvious benefits. When they nix drugs like MDMA, they nix compassion and love.
"I can take this drug that inspires me and makes me compassionate and teaches me to love nature in its byzantine complexity, or I can take Prozac which makes me unable to cry at my parents' funeral. Hmm. Which shall it be?" Only a mad person in a mad world would choose SSRIs.
The December Scientific American features a story called "The New Nuclear Age," about a trillion-dollar plan to add 100s of ICBM's to 5 states, which an SA editorial calls "kick me" signs. This Neanderthal plan comes from pols who think that compassion-boosting drugs are evil!
The government causes problems for those who are habituated to certain drugs. Then they claim that these problems are symptoms of an illness. Then folks like Gabriel Mate come forth to find the "hidden pain" in "addicts." It's one big morality play created by drug laws.
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, Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs: an open letter to Ligare, a Christian Psychedelic Society, published on June 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)
ear Ligare1: 
You have been reading an article entitled, Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs: an open letter to Ligare, a Christian Psychedelic Society, published on June 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)