How drug prohibition damaged my uncle's brain and turned me into a ward of the healthcare state
An open letter to Wade Davis, author of 'The Secret History of Coca'
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
November 24, 2025
Good Day, Wade!
As a chronic depressive, I am bothered by the fact that 400 cases of cocaine toxicity1 should be seen as a reason for outlawing cocaine, or at least of thinking of it as somehow beyond the pale, therapeutically speaking. 49,000 people commit suicide every year in America alone, and surely this has something to do with the fact that America has outlawed a drug that Sigmund Freud himself knew was a veritable "cure" for depression2. And, of course, 178,000 people die from alcohol every year, as per the CDC3. So to create drug policy -- or even drug attitudes -- based on 400 cases is strange.
This is the state of healthcare in the U.S.: We prefer to damage the brain of the depressed rather than let them use substances that could inspire them with joy and purpose.
Cocaine is not universally addictive. Most people use it wisely. Indeed, Freud reported in "On Cocaine" that his cocaine use was self-limiting insofar as the drug seemed to give him an instinctive repugnance toward overuse4.
I think it is seldom noticed that the medical community has a vested interest in demonizing near panaceas like opium and coca. If everyone could cure their depression on their own, who would need psychiatrists? Of course, no one asked the depressed what THEY thought about cocaine. No one thought of giving it to my uncle instead of knowingly damaging his brain with the use of shock therapy.
"The laws that deny healthy people 'recreational' drugs also deny sick people 'therapeutic' drugs." --Thomas Szasz, Our Right to Drugs --p. 675
Freud knew that cocaine was a godsend for the depressed. But doctors saw it as a threat to their bottom line and so they studied only the rare misuse of the drug.
I take this personally because the outlawing of cocaine has shunted me off onto an antidepressant that is MUCH HARDER to kick than heroin 6.
The Effexor that I am "on" has a 95% recidivism rate 7 for long-term users8. 95%. I got off the drug after a year of trying -- only to find that I had severe cognitive impairment without the drug. Effexor had mucked about with my brain chemistry in a way that was seemingly irreversible. I had to go back on the drug merely in order to think straight. I remain a patient for life, with all the expensive, time-consuming, and humiliating baggage that such a status entails -- especially as a 67-year-old who has to see a psychiatrist 1/3rd his age every three months in order to be approved for a refill on this underperforming "med" -- and all because America judged cocaine based on its worst possible use, exactly as if we were to judge alcohol by looking only at alcoholics.
Americans know nothing about drugs. They just have a feeling of distrust and fear, inculcated in them since childhood by blanket censorship of positive drug use and propaganda in the form of lies and half-truths.
Compare this to heroin. A study by Lee Robins showed that only 5% of our heroin-using soldiers in Vietnam required help getting off heroin when they returned to the States9. 5%. Nor did they find that they had brain damage after doing so.
For these reasons and many, many others, I consider drug prohibition to be a crime against humanity. It literally keeps me from healing, from taking care of my own health.
Just think how much money bar owners in the Old West would have saved on restoration expenses if they had served MDMA instead of whiskey.
It is a crime against humanity to withhold cocaine from the depressed and those with impaired cognition.
The "acceptable risk" for psychoactive drugs can only be decided by the user, based on what they prioritize in life. Science just assumes that all users should want to live forever, self-fulfilled or not.
DEA Stormtroopers should be held responsible for destroying American Democracy. Abolish the American Gestapo.
Yeah. That's why it's so pretentious and presumptuous of People magazine to "fight for justice" on behalf of Matthew Perry, as if Perry would have wanted that.
In the age of the Drug War, the Hippocratic Oath has become "First, do no good."
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies." -- Groucho Marx
It's amazing. Drug law is outlawing science -- and yet so few complain. Drug law tells us what mushrooms we can collect, for God's sake. Is that not straight-up insane? Or are Americans so used to being treated as children that they accept this corrupt status quo?
Governor Kotek is "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.
Freud had the right idea: He noticed that cocaine use actually ended depression in his patients. Unfortunately, he was ambitious and was more interested in making a name for himself than in pushing back against the statistically challenged fear mongering of prohibitionists.
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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