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I hope to use cocaine in 2025

and other confessions of a drug war heretic

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 19, 2024



I just noticed the Twitter bio of a certain NYT writer who tells us that she "quit cocaine & heroin 1 in 1988." This got me thinking some heretical thoughts, which I formulated in the following Tweets, at the risk of a mass exodus of my five loyal followers... if five followers can be said to exit "en masse." But that's kind of like saying, "I was attacked by a horde of two, maybe three ruffians!" ... Er, but that's not important now.

Oh, and there's some notes to follow.


When people write "quit cocaine in 1988" in their bio, that's fine. That was a big moment for them given their psychological makeup and environment. For me, tho, the bio snippet would read: "Hopes to try cocaine in 2025." That makes as much sense since coke CAN be used wisely!




The problem is, many people who write that confession in their bio ("quit cocaine ") figure that they've discovered a universal law: that cocaine is necessarily wrong for everybody. That evinces an unimaginative view of the psychological diversity of human beings.



I "quit valium" in 1994, but I don't include that in my bio because I don't think it's a huge thing. The only reason that quitting was "a big ask" for me was because all better drugs were outlawed -- including many that are non-addictive.



Please, nobody take offense. I just believe that in a sane world, "quitting" a given drug would not be such an earth-shattering event. When all drugs are re-legalized and used wisely, we would not find occasion to obsess about or blame any one drug.


Focusing like that on any one drug as evil (heroin, cocaine , etc.) is just the flip side of what the Drug Warrior does in demonizing them -- blaming the drug instead of prohibition, which outlaws of all of the endless alternatives to a given use pattern.


Confessions like "I quit cocaine in 1988" -- at least when featured prominently in a tiny bio -- turn cocaine into a real colossus, giving it powers to destroy that it would never have in a free world -- one in which we seek to use all psychoactive substances as wisely as possible. Again, I recognize that I do not know the person behind this particular biographical snippet, but in general, such confessions smack of the way that Drug Warriors turn drug use into a morality play. It's just, in this case, the morality play has a happy ending2 -- but the assumption behind the snippet at least seems to be that the villain of the piece was cocaine or heroin -- whereas I believe it is our failure to be adults about drugs and to learn everything we can about safe use, meanwhile legalizing the seemingly endless substances that provide the transcendence of heroin without unwanted dependence.

I would go on to state why I want to use cocaine in 2025, but that rarely spoken resolution is bound to arouse so many mistaken assumptions in the average bamboozled reader that it would take me another entire essay to unpack them. Suffice it to say, my goal in using cocaine would be to think as clearly as possible and to be productive in my work. My goal is not to go gambling in Monte Carlo with a call girl on my lap and a pocket full of blood-stained dollar bills.

Author's Follow-up: May 18, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


I should have mentioned, this writer actually specializes in writing on drug-related topics. With this in mind, the confession in her bio seems to be signaling the following: "I too believe that drugs are the problem and I have experience in overcoming their evil, so listen to me." So as friendly as she may be to decriminalization, she is arguing on the back foot, tacitly expressing the stubborn beliefs of the Drug War that the problem "is drugs," not prohibition and our failure to be adults and learn about substances and to use them wisely.

It's also interesting that this author specializes in neuroscience. Only in the west could a neuroscientist be deemed an expert in drugs that inspire us both psychologically and spiritually. Drug prohibition is all about limiting my ability to express myself and to live the sort of psychological and spiritual life that I want to lead. A neuroscientist has precisely zero expertise in such areas.

Someday folks will realize that there are very good reasons that one might wish to use cocaine . The idea that it can only be misused is a superstition. The superstition is basically made true, however, by prohibition, which outlaws alternatives and refuses to teach safe use.


And, of course, if all that doesn't ruin your life, then the DEA and company will do the ruining for you by putting you in a cage. That's why I say we live in the Dark Ages, where attempts to achieve great mental clarity are punished with lengthy prison stretches.


In fact, nothing against "drinkers," but there are far more good reasons to use cocaine than there are to drink whiskey. Except, of course, that whiskey drinking won't get you thrown in the pen and treated like a scumbag.




Notes:

1: Lee Robins' studies of heroin use among US Vietnam veterans Hall, Wayne, National Library of Medicine, 2016 (up)
2: Of course, even this statement is problematic. Is it really a "happy" ending merely because one is no longer using cocaine? That's a Christian Science belief, not a logical conclusion. It may well be a happy ending in a given case, but we have no reason for assuming that it is unconditionally so. (up)


Cocaine




Freud's real discovery was that drugs like cocaine could make psychiatry UNNECESSARY for the vast majority of people. The medical establishment hated the idea -- so they judged the drug based on its worst possible use!

"My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine


***

Cocaine can be used wisely, believe it or not. Just ask Carl Hart. Or Graham Norton, the UK's quixotic answer to Johnny Carson. Just ask the Peruvian Indians, who have chewed the coca leaf for stamina and inspiration since Pre-Inca days. You have been taught to hate cocaine by a lifetime of censorship -- and by an FDA which dogmatically ignores all positive aspects of drug use, just as they ignore all downsides to prohibition.

Laws are never going to stop westerners from using cocaine, nor should they. Such laws are not making the world safe. To the contrary, laws against cocaine have made our world unthinkably violent! It has created cartels out of whole cloth, cartels that engage in torture and which suborn government officials, to the point that "the rule of law" is little more than a joke south of the border.

This is the enormous price tag of America's hateful policy of substance prohibition: the overthrow of democratic norms around the world.

The eerie bit is that most leading drug warriors understand this fact and approve of it. Too much democracy is anathema to the powers-that-be.

So... "Is cocaine use good or bad?" The question does not even make sense. Cocaine use is a blessing for some, just a little fun for most, and a curse for a few. Just like any other risky activity.

  • Addicted to Addiction
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  • Coca Wine
  • Colorado plane crash caused by milk!
  • Drug War Bait and Switch
  • How Cocaine could have helped me
  • How Ralph Metzner was bamboozled by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization
  • How The Drug War Killed Andy Gibb
  • I come not to praise coca but to use it
  • I hope to use cocaine in 2025
  • In Defense of Cocaine
  • One Strike, You're Out
  • Scientific Collaboration in the War on Drugs
  • Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis
  • Smart Uses for Opium and Coca





    • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    Proof that materialism is wrong is "in the pudding." It is why scientists are not calling for the use of laughing gas and MDMA by the suicidal. Because they refuse to recognize anything that's obvious. They want their cures to be demonstrated under a microscope.

    The 2024 Colorado bill was withdrawn -- but only when pols realized that they had been caught in the act of outlawing free speech. They did not let opponents speak, however, because they knew the speeches would make the pols look like the anti-democratic jerks that they were.

    I'm looking for a United Healthcare doctor now that I'm 66 years old. When I searched my zip code and typed "alternative medicine," I got one single solitary return... for a chiropractor, no less. Some choice. Guess everyone else wants me to "keep taking my meds."

    Only a pathological puritan would say that there's no place in the world for substances that lift your mood, give you endurance, and make you get along with your fellow human being. Drugs may not be everything, but it's masochistic madness to claim that they are nothing at all.

    Both physical and psychological addiction can be successfully fought when we relegalize the pharmacopoeia and start to fight drugs with drugs. But prohibitionists do not want to end addiction, they want to scare us with it.

    The search for SSRIs has always been based on a flawed materialist premise that human consciousness is nothing but a mix of brain chemicals and so depression can be treated medically like any other physical condition.

    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.

    "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."

    Even if the FDA approved MDMA today, it would only be available for folks specifically pronounced to have PTSD by materialist doctors, as if all other emotional issues are different problems and have to be studied separately. That's just ideological foot-dragging.

    At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






    How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
    Our Short-Sighted Fears about Long-Term Drug Use


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    Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

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