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LSD for puritans

FDA gives breakthrough status to LSD Lite from MindMed

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 7, 2024



The drug makers even list euphoria and visions as "adverse effects."


Ugh! I cannot stand it. The FDA is now approving LSD for anxiety (from MindMed) -- but in a form that has gotten rid of all that pesky ecstasy and those silly visions that are associated with the drug1. This is so very telling: it wasn't public health after all that bothered Americans about LSD, it was the fact that it made us feel ecstatic and have visions. The ecstasy offended us because we're puritans and the visions offended us because we're scientific materialists. We don't believe in transcendence. Besides, we want drugs that are one-size-fits-all. The drug makers even list euphoria and visions as "adverse effects." Adverse effects! Adverse effects??? Give me the adverse effects, damn it! I would almost rather have prohibition than have legalization 2 limited to these "defanged" versions of drugs that have been doctored or diluted in such a way as to remove all ecstasy and insight that the substances are known to provide in their uncensored doses.

This is what we learn from the "breakthrough" status that has been given to LSD by the FDA: that our scientists think that euphoria and visions are adverse effects!

They should at least provide two versions of the drug, one of which INCLUDES the euphoria and the so-called "hallucinations." Otherwise the FDA is showing a pharmacological prejudice against those who believe in the cathartic nature of transcendent experience, those who, like myself, are convinced that ecstasy is actually good for us - and this, by the way, is not a question for which the FDA has any standing whatsoever, let alone some kind of expertise in resolving for us by regulatory fiat.

It's not enough that the government censors the truth about drugs: now they are censoring the drugs themselves. Instead of relegalizing godsend medicine, they are making that medicine safe for puritans and materialists - and for capitalists, who now can find a way to market LSD. So typical, that the drug had to be made profitable and inoffensive to our milksop zeitgeist before we could have the luxury of using it legally. Just look up the company, MindMed. I did so and thought I'd see all sorts of talk about LSD as a treatment. Instead, I saw articles about money from Forbes Magazine and Bloomberg News. It's all about turning LSD into a saleable product and thereby making a mint - but in the meantime denuding the drug of everything that had made it promising in the first place, its power to change lives and bring ethereal visions.

End prohibition. Get the FDA out of the business of deciding how much ecstasy and inspiration we're allowed to have in this life!

Here are a few Tweets I fired off as I groaned about this new development in politically correct medicine:

Author's Follow-up: March 10, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


I got slammed for this essay because the guy said, "It's all about money and power, you idiot!" -- or words to that effect. But we are talking about two different things. Yes, for the MindMed company, it's surely all about money -- but the question is: why do Americans (and the FDA) think that it makes sense to create a version of LSD that lacks the very attributes that made the drug popular in the first place?! Why do they not see this as absurd on the face of it? This is what we need to confront: we cannot eradicate greed from the human heart, but we can educate Americans whose attitudes are based on assumptions that they are not even aware of. For more, see this essay on the "causes" of the Drug War.









Notes:

1: Single dose of LSD provides immediate and lasting relief from anxiety, study says LaMotte, Sandee, CNN, 2024 (up)
2: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Here is a sample drug-use report from the book "Pihkal": "More than tranquil, I was completely at peace, in a beautiful, benign, and placid place." Prohibition is a crime against humanity for withholding such drug experiences from the depressed (and from everybody else).

Even the worst forms of "abuse" can be combatted with a wise use of a wide range of psychoactive drugs, to combat both physical and psychological cravings. But drug warriors NEED addiction to be a HUGE problem. That's their golden goose.

We've got to take the fight TO the drug warriors by starting to hold them legally responsible for having spread "Big Lies" about "drugs." Anyone involved in producing the "brain frying" PSA of the 1980s should be put on trial for willfully spreading a toxic lie.

Alcohol makes me sleepy. But NOT coca wine. The wine gives you an upbeat feeling of controlled energy, without the jitters of coffee and without the fury of steroids. It increases rather than dulls mental focus.

It is actually illegal to be a Ben Franklin in 21st century America. To put this another way: we outlaw far more than drugs when we outlaw mind and mood medicine.

In the 2015 movie "No Escape," the only place that was safe from anti-American hysteria was an opium den. How ironic that the U.S. forced Iran to outlaw opium.

The DEA is gaslighting Americans, telling them that drugs with obvious benefits have no benefits whatsoever. Scientists collude in this lie thanks to their adherence to the emotion-scorning principles of behaviorism.

"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death." -Jean Cocteau

The FDA approves of shock therapy and the psychiatric pill mill, but they cannot see the benefits in MDMA, a drug that brought peace, love and understanding to the dance floor in 1990s Britain.

Our tolerance for freedom wanes in proportion as we consider "drugs" to be demonic. This is the dark side behind the new ostensibly comic genre about Cocaine Bears and such. It shows that Americans are superstitious about drugs in a way that Neanderthals would have understood.


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






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