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My First Journey on Psilocybin

presented in the convenient form of a presidential news conference

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher







July 15, 2024

I'll just make a brief statement and then I'll take questions. As some of you might know, I flew out to Oregon last week to receive psilocybin treatments with the help of Sammy Kahuk at the Psilocybin Center in Salem. The good news is, the medicine worked great for me for the first two days. The bad news is, I ran into limitations in my psychedelic experience thanks to the fact that I am taking two Big Pharma drugs. Fortunately, however, I also discovered benefits to psilocybin use that were noticeable even after I had left the center. That is, I left the Psilocybin Center feeling far more interested in the world around me than I have in years. And this, remember, in spite of the muted nature of my experience thanks to my daily use of Big Pharma meds. So I'm psyched now about using such meds to get off of my current Big Pharma drugs, after which, by the way, I look forward to trying ayahuasca, as sort of a gift to myself for persevering.


Hey! Mr. President. Are you thinking of moving to Oregon?



Yes, it is a distinct possibility.


How distinct?


Let's just say I'm already looking for plane tickets for August of this year.


To Salem?


To Salem.


And leave your house on the hill with a great view of the resort valley and lake?


Well, I've always felt that attitude is what matters. I'd rather truly appreciate a humble life in Oregon than be unable to appreciate a fancy life in Virginia.


And let me get this straight: you'd never submit to a drug test, right?


Never. Unless, of course, the drug test was fair and they gave you high points for using substances like coca and opium wisely. If things were done by rights, I should get excellent marks for all my drug use! I've always insisted that I only use drugs that help me live life honorably while yet thinking as creatively as possible all the time and silencing those deadly inner voices within what keep you from living large in front of la gente, dost thou dig? I'm not like those (if you'll forgive me) rich yuppies what goes to San Jose del Pacifico to have a once-in-a-lifetime experiencing mushrooms. I want to leverage the power of psilocybin to the max in my life so that I can enjoy life as much as possible and learn from it, till death do I do part, which, come on folks, I'm 65 now: it's not like I'm going to live to 100. But if I do, I want the door to the goodie basket to be open 24-7 when it comes to my mental life, and that's, of course, a freedom that Drug Warriors will never recognize -- and my upcoming move to Oregon is to move to that spot in the country where the citizenry is (as like as not) to appreciate my views on these topics, namely the evil of the Drug War and the wonder of psilocybin.

And what about MDMA? Didn't Sammy told you that it will be available for use in Oregon within a couple of years?


I fancy he rather did at that. It's this progressive mindset that makes me want to move to Oregon, especially in this age wherein everything seems to be political. But don't get me wrong: the idea that mother nature should be free is not some progressive fanaticism, it is the way that people have always lived until the intolerant show up and try to determine how much you're allowed to think and feel in life.



Next essay: Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
Previous essay: Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited
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Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.
I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?
Most substance withdrawal would be EASY if drugs were re-legalized and we could use any substance we wanted to mitigate negative psychological effects.
Chesterton might as well have been speaking about the word 'addiction' when he wrote the following: "It is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase."
The drug war basically is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.
Peyote advocates should be drug legalization advocates. Otherwise, they're involved in special pleading which is bound to result in absurd laws, such as "Plant A can be used in a religion but not plant B," or "Person A can belong to such a religion but person B cannot."
All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
Richard Evans Schultes seems to have originated the harebrained idea (since used by the US Supreme Court to suppress new religions) that you have no right to use drugs in a religious ritual if you did not grow up in a society that had such practices. What tyrannical idiocy!
The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?
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You have been reading an article entitled, My First Journey on Psilocybin: presented in the convenient form of a presidential news conference, published on July 15, 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)