or, why Big Pharma is justifiably afraid of psychedelic medicine
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 13, 2024
Author's note: I received immediate feedback to this post stating that psilocybin does not cause flashbacks. But I was not using "flashback" in the pathological sense of that term. For me, a flashback (in the positive sense) is a relevant reminiscence that is vouchsafed the individual, as if by miracle, at precisely the time in their life when that information is crucial to them. I am not talking about a classic "Wayne's World" flashback in which past events materialize gradually in the ether as Mike Myers makes silly noises. I was instead on a low dose of a medicine that sharpened my mind to the point that the information I needed from the past was suddenly present to me at the precise moment that I needed it. That is a "flashback" in the positive sense of the term, before Drug Warriors redefined it to apply only to pathological instances of sudden unwanted recall.
I would retitle the article to lose the reference to "flashback" -- except that I refuse to give up that word just because Drug Warriors have claimed it for their own as a pejorative, just like they have turned "drugs" into a pejorative term, which has led to great terminological confusion in the debate about psychoactive substances ever since.
I had a flashback tonight under the influence of psilocybin. I suddenly recalled a summer afternoon in the 1970s when I walked into my bedroom and tore down a long strip of colorful international flags with which I had decorated my walls just one week previous. I was 16 years old at the time and something had just "happened," as they say, something that caused me to suddenly and decisively sour on life. Tonight, 50 years later, I realized that the day in question marked the beginning of my lifelong depression, a fact of which I had never been consciously aware during my many years of psychotherapy as a young adult. It seems that some things are just so obvious that the mind refuses to recognize them, kind of like that guy in the gorilla suit who walks by college students unnoticed in those 20th-century experiments about "inattentional blindness" at American universities.
But put your hankies away, folks. I won't be going into detail here about that psychological belly-punch of yore. Nor do I seek any retroactive pity, especially since I am by no means sure that I would deserve any. True, I can imagine a good filmmaker convincingly portraying my teenage self as a clear-cut trauma victim. I can even see Jack and Jill America leaving the theater in tears on behalf of the former "me." Yet I fear that an even better filmmaker would dig through my adult archives and produce a movie to demonstrate convincingly that I deserved everything I got back then, and then some.
My point here is merely this, that this long-forgotten U-turn in my life came to mind tonight under the influence of psilocybin, as I was doing something quite unusual for myself as a chronic depressive: namely, creating a colorful display for my office walls not unlike the one that I had torn down in abject despair half a century ago.
I trust the reader grasps the significance of that last remark: Not only did the consumption of a mushroom reignite my passion for colorful decoration tonight, but it "tipped me off" to the specific event in my life that quelched my interest in eye-catching interior design in the first place.
No wonder Paul Stamets says that Big Pharma is worried about psilocybin. It actually works! It accomplishes in one night what psychiatrists try in vain to accomplish in an entire career.
When the FDA tells us in effect that MDMA is too dangerous to be used to prevent school shootings and to help bring about world peace, they are making political judgments, not scientific ones.
Drug warriors are too selfish and short-sighted to fight real problems, so they blame everything on drugs.
Most substance withdrawal would be EASY if drugs were re-legalized and we could use any substance we wanted to mitigate negative psychological effects.
America is insane: it makes liquor officially legal and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
We've created a faux psychology to support such science: that psychology says that anything that really WORKS is just a "crutch" -- as if there is, or there even should be, a "CURE" for sadness.
There are neither "drugs" nor "meds" as those terms are used today. All substances have potential good uses and bad uses. The terms as used today carry value judgements, as in meds good, drugs bad.
The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.
Michael Pollan is the Leona Helmsley of the Drug War. He uses outlawed drugs freely while failing to support the re-legalization of Mother Nature. Drug laws are apparently for the little people.
Prohibition turned habituation into addiction by creating a wide variety of problems for users, including potential arrest, tainted or absent drug supply, and extreme stigmatization.
A pharmacologically savvy drug dealer would have no problem getting someone off one drug because they would use the common sense practice of fighting drugs with drugs. But materialist doctors would rather that the patient suffer than to use such psychologically obvious methods.
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
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You have been reading an article entitled, My Psilocybin Flashback: or, why Big Pharma is justifiably afraid of psychedelic medicine, published on October 13, 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, My Psilocybin Flashback: or, why Big Pharma is justifiably afraid of psychedelic medicine, published on October 13, 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)