Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches: LSD, Cannabis, and Spiritual Sacraments in Underground America
a philosophical review of Mike Marinacci's new book
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 29, 2024
COMMENT 1:
I have decided to comment on this book in installments, since the stories of religious suppression that it tells are so irritating to me that I cannot wait until the final page to start speaking out. I can say, however, that the first 29 pages have convinced me that author Mike Marinacci's heart is in the right place: he has transcended prohibition propaganda and grasped the real problem of the Drug War, namely that it represents a war against religion. As Mike writes:
"The idea that the War on Drugs is as much a religious war as it is a campaign of criminal law and public-health concerns, is a compelling one."
I am already a trifle bothered, however, by one thing in particular.
Mike mentions the racial nature of laws against peyote use, without even acknowledging the fact that such laws seem to violate everything that America stands for in the way of how we are judged as people. For according to the law, Native Americans may use peyote, whereas Caucasians cannot, and I would have hoped that such a race-based policy should be prima facie tyrannical to any American familiar with the Declaration of Independence and the natural law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. But Mike does not so much as cast a nod toward such considerations as he reports the details of peyote law in America. Maybe he is just reporting the facts without commenting on them, but after reading his account of such anti-American realities, I was expecting to encounter some pushback along the lines of: "Of course, this is patently anti-American, but what can you do?" So his silence on this topic makes me wonder if I haven't missed something, if I haven't become a Rip Van Winkle when it comes to political science. Maybe 21st-century Americans no longer believe in the existence of inalienable rights and natural law, which denies government the power to outlaw something so basic as Mother Nature. For if our right to Mother Nature is no longer deemed self-evident, then there is simply no right whatsoever that is inalienable any longer in 21st century America.
These "racial laws" about drug use make a mockery of inalienable rights, and force us to sue government (one ethnic group at a time) for the privilege of leaning over and gathering the plant medicine that grows at our very feet.
I don't know about Mike, but I claim a birthright to Mother Nature and hold any government to be a tyrant which would deny me that right.
It makes me wonder if the government is not using racial drug policy as a divide-and-conquer strategy in the War on Drugs. They bring Native Americans into alignment with oppressive drug policy by magnanimously granting them the "privilege" to use peyote as a sort of payback for past wrongs, knowing that Caucasian Americans, for their part, have a bad conscience and so will be ashamed to protest their own denial of religious freedom viz. peyote. But the fact is that neither Native Americans nor Caucasians -- nor anybody else -- should need the government's OK to access Mother Nature. That is the root injustice of the Drug War, one which goes against the very idea of inalienable rights. You can be sure that Thomas Jefferson was rolling in his grave when the DEA stomped onto Monticello 1 in 1987 and confiscated his poppy plants -- which was just the case of government blowing a giant raspberry at the very idea of Jeffersonian freedoms.
Americans do not really agree with such policy. They are ashamed of the raid whenever they hear about it -- which is almost never, however, thanks to the fact that the media refuses to talk about it. The Jefferson Foundation itself refuses to tell its visitors about such raids and how they have sold out the legacy of Thomas Jefferson by fully cooperating with the DEA's efforts to eradicate hemp and poppies on the Jefferson estate. They know that they are schmucks for so doing -- that's why they say nothing about it. But if truth be told, they need to remove the signs around the estate reading "hallowed ground," for the ground has long since been desecrated by the anti-American fascists of the Drug War, coming on the property not to arrest terrorists, not to nab murderers, not to confiscate a weapon of mass destruction... but rather to confiscate plants. Your tax dollars at work, folks. Don't you feel safe knowing that the government is handling tough jobs like this? It's only fair to serial killers who deserve at least a sporting chance to get away with their crimes!
But stay tuned. Mike may flesh out his reportage with the missing pushback as the book progresses. It just surprised me - and frightened me a little - that Mike reported on this race-based drug policy so uncritically (at least initially). It gave me the impression that Americans have already pawned their birthright and so are more than happy to accept race-based drugs policy, that their only concern now is that the right drugs be made available for the right ethnic groups and that no one even disputes the government's right to dole out Mother Nature's bounty in the first place - something that is outrageous in itself, but even more so when the distribution and/or withholding is done on a racial basis.
Another thing that pissed me off was a quote from a politician who wanted to outlaw the peyote-based religion based on the fear that Blacks in New Orleans might demand a cocaine 23 -based religion. Such fearmongering is par for the Drug War course, full of unspoken assumptions, many of them racist. It's like saying, we need to outlaw horseback-riding because before you know it, folks will be riding wild broncos. The fact is that a sort of coca-based religion - nay, a coca-based lifestyle - has existed for millennia in South America and resulted in nothing but group cohesion and endurance, both physical and mental. The idea that the government has an overriding interest in outlawing such things is nonsense - for no one thinks that government has an overriding interest to outlaw horseback riding. Why not? Because we acknowledge there are benefits to riding as well as downsides. Despite the endless lies and mischaracterizations of the Drug Warrior, there is endless evidence of the benefits of all sorts of drugs and the idea that ANY drug can have no value whatsoever is absolute anti-logical nonsense.
MORE COMMENTS WHEN I CALM DOWN ENOUGH TO GO ON READING!
Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.
We have to deny the FDA the right to judge psychoactive medicines in the first place. Their materialist outlook obliges them to ignore all obvious benefits. When they nix drugs like MDMA, they nix compassion and love.
It's disgusting that folks like Paul Stamets need a DEA license to work with mushrooms.
"Drugs" is imperialist terminology. In the smug self-righteousness of those who use it, I hear Columbus's disdain for the shroom use of the Taino people and the Spanish disdain for the coca use of the Peruvian Indians.
High suicide rates? What a poser! Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the US has outlawed all substances that elate and inspire???
In a compassionate world, we would give laughing gas kits to the suicidal just as we now give epi pens to those with severe allergies.
The proof that psychedelics work has always been extant. We are hoodwinked by scientists who convince us that efficacy has not been "proven." This is materialist denial of the obvious.
Politicians protect a drug that kills 178,000 a year via a constitutional amendment, and then they outlaw all less lethal alternatives. To enforce the ban, they abrogate the 4th amendment and encourage drug testing to ensure that drug war heretics starve.
The drug war is is a multi-billion-dollar campaign to enforce the attitude of the Francisco Pizarro's of the world when it comes to non-western medicine. It is the apotheosis of the colonialism that most Americans claim to hate.
My approach to withdrawal: incrementally reduce daily doses over 6 months, or even a year, meanwhile using all the legal entheogens and psychedelics that you can find in a way likely to boost your endurance and "sense of purpose" to make withdrawal successful.
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