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Review of When Plants Dream



by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher


October 15, 2019

in the form of an open letter to author Daniel Pinchbeck:

Thanks for "When Plants Dream," Daniel. It presents an enjoyable and well-rounded introduction to ayahuasca and the many issues that surround its use. That said, however, I'm afraid that, like most Western authors these days, you write under the subconscious influence of a number of Drug War assumptions that are either flat-out wrong or, at best, mere half-truths. I think that this sometimes skews your conclusions or unnecessarily limits their application.

Example 1

You imply when writing about cocaine that it has nothing but bad effects when used in Western society. This is Drug War dogma, of course, but why do we believe it? Why do we think that cocaine has no good uses in the West? How would we even know?

In a Drug War society, no one dares to write about the positive uses of cocaine, especially in newspapers (or in academia, for that matter) - and so we hush up the story of how cocaine helped Sigmund Freud achieve self-actualization (by "pushing him on" to enormous productivity) or stimulated insight in the Richard Feynmans of the world. But if all we're allowed to learn about cocaine is its negative effects, then we are being subject to a propaganda campaign in the West, not to objective scientific information. This is (or should be) very relevant to your book because these one-sided Drug War assumptions are what undergird and perpetuate the criminalization of desperately needed therapeutic plants such as ayahuasca.

But if indigenous people have used coca leaves advisedly for centuries (for visions, insight and/or mental focus), the obvious question is, why can't those benefits be transferred to the West? It may be that Westerners are just not mature enough to use the plant wisely.* But we should not make this assumption hastily in a country where we're only allowed to hear bad things about cocaine use -- and so Freud's use, for instance, is expunged from the psychology textbooks. This is a glaring omission for it keeps psychologists from confronting the $64,000 question: Why did Freud treat his patients based on theories and yet insist on improving his own life with cocaine? If Freud was having trouble getting out of bed, he did not turn to his own psychotherapy. He demanded the real politik of cocaine. Psychology ignores this fact and continues to insist that all psychological patients be treated according to the latest theory and that any use of a psychoactive plant is somehow a "cop-out" -- unless, of course, that plant is synthesized and packaged in such a way that Big Pharma gets its cut.

{^You're never too young to oppress your fellow Americans. Tell your kids about the FDWA, Future Drug Warriors of America. In our summer camps, we teach them how to kick down doors and throw elderly citizens and children on the ground while shouting at them and calling them scumbags for using Mother Nature's plants to gain psychological healing and insight. }{


*SPOILER ALERT: Of course, the real problem is capitalist exploitation. The profit motive, it turns out, has no place when it comes to encouraging the use of psychoactive plants.

Freud's hypocritical use of cocaine reminds me of the liberal who argues vehemently in favor of public schools but ultimately sends his or her own child to a private school. Theoretical benefits are all well and good, but at some point, success-oriented people demand REAL solutions.

Example 2

Like virtually all other authors who write about psychedelic therapy, you fail to state one of the main arguments in favor of that new paradigm: namely, the fact that more than 1 in 8 Americans (1 in 4 women, according to psychiatrist Julie Holland) are currently addicted to modern antidepressants, which were never even trialed for long-term use, some of which are harder to quit than heroin. I myself am addicted to Effexor - which I'm told I can NEVER get off of. Indeed, that is the conclusion of my own psychiatrist. He told me that there is a 95% recidivism rate (according to the NIH itself) for those who attempt to quit Effexor. This is on par with heroin - but I have yet to read any author who is outraged on MY behalf. To the contrary, most authors on these topics are still lecturing me about the supposed "evils" of cocaine and opium, advice that I find laughable in its ignorance and/or hypocrisy.

(To add insult to injury, modern antidepressants are contraindicated for those taking psychedelics. So we have an as-yet unrecognized irony: psychedelics can cure many addictions, but they cannot be used to cure the great addiction of our time: the addiction to SSRI antidepressants.)

When it became clear several decades ago that SSRIs were addictive, psychiatrists merely made a virtue of necessity and began telling their patients that they had to "take their meds for life" (thereby absolving psychiatrists from lawsuits and putting them in the position of the scientific "good guy"). These are the medicines, Daniel, that were promoted based on the erroneous notion that they fixed a chemical imbalance in the brain, whereas subsequent research (see Robert Whitaker) revealed that SSRIs actually CAUSE the imbalances that they purport to fix.

This mass addiction cries out for a remedy, and psychedelics are the obvious solution, since they provide self-insight, grow new neurons, and are non-addictive. (This compares favorably with SSRIs, which in my experience have been fiercely addictive, fog my mind, and conduce to long-term anhedonia.) By ignoring this politically correct addiction (as Drug Warriors dutifully do), your case for psychedelic therapy is far weaker than it need be. As you mention, there are, indeed, potential "down sides" to ayahuasca use, but these rare problems would be dwarfed if contrasted with the actual damage being done by SSRIs today.

This ignorance of the status quo is a feature of today's Drug War. The Drug Warrior has to hush up this legal addiction situation, lest we draw the obvious conclusion: that addiction is not bad, as long as the drugs in question are forthcoming. If that's true, why am I not allowed to use opium occasionally to increase my creativity and give me, as a chronic depressive, something to look forward to in life: namely, times of increased enjoyment of the world around me?

Example 3

I think you correctly suspect the Judeo-Christian outlook of scorning psychoactive plant remedies, but your analysis here does not go far enough. The fact is that the original Drug Warrior was none other than the founder of the Catholic Church, Emperor Theodosius, who, in 392 CE, outlawed the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian mysteries as a threat to Christianity. This ceremony had been ongoing annually for almost two-thousand years, and was reported by many attendees to be the highlight of their entire lives, in passages that could easily be mistaken for journal entries of an ayahuasca enthusiast. These entries speak of great revelations about the true nature of reality. But since such non-Christian revelation was anathema to the Emperor, he launched the Drug War to outlaw all insights that do not come from "the true religion," i.e. Christianity.

Thus we can see that today's Drug War is nothing but the enforcement of Christian Science with respect to mental states: the metaphysical idea (or belief) that it is somehow wrong to use substances to improve one's mental outlook. Of course, this Christian Science is hypocritical, in that it supports psychoactive therapies - even addictive ones - provided that they do not seem to render a user "high" - something that is anathema to the puritan sensibilities of the Christian Scientists.

This Christian Science approach to drug law is aided and abetted by modern materialists, who have a dogmatic disdain for consciousness itself and so refuse to countenance any therapeutic solution that cannot be reduced to so-called "natural causes." Thus the Drug War makes strange bedfellows indeed, as materialist atheists find common ground with intolerant Christians.

Conclusion

I hope these three examples have proven my thesis, Daniel: that even the most progressive writers on the subject of "drugs" are subconsciously biased by the erroneous beliefs of the Drug War and that this bias skews or limits the conclusions that they draw. In short, your case for ayahuasca therapy is compelling in itself, but it could win far more converts if you compared your proposal to the ugly nature of the addictive status quo.

Of course, this may be easier said than done. There is, after all, a "kids glove" attitude toward SSRIs based on decades of Big Pharma-financed proselytizing on their behalf. During this time, the APA has been in league with the pharmaceutical companies to make SSRIs look like lamb's milk on shows like Oprah and Today. The result has been the creation of an American myth, according to which these drugs "fix" a chemical imbalance. This is just plain false, but it apparently has been drilled into Americans so successfully via a full-court media press that few people dare acknowledge its falsehood today.

(The proof is extant: I am as depressed today as I was 40 years ago, after taking legal antidepressants every single day of my life. If modern antidepressants are some kind of silver bullet, my brain chemicals never got the memo.)

Viewed in this light, I guess it's little wonder that writers like yourself fail to point out this corrupt status quo, since it is so thoroughly believed by the public that it no doubt demands a separate book to address the issues in question.

At their best SSRIs make life livable - which would be fine if that's all we had. But why should we settle for an addictive drug that simply makes life bearable when we could use a non-addictive one that can truly make life worth living?

What we need, I believe, is to replace psychiatry with shamanism, but only in a world in which the shaman is allowed to learn about and use any plant in the world - rather than a handful of addictive drugs that enrich the Fortune 500 while limiting users both financially and emotionally.

I fear this won't happen, however, until Americans recognize the folly of outlawing Mother Nature in the first place.

PS When pushed, psychiatrists may claim that SSRIs and SNRIs are not addictive, that they only cause "chemical dependence." But there is little difference from the point of view of a user. If I stopped using Effexor, I would go through hell. Just see the online testimony describing the many horrific but futile attempts to get off the drug.

Author's Follow-up: July 14, 2022






Bear in mind, I wrote this three years ago, when I was still basically a kid. Couldn't have been more than 59, 60 tops. I freely admit I may have been a loose cannon back then, impatient of acknowledging the full nuances of my seeming opponents' positions before firing at them broadside. If so, a thousand pardons to Dan. (Now if only I had an online presence that permitted Daniel to both learn of this potential sleight and to at least partially forgive it based on this admittedly somewhat quirky appendix that I'm adding here. If I don't hear from him in a few months, I'll have to assume that he forgives me, at which point I'll append a thank-you right here on this web page for that supposititious forbearance on his part.)

I would add, however, that there is one drug-war lie that has kept the average American's mind-improving arsenal empty, forcing them to rely solely on the dependence-causing meds of Big Pharma: that is the idea that substances can be characterized as bad, in and of themselves, without regard for how, why, when or where they are used. Even crack cocaine and morphine can be used non-addictively in a regime designed for that purpose.

Once we free ourselves of the anti-scientific Drug War ideology of substance demonization, we can envision an empathic shaman using all substances freely in an attempt to cajole and instruct a person in life, without getting them addicted insofaras the patient does not even have to know with what substances he or she is being treated.

We can teach this non-addictive strategy to all human beings -- but with honesty, telling them about how Big Pharma meds cause lifetime chemical dependence, not as a possible side effect but as an actual feature.

This is a truth that corporate America and moneyed interests can't tolerate. They want our knowledge of "drugs" to be based on expensive TV ads designed to associate substances with warm fuzzy feelings. They want us to be children when it comes to psychoactive substances. This is why we demonize drugs, because drugs that expand the mind and inspire new religions have no place in a capitalist society that values the individual only insofar as they are a good consumer of products. That's why thought control via substance prohibition is just another step in capitalism uber alles.

When the police pull you over, they are really the "thought police," searching to find drugs in order to prove that you are conspiring to think more and/or differently than the capitalist status quo allows.

Book Reviews







Most authors today reckon without the drug war -- unless they are writing specifically about "drugs" -- and even then they tend to approach the subject in a way that clearly demonstrates that they have been brainwashed by drug war orthodoxy, even if they do not realize it themselves. That's why I write my philosophical book reviews, to point out this hypocrisy that no other philosopher in the world is pointing out. (Hey, if I thought I would ever be recognized in this lifetime, I would be humble and patient -- but it's clear to me that I'm to be largely ignored here-below until such time as I bite some serious dust, so you'll just have to put up with my horn-blowing, fair enough?)

  • 'Synthetic Panics' by Philip Jenkins
  • Alternative Medicine as a Drug War Creation
  • Blaming Drugs for Nazi Germany
  • Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant
  • Clodhoppers on Drugs
  • Disease Mongering in the age of the drug war
  • Even Howard Zinn Reckons without the Drug War
  • Five problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick Strassman
  • How Bernardo Kastrup reckons without the drug war
  • In the Realm of Hungry Drug Warriors
  • Intoxiphobia
  • Michael Pollan on Drugs
  • Noam Chomsky on Drugs
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
  • Opium for the Masses by Jim Hogshire
  • Psilocybin Mushrooms by Edward Lewis
  • Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches: LSD, Cannabis, and Spiritual Sacraments in Underground America
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Richard Rudgley condemns 'drugs' with faint praise
  • The Book of the Damned
  • The Drug War Imperialism of Richard Evans Schultes
  • The End Times by Bryan Walsh
  • What Andrew Weil Got Wrong
  • What Carl Hart Missed
  • What Rick Strassman Got Wrong
  • Whiteout
  • Why Drug Warriors are Nazis

  • Open Letters







    Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.

    I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.

    Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.



  • America's Blind Spot
  • Another Cry in the Wilderness
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Critique of the Philosophy of Happiness
  • Depressed? Here's why you can't get the medicines that you need
  • Drug Dealers as Modern Witches
  • Drug War Murderers
  • Drugs are not the problem
  • End the Drug War Now
  • Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
  • Finally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxes
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
  • God and Drugs
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!
  • Heroin versus Alcohol
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the drug war
  • How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England
  • How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
  • How the Drug War Screws the Depressed
  • How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
  • How to Unite Drug War Opponents of all Ethnicities
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl
  • Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro
  • In Defense of Opium
  • In Defense of Religious Drug Use
  • Keep Laughing Gas Legal
  • Majoring in Drug War Philosophy
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
  • No drugs are bad in and of themselves
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open Letter to Diane O'Leary
  • Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand
  • Open Letter to Erowid
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
  • Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser
  • Open letter to Kenneth Sewell
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open Letter to Margo Margaritoff
  • Open Letter to Nathan at TheDEA.org
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley
  • Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths
  • Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
  • Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  • Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer
  • Open Letter to Vincent Rado
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War
  • Prohibition Spectrum Disorder
  • Prohibitionists Never Learn
  • Regulate and Educate
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Science is not free in the age of the drug war
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs
  • Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma
  • Teenagers and Cannabis
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Drug War and Armageddon
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings
  • The Menace of the Drug War
  • The Mother of all Western Biases
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts
  • The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment
  • The Right to LIVE FULLY is more important than the Right to DIE
  • There is nothing to debate: the drug war is wrong, root and branch
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War
  • Unscientific American
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • Vancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe Use
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
  • Whitehead and Psychedelics
  • Why CBS 19 should stop supporting the Drug War
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
  • Why Philosophers Need to Stop Dogmatically Ignoring Drugs
  • Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
  • Why Science is the Handmaiden of the Drug War
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
  • Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine
  • Why the Holocaust Museum must denounce the Drug War
  • William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas





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    Opium for the Masses by Jim Hogshire
    What Jim Hogshire Got Wrong about Drugs
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    How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
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    front cover of Drug War Comic Book

    Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans



    You have been reading an article entitled, Review of When Plants Dream published on October 15, 2019 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)