Someone you love is suffering unnecessarily because of the war on drugs
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 3, 2024
was chatting with my sister last night about a distant family member who can scarcely leave her house because of agoraphobia. Had the discussion occurred five years ago, I would have simply put this condition down to bad luck and condoled with my sibling over the trials and tribulations of our distant relation. But having since then studied the potential powers of psychoactive drugs to inspire, elate and even educate, I see such instances in an entirely new light today, as a sign, that is, that America is living in a self-imposed dark ages. For such conditions as agoraphobia are not untreatable, as we both seemed to implicitly believe judging by our impotent head-shaking on the subject. There are, in fact, hundreds of psychoactive medicines that could be creatively used in various protocols to overcome even extreme agoraphobia, substances ranging from the shrooms currently being trialed by MAPS1 to the phenethylamines like MDMA that have been synthesized by Alexander Shulgin2. So the big story here is not that my distant cousin has troubles: the big story is that America is willfully refusing to provide her with godsend relief.
If you doubt this claim, I invite you to read Alexander Shulgin's description (below) of his experiences on a phenethylamine that he created and called T-7. Keep in mind in doing so that phenethylamines are not some exotic psychoactive substance found in some rare endangered cactus in the Chilean desert, but rather, as Shulgin writes, they are "a naturally occurring compound found in both the animal and plant kingdoms," one which, in fact, is endogenous to the human brain3.
Account of Alexander Shulgin's experience on phenethylamine T-7
"Suddenly I am completely pierced, down to the core of my being, by what feels like the penetration of the Finger of God. It seems to be a female source that reaches me and touches. I am totally undone by this deep touching, and sob uncontrollably for several minutes, crying out all my pain and fears, and feeling sheer ecstasy. As I feel gratitude for the beauty, I am pierced again and again, and continue to sob."4
Anyone with a little common sense will immediately see how such drugs could be leveraged into empathic protocols that could treat agoraphobia. Unfortunately, common sense is at a premium in the age of the Drug War, so I will spell it out as follows.
First, what is agoraphobia? It is surely a kind of knee-jerk mental correlation between crowds and personal discomfiture. It's a negative psychological association that triggers all kinds of flight mechanisms in the afflicted individual. How then do you fight such a condition? Surely by helping the sufferer to start associating crowds with a different feeling altogether: namely, a feeling of bliss, love and contentedness rather than of panic, confusion and existential angst. And this is precisely what an empathic counselor could do using substances like T-7. He or she could gently introduce the agoraphobic to a whole new way of thinking about crowds, not by scheduling a hundred expensive office visits in which the duo discuss tactics for reducing anxiety (words, words, words!), but rather by helping the client begin emotionally associating crowds with empathic feelings of love and trust. How? Simply by accompanying the drug-taking client on a series of trips into increasingly crowded environments so that their knee-jerk reaction of horror can be replaced over time with a knee-jerk reaction of overwhelming curiosity, compassion and love.
Of course, the ideal treatment protocol will vary with the individual, when it comes to which drug(s) are to be used for such a purpose and how the encounters with crowds are to be managed, etc., but the kinds of protocols hinted at above are merely psychological common sense - or at least they would be had modern psychology not fallen under the spell of materialism which causes drug researchers to insist that all "real" cures must be found in brain chemistry5. This is why materialist doctors actually cannot decide if laughing gas could help the depressed6 - because they do not care about what the depressed actually feel and believe; instead the materialist pretends that they know more about what makes a person happy than the person themselves. They essentially say to the depressed today: "I'm the doctor: I'll tell you when you're REALLY happy, thank you very much."
And this brings up a crucial problem that even Drug War opponents have yet to recognize: namely, that medical doctors are not qualified to perform research on psychoactive medicines, except perhaps to tell us what are likely toxicities at given doses. The determination of proper protocols for such drugs should be made by empathic "psychonauts,"7 pharmacologically savvy "shaman" who take time to learn the attitudes and aspirations of their client and who use best practices based on their own actual experience with the drugs in question. "Clean and sober" medical doctors have no expertise in these areas, neither pharmacologically speaking nor psychologically speaking, as is clear given their dogmatic disdain for user accounts in the case of laughing gas. To a medical doctor, the user accounts are worthless because they are subjective, whereas the psychonaut realizes that subjectivity is the whole point of psychoactive therapy and that no such treatment can be effective if it ignores the feelings, desires and aspirations of the client.
The overarching point here is that agoraphobia - and indeed most so-called "mental health problems" - are NOT intractable - or at very least we have absolutely no right to say so in a country that has outlawed almost all the medicines that could help combat such conditions. That would be like outlawing antiviral medicine and then claiming that the flu was intractable. Nor are the drugs of Alexander Shulgin the only psychoactive substances that could conceivably help with agoraphobia. I speak from personal experience in saying that coca wine (at least the time-honored brand created by Angelo Mariani)8 can buoy mood and outlook, in such a way that its advised use could potentially help the sufferer to, as it were, gradually "wean themselves" off the feelings of mistrust and fear with which they associate crowds. Then, of course, there are the seemingly endless plants and fungi of mother nature, about which we know shamefully little so far, but whose vast untapped potential can be readily guessed at by anyone who peruses such books as "The Plants of the Gods" by Albert Hoffman9 or "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants," a book also partially edited by Albert Hoffman10, again reminding us of how few individuals have been able to violate drug-war taboos with relative impunity in order to provide facts instead of fear about the modern scapegoat called "drugs."
But the entire world is clueless thanks to its knee-jerk adoption of the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. A quick Google search on "agoraphobia" brings up seemingly exhaustive analyses of the condition on the Mayo Clinic website, the website for the NHS, WebMD and the National Institute of Mental Health, etc. They all present the condition as largely intractable, while offering shreds of hope based on various materialist protocols... and yet they all miss the point. They all ignore the many common sense drug-aided protocols that could be used to alter the agoraphobic's boiler-plate reaction to crowds. In fact, the failure of these websites to even mention drugs like the inspiring T-7 would strike readers as a glaring omission, were the readers themselves not living in a world wherein we have been taught from childhood to pretend that such substances do not even exist. For in the terminology of Charles Fort, such otherwise obvious treatments have been "damned" by both science and the world at large.11.
In light of this sad state of affairs, I no longer think of that distant relative of mine as a victim of agoraphobia, but rather as a victim of the War on Drugs, that Christian Science ideology that prioritizes ignorance over human happiness.
Author's Follow-up: February 3, 2024
Most of the drugs that could be used to fight agoraphobia are non-addictive; however, even occasional opium smoking could work to allay agoraphobic responses, even though we have all been programmed to think of this as unthinkable. Nor is this a medical question: it is rather a question of priorities in life and what constitutes the good life. The question is: Is it better to live a sober life away from all crowds or an active life among people with the help of a potentially habit-forming drug like opium? Again, this is not a medical question, it is a question of what we value in life. It can be answered by no one but the agoraphobic themselves.
Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which limits drug choice and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.
Someday those books about weird state laws will be full of factoids like: "In Alabama, you could be jailed for 20 years for conspiring to eat a mushroom."
But, of course, drug warriors do not want to end "addiction": it's their golden goose. They use the threat of addiction to scare us into giving up our democratic freedoms, like that once supplied by the 4th amendment.
This massive concern for safety is downright bizarre in a country that will not even criminalize bump stocks for automatic weapons.
Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could disbelieve it.
Drugs like opium and psychedelics should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
I'm grateful to the folks who are coming out of the woodwork at the last minute to deface their own properties with "Trump 2024" signs. Now I'll know who to thank should Trump get elected and sell us out to Putin.
The drug war bans human progress by deciding that hundreds of drugs are trash without even trying to find positive uses for them. Yet scientists continue to research and write as if prohibition does not exist, that's how cowed they are by drug laws.
Mariani Wine is the real McCoy, with Bolivian coca leaves (tho' not with cocaine, as Wikipedia says). I'll be writing more about my experience with it soon. I was impressed. It's the same drink "on which" HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories.
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, Someone you love is suffering unnecessarily because of the war on drugs published on February 3, 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)
was chatting with my sister last night about a distant family member who can scarcely leave her house because of agoraphobia. Had the discussion occurred five years ago, I would have simply put this condition down to bad luck and condoled with my sibling over the trials and tribulations of our distant relation. But having since then studied the potential powers of psychoactive drugs to inspire, elate and even educate, I see such instances in an entirely new light today, as a sign, that is, that America is living in a self-imposed dark ages. For such conditions as agoraphobia are not untreatable, as we both seemed to implicitly believe judging by our impotent head-shaking on the subject. There are, in fact, hundreds of psychoactive medicines that could be creatively used in various protocols to overcome even extreme agoraphobia, substances ranging from the shrooms currently being trialed by MAPS1 to the phenethylamines like MDMA that have been synthesized by Alexander Shulgin2. So the big story here is not that my distant cousin has troubles: the big story is that America is willfully refusing to provide her with godsend relief.
You have been reading an article entitled, Someone you love is suffering unnecessarily because of the war on drugs published on February 3, 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)