irst, let me anticipate eventual pushback by stating up front that I am not a starry-eyed utopian, about drugs or about anything else for that matter. What I maintain in this essay is rather that the proper appreciation, understanding and use of psychoactive substances in modern society would provide humanity with its greatest possible chance of avoiding self-annihilation. If there's a more likely way to end the cycle of killing and vengeance, I have yet to hear it.
Ironically, I think the real starry-eyed optimists are the Karl Marxes, Hegels and Rousseaus (AND ELON MUSKS) of the world, who think everything will be fine if we only get the correct socioeconomic systems in place, in line with the laws of history or the proclivities of human beings, etc. These are the real "dreamers" in the pejorative sense of that word.
For the fact is, sober human beings will never be happy, even if you can show them with mathematical formulas that they live in the best of all possible social and economic worlds.
As Shelley writes in "To a Skylark":
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
The principal problems of the world are ultimately not social or economic, but rather psychological and/or spiritual. This is not to counsel that the oppressed adopt a masochistic quietism in the face of unjust laws, etc., but rather to say that oppression itself would have been far less likely to arise in the first place had the entire world tended to its own "psychological gardens," rather than prioritizing the acquisition of money and weapons to defend one economic system (or religion, or race, etc.) over another.
The problem in question is hinted at in the quote by La Bruyère with which Edgar Allan Poe prefaces his short story, "The Man of the Crowd"
Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul.
This is, in fact, the status quo of most individuals. They cannot stand still and bask in a sunset, they cannot enjoy the odd shapes of the clouds on the horizon, they cannot appreciate the sounds of the cardinal at their windowsill: all because they are focused, not on this moment, but rather on the fears and anxieties about the future. (This is especially true of men, perhaps due to their biochemistry. When was the last time you saw women overturning police cars on the nightly news? When was the last time you saw women on the news surrounding one of their political foes and beating him into the ground? Women, it seems, are comfortable staying at home and channeling their protests in more peaceful ways.1)
But human beings need not live this way, in constant enmity, with a constant elephantine chip on their shoulders. There are drugs that motivate. There are drugs that elate. There are drugs that increase compassion for our fellows. There are drugs whose use conduces to an almost surreal appreciation of Mother Nature's bounty. There are drugs whose use conduces to a profound appreciation of music, many times more powerful than that which could ever be cultivated even in the most popular drug-free music appreciation course on earth. There are many drugs that make the present okay to live in and enjoy - or else to use productively to learn more about oneself.
I am not just speaking here of opiates and soma and mescaline and coca - or even of the hundreds of elating and mind-improving drugs synthesized by Alex Shulgin -- but of hundreds of plant- and fungi-based medicines that most Americans have never even heard of, simply because our government does not want us to even know that they exist - until the cat is out of the bag, of course, at which point a well-publicized crackdown is sure to follow. For make no mistake: the Drug War is nothing less than a fanatical Christian Science Sharia with respect to psychoactive medicine.
To the puritanical west, the therapeutic use of psychoactive medicine smacks of hedonism and flower children. But personally I'd rather have a world full of silly flower children than a world full of innumerable terrorists, each bearing a deadly desire to promote their favorite religious or economic system "by any means necessary." Although it may seem heresy to westerners to use psychoactive medicines therapeutically like this, all tribal people have used psychoactive medicines therapeutically for millennia, so I am scarcely a wide-eyed fanatic for suggesting that the western world try doing the same. It's not like the status quo is working, as the bloody history of the last 200 years proves in spades. (You remember the tribal people: the folks that the west annihilated because we placed economics first rather than prioritizing the creation of those states of mind in which we could live easily both with ourselves and others.)
Speaking generally, there are basically two attitudes toward drugs: the western view that sees them through the jaundiced lens of puritanism, and the tribal view that sees them as potential godsends when used wisely.
My utopia proposes merging the best of both worlds, creating a world in which we actively learn about and use psychoactive medicines of all kinds to help us achieve positive goals: appreciation of nature, compassion toward others, ability to concentrate and to endure - in short, to be able to live with ourselves at long last.
My utopia in short is: compassion first, economics and religion second.
To achieve this goal, human beings have to get over their psychosocial hang-ups in double-quick time, those deeply ingrained habits of mind that make them unable to live comfortably with themselves and therefore with others. And surely the only way for the vast majority of human beings to accomplish this transformation is by learning how to wisely use the very sorts of psychoactive drugs that militant moderns are keen to disparage. This is not the suggestion of a dreamer. To the contrary, the starry-eyed people are the ones who think that this urgently required eradication of humankind's antisocial tendencies will ever take place without the wise and considered use of the godsend medicines that we have been taught from childhood to detest.
Author's Follow-up: October 20, 2023
Ooh, boy, I get a headache just thinking about how people are likely to misunderstand what I'm saying above. To be clear, I'm not siding with any economic system. My point is that positions on such topics should not be the touchstone by which we judge people. Let's make sure everyone first has their head screwed on straight and is pleasantly disposed toward "the other." Only then can discussion of such issues prove productive. Who knows? We may begin to have discussions in which both sides learn something from each other -- rather than putting all their energy into winning points at all cost.
Author's Follow-up: October 24, 2023
Elon Musk champions the 21st-century version of the Crystal Palace, against which Dostoevsky raged on psychological and philosophical grounds in "Notes from Underground."
Author's Follow-up: January 19, 2024
The typical conservative ploy is to mock the Flower Children of the '60s -- but let's remember what they were reacting to: a world that had almost irradiated the East Coast multiple times due to hatred that could have been combatted with empathogenic medicine. We laugh at the flower children, but we'd be singing a different tune had the Soviet Union or the US Air Force blown up the entire East Coast of the USA -- using those weapons that the insane warmongers insisted that we needed.
I'd rather live among loopy flower children than among warmongers who have nearly literally destroyed the USA -- and who have only failed to do so so far thanks to stupid luck.
Cursed are the hatemongers, for they will inherit a pile of radioactive rubble.
1 Upon re-reading this, I actually said "Ouch!" because I see that it is susceptible to a very uncharitable reading indeed -- especially for those who judge by the words one uses rather than by what's in the heart -- in other words, for those who are guilty of the Cordelia Fallacy. (up)
Only a pathological puritan would say that there's no place in the world for substances that lift your mood, give you endurance, and make you get along with your fellow human being. Drugs may not be everything, but it's masochistic madness to claim that they are nothing at all.
I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.
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.
Many psychedelic fans are still drug warriors at heart. They just think that a nice big exception should be carved out for the drugs that they're suddenly finding useful. Wrong. Substance demonization is wrong, root and branch. It always causes more suffering than freedom.
The December Scientific American features a story called "The New Nuclear Age," about a trillion-dollar plan to add 100s of ICBM's to 5 states, which an SA editorial calls "kick me" signs. This Neanderthal plan comes from pols who think that compassion-boosting drugs are evil!
The Thomas Jefferson Foundation is a drug war collaborator. They helped the DEA confiscate Thomas Jefferson's poppy plants in 1987. They have refused to talk about that ever since.
Trump is the prototypical drug warrior. He knows that he can destroy American freedoms by fearmongering. He has seen it work with the Drug War, which got rid of the 4th Amendment, religious freedom and is now going after free speech.
Drug warriors are full of hate for "users." Many of them make it clear that they want users to die (like Gates and Bennett...). The drug war has weaponized humanity's worst instincts.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
I passed a sign that says "Trust Trump." What does that mean? Trust him to crack down on his opposition using the U.S. Army? Or trust him not to do all the anti-American things that he's saying he's going to do.
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, The Best of All Possible Utopias: How drug use can help save the world, published on November 20, 2023 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)
irst, let me anticipate eventual pushback by stating up front that I am not a starry-eyed utopian, about drugs or about anything else for that matter. What I maintain in this essay is rather that the proper appreciation, understanding and use of psychoactive substances in modern society would provide humanity with its greatest possible chance of avoiding self-annihilation. If there's a more likely way to end the cycle of killing and vengeance, I have yet to hear it.
Ooh, boy, I get a headache just thinking about how people are likely to misunderstand what I'm saying above. To be clear, I'm not siding with any economic system. My point is that positions on such topics should not be the touchstone by which we judge people. Let's make sure everyone first has their head screwed on straight and is pleasantly disposed toward "the other." Only then can discussion of such issues prove productive. Who knows? We may begin to have discussions in which both sides learn something from each other -- rather than putting all their energy into winning points at all cost. 
You have been reading an article entitled, The Best of All Possible Utopias: How drug use can help save the world, published on November 20, 2023 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)