I would like to comment on a statement of yours, however, on page 12 of the introduction:
You say, "To be clear, there are legitimate medical reasons why someone should not smoke heroin or snort cocaine."
A few comments.
Regarding cocaine:
As a chronic depressive, I have been denied healing for a lifetime now because self-interested doctors demonized cocaine -- without even asking what the depressed thought about the drug.
They judged the drug only by focusing on misusers, exactly as if they were to judge alcohol by looking only at drunkards. Moreover, the original "abusers" were folks who had trouble using morphine wisely. Why are we surprised that such people would have trouble using cocaine wisely? And why are "misusers" the only stakeholders in this debate? Why are hundreds of millions of depressed people like myself left to suffer in silence and forced to use Big Pharma meds that can never be kicked? The outlawing of cocaine has turned me into a patient for life, with all the demoralizing, expensive and time-consuming baggage that comes with that designation.
Freud knew that cocaine was a godsend for most of the depressed. Nor did he have trouble getting off the drug himself. In fact, he reports in "On Cocaine 2" that for him, his drug use was self-limiting: he felt a seemingly drug-inspired revulsion to the idea of unnecessary use. I doubt we would have heard of Freud today had he not conquered his procrastinating tendencies with the use of cocaine 3 . He dropped his advocacy only after it became clear which way the wind lay. Doctors refused to see any good in a drug that would put them out of business, at least when it came to treating the depressed. Social Psychologist Henry Lennard4 is the poster child for such self-interested demonization, as I discuss in the following essay5:
There is enormous self-interest at work here, even if the cocaine-demonizers are not conscious of it themselves. The medical industry profits ENORMOUSLY from the outlawing of opium and coca. This is why it's so problematic that Big Pharma funds 75% of the FDA's drug division budget6.
Regarding heroin:
A study by Lee Robins showed that only 5% of the Army's heroin users in Vietnam required help getting off the drug when they returned to the States. 5%.7
I am on a Big Pharma drug that has a 95% recidivism rate 8 for long-term users and which I believe can NEVER be kicked successfully (at least not without the psychological help of the endless psychoactive substances that America has outlawed) 9. I got off the drug for three months this year and found I could not think straight. The drug had apparently mucked about with my brain chemistry in a seemingly irreversible manner.
Then, too, heroin only became " a thing" because we had outlawed the peaceable smoking of opium at home, after which the search was on for an opiate replacement that was easier to conceal from the police.
I may be oversensitive, but I read your quote as saying; "We can all agree that heroin smoking and cocaine snorting are particularly bad ideas, medically speaking." This, to me, is like saying that driving a car is a bad idea because it could lead to a car accident. In fact, this is the problem with the Drug War, in my opinion: it has taught us to judge drug use outside of all context, as being good or bad. Is cocaine use really a bad idea, medically speaking, for someone who might kill themselves in the absence of such a godsend? We need context before we can discuss the medical advisability of any practice.
I am not sure Americans realize how much indoctrination they have received over the years on these matters. I don't think they understand that they have been shielded by the media from all talk of beneficial drug use -- indeed, that the media has rewritten history, while working with the White House to frame anti-drug messages in TV sitcoms10.
Meanwhile, Jim Beam targets their ads for bourbon at young people on prime-time television -- and the FDA approves of Big Pharma drugs whose side effects include death itself! The FDA also promotes shock therapy for severe depression, while refusing to approve of drugs that would make shock therapy unnecessary.
In my opinion, almost every single author on these topics has western-inspired prejudices of which they are unaware. These prejudices always make them underestimate the full evil of drug prohibition, which is actually the outlawing of our right to take care of our own health. These prejudices always come out when the author writes about the things that "we all know," like the idea that "snorting" cocaine is medically problematic.
Our very use of the word "snorting" serves to indicate our puritan disgust for the practice: one TAKES their meds, one SNORTS cocaine, like a pig. My point is simply that the subject of what "we all know" is highly problematic in a world in which we have been brainwashed from birth in the drug-hating ideology of substance demonization.
Your statement is at best only technically true. I realize that you added some qualifications after the citation on the subject of what we consider to be "drugs" in the first place. Yet the statement seems to support the Drug Warrior notion that there are some particularly evil substances that are bad in and of themselves, and this is, in my opinion, the big lie of the Drug War. Even deadly Botox has beneficial uses. It is now being used to treat migraine headaches -- a breakthrough that would not have occurred had we demonized and criminalized the drug based on the fact that it was deadly when considered in the abstract, outside of all context (like dose, reason for use, the user's goals in using, etc.).
I think historian William Shirer could have been writing about Drug War America when he wrote the following in his book about Nazi Germany:
"No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda." 11
Yours in the hope of advancing the conversation on these matters...
Best Wishes
Author's Follow-up:
November 30, 2025
When I consider my invisibility online, I sometimes think that I must be literally mad. I must THINK I am writing one thing, when I am actually writing something very different. If I think I am writing the word "cat," I must be writing the word "dog" instead. Otherwise such essays would be promulgated far and wide across the brainwashed Internet with plug lines such as, "What HE said!" or "Read this NOW!" But if I am mad, then at least I am consistently so, for having re-read this essay this morning, immediately after a mind-composing slumber, my only reaction is: "Preach! And let those who have ears, hear!" There is not one single word I would retract.
That said, I could no doubt benefit from hiring an editor who would help me render my harangues more diplomatic in the eyes of those whom I criticize, implicitly or otherwise. Being a trifle sensitive myself, I can imagine how an author might be put off by the slightest hint of criticism in my essays, let alone the fusillade of objections that I routinely level at the truly brainwashed drug pundits (like Michael Pollan12 and Rick Strassman13 and even Andrew Weil14 and Terence McKenna15), whom, unfortunately, represent the vast majority of the breed. But I guess any writer who holds unpopular opinions has the same problem, especially if they have skin in the game when it comes to their topic of choice. One wants to scream bloody murder, whereas the strictly armchair pundit wants to discuss matters civilly over tea and crumpets.
One might object, "Yes, but, Brian, it is all about how you THINK and FEEL about life!" What they fail to realize, of course, is that this is precisely what drug prohibition CONTROLS: how I THINK and FEEL about life!!!
It is depressing to realize that Andrew is one of the least bamboozled pundits out there, and even he embraces the Big Lie of the Drug War, that some substances are beyond the pale without regard for details like dosage, circumstances of use, reason for use, the biochemistry of the user, the education level of the user, the goal of the user, the overall philosophy of the user, the genetics of the user, etc. He seems to embrace the Big Lie of the prohibitionist that substances can be bad in and of themselves. In reality, no drug is bad in and of itself -- and may someday be just what is needed, in some dose, for some reason, by itself or in combination with other drugs. To rule out a drug in advance is both anti-scientific and inhumane.
Of course, we may associate any drug with evil outcomes in a given society -- but that tells us something about that society, not about drugs. Puritanical prejudices16 to the contrary, opium and coca have been used wisely and for good reasons for millennia. As Thomas Szasz writes in "Ceremonial Chemistry":
"In Galenic practice the most useful medicine was a theriaca, or antidote, named Electuarium theriacale magnum, a compound composed of several ingredients, among them opium and wine. " 17
Yet America pretends that if their own young people cannot use a drug wisely (in a world wherein society does everything it can to keep that from happening), then nobody on earth can use that drug wisely -- nor should ever be allowed to do so!
This is the mother of all "cases of denial" -- and it is pharmacological colonialism into the bargain.
Talk about denial: The UN actually has a goal of eradicating the coca plant from the face of the earth18! This is ultimate madness! Not only do Drug Warriors think that their prohibition should apply to everybody now living -- they want to alter the world's biodiversity in such a way that future generations will not even have a CHOICE in the matter! Surely, they will curse us in saner ages to come when they realize that we have eradicated drugs that had enormous benefits and were even once considered actual panaceas! I can hear the mother in the year 2222: "I'm sorry you're depressed and in pain, honey, but the racist and paleolithic cretins back in the early 2000's eradicated all the plant-based substances that could help you the most!"
How did ostensible Christians ever sign off on such a plan: a plan that second-guessed the opinion of God himself with respect to his own creation? "God looked and saw that it was good..." reads the updated Bible, "until racist politicians came along in the 20th century and overruled God in order to make money and to garner votes by playing to popular prejudices."
Why, then, are we westerners so zealously protected from hearing, reading or seeing any positive depictions of drug use? We need simply ask the question "Cui bono?" to find out, remembering, as Poe reminds us, that the phrase means "to whose advantage?" and not "to what good?19"
Who benefits from the demonization of godsends like opium and coca?
Panaceas cure and even prevent all sorts of illnesses. That is what panaceas do by definition. When we outlaw a panacea, therefore, we create all sorts of "conditions" that the medical industry can now treat. The medical industry has been reifying those conditions into board-certified illnesses ever since such panaceas were outlawed. They have profited enormously from so doing, as can be seen by the fact that the hospital building is one of the few edifices that is not crumbling to bits in America's bullet-riddled downtowns (bullet-riddled courtesy of drug prohibition, of course20). The psychiatric field would scarcely exist if cocaine were re-legalized21, nor would Americans have to rely on a doctor to decide how much pain relief they receive22 -- a doctor who is being jealously monitored by DEA agents who will literally throw him or her in jail should they give you more relief than the bureaucrats believe that you should need. Of course, the doctors will never be thrown in jail for giving you too LITTLE pain medication.
I realize in writing this that I am not just outraged about drug prohibition because "I have skin the game"; I am outraged as well because I have a philosophical turn of mind that renders me aghast at the prohibitionist's flagrant disregard for logic and common sense. I am then further outraged when I see that the philosophical community (almost to a man and almost to a woman) refuses to even recognize the existence of drug prohibition, let alone to push back against it as an offense against reason. They are thereby demonstrating how drug prohibition outlaws the freedom of academia and in the worst possible way: by propagandizing academics from birth until they can be trusted to censor themselves! This reminds me that propaganda works, that there are indeed consequences when a country succeeds in censoring all positive talk about drugs from all media -- indeed, succeeds so well that most authors censor themselves -- or else write books that actively support the ideology of drug prohibition23.
Once again, the quote from historian William Shirer is all-too apropos.
"No one who has not lived for years in a totalitarian land can possibly conceive how difficult it is to escape the dread consequences of a regime's calculated and incessant propaganda." 24
Peyote advocates should be drug legalization advocates. Otherwise, they're involved in special pleading which is bound to result in absurd laws, such as "Plant A can be used in a religion but not plant B," or "Person A can belong to such a religion but person B cannot."
The drug war normalizes the disdainful and self-righteous attitude that Columbus and Pizarro had about drug use in the New World.
"The Oprah Winfrey Fallacy": the idea that a statistically insignificant number of cases constitutes a crisis, provided ONLY that the villain of the piece is something that racist politicians have demonized as a "drug."
Cocaine use is a blessing for some, just a little fun for most, and a curse for a few. Just like any other risky activity. We need to educate people about drugs rather than endlessly arresting them for attempting to improve their mental power!
Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.
In response to a tweet that "some drugs cannot be used wisely for recreational purposes": The problem is, most people draw such conclusions based on general impressions inspired by a media that demonizes drugs. In reality, it's hard to imagine a drug that cannot theoretically be used wisely for recreation at some dose, in some context.
Before anyone receives shock therapy -- or the right to assisted suicide -- they should have the option to start using opium or cocaine daily -- in fact, any drug that makes them feel that life is worth living again.
When folks banned opium, they did not just ban a drug: they banned the philosophical and artistic insights that the drug has been known to inspire in writers like Poe, Lovecraft and De Quincey.
"Like Christians burning mosques and temples to spread the word of Jesus, modem drugabuseologists burn crops to spread the use of alcohol." -- Ceremonial Chemistry, p. 48
Had the FDA been around in the Indus Valley 3,500 years ago, there would be no Hindu religion today, because they would have found some potential problem with the use of soma.
Talk about denial: The UN actually has a goal of eradicating the coca plant from the face of the earth18! This is ultimate madness! Not only do Drug Warriors think that their prohibition should apply to everybody now living -- they want to alter the world's biodiversity in such a way that future generations will not even have a CHOICE in the matter! Surely, they will curse us in saner ages to come when they realize that we have eradicated drugs that had enormous benefits and were even once considered actual panaceas! I can hear the mother in the year 2222: "I'm sorry you're depressed and in pain, honey, but the racist and paleolithic cretins back in the early 2000's eradicated all the plant-based substances that could help you the most!"
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