how the Black leader refused to view substance misuse as a medical problem
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
September 1, 2025
One of Thomas Szasz's most striking insights is revealed in his explanation of how Malcolm X fought heroin1 addiction, both his own and that of his followers. He did so without relying on the medicalization model championed by modern (white) science. As Szasz writes:
"Here, then, is the basic conflict and contradiction between the Muslim and methadone; the former eliminates the problem, and thus the need for the white man and the doctor, by making the Negro self-responsible and self-reliant; the latter makes the white man and the doctor indispensable by making the Negro a permanent medical cripple and a lifelong patient, on the model laid down long ago by Benjamin Rush.2"
This points in turn to the larger problem of drug prohibition and the medicalization of mind and mood matters, the fact that these two impulses for societal control are all about disempowering and infantilizing Americans when it comes to their most basic right to take care of their own health as they see fit3. I am attempting to kick the SNRI known as Effexor 4 for the same reason that Malcolm was attempting to kick heroin: because he believed that he had been shunted off onto the drug thanks to the incentives supplied by a corrupt society. In my case, I believe I was shunted off onto Effexor thanks to incentives supplied by a materialist society, one that is dogmatically blind to common sense, anecdote and history when it comes to the glaringly obvious benefits of drug use. I was thus transformed into a permanent medical cripple and a lifelong patient.
I was trying to promote these ideas on X this morning, but it is quite depressing to encounter so much knee-jerk resistance to common sense. One runs into constant gaslighting 5 . We are told that we are being paranoid merely because we dislike being forced to rely on a mind-numbing Big Pharma 67 med in a world wherein we do not have the right to use medicine that grows at our very feet.
Note here that I am not saying that antidepressants 8 are evil in themselves: merely that drug prohibition makes them so by turning them into "the only game in town" for the depressed. This in turn makes these dependence-causing meds almost impossible to quit -- since drug prohibition denies us the common-sense ability to fight drugs with drugs.
Malcolm X at least vaguely sensed an important truth about drugs: the fact that it was always a self-interested category error for Americans to place medical doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place. He would not have phrased his insight in this way, but this view is implicit in his determination to keep his flock out of the doctor's office. Drug use is all about the hopes, dreams and desires of a human being, after all -- things about which the doctor qua doctor has no expertise whatsoever. Indeed, medical doctors are antithetical to such topics insofar as they view patients through a behaviorist lens, as lacking free will and as subject to biochemical forces beyond their control and therefore requiring a lifetime worth of government-sanctioned medical interventions.
The real monkey on our backs today, however, is neither heroin nor antidepressants: the monkey on our back is the medical industry which has been illegitimately placed in charge of mind and mood medicine. That was the mother of all category errors, and until America recognizes that fact, we will continue infantilizing patients and turning them into wards of the healthcare state by using pills specifically designed for that purpose.
This is an uphill battle, to put it mildly, since we need to change more than our laws: we need to change the simplistic and inherently racist way that America thinks about the world. Only imagine: our view of drugs is based on the following inhumane and antiscientific algorithm: namely, that if a drug can be misused, even in theory, by a white American young person, then it must not be used by anyone for any reason ever.
Just look how that algorithm renders every single stakeholder invisible when it comes to drugs except for Western young people -- the very young people whom we Westerners refuse on principle to teach about wise drug use! On what principle, you ask? Answer: On the Christian Science principle that drug use is somehow wrong in and of itself without regard for context of use!
It would be so easy to despair in light of the wholesale bamboozlement of a gullible and self-interested humanity on this subject, especially considering the vast financial incentives that are in place for ensuring that so-called "mental health" patients remain subservient and disempowered. Let me end, therefore, with an inspirational quote from Jeffrey Singer's 2025 book entitled Your Body, Your Health Care. I hope the following snippet will encourage the countless disempowered "patients" like myself to keep the faith.
"Restoring patient autonomy and the right to self-medicate 9 will be a challenging task. Like most precious things, it requires perseverance and commitment. Like all precious things, it is worth the effort." - --p. 6310
NOTES: The sad fact is that many (if not most) of our drug-law reform advocates believe in the medical model of drug abuse. Szasz himself saw how far America was "behind the curve" on this topic when he wrote the following in "Our Right to Drugs":
"When even so staunch a defender of the free market as Milton Friedman regards treatment as the proper response to the drug problem, how can we expect ordinary people to resist this deadly illusion?" --p. 14711
I'm going to get on the grade-school circuit, telling kids to say no to horses.
"You think you can handle horses, kids? That's what Christopher Reeves thought. The fact is, NOBODY can handle horses!!!"
The war on drugs has destroyed America's faith in the power of education. In fact, it has made us think of education as WRONG in and of itself. It has made us prefer censorship and fear-filled ignorance to education!
Americans won't be true grown-ups until they learn to react to drug deaths the same way that they react to deaths from horseback riding and mountain climbing.
I never said that getting off SSRIs should be done without supervision. If you're on Twitter for medical advice, you're in the wrong place.
It wasn't until western prudery and racism came along that we started to judge people by the substances that they chose to ingest, rather than by their actual behavior in the world.
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.
Just think how many ayahuasca-like godsends that we are going without because we dogmatically refuse to even look for them, out of our materialist disdain for mixing drugs with drugs.
We throw people out of jobs for using "drugs," we praise them for using "meds." The categories are imaginary, made up by politicians who want to demonize certain substances, but not cigs or beer.
Drugs like opium and cocaine 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."
Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.
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