relative of mine recently visited an emergency room complaining of severe depression. Did they offer her something that would cheer her up right then and there? Did they offer her a free 'trip' on the kind of medicine that had inspired the Hindu religion or that was used in ancient Greek ritual? Did they offer her laughing gas that makes people experience heaven itself? Of course not. That would not be scientific. Instead, they started her on a long-term dependence-causing treatment on Big Pharma anti-depressants - and crossed their fingers that she would not commit suicide while waiting for the drugs to begin altering her personality and numbing her pain. The working assumption here seems to be that suicide itself is better than 'drug use,' as that term is hypocritically and unscientifically defined by racist demagogue politicians.
I despair of convincing brainwashed Americans of the many ways that potentially addictive drugs could be used safely to end depression as part of a wide variety of psychologically common-sense protocols that smart people have not even dared to imagine yet. Drug war propaganda has too thoroughly frightened them into believing that human imagination can never find ways to use drugs safely, that we are eternally gullible children with respect to psychoactive medicine. But the pharmacological work of Alexander Shulgin reveals that there exists a potentially endless list of phenethylamines that could elate and inspire without even theoretically causing addiction in the user1. This should be good news to Americans, given that their safety standard for drug use is so much higher than that for any other risky activity on the face of the globe. In this essay, therefore, I will cite qualitative testimony from Shulgin about the mood-elevating benefits of phenethylamines, thereby tacitly demonstrating the inhumanity implicit in denying such medicines to the severely depressed, as we do today, apparently on the fanatical assumption that suicide itself is better than using drugs to elevate mood.
My goal is to wake the reader up to the obvious: namely, that suicide is a big problem today only because we have made it so as a society with the superstitious Drug War ideology of substance demonization.
Here is what Shulgin writes about his experience with Pikhal drug #2:
'I moved into the creative, free-flowing kind of repertoire which I dearly love, and found everything enormously funny. Much of the laughter was so deep that I felt it working through buried depressions inside me and freeing me.'
And this is the kind of medicine that we refuse to even consider using for the severely depressed? We would truly rather that the suicidal commit suicide or have their brain damaged by ECT than for them to use such drugs. America, take a look in the mirror, for God's sake!
In evaluating Pihkal drug #5, Shulgin writes:
'I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing. All moved over to the plus side with time, and the evening was gorgeous. I have never seen the sky so beautiful.'
And yet Laura Sanders at Science News considers depression to be a tough nut to crack2? What she really means to say is: 'Depression is hard to beat in a socially acceptable way, a way that will be accepted by our simultaneously materialist, professionalist and puritanical society.'
Of PihKal drug #20, Shulgin writes:
'My body was flooded with orgasms-- practically from just breathing.'
Okay. And yet we drug-haters cannot figure out a way to cheer people up and thus prevent suicide? What kind of fools does modern science take us for? Answer: Fools who have been brainwashed by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.
The real problem here is a category error: the false idea that materialists are the experts when it comes to mood and mentation. This is a problem because materialists are behaviorists when it comes to human psychology: they dogmatically ignore all the glaringly obvious positive effects of drugs, insisting instead that drug efficacy must be established quantitatively, by looking under a microscope. This means that they can completely ignore the obvious when evaluating drug benefits, refusing to consider anecdote, historical usage and psychological common sense. You say that laughing gas cheers you up? What do YOU know about it? The materialists are the ones who will decide for us what works for our depression. We have placed our emotional and mental lives under the control of the passion-scorning Dr. Spock of Star Trek. And we wonder why suicide is a problem?
I am not trying to recommend any specific substances here. Some of the phenethylamines described in Pihkal have side effects that Shulgin himself did not wish to experience more than once. My point is rather that there are a wide variety of drugs that can inspire and elate and that we are ignoring their very existence whenever we gripe about the so-called problem of suicide. The problem of suicide is really a problem with our attitude about drugs. It is a problem about which we are in total denial. If we were not in denial, then all organizations that exist to combat suicide would be calling loudly and clearly for the re-legalization of mind and mood medicine. The fact that they are not doing so means that they would prefer suicide to the use of drugs - and that is the mother of all pathologies.
Nor are we only blind to the potential of phenethylamines when it comes to common-sense treatments for the depressed. Our FDA is now trying to regulate laughing gas as a 'drug,' this despite the fact that the substance is already shamefully unavailable to the depressed, as a practical matter. In a humane world, we would be giving laughing gas kits to the severely depressed in the same way that we give epi pens to those who are prone to severe allergic reactions. Everyone knows that laughing gas and similar anesthetics can cheer up the depressed in real-time, but Americans would rather have depressed persons kill themselves than to use drugs. That is why we are deaf to the testimony of past generations when it comes to the so-called 'anaesthetic revelations' reported by William James3. Consider the following description of the use of nitrous oxide by Benjamin Paul Blood, the philosopher who taught William James about the philosophical powers of laughing gas4.
'I look into the future with serene and changeless cheer. This world is no more that alien terror which was taught me.'
Is the experience of such a state not a consummation devoutly to be wished by the suicidal?
In 'Will to Believe,' James quotes a surgery patient as follows regarding her own experience on laughing gas:
'My soul became aware of God, who was manifestly dealing with me, handling me, so to speak, in an intense personal present reality. I felt him streaming in like light upon me.... I cannot describe the ecstasy I felt.'
And yet when the suicidal arrive at the emergency room, we dare to let them leave without giving them any such medicine, without giving them any experiential proof that the world can be seen differently, that all need not be gloom and doom? But then the suicidal should not be going to the E.R. in any case. We need to establish a cadre of pharmacologically savvy empaths5 who can treat all mind and mood problems while using any drug in the world that might actually help according to a human being's individual circumstances. Imagine that: using a pharmacopoeia that has not been limited in advance by racist politicians and doing so in a way that removes all stigma by getting rid of the very concept of 'patient.'
Suicide is a big problem today only because the Drug War has completely blinded Americans to common sense.
As Alfred North Whitehead tells us in 'The Concept of Nature':
'The substantial reason for rejecting a philosophical theory is the 'absurdum' to which it reduces us.6'
We see this absurdum clearly in the callous consequences of the Drug War ideology of substance demonization, according to which it is better to commit suicide than to use 'drugs.'
AFTERWORD:
This is not to deny that there are social factors behind suicide. In the case of the relative mentioned above, contributing factors to severe depression clearly include the fact that, like many Americans, she lives far away from a support network of extended family members, a fact which can be traced in turn to modern capitalism and its dethroning of time-honored social priorities. Many of us would also maintain with physicist David Bohm that America's suicidal tendencies are linked to our materialist beliefs, which refuse to view the world holistically and so leave each individual on their own to reinvent the wheel when it comes to holism and connection. The above essay is not meant to confront such causes of the suicidal impulse, but rather to highlight our ineptitude in dealing with that impulse when it manifests itself in cries for help. Right now we play dumb and say: 'We have nothing to give you except dependence-causing 'meds' that you will have to take for a lifetime -- combined with endless therapy that may perhaps truly work... eventually... someday... at least to some extent.'
Speaking of social problems, the Drug War is all about hiding such things. The
conservative nips all criticism of capitalism in the bud by describing the problems that it creates as drug problems. That is how they made the housing problem in Oregon disappear from the American mind: by insisting that it was a drug problem instead. That is how they made the healthcare problem in Oregon disappear from the American mind: by insisting that it was a drug problem instead. Of course, there is a big drug problem in Oregon but not the one that the Drug Warriors imagine: the real drug problem in Oregon is the fact that we refuse to regulate drugs as to quality and quantity and we refuse to teach safe use and honest facts about all drugs. It is a sign of the times that I have to point out that enforced ignorance is bad social policy, for that is something that 'went without saying' before Americans decided to fear psychoactive drugs rather than to understand them and use them for the benefit of a suffering humanity.
Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths
In an ideal world, we would replace psychiatrists with what I call pharmacologically savvy empaths, compassionate healers with a vast knowledge of psychoactive substances from around the world and the creativity to suggest a wide variety of protocols for their safe use as based on psychological common sense. By so doing, we would get rid of the whole concept of 'patients' and 'treat' everybody for the same thing: namely, a desire to improve one's mind and mood. But the first step toward this change will be to renounce the idea that materialist scientists are the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine in the first place. This is a category error. The experts on mind and mood are real people with real emotion, not physical doctors whose materialist bona fides dogmatically require them to ignore all the benefits of drugs under the belief that efficacy is to be determined by looking under a microscope.
This materialism blinds such doctors to common sense, so much so that it leads them to prefer the suicide of their patient to the use of feel-good medicines that could cheer that patient up in a trice. For the fact that a patient is happy means nothing to the materialist doctor: they want the patient to 'really' be happy -- which is just there way of saying that they want a "cure" that will work according to the behaviorist principles to which they are dedicated as modern-day materialists. Anybody could prescribe a drug that works, after all: only a big important doctor can prescribe something that works according to theory. Sure, the prescription has a worse track record then the real thing, but the doctor's primary job is to vindicate materialism, not to worry about the welfare of their patient. And so they place their hands to their ears as the voice of common sense cries out loudly and clearly: "You could cheer that patient up in a jiffy with a wide variety of medicines that you have chosen to demonize rather than to use in creative and safe ways for the benefit of humankind!" I am not saying that doctors are consciously aware of this evil --merely that they are complicit in it thanks to their blind allegiance to the inhumane doctrine of behaviorism.
This is the sick reality of our current approach. And yet everybody holds this mad belief, this idea that medical doctors should treat mind and mood conditions.
How do I know this?
Consider the many organizations that are out to prevent suicide. If they understood the evil consequences of having medical doctors handle our mind and mood problems, they would immediately call for the re-legalization of drugs and for psychiatrists to morph into empathizing, drug-savvy shamans. Why? Because the existing paradigm causes totally unnecessary suicides: it makes doctors evil by dogmatically requiring them to withhold substances that would obviously cheer one up and even inspire one (see the uplifting and non-addictive meds created by Alexander Shulgin, for instance). The anti-suicide movement should be all about the sane use of drugs that elate. The fact that it is not speaks volumes about America's addiction to the hateful materialist mindset of behaviorism.
More proof? What about the many groups that protest brain-damaging shock therapy? Good for them, right? but... why is shock therapy even necessary? Because we have outlawed all godsend medicines that could cheer up almost anybody "in a trice." And why do we do so? Because we actually prefer to damage the brain of the depressed rather than to have them use drugs. We prefer it! Is this not the most hateful of all possible fanaticisms: a belief about drugs that causes us to prefer suicide and brain damage to drug use? Is it really only myself who sees the madness here? Is there not one other philosopher on the planet who sees through the fog of drug war propaganda to the true evil that it causes?
This is totally unrecognized madness -- and it cries out for a complete change in America's attitude, not just toward drugs but toward our whole approach to mind and mood. We need to start learning from the compassionate holism of the shamanic world as manifested today in the cosmovision of the Andes. We need to start considering the human being as an unique individual and not as an interchangeable widget amenable to the one-size-fits-all cures of reductionism. The best way to fast-track such change is to implement the life-saving protocol of placing the above-mentioned pharmacologically savvy empaths in charge of mind and mood and putting the materialist scientists back where they belong: in jobs related to rocket chemistry and hadron colliders. We need to tell the Dr. Spocks of psychology that: "Thanks, but no thanks. We don't need your help when it comes to subjective matters, thank you very much indeed. Take your all-too-logical mind back to the physics lab where it belongs."
All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.
Materialist puritans do not want to create any drug that elates. So they go on a fool's errand to find reductionist cures for "depression itself," as if the vast array of human sadness could (or should) be treated with a one-size-fits-all readjustment of brain chemicals.
Aleister Crowley actually TRIED to get addicted to drugs and found he could not. These things are not inevitable. The fact that there are town drunkards does not mean that we should outlaw alcohol.
Irony of ironies, that the indignant 19th-century hatred of liquor should ultimately result in the outlawing of virtually every mind-affecting substance on the planet EXCEPT for liquor.
In a sane world, we'd package laughing gas for safe use and give it to the suicidal -- saying, "Use before attempting to kill yourself." But drug warriors would rather have suicide than drug use.
That's how antidepressants came about: the idea that sadness was a simple problem that science could solve. Instead of being caused by a myriad of interrelated issues, we decided it was all brain chemistry that could be treated with precision. Result? Mass chemical dependency.
Drug Warriors rail against drugs as if they were one specific thing. They may as well rail against penicillin because cyanide can kill.
The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.
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.
I might as well say that no one can ever be taught to ride a horse safely. I would argue as follows: "Look at Christopher Reeves. He was a responsible and knowledgeable equestrian. But he couldn't handle horses. The fact is, NO ONE can handle horses!"
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, Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use: how the drug war blinds us to lifesaving medicine, published on March 14, 2025 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)
relative of mine recently visited an emergency room complaining of severe depression. Did they offer her something that would cheer her up right then and there? Did they offer her a free 'trip' on the kind of medicine that had inspired the Hindu religion or that was used in ancient Greek ritual? Did they offer her laughing gas that makes people experience heaven itself? Of course not. That would not be scientific. Instead, they started her on a long-term dependence-causing treatment on Big Pharma anti-depressants - and crossed their fingers that she would not commit suicide while waiting for the drugs to begin altering her personality and numbing her pain. The working assumption here seems to be that suicide itself is better than 'drug use,' as that term is hypocritically and unscientifically defined by racist demagogue politicians.
You have been reading an article entitled, Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use: how the drug war blinds us to lifesaving medicine, published on March 14, 2025 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)
