and how the work of Alexander Shulgin can inspire us to fix it
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
March 15, 2025
Resolved: that the modern approach to mental health in America is INSANE -- and that this insanity is caused by the War on Drugs.
Work with me here, dear reader: I know that you have been brainwashed since grade-school to believe that drugs are bad, but humor me as I try to convince you of the opposite: that drugs, wisely used, are actually godsends -- real godsends!
First, I will use a little thought experiment to convince you that mental health treatment in America is insane.
Suppose that you or a loved one were to rush to an emergency room right now complaining of severe depression: you have just HAD it with life and you do not want to live any longer! You just want to die! Now then: Will the doctors on duty say to themselves, 'My God, we have got to get this person on some mood-elevating drugs stat -- drugs that inspire and teach one that life is worth living! We don't want this guy or gal committing suicide, after all!!!' Will they say that, gentle reader? Will they be eager to get you feeling better stat?
Of course not, right? Not at all! To the contrary, the doctors will refuse to give you any inspiring medicine of any kind -- although such medicines exist and are, in fact, quite plentiful -- not that you would know that, of course, dear reader, insofar as you were shielded from stories of positive drug use your entire life thanks to media censorship on behalf of the War on Drugs.
But if you knew for a fact that there were such drugs in the world (which there are) and that many of them were actually 'highly non-addictive' (which they are), would you not then conclude that the aforesaid doctors were crazy -- if not actually CRUEL -- for withholding them from you in your hour of need, at a time when your failure to receive them could result in your death at your own hands?!
You see now why modern mental healthcare is insane, gentlest of all readers? You see moreover that modern mental healthcare is insane BECAUSE of the Drug War mentality, which teaches our doctors and psychiatrists to ignore a wide array of medicines that elate and inspire, many without any appreciable tendency to cause addiction whatsoever.
Of course, this 'proof' of mine about the idiocy of modern mental healthcare depends on the notion that the kinds of beneficial drugs that I am talking about here actually exist -- something that you, dear reader, could not know because of drug-war censorship which seeks to shield you from such empowering knowledge.
With this censorship in mind, then, I will conclude my proof of today's Drug War-inspired idiocy in the field of mental health with a variety of positive drug use reports: reports drawn from the 'qualitative comments' section of pharmacist Alexander Shulgin's book entitled 'Pihkal.' These comments about positive drug use were written by Alexander and his wife Ann as they experimented with a wide variety of central nervous system stimulants called phenethylamines, many of which were able to elevate their moods, increase their compassion for others and even teach them something about themselves and so help them improve their overall lives. (Pihkal, by the way, stands for 'Phenethylamines I Have Known and Loved.' The author had to employ such an odd title because he could not have gotten the book published in 'free America' had the front cover featured the word 'drugs.')
These citations of positive drug use speak for themselves -- although I have added a short comment to each to underscore the take-home message or messages that they seem to me to contain. The mere existence of these ultra-positive reports of drug use should convince you of my thesis, which, to repeat, is that the modern approach to mental health is insane and that the Drug War is the reason for said lunacy. As you read on, I hope that you will bear in mind the cluelessness of the doctor that we imagined back at the E.R., that guy who has no medicine whatsoever to offer you for your severe depression -- except, perhaps, for a regime of mind-numbing, one-size-fits-all Big Pharma pills that will turn you into a lifetime ward of the healthcare state. And then ask yourself: 'Is this not a barbarous way to treat mental health concerns in a supposedly free and advanced country, for the government to outlaw every drug that could actually work for me?!!!'
'At one point I went out back and strolled along to find a place to worship. I had a profound sense of the Presence and great love and gratitude for the place, the people, and the activities taking place.'
A drug whose effects sent you off to look for a place to worship?! And you're going to tell me that such a drug could not help get a gloomy person back up on their feet? It is common psychological sense that such a drug could be a godsend! Only a hardcore behaviorist could deny this fact, i.e., someone committed to the inhumane doctrine of JB Watson, according to which the doctor is supposed to ignore everything but quantifiable data when it comes to human emotions.
'The afterglow was benign and rich in empathy for everything. '
Again, such drug-inspired feelings could be of great help to the depressed: this is psychological common sense -- or at least it used to be, until psychologists turned their field into a 'hard science' by adopting the above-mentioned doctrine of behaviorism.
Note: The more perceptive of my gentle readers will have noticed a sort of theme developing here: namely, that the Drug War is not the only culprit when it comes to rendering mental healthcare stupid today, that the substance demonization of the Drug Warrior is aided and abetted by the emotion-scorning attitude of modern science, as dictated by the inhumane psychological doctrine of behaviorism.
' I experienced the desire to laugh hysterically at what I could only describe as the completely ridiculous state of the entire world.'
Only a hardcore Drug Warrior or a hardcore behaviorist could tell us that such drug-inspired feelings as these could not be HUGELY beneficial to a depressed individual.
'I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing.'
The depressed are not from another planet, folks. We do not need a ghost come from the grave to tell us that rapture would be beneficial to the depressed 'patient' just as much as it is to a non-depressed pharmacologist like Alexander Shulgin.
'My body was flooded with orgasms practically from just breathing.'
Isn't it amusing to think back to that doctor we imagined above, the one who really believes that he or she has nothing to offer you as a depressed person? If only such brainwashed professionals knew how much they had to offer were they but free to do so -- maybe then they would stop channeling Dr. Spock of Star Trek and let their hair down a little and get REAL about treating so-called mental health issues.
'Excellent feelings, tremendous opening of insight and understanding, a real awakening.'
Only a materialist would deny that such feelings as described above could help the depressed. This is where even Carl Hart goes wrong. He maintains in his otherwise great book 'Drug Use for Grown-Ups' that 'drugs' are not for the depressed, just for those seeking to have a good time. He implies instead that the depressed should just 'keep taking their meds,' as if the depressed were not normal human beings but a completely different species altogether. Again, the depressed are not from another planet, folks. They can be helped according to the time-honored psychology of Homo sapiens, according to which insight is insight and understanding is understanding and motivation is motivation!
'I learned a great deal about myself and my inner workings.'
If you are like me, gentle reader, you get madder at the Drug Warriors with every quote you read. These clowns have tried to tell us for decades now that drugs can do nothing but fry our brains. Clearly, it is drug prohibition that fries the brain, not drugs. The Drug Warrior's anti-scientific penchant for fearmongering is downright prehistoric. In the old days, they would shout, 'Fire bad!' Today, they're shouting, 'Drugs bad!'
'I experienced some physical discomfort, but doesn't that tell us about the work to be done, rather than the property of the material? The breakthrough I had... the following day... was of the highest value and importance for me.'
Drug warriors would point triumphantly to the report of physical discomfort in this one particular drug experiment and say, 'See? Drugs are evil! I told you so!' And that is so childish of them! Those Drug Warriors will do anything they can to prevent us from achieving unsanctioned psychological breakthroughs in our lives. Their whole goal in life seems to be to keep us from achieving peace of mind. One cannot help thinking, gentle reader, that they are motivated, at least at some level, by a virulent strain of Christian Science fanaticism. But I won't hold my breath until that prevalent pathology is published in the DSM.
'There was a change in perspective both in the near visual field and in the distance. My usually poor vision was sharpened. I saw details in the distance that I could not normally see.'
I include this quotation to remind you, O gentle one, that it's not all about emotional healing. Some of these psychoactive drugs that we have been told to hate actually bring about improvements in our 'physical world,' as for instance the improved vision referred to above.
'An energetic feeling began to take over me. It continued to grow. The feeling was one of great camaraderie, and it was very easy to talk to people.'
Not only are such positive feelings obviously beneficial to the depressed, but they also would help convince a hater to refrain from shooting up grade schools. Sadly, America would rather outlaw drugs than to prevent things like grade-school massacres and suicide.
'It could be best described as an 'insight-enhancer' and obviously of potential value in psychotherapy (if one would wish to spend 30 hours in a therapy session!). I suppose it would be best to simply stick with the insight-enhancing and skip the psychotherapy.'
As the drug experimenter points out above, formal mental health therapy itself will be required far less often once we re-legalize drugs and promote their safe and wise use -- which, of course, is one of the main reasons why the powers-that-be refuse to do so. They see where such freedom would lead. It would lead to a paradigm in which individuals were empowered as to their own health -- a world in which many people simply would not need a therapist, but could make due on their own with a good friend or two in combination with a pharmacopoeia that had not been drastically censored by racist politicians.
'I am experiencing more deeply than ever before the importance of acknowledging and deeply honoring each human being. And I was able to go through and resolve some judgments with particular persons.'
This quote both suggests a drug benefit and shows how that benefit was actually applied successfully in the real world. The drug use not only rendered the user compassionate, but he or she acted on that new compassion and did something to make the world a better place. But then Drug Warriors have never been happy about making the world a better place. They hated BOTH of the summers of love in the anglophone world and cracked down on both of them in the name of fighting drugs: the Summer of Love that happened in the States in the 1960s and the one that happened in Britain in the 1990s.
'Good material for unknown number of possible uses.'
Damn! This particular drug was so overflowing with psychological blessings that the user basically tells us: 'The world is your oyster with this one, folks.' Unfortunately, the first instinct of the Drug Warrior is to pretend that such oysters do not exist.
''This feels marvelous, and a whole new way to be much more relaxed, accepting, being in the moment. No more axes to grind. I can be free.''
And you're going to tell me that this drug can have no benefits in increasing compassion and preventing school shootings? If so, then you're either a Drug Warrior or a behaviorist, or both, since you're clearly more influenced by dogma than by common sense.
'One of us needed his cigarette right now, and then he saw that he was killing himself, and he swore off.'
Who knew? Drug use can help stop smoking and other undesired behaviors. Okay, materialist scientists are beginning to grudgingly acknowledge that fact, but only in the case of a few well-publicized medicines, such as ayahuasca and ibogaine. Materialists do not think holistically, which keeps them from understanding the principle behind such efficacy -- so they continue to hope that they can contain these dangerous benefits to a few exotic substances which the FDA can drag its heels on approving for many decades to come.
'I was caught up with the imagery, and there was an overriding religious aspect to the day.'
Drug warriors claim that their Drug War is not a war on religion. After all, it outlaws no acknowledged sects, right? But that's only because the government refuses to acknowledge any drug-using sects, with a few very rare exceptions, like the ayahuasca-using UDV church of America, and even that recognition required the intervention of the Supreme Court to take effect. What the Drug Warriors fail to understand is that the Drug War does far worse than outlawing a specific religion: it outlaws the religious impulse itself. It denies us the ability to have the kinds of experiences that have inspired religions, as when the use of the psychedelic soma inspired the religion of the Hindus or the use of psychoactive mushrooms inspired the religion of the Aztec.
'There is a profoundness of meaning inherent in anything that moves.'
Sounds like a consummation devoutly to be wished for a suicidal person: to have them experience 'a profoundness of meaning inherent in anything that moves.' And yet our mental health pros scarcely know that such substances even exist! [sigh] They've just made this proof business too easy for me, folks...
QED: America's approach to mental health is insane...
and this is all due to the substance demonization of the War on Drugs, which blinds us to the many benefits of godsend medicines -- with a little help from behaviorists, who are equally clueless about drug benefits, albeit for different reasons.
The Penny Never Drops
Now here's the bad news when it comes to Alexander Shulgin. Whenever he begins thinking as a materialist chemist, he writes as if the depressed are from another planet. After publishing seemingly nonstop user reports of ecstasy and rapture created by the use of various phenethylamines, he writes as if a search for antidepressants has nothing to do with such drugs. He seems to feel that normal psychology would not apply to folks with the blues, that we need something different to cheer them up.
He misses the point entirely. The penny never drops.
The obvious take-home message from his drug research is that a wide variety of substances could be used therapeutically with (or by) the depressed, especially with the help of a pharmacologically savvy and empathic individual. The message is that mental health treatment should become an art form based on user specifics. Instead, he hews to the materialist party line, thanks to which he searches for a one-size-fits-all pill that will work biochemically behind the scenes, one justified dogmatically by its biochemistry rather than by any obvious outcomes of actual usage. It's as if he wants to reserve the ecstasy and rapture of such drug use for the lab investigator and to go behind the scenes to improve mood subtly over the long-term -- an approach which has led to the greatest mass dependency of all time in the form of the psychiatric pill mill, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma drugs for life.
Common sense says that occasional informed use of a variety of strategically chosen phenethylamines (and other substances that elate and inspire) could alleviate depression thanks to common sense psychology. This fact is only invisible to those who are working from a behaviorist-materialist paradigm, according to which only quantifiable data matters -- and that is the whole problem! We came to this outrageous pass as described above, a world in which we have no godsend medicines for the deeply depressed, precisely because we have closed our eyes to the glaringly obvious drug benefits like those reported in Pihkal!
Drugs only for chemical warfare
Let me end by reminding the reader just how far the American government is from wishing to make drugs safe and available. This same government that is always harping on drug dangers used its Army in the 1960s to expose 'innocent patients' to a variety of potential psychedelics 'with not even a thought of obtaining informed consent.' Some of those guinea pigs died. This occurred, according to Shulgin, at a variety of places in that decade, including the New York State Psychiatric Institute, and we may as well assume that it continues to this day, given the predilection for mendacity that the government has demonstrated time and time again on the subject of drugs. And you had better believe that the goal of this work with psychedelics had nothing to do with bringing peace of mind and compassion and rapture to the depressed, nor to find ways to bring the world together as one people.. Oh, no. The Army was testing these drugs in order to find ways to use them in chemical warfare. That's right, chemical warfare.
As I said above, the government has no interest in Summers of Love or in preventing suicide: their job is to use drugs only for the purpose of causing death and disability, notwithstanding the outrageously high safety standard that they set for all drug use for the hoi polloi, a standard that they fail to apply to any other activity on earth, no, not to gun firing or alcohol drinking.
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."
The DEA outlawed MDMA in 1985, thereby depriving soldiers of a godsend treatment for PTSD. Apparently, the DEA staff slept well at night in the early 2000s as American soldiers were having their lives destroyed by IEDs.
In fact, that's what we need when we finally return to legalization: educational documentaries showing how folks manage to safely incorporate today's hated substances into their life and lifestyle.
Americans heap hypocritical praise on Walt Whitman. What they don't realize is that many of us could be "Walt Whitman for a Day" with the wise use of psychoactive drugs. To the properly predisposed, morphine gives a DEEP appreciation of Mother Nature.
The UN of today is in an odd position regarding drugs: they want to praise indigenous societies while yet outlawing the drugs that helped create them.
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?
Here's one problem that supporters of the psychiatric pill mill never address: the fact that Big Pharma antidepressants demoralize users by turning them into patients for life.
That's why we damage the brains of the depressed with shock therapy rather than let them use coca or opium. That's why many regions allow folks to kill themselves but not to take drugs that would make them want to live. The Drug War is a perversion of social priorities.
Trump supports the drug war and Big Pharma: the two forces that have turned me into a patient for life with dependence-causing antidepressants. Big Pharma makes the pills, and the drug war outlaws all viable alternatives.
I, for one, am actually TRYING to recommend drugs like MDMA and psilocybin as substitutes for shock therapy. In fact, I would recommend almost ANY pick-me-up drug as an alternative to knowingly damaging the human brain. That's more than the hateful DEA can say.
Until we get rid of all these obstacles to safe and informed use, it's presumptuous to explain problematic drug use with theories about addiction. Drug warriors are rigging the deck in favor of problematic use. They refuse to even TEACH non-problematic use.
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 America's Mental Healthcare System is Insane: and how the work of Alexander Shulgin can inspire us to fix it, published on March 15, 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, Why America's Mental Healthcare System is Insane: and how the work of Alexander Shulgin can inspire us to fix it, published on March 15, 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)
