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Why the Drug War is Worse than a Religion

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





December 29, 2020



As a white kid who grew up listening to so-called black music in the '70s (not just the crossover hits of Labelle but the deep album cuts such as "Isn't it a Shame" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow") I would occasionally experience the awkward phenomenon of having my white friends snicker or break into what for me was unwelcome parody when I made the mistake of playing one of my favorite soul hits during a get-together at my place.

Update: May 05, 2025

It actually made them uncomfortable to hear singers expressing so much emotion. Sure, they had grown to like "Lady Marmalade," but when Labelle really let herself go, emotionally speaking, on such lengthy ballads as "Isn't it a Shame," complete with melodious moaning and impassioned scatting, my white friends began to squirm in their seats like so many grade-schoolers, despite the fact that their college days were already long behind them.

In that reaction, I think we can see the real motivation behind America's Drug War: the white man's insistence that we all be as emotionally restrained as he is, that we "let ourselves go" a little, perhaps, in the same way that my friends could find it in their hearts to enjoy "Lady Marmalade," but that we never really truly "shake it like we mean it" in this life, as Labelle most obviously did in "Isn't it a Shame?" It strikes me, moreover, that this "white reaction" to soul music is "all of a piece" with the Caucasian preference in Shakespearean times for behavior to be "meet" and "seemly" and to not offend the sensibilities of the community with any emotional excesses. In short, the white race, if we must call it so, has placed such a premium upon thought (which is, indeed, the very touchstone of its own existence, according to Descartes) that it has come to fear any forays into the long-since unfamiliar lands of unbridled emotion.

With this backstory in mind, the Drug War may be seen as the enforcement, not simply of a religion, but of a whole way of "being in the world," a whole way of approaching life. We must be aggressive and ambitious, yes, and so the use of caffeine is not only legal but encouraged. However, we must not be TOO aggressive or ambitious (after all, that would not be "meet" and "seemly" and it might even empower the user to promote the overthrow of the uptight status quo) and so the use of cocaine 1 2 3 must be punished. In this way, the Drug War turns Aristotle's Golden Mean into the law of the land. "Dance if you must," it cries, "but never, never, shake it like you really mean it." Of course, even the Drug Warrior agrees that occasional self-forgetfulness is necessary in this life, and so we are free -- and even encouraged -- to use alcohol and beer. However, we must never achieve this self-forgetfulness with the help of a substance that inspires us to question the very thought-centric nature of the society in which we live (and so psychedelic use will be punished). Americans have to be uptight by law, and the last thing that the Drug Warrior wants is for us to realize through substance use that there are other perhaps more satisfying ways of seeing the world.

We can say then that modern drug law is designed to legally oblige Americans to be "uptight" (or "meet" and "seemly" as Shakespeare would have called it) and to have only those thoughts and feelings that are not quite passionate or novel enough to rock the boats of the thought-obsessed powers that be. And so the Drug War is far worse than the mere establishment of a religion, for in such an injustice, the tyrant may be appeased with a mere outward show of obedience. No, the Drug War tyrant is far more ambitious: he insists that we FEEL the way that he wants us to feel (namely uptight) on penalty of law.



EDITOR'S NOTE March 30, 2022: The substances that we ban today actually inspired entire religions. One of the earliest human religions, the Vedic which gave rise to Hinduism, was inspired by Soma, a psychedelic concoction created from the bounty of Mother Nature. Plato's views of the afterlife were inspired by the psychedelic kykeon at Eleusis. The Mesoamericans sought divine guidance from sacred mushrooms.

Thus the Drug War is not only the outlawing of specific religions, but it's the outlawing of the very source and fountainhead of religious feeling itself, and so the Drug War is religious tyranny twice over.



Author's Follow-up: December 15, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


Of course, the above argument has been made before, absent the 20th-century specifics. It is really just a gloss on Nietzsche's distinction between the Apollonian and Dionysian outlook on life4.




Author's Follow-up:

May 05, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




This distaste for excessive passion helps explain why Americans do not recognize the category error that is implicit in placing materialist scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine. Materialists are behaviorists when it comes to psychology and are therefore blind to the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs as expressed in anecdote, history and plain common sense. This is why materialist Dr. Robert Glatter could question the power of laughing gas to help the depressed in Forbes magazine in 20215 -- without having been laughed out of his job. It is absurd to suggest that laughing gas might not be beneficial for the depressed, a drug that inspires views of heaven itself. Even the editors at Readers Digest know that "Laughter is the best medicine." But then if materialists were to admit laughing gas 6 to the category of beneficial substances, they would be forced by dint of logical consistency to admit opium 7 and phenethylamines as well. It is therefore in everybody's interests that we put Dr. Spock of Star Trek in charge of mind and mood medicine. In doing so, we flatter materialists and give them work -- albeit in a psychological and religious field for which they have no qualifications -- meanwhile flattering the hoi polloi viz their unbounded faith in "science" to conquer all.

Common sense, on the other hand, would tell us an inconvenient truth: namely, that there are obvious potential beneficial uses for all drugs that inspire and elate. Indeed, the Hindu religion owes its existence to the use of a drug that inspired and elated, from which it follows that the outlawing of drugs is the outlawing of religion -- nay, of the religious impulse itself.



Notes:

1: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)
2: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
3: On Cocaine Freud, Sigmund (up)
4: Nietzsche and the Drug War DWP (up)
5: Can Laughing Gas Help People with Treatment Resistant Depression? Glatter, Dr. Robert, Forbes Magazine, 2021 (up)
6: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
7: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)


Religion




The Hindu religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. It is therefore a crime against religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate.

Prohibition is a crime against religious freedom.

William James found religious experience in substance use. See his discussion of what he calls "the anesthetic revelation" in his book entitled "The Varieties of Religious Experience."

The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.

The Drug War violates religious freedom by putting bureaucrats in charge of deciding if a religion is 'sincere' or not. That is so absurd that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. No one in government is capable of determining whether the inner states that I achieve with psychoactive medicine are religious or not. This is why Milton Friedman was so wrong when he said in 1972 that there are good people on both sides of the drug war debate. WRONG! There are those who are more than ready to take away my religious liberty and those who are not. If the former wish to be called 'good,' they will first need a refresher course in American democracy and religious freedom. They need to renounce their Christian Science theocracy and let folks like myself worship using the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions in the past. Until they do that, do not expect me to praise the very people who have launched an inquisition against my form of experiencing the divine.

There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.

"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda



  • Addicted to Christianity
  • America's Puritan Obsession with Sobriety
  • Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Heroin versus Alcohol
  • How the DEA determines if a religion is true
  • How the Drug War Banned my Religion
  • Libertarians as Closet Christian Scientists
  • Meister Eckhart and Drugs
  • Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches: LSD, Cannabis, and Spiritual Sacraments in Underground America
  • Take this Drug Test
  • The Christian Presuppositions of the Drug War and Why They're Important
  • The Church of the Most Holy and Righteous Drug War
  • The Drug War = Christian Science
  • The Drug War as Religion
  • Using Ecstasy in Church
  • Why the Drug War is Christian Science Sharia
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than a Religion





    • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    What are drug dealers doing, after all? They are merely selling substances that people want and have always had a right to, until racist politicians came along and decided government had the right to ration out pain relief and mystical experience.

    It's "convenient" for scientists that their "REAL" cures happen to be the ones that racist politicians will allow. Scientists thus normalize prohibition by pretending that outlawed substances have no therapeutic value. It's materialism collaborating with the drug war.

    That's another problem with "following the science." Science downplays personal testimony as subjective. But psychoactive experiences are all ABOUT subjectivity. With such drugs, users are not widgets susceptible to the one-size-fits-all pills of reductionism.

    It is consciousness which, via perception, shapes the universe into palpable forms. Otherwise it's just a chaos of particles. The very fact that you can refer to "the sun" shows that your senses have parsed the raw data into a specific meaning. "We" make this universe.

    Today's Washington Post reports that "opioid pills shipped" DROPPED 45% between 2011 and 2019..... while fatal overdoses ROSE TO RECORD LEVELS! Prohibition is PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE.

    Drug Warriors should be legally banned from watching or reading Sherlock Holmes stories, since in their world, it is a crime for such people as Sherlock Holmes to exist, i.e., people who use medicines to improve their mind and mood.

    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.

    Freud had the right idea: He noticed that cocaine use actually ended depression in his patients. Unfortunately, he was ambitious and was more interested in making a name for himself than in pushing back against the statistically challenged fear mongering of prohibitionists.

    I can't imagine Allen Ginsberg writing "Howl!" while under the influence of mood-damping drugs like Inderal and Prozac -- but then maybe that's the point: the powers-that-be do not want poets writing poems like "Howl!"

    Another problem with MindMed's LSD: every time I look it up on Google, I get a mess of links about the stock market. The drug is apparently a godsend for investors. They want to profit from LSD by neutering it and making it politically correct: no inspiration, no euphoria.


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






    The Drug War as a Greek Tragedy
    Childish Drug Warriors


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    Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

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