Why the Mad in America website is dead wrong about assisted suicide for the depressed
An open letter to Robert Whitaker
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 18, 2026
INTRODUCTION
I recently wrote an essay1 for Mad in America2 about assisted suicide for the depressed. I was writing in particular about the case of depressed Canadian entertainer Claire Brosseau3 who is demanding her right to assisted suicide even as we speak. I claimed that assisted suicide for the depressed cannot be ethically discussed without also discussing the drug prohibition which makes it necessary in the first place, at least in the minds of the depressed themselves. To my astonishment, the founder of Mad In America, Robert Whitaker, did not agree with me. He argued that Claire never complained about her lack of access to drugs; hence, drug prohibition has no obvious connection with her case. With all due respect to Robert, I found that argument to be shallow. I find it naive to expect that individuals who are profoundly depressed would have the self-awareness to realize how a drug policy that nearly everyone in America takes for granted as being irrelevant to everyday life would be negatively affecting themselves in particular.
But my goal is not to bash Robert. I feel, rather, that guys like Robert Whitaker are like Don Quixote with respect to myself. They are far more intelligent than I am on almost every subject in the world... until it comes to the topic of drugs, that is. When that topic is broached, suddenly they say silly things that they would never say had they been raised in a free world. And what can we expect? They have been raised since childhood on a steady diet of drug-war propaganda, above all in the form of the media's almost complete censorship of all reports of positive drug use, a bias that our equally brainwashed authors are happy to mimic in their own chef d'oeuvres, leaving the bibliophile with the impression that drugs have no positive uses whatsoever. This is how Americans have come to believe that drug prohibition can have no negative effects, to the point now that they cannot even see the otherwise obvious connection between drug prohibition and assisted suicide for the depressed.
I hope that the following essay will bring the Don Quixotes of the world back to their senses when it comes to drugs. I hope that it will convince them to join me in speaking up on behalf of Claire's right to heal and so prevent her from being sacrificed on the altar of Drug War superstition, according to which drugs are thought to be bad, regardless of all circumstances of use.
Brian
THE ESSAY PROPER
Robert Whitaker suggests that I'm not sufficiently objective in my discussion of assisted suicide for the depressed. I would respond as follows:
What is objective about the status quo, when the entire healthcare industry -- and its critics -- ignore the fact that there are drugs that could end depression in a trice?
In light of this fact, it is unethical (if not positively immoral) for Americans to remain silent about drug prohibition as depressed westerners like Claire Brosseau go to an early grave under the absurd conviction that they are beyond help. The only way to gainsay this conclusion of mine would be to claim that there are, indeed, no drugs that could dramatically elevate Claire's mood in a trice. And this is simply false. Anyone who holds such a view is undereducated in the fields of pharmacology and ethnobotany. They are unfamiliar with modern drug literature. They also lack a grasp of common-sense psychology -- which is to say, psychology before biochemical determinism began to remove human volition from the equation, thereby making scientists the experts on how we think and feel4.
With respect to a specific case, Robert makes what I insist is a very weak argument: He claims that the depressed Claire Brosseau did not complain of an inability to access the drugs that she desired; ergo, drug prohibition was not a problem for her. Of course, this viewpoint reckons without the Drug War and the attitudes upon which it is based. Thanks both to harsh drug laws and America's propaganda-driven disinterest in psychoactive medicines, Claire could only have had access to a mere sliver of the sorts of medicines that we are talking about here, the word "drugs" being but a dysphemism for the endless list of psychoactive substances that have the potential to inspire and elate and which are therefore anathema to puritanical politicians on both sides of the aisle. Nor would Claire be motivated to use those drugs wisely and on a strategic basis, as the party line of drug-hating America is that such use is impossible, or at least predestined to lead to a dead-end -- a result that the government is committed to ensuring by spending 51 billion dollars a year for that very purpose5.
Moreover, Robert's argument recoils on itself. In the Stephanie Nolen story in the New York Times6, Claire claimed to have loved the drugs that she had used in the past. She loved them. This begs the sort of question that everyone is trying to avoid asking: namely, why can't Claire be encouraged to live by continuing to use that wee percentage of drugs to which she already seems to have access, only in a more deliberate, strategic and therapeutic manner, perhaps by using them on an as-needed basis? Why can't she strategically use such drugs to transcend suicidal ideation, and/or to motivate herself to leave the couch and get some exercise, and/or to help her to talk more honestly with her psychiatrists during therapy sessions? Even if Claire is unaware of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of naturally occurring mood-enhancing drugs in the natural world, drugs of whose unsuspected but widespread existence Richard Schultes gave us a mere glimpse in "Plants of the Gods: Origins of hallucinogenic use,7" we have a duty to ask: "Why would Claire rather die than to use drugs that she herself claims to love?", followed by the corollary question that cuts to the nib of the matter: "Do we truly believe that death itself is better for Claire than using drugs?!"
Of course, no reputation-conscious professional can recommend that Claire use such drugs, for the simple reason that such drugs are illegal. But that does not stop the onlookers in Claire's case (whether they be pundits, friends, family members, or psychiatrists) from pointing out the 6,400-pound gorilla in the room: the glaringly obvious fact that her life could be made livable with drugs, or at very least be made far preferable to suicide, whence it follows that onlookers have a duty, on Claire's behalf, to indignantly demand the end of drug prohibition as nothing less than the outlawing of Claire's right to heal, a prohibition that in Claire's case could lead to her suicide.
As to my supposed lack of objectivity, am I really required to approach this topic with the passion-free disdain of Dr. Spock of the original Star Trek series, when I hear our movers-and-shakers agreeing with Claire that she is, indeed, out of options, at least if her biochemical system is so finicky as not to appreciate the "scientific" benefits of Big Pharma meds? I am a chronic depressive, too, for whom all treatments have failed (or rather done worse than fail, at least in the case of dependence-causing meds that have turned me into a ward of the healthcare state). If Claire is out of options, then so am I. I, however, would never commit suicide, even if it seems like the scientific thing to do. I understand that to commit suicide in my case would be to help normalize the policy of drug prohibition by letting it get away with murder, a murder for which my bamboozled survivors, of course, would never even think of holding it responsible.
Yes, I am passionate on this topic, but passion is called for when basic rights have been usurped. This is why drug prohibition has hung around like an unwelcome guest for well over one hundred years now, because no one is writing passionately about that usurpation, at least when it comes to its effect on our ability to take care of our own health as we see fit. Instead, we ignore the situation, pretending all is well, and we gaslight those who attempt to "cry foul," telling them that their viewpoints belong in a Subreddit for Libertarians and anarchists, as I myself was told by the moderator when I attempted to broach these topics on the philosophical forum hosted by philosopher Bernardo Kastrup8.
Finally, my essays are in the form of the argumentum ad absurdum, in which one adduces a variety of generally accepted propositions and then deduces the illogical consequences of those propositions, thereby displaying the falsity of some of our most widely held presuppositions about the world. This is what I have done in my essays on assisted suicide for the depressed. Dismissing my philosophical essays as subjective rants may provide an excuse to not grapple with the issues that I have raised, but it does not make those issues go away. But it is depressing. If even the potential unnecessary death of depressed people like Claire Brosseau cannot cause highly intelligent Americans to speak out against drug prohibition on the grounds of our right to heal, it's hard to imagine what would.
AFTERWORD
When I make such arguments to various academics, they usually ignore me; however, on rare occasions, they will tell me, almost indignantly, that they have always been a foe of drug prohibition, thank me very much. I have only to check their record on that subject! I tell them that I am glad to hear that, of course, but what I really want to say is: that is not enough. Lives are at stake now and we must speak up about specifics; we must say of drug prohibition like Laertes in the play: "Thus didst thou!" We must hold drug prohibition responsible for the endless social problems that it causes, first and foremost the way that it outlaws the right of depressed human beings to heal. Until then, our most trusted pundits will continue to ignore the connection between drug prohibition and assisted suicide for the depressed, thereby rendering themselves complicit in the untimely deaths of the Claire Brosseaus of the world.
The Holy Trinity of the Drug War religion is Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and John Belushi. "They died so that you might fear psychoactive substances with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."
If MAPS wants to make progress with MDMA they should start "calling out" the FDA for judging holistic medicines by materialist standards, which means ignoring all glaringly obvious benefits.
Despite the 50 year-long war on drugs, the global cocaine supply has grown by 400%. --Elma Mrkonjic
I'd like to become a guinea pig for researchers to test the ability of psychoactive drugs to make aging as psychologically healthy as possible. If such drugs cannot completely ward off decrepitude, they can surely make it more palatable. The catch? Researchers have to be free.
This hysterical reaction to rare negative events actually creates more rare negative events. This is why the DEA publicizes "drug problems," because by making them well known, they make the problems more prevalent and can thereby justify their huge budget.
I'm interested in CBD myself, because I want to gain benefits at times without experiencing intoxication. So I think it's great. But I like it as part of an overall strategy toward mental health. I do not think of CBD, as some do, as a way to avoid using naughty drugs.
Someone should stand outside Jefferson's estate and hand out leaflets describing the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello to confiscate poppy plants. That raid was against everything Jefferson stood for. The TJ Foundation DISHONORED JEFFERSON and their visitors should know that!
Almost all talk about the supposed intractability of things like addiction are exercises in make-believe. The pundits pretend that godsend medicines do not exist, thus normalizing prohibition by implying that it does not limit progress. It's a tacit form of collaboration.
Classic prohibitionist gaslighting, telling me that "drugs" is a neutral term. What planet are they living on?
THE ESSAY PROPER
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