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The Mother of all Western Biases

an open letter to Science News

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher






July 7, 2022



In response to: "The idea that many people grow following trauma may be a myth" by Sujata Gupta.

Once again, Science News reckons without the Drug War. Ms. Gupta does not even mention MDMA, which has delivered fabulous results for PTSD sufferers over the last 35 years - albeit only in trials, since the self-serving DEA decided against the advice of its own counsel to criminalize the ultra-safe substance in 1985. Meanwhile, there is plenty of prima facie evidence that psychoactive botanicals could work wonders for PTSD patients in the proper settings. Some of these substances have inspired entire religions after all and given Plato his visions of an afterlife, but the Drug War either criminalizes such research or stigmatizes it such that little or no funding can be found for pursuing these tantalizing new approaches.

Update: May 05, 2025

One can hardly blame the writer, however, since the experts that she interviews are also in denial about the way that the Drug War has limited their research on PTSD, as if they were approaching the problem from a natural baseline when nothing could be further from the truth; rather, they are approaching the problem in a country in which drug-war proscriptions have become so internalized that scientists do not even realize that they are censoring themselves. And how are they censoring themselves? By completely ignoring the role that psychoactive medicine could play in changing the prognosis for conditions like PTSD. This self-censorship on the part of scientists is the mother of all "western biases" and yet it is apparently invisible to psychologists like Iara Meili and Andreas Maercker, who are otherwise so sensitive to the mere theoretical possibility of culturally-based presumption.

And they're not the only scientists in this article who have been bamboozled by the Drug War. Psychologist Richard Tedeschi is quoted as saying: "You can't expect people to change their spiritual beliefs in eight weeks." But actually you can, if you dare to consider the use of medicine that the Drug War has gone to such great pains to demonize over the last 100+ years (since anti-Chinese politicians first effectively criminalized the poppy plant in 1914). People have changed their spiritual beliefs in less than eight weeks, and usually for the better, under the influence of properly administered psychoactive medicines like psilocybin and MDMA. (See the work of such researchers as James Fadiman, Stanislav Grof, Rick Doblin, David Nichols, DJ Nutt, Julie Holland, Charles Grob, Michael and Annie Mithoefer, and Amanda Feilding.) But Richard Tedeschi is apparently not aware of such research. And why not? Because he has ruled out the consideration of "drugs" a priori in fealty to the Christian Science metaphysic of the Drug War.

There is yet a third psychologist whose comments only make sense in the age of the Drug War, namely psychologist Eranda Jayawickreme, who helps conclude Gupta's article by telling us:

"The most compassionate response to suffering is to validate survivors' feelings."


This is just plain wrong. The most compassionate response, at least to PTSD suffering, is to end the War on Drugs and call for the immediate legalization of godsend medicines like psilocybin and MDMA.

PTSD sufferers want help, not kind words.

Moral: the Drug War is impeding scientific progress, and Science News should not be writing articles that imply that such a war does not even exist.



Author's Follow-up:

May 05, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up





In the above letter, I criticize scientists for completely ignoring godsend medicines whose use could profoundly change attitudes and so profoundly help victims of traumatic shock -- not to mention folks with simple everyday psychological hang-ups. It occurs to me, however, that most modern Americans (scientists included) are unaware of the ability of "drugs" to perform such psychological feats. I ask the reader, therefore, to contemplate the actual reported effects of beneficial drug use (phenethylamines, in this case) as reported in "Pihkal" by Alexander Shulgin1:


"I feel that it is one of the most profound and deep learning experiences I have had."

"Excellent feelings, tremendous opening of insight and understanding, a real awakening."

"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."

"Tremendous clarity of thought, cosmic but grounded, as it were."

"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 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."


Trump is sometimes right, albeit always for the wrong reasons. There is such a thing as fake science: it is the science that we have today on the subject of mind and mood -- because it is all predicated on the notion that psychoactive substances do not exist and so we can ignore the obvious implications of beneficial drug experiences, especially insofar as Drug War dogma and censorship holds that beneficial use is an oxymoron.

Nor is it just the effects of synthesized medicines that scientists overlook in discussing trauma and related conditions. Consider this citation from the 19th-century short story entitled "What Was It?" by Fitz-James O'Brien2:

"Those hours of opium happiness which the Doctor and I spent together in secret were regulated with a scientific accuracy. We did not blindly smoke the drug of paradise, and leave our dreams to chance. While smoking, we carefully steered our conversation through the brightest and calmest channels of thought."


"Drug of paradise!" Surely, our scientists are gaslighting us when they pretend that such drugs can have no beneficial effects for a victim of trauma. And yet the article above shows that they are willing to pretend that such substances do not exist. They can get away with this for two reasons: first, because Drug War ideology holds as a matter of faith that psychoactive medicines can have no positive uses, and second, because materialist scientists are passion-scorning behaviorists when it comes to emotional issues and so feel free to ignore anecdote, history and common sense when it comes to the glaringly obvious benefits of drug use.

This is why it was a category error to place materialists in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place. Scientists can work wonders with hadron colliders and nuclear reactors, but they have no expertise in dealing with the hopes and dreams of real people. This is why we need to replace materialist psychiatrists with what I call "pharmacologically savvy empaths.3"

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."

  • Addicted to Addiction
  • Addicted to Ignorance
  • Addiction
  • After the Drug War
  • After the Drug War part 2
  • Another Cry in the Wilderness
  • Assisted Suicide and the War on Drugs
  • Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs
  • Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant
  • Case Studies in Wise Drug Use
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Declaration of Independence from the War on Drugs
  • Drug Use as Self-Medication
  • Drugs are not the enemy, hatred is the enemy
  • Ego Transcendence Made Easy
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  • Harold & Kumar Support the Drug War
  • Heroin versus Alcohol
  • How Cocaine could have helped me
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  • How the Drug War Blinds us to Godsend Medicine
  • How the Drug War is a War on Creativity
  • How the Drug War Killed Amy Winehouse
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  • How the Drug War Punishes the Elderly
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  • Hypocritical America Embraces Drug War Fascism
  • In Praise of Doctor Feelgood
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  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Let's Hear It For Psychoactive Therapy
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  • Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart
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  • THE ANTI DRUG WAR BLOG
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  • Using Opium to Fight Depression
  • What Jim Hogshire Got Wrong about Drugs
  • Why America's Mental Healthcare System is Insane
  • Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use
  • Why Louis Theroux is Clueless about Addiction and Alcoholism
  • Why Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs




  • Notes:

    1 Shulgin, Alexander, PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story, Transform Press, New York, 1991 (up)
    2 Great Ghost Stories, Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., 1918 (up)
    3 Quass, Brian, Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism, 2020 (up)



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    You have been reading an article entitled, The Mother of all Western Biases: an open letter to Science News, published on July 7, 2022 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)