Addicted to Christianity
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 14, 2019
eople tell me that opium, heroin and cocaine are bad for me. Why? Because they cause dependence. But this is sheer hypocrisy. I've been on Effexor for 25+ years, and my shrink tells me I can never get off it because it's far too addictive. Meanwhile, it's frying my brain and keeping me from trying new psychedelic therapies - and not even coming close to lifting my daily depression. Yet no one's screaming bloody murder about my plight. No, no. In my case, I have to be a good little boy and keep taking "my meds" for a lifetime.
But if dependence is not wrong, as psychiatry now insists (in action, if not in word), then I should have been free to "choose my OWN addictive poison" 40+ years ago when I began subsidizing Big Pharma fat-cats with my monthly prescription purchases. I would have opted for opium at that time, to give me peace of mind and an occasional rest from reality and perhaps even a little artistic inspiration of the kind obtained from the drug by Poe and Lovecraft, rather than flattening out my emotional responses with SSRIs to turn me into a socially acceptable Babbitt. While it's possible that I might have become addicted to opium, by using it more frequently than directed, at least my opium addiction could have been kicked in theory. Besides, psychiatry has no leg to stand on when it comes to criticizing an opium addiction, considering that it makes no scruples about addicting the world to SSRIs.
Really, it's a no-brainer: do I want to be addicted to a substance that fogs my brain - or do I want to use a natural substance once grown by Thomas Jefferson and used by Benjamin Franklin, a substance which, for all its shortcomings, occasionally gives me great visions?
As for me in my house, I would have used opium.
I end with this paraphrase of a Christian song title because the only possible rationale that I can see for preferring SSRIs to opium is the fact that opium occasionally provides what the Puritan would consider a "high," and that is a no-no in the puritan world. This is why the War on Drugs is a war on religion - because the Drug Warrior's goal is to keep the rest of the world from accessing spiritual states that the warrior believes to be at odds with Christianity.
Indeed, this is how the whole Drug War started in 392 C.E., when the first Drug Warrior, Emperor Theodosius, outlawed the Eleusinian Mysteries because he saw them as a threat to Christianity. The psychedelic kykeon was helping folks like Plato and Plutarch to see the light - and this was blasphemy for religious imperialists who believed that the only true light was Christianity itself.
Author's Follow-up: January 9, 2024
This was written almost five years ago, when I was still a greenhorn. Couldn't have been more than 61 years old at most! The basic point is still unanswerable and can be summed up in the following question: "Why is it that's okay to take big pharma meds daily -- and it's even my DUTY to do so as a chronic depressive ('take your meds') -- and yet I can be thrown in jail if I use opium daily instead?"
There is no logical or medical reason -- the reason is political, financial and puritanical -- and materialistic too, when it comes to that. Check out my many essays on that latter topic.
By the way, Ignaz Semmelweis, I can relate!
More Essays Here
Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs
"Arrest made in Matthew Perry death." Oh, yeah? Did they arrest the drug warriors who prioritized propaganda over education?
We need a few brave folk to "act up" by shouting "It's the drug war!" whenever folks are discussing Mexican violence or inner city shootings. The media treat both topics as if the violence is inexplicable! We can't learn from mistakes if we're in denial.
I hope that scientists will eventually find the prohibition gene so that we can eradicate this superstitious way of thinking from humankind. "Ug! Drugs bad! Drugs not good for anyone, anywhere, at any dose, for any reason, ever! Ug!"
We might as well fight for justice for Christopher Reeves: he was killed because someone was peddling that junk that we call horses. The question is: who sold Christopher that horse?! Who encouraged him to ride it?!
FDA drug approval is a farce when it comes to psychoactive medicine. The FDA ignores all the obvious benefits and pretends that to prove efficacy, they need "scientific" evidence. That's scientism, not science.
The problem for alcoholics is that alcohol decreases rationality in proportion as it provides the desired self-transcendence. Outlawed drugs can provide self-transcendence with INCREASED rationality and be far more likely to keep the problem drinker off booze than abstinence.
An Englishman's home is his castle.
An American's home is a bouncy castle for the DEA.
Prohibition turned habituation into addiction by creating a wide variety of problems for users, including potential arrest, tainted or absent drug supply, and extreme stigmatization.
Prohibitionists have blood on their hands. People do not naturally die in the tens of thousands from opioid use, notwithstanding the lies of 19th-century missionaries in China. It takes bad drug policy to accomplish that.
The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.
More Tweets
The latest hits from Drug War Records, featuring Freddie and the Fearmongers!
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, Addicted to Christianity published on October 14, 2019 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)
