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
THE DRUG WAR AND RELIGION
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."
The DEA conceives of "drugs" as only justifiable in some time-honored ritual format, but since when are bureaucrats experts on religion? I believe, with the Vedic people and William James, in the importance of altered states. To outlaw such states is to outlaw my religion.
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."
Today's war against drug users is like Elizabeth I's war against Catholics. Both are religious crackdowns. For today's oppressors, the true faith (i.e., the moral way to live) is according to the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.
The Drug War is a religion. The "addict" is a sinner who has to come home to the true faith of Christian Science. In reality, neither physical nor psychological addiction need be a problem if all drugs were legal and we used them creatively to counter problematic use.
This is a "prima facie" truth, based on the already established power of drug-aided sleep cures combined with the drug-aided ministrations of a pharmacologically savvy empath, especially in a world in which we spend billions on achieving this goal, rather than on arresting users.
Unfortunately, the prohibitionist motto is: "Billions for arrest, not one cent for education." To the contrary, drug warriors are ideologically committed to withholding the truth about drugs from users.
If any master's candidates are looking for a thesis topic, consider the following: "The Drug War versus Religion: how the policy of substance prohibition outlaws the attainment of spiritual states described by William James in 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.'"
essays about
THE DRUG WAR AND RELIGION
How the Drug War Banned my Religion
Hey, You, Get Off Of My Creed!
Modern Addiction Treatment as Puritan Indoctrination
What Terence McKenna Got Wrong About Drugs
Using Ecstasy in Church
Drug War Ideology:
the modern superstition
So, Your Faith Votes?
How the Drug War is the Establishment of Christian Science as the State Religion
Drug War U.
Majoring in Drug War Philosophy
The Drug War as a Litmus Test for Philosophical Wisdom
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)