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Addiction Therapy in the Year 2100

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 9, 2019



(a philosophical satire written to encourage a complete rethinking of our modern attitudes toward addiction and its treatment)


SCENE: 12 adults seated in a circle.

JOHN SMITH: My name is John Smith and I’m a miserable wretch.

[GROUP MEMBERS TITTER RELUCTANTLY, FINALLY BREAKING OUT INTO FULL-BLOWN LAUGHTER]

SMITH: What? What’s so funny?

[LAUGHTER CONTINUES]

LEADER: You’ll have to forgive us, Johnny boy, but you must not get around much these days.

SMITH: What do you mean? I thought the whole point of addiction therapy was for me to find the protestant God of the Bible.

LEADER: Oh, yeah?

SMITH: Or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.

[LAUGHTER RESUMES]

SMITH: That’s why I started out with the customary self-abasement and grovelling.

LEADER: That is so 21st century of you, dawg. The point of modern therapy is simply to SHOW YOU GOD – or “at least a reasonable facsimile thereof,” as you put it.

SMITH: What?

LEADER: Everything else follows from that point, bruh: self-respect, respect for others, temperance, you name it.

SMITH: And just how do you intend to show me God?!

LEADER: Earth to Smith: Americans stopped criminalizing Mother Nature over fifty years ago!!!

SMITH: Meaning?

LEADER: Meaning we have amassed a whole pharmacy worth of psychoactive plants and fungi with which we can now ceremonially lead you on a voyage of inner discovery…

SMITH: Yeah?

LEADER: …after which you’ll see the folly of addiction – always assuming, of course, that you enter our program in good faith, committed to learning from Mother Nature.

SMITH: Oh.

LEADER: Get it?

SMITH (reluctantly): Well… I guess…

LEADER: Good.

SMITH: All I can say is that the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous is probably rolling over in his grave right now.

LEADER: To the contrary, the legendary Bill W. was a big fan of treating addiction with LSD therapy…

SMITH: Really?

LEADER: Until a corrupt politician by the name of Richard Nixon criminalized the substance in his effort to crack down on hippies.

SMITH: Oh.

LEADER: That’s right: “Alcoholics be damned,” said Nixon, “as long as I can get my own back against Timothy Leary!”

SMITH: Fair enough, I guess, but…

LEADER: Yes?

SMITH: I still don’t get how you’re gonna make me see God.

LEADER: As far as the specifics of the process, I’d better turn you over to our team pharmacologist, Terence McKenna VIII. Terence?

TERENCE: Well, jefe, the precise combination of plants that we use is a trade secret, of course, kind of like the 11 herbs and spices still used to this very day by KFC.

LEADER: True dat. (Love me some KFC.)

TERENCE: But I can give you a random list of some of the big-hitters in our line-up of therapeutic plants.

LEADER: Proceed when ready.

TERENCE: We’ve got Acorus calamus, Amanita muscaria, Anadenantherea peregrina, Ariocarpus retusus Scheidw, Atropa belladonna, banisteriopsis caapi, Boletus manicus Heim—

LEADER: Enough, dawg. We don’t want to provide a shopping list for our competitors in the therapy biz.

TERENCE: Not to worry, bruh: these substances are useless (yea, even deadly) when used in the wrong doses…

LEADER: I heard that.

TERENCE: …or in the wrong set and setting.

JOHN: But then why are we sitting around in a circle?

LEADER: So you guys can get acquainted before we start our plant-guided rituals next week.

JOHN: Oh.

LEADER: Speaking of which, why don’t you introduce yourself again?

JOHN: OK.

LEADER: But this time, go easy on the self-abasement, would ya?

JOHN: Will do.

LEADER: I think we can take it as a given that we all have much to learn from our plant friends. No need to dwell morbidly on that fact during this introductory session.








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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




When it comes to "drugs," the government plays Polonius to our Ophelia: OPHELIA: I do not know, my lord, what I should think. POLONIUS: Marry, I'll teach you; think yourself a baby!

The MindMed company (makers of LSD Lite) tell us that euphoria and visions are "adverse effects": that's not science, that's an arid materialist philosophy that does not believe in spiritual transcendence.

The FDA will be accepting comments through September 20th on the subject of ways to fight PTSD. PTSD@reaganudall.org Ask them why they support brain-damaging shock therapy but won't approve drugs like MDMA that could make ECT unnecessary.

Timothy Leary's wife wrote: "We went to Puerto Rico and all we did was take cocaine and read Faust to one another." And there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG with that!!! The drug war is all about scaring us and making illegal drug use as dangerous as possible.

I might as well say that no one can ever be taught to ride a horse safely. I would argue as follows: "Look at Christopher Reeves. He was a responsible and knowledgeable equestrian. But he couldn't handle horses. The fact is, NO ONE can handle horses!"

I don't believe in the materialist paradigm upon which SSRIs were created, according to which humans are interchangeable chemical robots amenable to the same treatment for human sadness. Let me use laughing gas and MDMA and coca and let the materialists use SSRIs.

When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.

Drugs like opium and cocaine should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."

Just think how much money bar owners in the Old West would have saved on restoration expenses if they had served MDMA instead of whiskey.

If Fentanyl kills, then alcohol slaughters. Drug prohibition is the real killer.


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






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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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