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America's Puritan Obsession with Sobriety

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

February 21, 2021



I have yet to read or hear anyone in the 21st century speak honestly and rationally about drugs. Even the card-carrying enemies of the Drug War are under the spell of at least one Drug War lie, and they are usually mentally hobbled by a whole series of false Drug War assumptions. If nothing else, they accept the Drug War lie that "substances" are problems when the only real problems (as everyone knew before 1914) is a lack of education, violence-producing prohibition, and laws that are specifically written to target a bigoted politician's enemies. In the old days, these were poll taxes. In more recent times, these are drug laws.

Here's another lie to which even critics of the Drug War succumb. They speak as if this thing they call "sobriety" is the ne plus ultra of moral conditions. But that's just a Christian Science supposition, not a scientific fact. What's so great about sobriety, after all? Sobriety often kills. Why? Because the sober mind is often depressed, angry, in despair, caught up in a vicious circle of disempowering and defeatist self-talk.

Yes, many so-called "drug" users do want to escape reality... but there is a good reason for that. Their self-talk was making them unable to assert themselves in the world and maximize their self-actualization. You don't solve that problem by insisting that sobriety is somehow a goal in and of itself!

Let's say that my mental self-talk keeps me from enjoying life, to the point where I can't do my job, can't make money, etc. And so I try an illicit substance and go in for counseling. Suddenly, the idiotic assumption of my caregivers is that I need to become "sober." But that is nonsense. It is sobriety itself that led to my downfall. I need help from an empath who is empowered to use a wide variety of psychoactive plant medicine to help me think outside the murderous box of my self-doubts and depression. I don't need lectures about the sanctity of sobriety in the abstract.

But the modern Drug Warrior has this absurd idea that if I would only become "sober," I would be fine.

This is why illicit drug use in Drug War America makes perfect sense. What's the alternative for those suffering self-doubt? The alternative is either to become a lifelong ward of the healthcare state, hooked on the limited pharmacopoeia of psychiatry's disgraceful pill mill 1 , which tamps down emotions rather than empowering self-actualization -- or simply to become "sober," notwithstanding the negative voices in one's mind that will shout as loud as ever after this Christian Science goal of sobriety is reached.

If sobriety were the real goal in life, then the Vedic religion would not exist, founded as it was on the psychedelic insights provided by plant medicine. Nor would much inventive literature exist without insights from outside the box of the sober mind. Besides, in the Drug War world, "sober" is a political term, because it merely describes those of us who refrain from using plant medicines of which botanically clueless politicians disapprove. One in four women are hooked on Big Pharma meds, and the Drug Warrior considers them "sober." Why? Because the Drug Warrior does not fear the anti-depressant user, since the drugs they take simply tamp down emotion and do not lead to the sort of self-insight and empowerment that could make the drug-taker a threat to modern capitalism 2 and Big Pharma .

Former big-name "drug users" (like Howard Stern and Russell Brand) confuse the issue by renouncing "drugs" late in their career after said medications have helped them succeed -- only to write lucrative books praising the joys of sobriety. Why? Because it's verboten to even suggest that the demonized substances that they previously used had anything to do with their breakthrough in the entertainment world. The Christian Science party line of the Drug War insists that quote-unquote "drugs" (that is to say substances of which politicians disapprove) could have been nothing but hindrances to the performers and that all true talent will come out under the influence of sobriety -- which of course is a psychologically absurd supposition given the power of the depressed and masochistic human mind to induce the sober individual to fail -- a psychological tendency which Edgar Allan Poe described in some detail over 150 years ago but one which "the schools" as he called them, then as now, continue to ignore.



Of course the very idea that using drugs means you're not "sober" is itself absurd. Jules Verne and HG Wells wrote their best work while consuming Coca Wine. Although the Drug Warrior would insist that a coca user is not sober, the reality is that their mental focus and creativity were at a peak while using the drug. So the drug user's use of the term 'sober' is hypocritical, just as hypocritical as their definition of 'drugs,' which does not encompass the most dangerous substances in America, namely tobacco and alcohol which together kill about half a million Americans annually -- and doesn't help anybody write great literature either!

Author's Follow-up: July 29, 2022



Sometimes the opposite of what the Drug Warrior says is so blatantly true that you expect the Drug Warrior to pause you in the middle of your complaints, saying: "No, I'm just messin' with ya, dude. Of course the Drug War is absolute nonsense."

But the Drug War has lasted more than 100 years now, making things worse every year through massive incarceration 3 , the creation of cartels and gangs, the censoring of science, and the wholesale denial of hundreds of mood-altering godsends to the depressed and anxious, etc. It begs the question, what is the Drug War REALLY for? After all, it is achieving the very opposite of its purported goals, for presumably it was designed to keep Americans from "doing drugs," and yet America is now the most drug-taking country in human history, with 1 in 4 American women chemically dependent on Big Pharma "meds" for life. Meanwhile America alone is racking up half a million deaths a year from tobacco and alcohol. You might say that the Drug War "succeeded" in steering Americans away from opium , but it did so by shunting would-be opium 4 users off onto far more dangerous and addictive Big Pharma 5 6 meds. Why did this happen? Because drug Warriors fail to realize that you can outlaw certain substances but you cannot outlaw the impulse for self-transcendence. You can, however, make self-transcendence far more dangerous to achieve, especially when you prefer to indoctrinate people with fear campaigns rather than telling them the God's-honest truth about all "drugs," anti-depressants included: the truths not only about the endlessly described down sides of demonized medicines, but about the benefits of their use as well as described by actual users.

Author's Follow-up: January 9, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up



Most of us have seen a young child being verbally abused by their parent in a grocery store -- often for behavior that is simply childlike and need not have incurred censure in the first place, let alone been roundly denounced by an adult so loudly that the entire food store can hear. I don't know about you, but I always think of the years ahead for such a child during which they will be subjected to these unnecessary harangues and how such usage on the part of their parents is sure to monkey around with that child's self-image. This is sobriety for them: this is the "real" world, one in which positive expressions of interest in the world are loudly chastised.

The recipients of such rebukes do not need sobriety as an adult, they need a way to get outside of their own mind for a moment in order to learn to what games they have been subjected by an incompetent (if perhaps well-meaning) parent. And this is something that "drugs" can facilitate, above all when wisely used. And yet wise use is illegal these days -- and research on such drug-aided psychological liberation is almost unthinkable. This Christian Science outlook must be revealed for what it is and dismantled. This superstitious demonization of godsend substances must give way to a concern for human health and happiness and a re-learning of the basic fact of life: that substances are neither good nor bad except with regard to the details of their specific uses.











Notes for essay entitled America's Puritan Obsession with Sobriety:

1: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
2: What the drug war tells us about American capitalism DWP (up)
3: Heather Ann Thompson. 2014. The Atlantic. The Atlantic. October 30, 2014. https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/10/inner-city-violence-in-the-age-of-mass-incarceration/382154/. (up)
4: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
5: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
6: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




America arrests people whose only crime is that they are trying to be all that they can be in life... in such a way that psychiatrists are not getting THEIR cut.

Scientists cannot tell us if using drugs is worth the risk any more than they can tell us if free climbing is worth the risk, or horseback riding or parkour.

Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.

Getting off antidepressants can make things worse for only one reason: because we have outlawed all the drugs that could help with the transition. Right now, getting off any drug basically means becoming a drug-free Christian Scientist. No wonder withdrawal is hard.

Most enemies of inner-city gun violence refuse to protest against the drug prohibition which caused the violence in the first place.

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.

The best long-term treatment for OUD would be to normalize the nightly smoking of opium at home, not to addict the user to government-supplied drugs that render them impervious to the benefits of the poppy plant.

Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.

Kids should be taught beginning in grade school that drug prohibition is wrong.

Freud had the right idea: He noticed that cocaine use actually ended depression in his patients. Unfortunately, he was ambitious and was more interested in making a name for himself than in pushing back against the statistically challenged fear mongering of prohibitionists.


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