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Depressed? Ask Your Doctor if Assisted Suicide is Right for You

Philosophical musings on the strange case of Claire Brosseau

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

February 16, 2026



I have already written half a dozen essays on the strange case of Claire Brosseau, the depressed Canadian entertainer who wants the state to help her commit suicide, the same state that is denying her all the drugs that might make her want to live.
Depressed woman huddled up under grey blanket on white couch. Text reads: 'Depressed? Ask your doctor if assisted suicide is right for you.'
North Americans are so bamboozled by Drug War lies that we literally would prefer suicide to drug use.


The fact that none of the various "professionals" involved in the case even notices this glaring angle to the issue shows how propaganda and censorship have fried their brains. They now truly seem to believe the enormous demonstrable lie that psychoactive medicines have no positive uses for anybody, anywhere, ever, not at any dose or in any situation. For absent such indoctrination, the question on everybody's sane lips would be: why are we not fighting for Claire's right to the use of the plants of Mother Nature, why are we not fighting for her right to take care of her own health as she sees fit: why, in short, are we not fighting to end drug prohibition on her behalf rather than to help her to kill herself so that she can escape the hell that drug prohibition is forcing her to endure totally unnecessarily?

It seems Claire herself is bamboozled, because she seems to believe that drugs have nothing to offer her -- which is absurd considering that drugs have inspired entire religions and many have the power to elate and inspire in real-time, notwithstanding the self-interested lies of medical doctors who give us their metaphysical spiel about the need for "real" cures: you know, the kinds that turn the "med" user into patients for life. The very idea that drugs cannot help with depression is an enormous self-interested lie of the medical establishment, first promulgated when doctors saw their business model endangered by drugs that really worked, first opium, and then cocaine.


Line of people passing condemned building for 'Beneficial Drugs' -- continuing on to building for Assisted Suicide instead.
Modern drug attitudes are beyond parody. Depressed westerners demand that the state use drugs to kill them, but they don't demand their right to the drugs that could make them want to live.




Let us, however, ignore the fact that drug prohibition is rendering suicide necessary here (at least in the indoctrinated mind of Claire), and let us look at the case in isolation, as do all other pundits on this issue, more's the pity. Even if we assume the big lie here, namely that no drugs could help Claire, there is something ironic about granting the right to die to an ardent activist on that topic. For the mere fact that Claire can function enough to put her cause on the map -- with the drug-bashing New York Times, no less -- and to argue for herself so effectively makes me doubt her need for suicide. What a paradox, in fact: the more powerful her arguments, the more I question whether she really needs such a drastic measure. Of course, in reality it is Claire's decision -- but it can only REALLY be her decision were we to end drug prohibition, and that is not Claire's goal, unfortunately. Instead of fighting for the return of a time-honored right to heal, she is seeking instead for a recherché new right to have the government help her to kill herself -- and this, to repeat, is the same government that is denying her the medicines that could make her want to live!










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against the hateful war on US




I thought mycology clubs across the US would be protesting drug laws that make mushroom collecting illegal for psychoactive species. But in reality, almost no club even mentions such species. No wonder prohibition is going strong.

Two of the biggest promoters of the psychedelic renaissance shuffle their feet when you ask them about substance prohibition. Michael Pollan and Rick Strassman just don't get it: prohibition kills.

The evidence has been in for well over a century now: people want to use psychoactive substances to transcend the rational mind. It's about time we stopped punishing them for that.

So much harm could be reduced by shunting people off onto safer alternative drugs -- but they're all outlawed! Reducing harm should ultimately mean ending this prohibition that denies us endless godsends, like the phenethylamines of Alexander Shulgin.

Someday, the First Lady or Man will tell kids to "just say no to prohibition." Kids who refuse will be required to watch hours' worth of films depicting gun violence, banned religions, civil wars, and adults committing suicide for want of medicine that grows at their very feet.

The Drug War is the legally enforced triumph of human idiocy. We have rigged the deck so that our dunces can be right. The Drug War is a superstition. Indeed, it is THE modern superstition.

The goal of rehab should not be to get people off of all drugs, it should be to teach them to be in control of their drug use and to use drugs wisely for beneficial purposes.

High suicide rates? What a poser! Gee, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that the US has outlawed all substances that elate and inspire???

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.

Folks like Sabet accuse folks like myself of ignoring the "facts." No, it is Sabet who is ignoring the facts -- facts about dangerous horses and free climbing. He's also ignoring all the downsides of prohibition, whose laws lead to the election of tyrants.


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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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