Yesterday I traveled to Blue Plate Books in Winchester, Virginia, one of the largest used bookstores in the region. My plan was to buy books that would help me flesh out my understanding of drug-related issues. This was naive of me, however. Even though the store features tens of thousands of books, the vast majority of the authors of those books ignore the fact that drug prohibition even exists. The few books that treat of demonized drugs do so from the point of view of addiction and abuse. There are no books about how opium can improve your love of nature or about how phenethylamines can make the suicidal wish to live or about how the use of laughing gas can change your views of reality -- as the use of laughing gas eroded William James's dogmatic fealty to passion-scorning materialism and behaviorism.
Our tolerance for freedom wanes in proportion as we consider "drugs" to be demonic. This is the dark side behind the new ostensibly comic genre about Cocaine Bears and such. It shows that Americans are superstitious about drugs in a way that Neanderthals would have understood.
If our loved ones should experience severe depression and visit an emergency room for treatment, they will be started on a regime of dependence-causing Big Pharma drugs. They will not be given any drugs that elate and inspire.
Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which limits drug choice and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.
Brits have a right to die, but they do not have the right to use drugs that might make them want to live. Bad policy is indicated by absurd outcomes, and this is but one of the many absurd outcomes that the policy of prohibition foists upon the world.
In "Psychedelic Refugee," Rosemary Leary writes:
"Fueled by small doses of LSD, almost everything was amusing or weird." -- Rosemary Leary
In a non-brainwashed world, such testimony would suggest obvious ways to help the depressed.
Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?
We should start taking names. All politicians and government officials who work to keep godsends like psilocybin from the public should be held to account for crimes against humanity when the drug war finally ends.
There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???
We won't know how hard it is to get off drugs until we legalize all drugs that could help with the change. With knowledge and safety, there will be less unwanted use. And unwanted use can be combatted creatively with a wide variety of drugs.
Prohibition never ended. Busybody Americans just gave alcohol a big Mulligan for killing 178,000 a year in America alone and then began fighting to outlaw everything else.
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