esterday 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.
Visiting Blue Plate Books merely reminded me of how censored Americans are when it comes to drugs. There is almost a total censorship in America on the topic of drug benefits -- with all censorship working to ensure that we consider drugs a problem rather than a solution.
Someday, in a sane world, there will be plenty of book titles like the following:
"How I used opium wisely to improve my life."
"How I used morphine wisely to improve my love of mother nature."
"How I got off of cigarettes and alcohol through the safe and informed use of phenethylamines."
"How I rose from my depression with the wise use of a variety of drugs, including opium, coca, and phenethylamines."
Author's Follow-up:
June 17, 2025
The closest thing I found to drug praising was a copy of Michael Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind." It is telling, however, that even Michael does not champion drug re-legalization -- but instead frets about how the free use of Mother Nature is still just too dangerous for our poor little vulnerable young people -- you know, those young people whom we refuse "on principle" to educate about wise drug use in the first place. Indeed, with friends like Michael in the drug re-legalization debate, we scarcely need enemies. With all due respect to the talented author, I cannot understand how a botanist (amateur or otherwise) can believe in the outlawing of Mother Nature, can believe that the government has the right to tell us which plant medicines we can access and study. If drug prohibition were wrong for no other reason, it is clearly wrong for this reason: that it censors science in a supposedly free country. And yet I have to turn to Michael for my one example of a drug-friendly book in this library of 70,000 tomes? I am not exactly spoiled for choice, am I?
We are living the plot of Fahrenheit 451, in which we burn all books that speak of the positive uses of drugs -- or at least we would burn them if our bookstores ever bothered to stock them in the first place. Fortunately for the government, self-censorship is the order of the day in the age of the Drug War, so if a politically motivated Fire Brigade were to arrive on scene, they would find little use for their flame throwers.
Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.
That's my real problem with SSRIs: If daily drug use and dependency are okay, then there's no logical or truly scientific reason why I can't smoke a nightly opium pipe.
Opium is a godsend, as folks like Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus knew. The drug war has facilitated a nightmare by outlawing peaceable use at home and making safe use almost impossible.
And where did politicians get the idea that irresponsible white American young people are the only stakeholders when it comes to the question of re-legalizing drugs??? There are hundreds of millions of other stakeholders: philosophers, pain patients, the depressed.
This is why we would rather have a depressed person commit suicide than to use "drugs" -- because drugs, after all, are not dealing with the "real" problem. The patient may SAY that drugs make them feel good, but we need microscopes to find out if they REALLY feel good.
Prohibitionists have nothing to say about all other dangerous activities: nothing about hunting, free climbing, hang-gliding, sword swallowing, free diving, skateboarding, sky-diving, chug-a-lug competitions, chain-smoking. Their "logic" is incoherent.
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.
It's disgusting that folks like Paul Stamets need a DEA license to work with mushrooms.
Most psychoactive substance use can be judged as recreational OR medicinal OR both. The judgements are not just determined by the circumstances of use, either, but also by the biases of those doing the judging.
Philip Jenkins reports that Rophynol had positive uses for treating mental disorders until the media called it the "date rape drug." We thus punished those who were benefitting from the drug, tho' the biggest drug culprit in date rape is alcohol. Oprah spread the fear virally.
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, Censored Bookstores in the Age of the Drug War published on June 8, 2025 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)
esterday 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.
You have been reading an article entitled, Censored Bookstores in the Age of the Drug War published on June 8, 2025 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)
