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Charles Fort Didn't Know from Damnation

an open letter to Mitch Horowitz, author of Uncertain Places

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 2, 2025



Hi, Mitch!

My name is Ballard Quass and I have been studying the philosophy of the Drug War for the last ten years.

April 2025 Update

I am currently enjoying your book of essays entitled 'Uncertain Places.' 1

I am writing to suggest to you that the ultimate 'damned' facts today, in the Fortean sense of that word, are facts concerning the benefits of drugs. No facts are more totally damned. While UFOs and PEAR studies have been largely scorned by materialist society, one can now write about such things without being totally ostracized. But no one can write freely about common-sense drug benefits without being ghosted by mainstream society.

I have learned this the hard way over the last five years. During that time I have written hundreds of letters to top-ranked philosophers around the globe on this topic -- including many non-fiction authors -- and less than five have ever responded to me, and even then it was usually just a curt 'thank you' rather than the beginning of the productive discussion that I was hoping to facilitate by corresponding with them. Not only have my letters been ignored, but my posted comments have been blocked on websites that supposedly discuss drugs freely.

Here are just a few of the glaringly obvious drug benefits that no one is free to discuss these days without being totally marginalized:

1) The power of laughing gas 2 to cheer up the depressed.

2) The power of MDMA 3 to bring people together in peace and harmony.

3) The blatantly obvious power of opium to inspire and elate.

Indeed, before the west 'damned' upbeat stories about opium , the drug was considered an actual panacea.

This list of positive drug benefits could go on and on. Many of the benefits are just basic common sense, but again, materialists ignore common sense thanks to their adherence to behaviorist and reductionist principles.

When the FDA evaluates psychoactive drugs these days, it ignores all OBVIOUS benefits of drug use 4 . Not only that, but it ignores all OBVIOUS downsides of prohibition. This is because society has 'damned' all facts that point to such truths. Why? Because Americans have a 'previous commitment' to the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.

Meanwhile, our science mags tell us that depression is a tough nut to crack -- but that is only true because we have outlawed everything that obviously works for depression.

So thoroughly have such topics of discussion been 'damned' that I doubt that you yourself are going to respond to this email. I say this with all due respect, not because I know the first thing about you personally, but because I have written literally hundreds of letters like this to established authors over the years and few have ever responded -- and even those few have ignored the substance of my comments.



Nevertheless, I am enjoying your book... and I hope that you will contemplate my proposition: namely, that today's most fiercely 'damned' facts are those that concern the positive uses for drugs, closely followed by those facts that concern the negative effects of prohibition.

Thanks for your valuable time!

PS Positive facts about psychedelics are slowly approaching mainstream status in academia, perhaps, but no one dares point out that opium and coca have obvious positive uses, let alone the hundreds of phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin 5 6. Meanwhile, Americans have been taught to think of daily opium 7 smoking as outrageous, while they tell us that we have an actual duty to 'keep taking our meds.' I would go so far as to say that Charles Fort 'didn't know from damned,' insofar as he wrote before America had damned psychoactive drug benefits wholesale. These kinds of drug-related facts are so damned that even Forteans themselves damn them, as is shown by their ongoing failure to respond to my letters to them on this very topic.



Author's Follow-up:

April 06, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


It's been over a month and Mitch has not yet seen fit to respond. What delicious irony! As a Fortean himself, Mitch's failure to respond to my claims constitutes proof of their veracity. Positive talk about drug use is indeed the ultimate "damned" fact of all time!











Notes for essay entitled Charles Fort Didn't Know from Damnation: an open letter to Mitch Horowitz, author of Uncertain Places:

1: Uncertain Places: Essays on Occult and Outsider Experiences Horowitz, Mitch, Inner Traditions, 2022 (up)
2: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
3: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
4: The FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive drugs DWP (up)
5: Alexander Shulgin: American Hero DWP (up)
6: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
7: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."

Oregon has decided to go back to the braindead plan of treating substance use as a police matter. Might as well arrest people at home since America has already spread their drug-hating Christian Science religion all over the world.

If religious liberty existed, we would be able to use the inspiring phenethylamines created by Alexander Shulgin in the same way and for the same reasons as the Vedic people of India used soma.

Trump supports the drug war and Big Pharma: the two forces that have turned me into a patient for life with dependence-causing antidepressants. Big Pharma makes the pills, and the drug war outlaws all viable alternatives.

Americans love to hate heroin. But there is no rational reason why folks should not use heroin daily in a world in which we consider it their medical duty to use antidepressants daily.

I passed a sign that says "Trust Trump." What does that mean? Trust him to crack down on his opposition using the U.S. Army? Or trust him not to do all the anti-American things that he's saying he's going to do.

If America cannot exist without outlawing drugs, then there is something wrong with America, not with drugs.

Mayo Clinic is peddling junk. They are still promoting Venlafaxine, a drug that is harder to kick than heroin.

Countless millions suffer needlessly in silence because of America's fearmongering about drugs.

The drug war bans human progress by deciding that hundreds of drugs are trash without even trying to find positive uses for them. Yet scientists continue to research and write as if prohibition does not exist, that's how cowed they are by drug laws.


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






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Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

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