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 56. 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
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!
The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.
Mariani Wine is the real McCoy, with Bolivian coca leaves (tho' not with cocaine, as Wikipedia says). I'll be writing more about my experience with it soon. I was impressed. It's the same drink "on which" HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories.
The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.
Billboards reading "Fentanyl kills" are horrible because they encourage the creation of racist legislation that outlaws all godsend uses of opiates. Kids in hospice in India go without morphine because of America's superstitious fear of opiates.
Rick Strassman reportedly stopped his DMT trials because some folks had bad experiences at high doses. That is like giving up on aspirin because high doses of NSAIDs can kill.
It's because of such reductive pseudoscience that America will allow us to shock the brains of the depressed but won't allow us to let them use the plant medicines that grow at their feet.
We should no more arrest drug users than we arrest people for climbing sheer rock faces or for driving a car.
At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.
When psychiatrists write about heroin, they characterize dependency as enslavement. When they write about antidepressants, they characterize dependency as a medical duty.
We have to deny the FDA the right to judge psychoactive medicines in the first place. Their materialist outlook obliges them to ignore all obvious benefits. When they nix drugs like MDMA, they nix compassion and love.
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