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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. Even a solicited autobiography of mine was nixed by Mad in America because it stated the true fact that I believe that there are benefits to the use of outlawed substances. The organization's editors claimed that doctors know best about such things -- the same doctors who are blinded by behaviorism into ignoring all psychologically obvious uses for drugs.

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 to cheer up the depressed.

2) The power of MDMA 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. 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. Meanwhile, Americans have been taught to think of daily opium 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!

Charles Fort




In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort compiled a long list of factual stories that science had "damned" (i.e., ignored). He focused almost exclusively on the many published reports of unusual substances "falling from the sky," including stones, axes, animal matter, resinous residue, blood, frog spawn, beef, coal, sulfur, limestone, etc.

"There are so many records of the fall of earthy matter from the sky," wrote Fort, "that it would seem almost uncanny to find resistance here, were we not so accustomed to the uncompromising stands of orthodoxy--which, in our metaphysics, represent good, as attempts, but evil in their insufficiency."

In other words, modern science is blind to the facts that do not serve to advance existing hypotheses and theories.

Why is this relevant to the topic of drugs?

Because Charles Fort did not know from damnation! He lived before the western world had damned all stories about the positive uses of drugs.

And why did the west do so?

Because scientists had their own beloved theories of behaviorism and reductionism, by which they felt they could understand the world. They therefore insisted that we must look under a microscope to decide if a drug has REAL beneficial uses. In other words, scientists could ignore all positive anecdotes about drug use, they could ignore all positive historical use, and they could even ignore psychological common sense. Their job was not to investigate reports of positive drug use, but to prove that positive drug use was impossible -- at least until such time as science found a non-obvious way to prove that drug benefits actually exist, one that could be quantified and shown in a PowerPoint presentation to research funders.

And so billions have to go without godsend medicine because modern science cannot wrap its materialist mind around the glaringly obvious fact that psychoactive drugs have benefits -- indeed, their benefits are only limited by our imaginations in employing them.

To repeat and reiterate, then: Charles Fort did not know from damnation! No facts have ever been more thoroughly and ruthlessly "damned" than those that suggest positive uses for outlawed psychoactive medicines.








  • Charles Fort Didn't Know from Damnation
  • The Book of the Damned
  • The Book of the Damned continued


  • Notes:

    1: Uncertain Places: Essays on Occult and Outsider Experiences (up)







    Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    The front page of every mycology club page should feature a protest of drug laws that make the study of mycology illegal in the case of certain shrooms. But no one protests. Their silence makes them drug war collaborators because it serves to normalize prohibition.

    The FDA says that MindMed's LSD drug works. But this is the agency that has not been able to decide for decades now if coca "works," or if laughing gas "works." It's not just science going on at the FDA, it's materialist presuppositions about what constitutes evidence.

    My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine, 1884

    If drug war logic made sense, we would outlaw endless things in addition to drugs. Because the drug war says that it's all worth it if we can save just one life -- which is generally the life of a white suburban young person, btw.

    The scheduling system is a huge lie designed to give an aura of "science" to America's colonialist disdain for indigenous medicines, from opium, to coca, to shrooms.

    If psychoactive drugs had never been criminalized, science would never have had any reason or excuse for creating SSRIs that muck about unpredictably with brain chemistry. Chewing the coca leaf daily would be one of many readily available "miracle treatments" for depression.

    When folks banned opium, they did not just ban a drug: they banned the philosophical and artistic insights that the drug has been known to inspire in writers like Poe, Lovecraft and De Quincey.

    If daily drug use and dependency are okay, then there's no logical or scientific reason why I can't smoke a nightly opium pipe.

    The MindMed company (makers of LSD Lite) tell us that euphoria and visions are "adverse effects": that's not science, that's an arid materialist philosophy that does not believe in spiritual transcendence.

    Well, today's Oregon vote scuttles any ideas I might have entertained about retiring in Oregon.


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






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    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

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