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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 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:

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: Scribd.com: PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story Shulgin, Alexander, Transform Press, New York, 1991 (up)
7: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)


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





  • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    Trump is the prototypical drug warrior. He knows that he can destroy American freedoms by fearmongering. He has seen it work with the Drug War, which got rid of the 4th Amendment, religious freedom and is now going after free speech.

    Anyone who has read Pihkal by Alexander Shulgin knows that the drug warriors have it exactly backwards. Drugs are our friends. We need to find safe ways to use them to improve ourselves psychologically, spiritually and mentally.

    What are drug dealers doing, after all? They are merely selling substances that people want and have always had a right to, until racist politicians came along and decided government had the right to ration out pain relief and mystical experience.

    Today's drug laws tell us that we must respect the historical use of sacred medicines, while denying us our personal right to use them unless our ancestors did so. That's a meta-injustice! It negatively affects the way that we are allowed to experience our world!

    An Englishman's home is his castle. An American's home is a bouncy castle for the DEA.

    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.

    Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.

    The "scheduling" system is completely anti-scientific and anti-patient. It tells us we can make a one-size-fits-all decision about psychoactive substances without regard for dosage, context of use, reason for use, etc. That's superstitious tyranny.

    Ug! Fire bad! There were 4,731 fire-related deaths in America in 2023. Learn more at the Partnership for a Death Free America.

    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.


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    Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com


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