An honest 'Philosophy of Happiness' is not possible in the age of the Drug War, especially when the said philosophy does not even acknowledge the existence of that war in its otherwise quite detailed introduction.
For the Drug War is not value-neutral when it comes to happiness, but rather it is based on a highly debatable ideology: namely, that we have some sort of moral duty to be happy without using the criminalized substances that racist politicians have convinced us to refer to (or rather to denigrate as) 'drugs' -- and the even more debatable (indeed outright false) notion that the use of all such criminalized substances must end in poverty and ruin. To the extent that this latter belief is true, of course, it is because drug legislation is written with the goal of ruining the 'user' through loss of drug supply, loss of freedom, loss of job, loss of housing, loss of ability to get loans for education, loss of voting rights, loss of eligibility for welfare, etc. In short, legislation does most of the hard work of ruining the user, but the Drug Warrior is more than happy to superstitiously ascribe every bit of the user's downfall to the amoral substance that they have demonized as a "drug."
Yet, the introduction to this subject on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website never mentions drugs but in a negative light, first by fretting that 'drug' use may bring about a kind of happiness that renders the user indifferent to the real world, and second by questioning the use of antidepressants 1 which bring about a happiness which is expressed in ways that might be at odds with the 'user's' true original personality. Of course these are both important issues to cover, but they are scarcely the whole story. There is a whole world of drug use that involves neither the overpowering Soma of Huxley nor the use of Big Pharma meds that change brain chemistry in unpredictable ways. There is the use of "drugs" to gain self-transcendence and to take a break from full-on reality. There is the use of "drugs" to focus the mind and to increase cerebral output. There is the use of "drugs" to appreciate Mother Nature, or music, or to better appreciate one's fellow human beings. There are even drugs to increase one's religiosity.
Take opium for instance, in the 19th century. In those days, one was not a scumbag for becoming happy through the occasional use of opium (happy both in using and, most importantly, in "LOOKING FORWARD to using opium ") and even the regular users were referred to as "habitués," not as morally challenged "addicts" (the term which came into vogue only after the criminalization of the poppy). Yes, as many as 1 in 10 Americans were habituated to opium use in the early 1900s. But that's nothing compared to the fact that 1-in-4 American women are now chemically dependent on Big Pharma antidepressants today. 1 in 4. For the Drug War can outlaw specific psychoactive substances but it cannot outlaw the desire to be happy.
So how can we discuss an abstract philosophy of happiness in a world in which one's attempts to find happiness are strictly controlled by the federal government in this way? Stanford's apparent answer to this dilemma: Just ignore the government's role in controlling drug choices and pretend that we're studying happiness (its rarity, its causes, etc.) from a natural baseline, in a world, in short, where one actually has free access to the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet. Well, that's not the world we live in, and Stanford's course should not tacitly imply and/or assume that it is. When they do so, they are clearly implying that their "philosophy of happiness" presupposes the Christian Science ideology of Mary Baker Eddy, at least when it comes to psychoactive drugs, and this is a premise that should be acknowledged, not implied. Why? Because the idea that psychoactive "drugs" are bad is not a truth that naturally suggests itself to a person (at least not in the absence of daily Drug War propaganda), least of all to those who grew up say in a rain forest, surrounded by what they consider to be godsend plant medicine.
Sedation may mean happiness according to the self-interested definition of a Big Pharma 23 chemist (the chemist who designed this very expensive poison for me, which was never originally intended for long-term use), but it is not happiness according to myself. For my philosophy of life (and what brings me happiness) is to know myself, and the world around me, to the extent possible, and to be as creative as possible and open to novel thoughts -- and not to be side-lined with drug-induced sleepiness.
Yet the government tells me that when it comes to psychoactive pharmacology, I can only improve my happiness through the use of the most dependence-causing substances on the planet, for many SSRIs are harder to kick than heroin 4 (source: Julie Holland... plus hard-earned personal experience).
In short, a course about the Philosophy of Happiness should be all ABOUT the Drug War and its highly debatable assumptions about the definition of "true happiness" and how it is or is not to be obtained.
To ignore the Drug War in this course is like ignoring the fact that hammers have been outlawed when creating a course entitled A Philosophy of Nailing. Yes, there are other ways to "drive in" a nail than with a hammer, just as there are other ways to find happiness than with drugs (and/or with the mind-easing anticipation of their upcoming use). But there's still something very strange about creating a course about Nailing without even mentioning the 64,000-pound gorilla in the room, namely the fact that hammers in one's own society are actually illegal.
Finally, there is another Soma than that mentioned by Aldous Huxley, namely, the naturally occurring psychoactive substance that inspired the entire Vedic religion. Had the DEA rushed in back then and outlawed Soma, would we dare to write a philosophy of happiness in the ancient Indus Valley without even mentioning the fact that the history-changing Soma plant had been outlawed?
ADDENDUM April 27, 2022
I thought I was complaining about one course, but I have searched the entire literature on happiness at Stanford and there appears to be no happiness-related course or intensely annotated paper that even mentions the Drug War, let alone speculates how it may conduce to unhappiness. This is why it's so hard to make a philosophical dent in the Drug War, because no one acknowledges that it exists. How does the Drug War prevent happiness? By denying the depressed either a vacation from self-doubt (with drugs like opium , phenethylamines, and psychedelics) or a way to override that self-doubt with raw motivation (with the coca plant). This reveals that Stanford views psychoactive drugs from the Christian Science perspective of Mary Baker Eddy, and yet that ideology seems so natural to them that they do not even consider it to be a bias.
ADDENDUM June 24, 2022
Nor is philosophy "above" drugs. Marcus Aurelius wrote his meditations under the influence of generous helpings of opium 5 . Plato's view of the afterlife was inspired by a draft of the psychedelic kykeon at Eleusis. These philosophers never felt it necessary to acknowledge their indebtedness to plant medicines because it never occurred to them that there was something wrong or particularly novel about using them -- unlike the Drug Warrior, who sees the use of psychoactive plant medicine as a defining moment in one's life on planet Earth, one which immediately taints the user on moral grounds and casts doubt on everything that they henceforth do and say in the world.
Author's Follow-up:
June 11, 2025
Imagine discussing the philosophy of happiness without acknowledging the fact that we have outlawed all psychoactive substances whose use can MAKE us happy. It is a blatant example of self-censorship brought about by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. I need hardly add that Stanford never responded to my concerns here. Whenever one goes for the jugular in attacking sacrosanct lies, one is inevitably met by silence.
The problem is worse than this, however. No topic concerning consciousness and psychology in general can be fairly and honestly discussed in a world in which we dogmatically ignore what drug use might tell us on such topics. William James acknowledged this truth when he counseled philosophers to use laughing gas 6 for the purpose of understanding reality. Even the philosophies of Kant and Schopenhauer cry out for the consideration of drug use. Otherwise, we give a privileged status to our utilitarian 789 everyday perception as somehow ontologically correct and authoritative, with all potentially more insightful ways of perceiving the world "ruled out of court" should they happen to have been produced by outlawed means.
Until we kick the government out of the classroom, modern psychology and philosophy will be handmaidens of the Drug War. They will work to normalize drug prohibition by pretending that outlawed substances simply do not exist.
If opium and cocaine were re-legalized, hospital buildings would no longer be the secular cathedrals of our time. Some of that wealth would actually go to healthy people.
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.
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.
The Drug War brought guns to the "hoods," thereby incentivizing violence in the name of enormous profits. Any site featuring victims of gun violence should therefore be rebranded as a site featuring victims of the drug war.
The UN of today is in an odd position regarding drugs: they want to praise indigenous societies while yet outlawing the drugs that helped create them.
The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.
Capitalism naturally results in disease-mongering by a self-interested medically establishment -- and disease-mongering requires the suppression of medicines that work holistically.
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.
Drugs like opium and cocaine should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda
(There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.)
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
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