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Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition

how the drug war protects Christianity from competition

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

July 9, 2022



written in response to Julian Buchanan's excellent blog post on Drug Testing entitled Drug Testing: Misleading Simplicity Masking Complex Issues

Hi, Julian. Thanks for the refreshing honesty about drug testing. I'd like to add just a few thoughts to expand on what you've said.


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First, I would stress that "drug testing" only makes sense to the average person because "drugs" is a politically created word meaning "substances that have no value whatsoever and therefore should be completely avoided." The fact is, there are no substances of this kind in the world: even the highly toxic Botox has legitimate uses. In the cases of psychoactive substances, all of them have potential uses in some dosage, for some reason, in some therapeutic, religious or psychosocial setting. Drug war hysteria notwithstanding, substances like morphine 1 , opium and coca (and indeed even crack cocaine 2 3 ) can be used non-addictively, if an educated person sets out to use them in that way. But the Drug Warrior never explains how to use drugs safely since the party line is to insist that such a thing is not possible. Joe Biden 4 5's Office of National Drug Policy actually worked by a rule that beneficial uses of criminalized "drugs" were never even to be considered. But to think that substances can be bad without regard for how they are used is to adopt the view of Mary Baker Eddy toward drugs, which is that they are morally wrong, period, full stop. But this is a religious view, not a scientific one.

The real problem is that the Drug Warrior completely ignores the most obvious reason for drug use: and that is the human desire for self-transcendence. Only by ignoring this "primum mobile" for drug use can they seem to plausibly maintain such use has no positive purpose. Having drawn that misguided conclusion, they then feel justified in "treating" the "substance user" as a sick person, one who is to be cured by forcing him or her to become "sober" (at least as that term is hypocritically defined in a pill-popping and booze6-swilling country). Recidivism is the natural result of such "cures" because the treatment fails to acknowledge, let alone cater to, the "user's" original motivation for "using": namely to acquire self-transcendence. Why? So that they could escape the limitations imposed upon them by their own personal psychology, as well as the stark perceptual limitations imposed upon human beings in general by what Maupassant called our five "miserable senses":

"...our eyes which are unable to perceive what
is either too small or too great, too near to, or too far from us...
our sense of smell which is smaller than that of a dog ...
our sense of taste which can scarcely distinguish the age of a wine!"
- Le Horla, Maupassant


The drug users know (at least at some level) that there are substances in this world that let us see and feel more in life - and even help us BE more by quieting those niggling inner voices (arising from nature and/or nurture) that have otherwise continually told us to "hang it up," that "the likes of YOU can never accomplish that!"

Far from being pathological, this desire for pharmacological self-transcendence has been the inspiration for entire religions, including the Vedic religion in the Indus Valley, the mushroom cults in Mesoamerica, and the psychedelic Eleusinian Mysteries, from which Plato is thought to have gleaned his concepts of an afterlife7.

Seen in this light, drug-testing is the tool of a Christian Science inquisition, designed to "out" those who seek transcendence in ways that are unacceptable to WASP westerners, which is another way of saying that the Drug War is a war on religion - indeed, a war on the very wellspring of the religious impulse. It is not just a way to shield alcohol and liquor from competition; it is a way to shield Christianity itself from competition - Christianity, that is, as practiced in the politically non-threatening way that western capitalists are familiar with.


Related tweet: October 14, 2022



Drug testing (in the rare cases that it's needed) should be for identifying impairment. It should not be a fishing expedition to find traces of substances that are hated by botanically clueless politicians.



Author's Follow-up: January 15, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




If Labor hadn't been hornswoggled by Drug War ideology, the outlawing of indiscriminate drug testing would be their cause célèbre. Why? Because such drug testing represents the political castration of the American worker. What could be more humiliating than being required to submit your urine to a potential employer -- not to find out if you're impaired, but simply to make sure that you practice the drug-hating faith of Christian Science with respect to psychoactive substances?

I also state above that drug testing is a way to shield Christianity from competition. Let me add here that there is a long history of this oppression. The time-honored psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries inspired renowned westerners like Plato and Cicero for almost 2,000 consecutive years. But it was finally outlawed by a Christian Emperor in 392 A.D. as a threat to Christianity.

Regarding my allusion to the failure of rehab, I have since realized that prohibition ensures the failure of rehab. It does this by outlawing all the drugs that could get one through those few tough weary hours of the day that are the bane of the recidivist -- when they sit alone in a quiet house, typically in the early hours of the morning, ready to climb the walls.

If such sufferers had access to laughing gas 8 , or opium 9 , or coca, or MDMA 10 , or any of a wide list of empathogens created by Alexander Shulgin -- or better yet, to all of these drugs in a go-to pharmacopoeia -- there would be no recidivism. Those seeking to get off a specific drug would find the psychological ability to do just that. This is just plain psychological common sense. But Drug Warriors ignore common sense -- as do the myopic materialist scientists that advise on drug policy these days. For more on this topic, please see my essay on "Fighting Drugs with Drugs."

For more on how Drug Warriors, doctors and scientists ignore psychological common sense, please see my essay entitled "Common Sense and the Drug War."













Notes for essay entitled Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition: how the drug war protects Christianity from competition:

1: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
2: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
3: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
4: Joe Biden (up)
5: Joe Biden’s Drug War Record Is So Much Worse Than You Think Bienenstock, David, Leafly, 2019 (up)
6: Blast-off for Planet Hypocrisy! DWP (up)
7: The Eleusinian Mysteries: A Gateway to the Afterlife in Greek Beliefs (up)
8: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
9: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
10: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

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Big pharma drugs are designed to be hard to get off. Doctors write glowingly of "beta blockers" for anxiety, for instance, but ignore that fact that such drugs are hard -- and even dangerous -- to get off. We have outlawed all sorts of less dependence-causing alternatives.

If opium and cocaine were legal again in America, the healthcare industry would suddenly have to undergo extensive downsizing, as Americans were once again put in charge of their own health.

To treat opioid use disorder, we should re-normalize the peaceable smoking of opium at home as an alternative to drinking alcohol.

And we should not insist it's a problem if someone decides to use opium, for instance, daily. We certainly don't blame "patients" for using antidepressants daily. And getting off opium is easier than getting off many antidepressants -- see Julia Holland.

Now drug warriors have nitrous oxide in their sights, the substance that inspired the philosophy of William James. They're using the same tired MO: focusing exclusively on potential downsides and never mentioning the benefits of use, and/or denying that any exist.

Many articles in science mags need this disclaimer: "Author has declined to consider the insights gained from drug-induced states on this topic out of fealty to Christian Science orthodoxy." They don't do this because they know readers already assume that drugs will be ignored.

@HKSExecEd The use of Ecstasy brought UNPRECEDENTED peace and love to the British dance floors in the 1990s. When are political scientists going to acknowledge the potential for such substances to pull our species back from the brink of nuclear annihilation?

The Drug War shows us that American democracy is fundamentally flawed. Propaganda and fearmongering has persuaded Americans to give up freedoms that are clearly enunciated in the U.S. Constitution. We need a new democracy in which a Constitution actually matters.

Prohibitionists have nothing to say about all other dangerous activities: nothing about hunting, free climbing, hang-gliding, sword swallowing, free diving, skateboarding, sky-diving, chug-a-lug competitions, chain-smoking. Their "logic" is incoherent.

If media were free in America, you'd see documentaries about people using drugs wisely for a wide variety of praiseworthy purposes.


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






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