The Drug War Philosopher is "not quite dead yet," at least as of July 3, 2024, but he recently decided to get a head start on his epitaph after reflecting on the transiency of human life. Hey, ya never know, right? Besides, he does not trust anyone else to write it. (Don't take that personally, though, he's not even sure that he trusts himself! He says he was keeping a close eye on himself as he wrote the following, determined to tell the bald truth without flattery or bias. What more can we ask?) He also felt that this exercise would serve as a memento mori of sorts to help him put hard times in perspective. Not that he's been suffering lately, of course, but we all know that old age is full of landmines and he wants to deny Fate the opportunity of saying, "Nyeh-nyeh, I told ya so!"
Epitaph: white copy
Brian Quass, the Drug War Philosopher, died yesterday at the probably ripe old age of _____, bless him. Between 2018 and his death, he wrote hundreds of insightful (if perhaps somewhat underappreciated) essays against the war on drugs under the nom de plume of "the Drug War Philosopher" at abolishthedea.com1. In that role, he was the first to recognize the sinister symbiosis between the Drug War and the philosophy of materialism, thanks to which scientists dogmatically ignore all evidence of drug efficacy except that which can be discovered under a microscope2. He was also credited with unmasking the Christian Science bona fides of the Drug War3, which he characterized as a form of religious sharia insofar as it posits the ontological evil of drugs per se, while making a few glaringly hypocritical exceptions for a relative handful of psychoactive substances, of course, such as alcohol and so-called Big Pharma meds.
He was also one of the first Americans to reveal the dystopian nature of the psychiatric pill mill4, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women are dependent upon Big Pharma antidepressants for life5, a state of affairs which Brian was wont to refer to as "a real-life Stepford Wives."6 In a similar literary vain, he would draw analogies between the Drug War and the sci-fi classic "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury, in which the government burned books in order to enforce "right" thinking. Brian claimed that the Drug War was actually worse than this fictional dystopia, that it represented a kind of "Fahrenheit 452," in which the government burns plants instead of books, this time with the goal of controlling not simply WHAT you can think in this life, but also how and how much you can think7.
Brian also dropped a bombshell on modern psychology back in November of 2022 with his essay entitled "The Naive Psychology of the Drug War,"8 in which he accused the field of losing track of reality thanks to its slavish adherence to Drug War ideology, especially to the anti-scientific postulate that psychoactive drugs can have no positive uses whatsoever, no, not at any dose, in any situation, at any time. By thus kowtowing to Drug War orthodoxy, the field was forced to deny (or at least to ignore) the once-obvious psychological benefits of ecstasy and anticipation, thereby discounting the efficacy of all drugs except those that work behind the scenes, at the molecular level: in other words those very drugs upon which 1 in 4 American women are now dependent for life (despite the fact that few users think these latter drugs do more than make life bearable at best).
Brian showed us that once we acknowledge the psychological benefits of psychoactive drug use, it immediately follows that hundreds of drugs could function as antidepressants9, not by changing some underlying chemistry but by cheering up a user on a given schedule and giving them something to look forward to, thereby creating a virtuous circle of use. Brian took pains to explain (to the ever-worried Drug Warriors in his audience) that such use need not develop into addiction insofar as a wide variety of drugs could be used for this purpose in a free world, such that the user need not even know the precise name of the substance being employed at any time (assuming here that the drug is being supplied by an informed friend or counselor). Brian would then typically target any remaining doubters by observing that surely even addiction is better than suicide, especially since that addiction10 would be both rare and treatable in a world in which all medicines were free and in which we learned to use them wisely. Finally, Brian would typically end these admittedly informative harangues by asking the following question of his skeptics:
"Why is it my medical duty to take my 'meds' every day of my life while I can go to jail for smoking an opium pipe at night?"
Brian has been accused by critics of discounting the racist origins of the Drug War, though in reality he has written extensively on that topic. (See "The Runner: Racist Drug War Agitprop"11, "COPS: TV show for racist Drug Warriors"12, "The Racist Drug War Killed Floyd George"13, and "Whiteout"14.) He believed, in fact, that the racist origins of the Drug War were beyond dispute, as are the often unacknowledged racist viewpoints that underlie the call for continued prohibition today. However, Brian was not, nor has ever claimed to be, an historian. His forte was in revealing how the Drug War, however created, was at odds with the American values of personal liberty and scientific freedom and that it fails the laugh test when considered philosophically, that is, in light of the dodgy but unspoken assumptions upon which it is defended as public policy.
Brian's legacy includes the Partnership for a Death Free America, an agency that he founded in 2023 to lampoon the idea that drugs are too risky to be used sensibly by Americans15. This agency works to outlaw ALL risky human activities and in so doing demonstrates the sheer idiocy of outlawing drug use, which, as it turns out, is far less risky than many other activities that we allow and even "glorify" today as a society, such as hang-gliding, free climbing, and free diving -- and this despite the fact that the Drug War does everything it can to make drug use dangerous, by denying safe supply and refusing to share the simple truth about drugs. Brian's Partnership, of course, is a satirical "take" on the Partnership for a Drug Free America, that politically inspired non-profit which sought to scare Americans in the 1980s by promoting the Big Lie that drugs fry the brain, without, of course, specifying the names of the drugs nor under which conditions such alleged incineration was taking place. But then the Drug Warriors are never ones for detail: their goal is not to teach you anything about drugs but rather to make you feel a certain way about them, in short, to fear them, no questions asked. Of course, what REALLY fries the brain is electroshock therapy16, the depression "treatment" that is made necessary to this very day thanks to the Drug War and the fact that scaremongers have enticed politicians to outlaw all the godsend medicines that could have been used instead.
Brian was grateful to his dying day for the existence of at least a few online followers who actually seemed to understand what he was saying. Remarkably, though, Brian cherished no apparent malice whatsoever toward the seemingly endless list of movers-and-shakers in this world who ignored him entirely during his lifetime17. Indeed, some might say that they "cut him ruthlessly," but once you've joined the club of movers and snakers, you don't want to let juse anybody join in all the reindeer games. But Brian did not seem to care, although in November 2023, he did absent-mindedly suggest that he might well be considered the Ignaz Semmelweis of our times (i.e., the modern Cassandra who tried in vain to convince a deaf and indignant audience that they had gotten ahold of the wrong side of the stick, to put it mildly). He apparently knew, however, that the truth was bound to prevail at long last, that he was indeed on the right side of history, and that it was always clear -- then as now -- that it was madness to outlaw mother nature in the first place and that by doing so we caused all the problems that we sought to solve... and then some.
Donations may be sent to the Drug Policy Alliance18.
My approach to withdrawal: incrementally reduce daily doses over 6 months, or even a year, meanwhile using all the legal entheogens and psychedelics that you can find in a way likely to boost your endurance and "sense of purpose" to make withdrawal successful.
Using the billions now spent on caging users, we could end the whole phenomena of both physical and psychological addiction by using "drugs to fight drugs." But drug warriors do not want to end addiction, they want to keep using it as an excuse to ban drugs.
The first step in harm reduction is to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Then hundreds of millions of people will no longer suffer in silence for want of godsend medicines... for depression, for pain, for anxiety, for religious doubts... you name it.
That's how antidepressants came about: the idea that sadness was a simple problem that science could solve. Instead of being caused by a myriad of interrelated issues, we decided it was all brain chemistry that could be treated with precision. Result? Mass chemical dependency.
If politicians wanted to outlaw coffee, a bunch of Kevin Sabets would come forward and start writing books designed to scare us off the drink by cherry-picking negative facts from scientific studies.
Drugs like opium and psychedelics 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."
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.
A Pennsylvanian politician now wants the US Army to "fight fentanyl." The guy is anthropomorphizing a damn drug! No wonder pols don't want to spend money on education, because any educated country would laugh a superstitious guy like that right out of public office.
When scientists refuse to report positive uses for drugs, they are not motivated by power lust, they are motivated by philosophical (non-empirical) notions about what counts as "the good life." This is why it's wrong to say that the drug war is JUST about power.
Science keeps telling us that godsends have not been "proven" to work. What? To say that psilocybin has not been proven to work is like saying that a hammer has not yet been proven to smash glass. Why not? Because the process has not yet been studied under a microscope.
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Epitaph of the Drug War Philosopher: (rough draft), published on July 3, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, Epitaph of the Drug War Philosopher: (rough draft), published on July 3, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)