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Five problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick Strassman

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 26, 2024



The following material is a condensed version of "What Rick Strassman Got Wrong.


PSYCHEDELIC CHEERLEADERS?

If organizations like MAPS1 are cheerleaders for psychedelics, as Strassman suggests, then organizations like the FDA are jeerleaders! They look only for downsides in drugs, and so ignore the millions worldwide who are suffering silently behind closed doors thanks to America's blanket dismissal of time-honored medicines. If a drug can be misused by a white American teenager at one dose, in one context, then it must not be used by anyone at any dose, in any context. It's hard to imagine a more anti-scientific premise than this, nor one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering around the world: that anonymous suffering for which the FDA never takes responsibility. This, of course, is also an anti-democratic premise, as it turns local sheriff deputies into the morality police and convinces the public to sacrifice American freedoms on the altar of the Drug War. It also leads to the election of dictators insofar as it removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, which one suspects is the true purpose of the Drug War in any case.


LSD?

Strassman implies that Richard Nixon was interested in public health when he outlawed psychedelics. Wrong. He was actually interested in removing radicals from the voting rolls by charging them with felonies. If he had been interested in public health, he could have recommended the use of niacin or Thorazine to quickly bring an end to those "bad trips" that Drug Warriors love to talk about. Besides, the TV networks never covered positive uses of drugs in the '60s, while yet doing their best to outdo each other in making a big thing out of an atypical drug overdose. And neither television nor magazines talked about positive uses of psychedelics. In short, the whole power of the mainstream worked to make sure that such drugs as LSD were always portrayed in a negative light.


DRUGS OF ABUSE?

Strassman keeps using the phrase "drugs of abuse" uncritically. But there are no drugs of abuse in the Drug Warrior's sense of that term. The problems of drug use are always caused by a lack of education, and corrupt drug supply, which are two conditions that are caused by prohibition, not by drugs. We did not have thousands of kids dying in the streets when opium 2 was legal in America. Young people are dying of opiates because of a lack of education combined with a totally unregulated drug supply. We could wait for human psychology to change and for everyone to become a Christian Scientist... or we could recognize that the Drug War is murderous folly and must be ended at once. And yet Strassman tells us that he still is unsure about re-legalizing Mother Nature, i.e., ending substance prohibition? Please!


HOPE TRAUMA?

Strassman implies that "hope trauma" is a problem inherent in psychedelic use, whereas the failure to achieve transcendent psychedelic states is usually connected with the use of the antidepressant drugs that were created by reductive materialists. The other principal cause of "hope trauma," or failure to have breakthrough psychedelic journeys, is the materialist outlook of the user, who expects that psychedelics should work just like aspirin: one simply takes the drug and lets the substance do all the heavy lifting.


PSYCHEDELICS V. ENTHEOGENS?

Strassman prefers the term "psychedelics" over "entheogens," and this is understandable from a materialist point of view. He wants us to approach a marvelous world scientifically, that is to say with the mind set of Dr. Spock of Star Trek, constantly reminding oneself, as Richard Dawkins suggests when it comes to evolution, that there is "nothing to see here" except the inevitable dreary outcome of cause and effect. In this view, the psychedelic drug experience is merely a case of the mind observing its own inner workings, divorced from all connection with nature as a whole. It has nothing more important to tell us than that silly dream you had after eating too much ice cream. But that's a metaphysical conclusion about such "trips," not common sense or logic.

This is why I believe that we should NOT insist on any one word (neither psychedelic nor entheogen nor hallucinogen) but that everyone should use the word that accords with their own metaphysical understanding of the world. I prefer the word entheogen, because it highlights the godsend potentials that we are ignoring when we outlaw drugs like MDMA 3 and psilocybin. An atheist may take exception to the apparent etymological nod to a deity, but for me the word merely connotes the intimation of the existence of higher beneficent powers about which it is impossible to be specific. I do not feel that the term "entheogens" implies that I worship a Caucasian God with a long white beard ensconced upon a cumulus cloud alongside cherubim and angels. But at the same time, I feel a deep conviction that there is far more at play here, something "more deeply interfused," than simple neurological cause and effect, which seems to be the default outlook of those who plump for the term "psychedelic."

I also find it hard to care about the rights of atheists when the Drug War is outlawing my religion. Let them legalize my entheogenic religion first, and maybe THEN we can talk about your right not to believe in it!

Besides, the motivation behind Strassman's preference for the term "psychedelic" resembles for me the motivation behind the modern scientist's willful blindness about the benefits of drugs: they refuse to recognize the obvious, like even the most overwhelming feeling of sudden enlightenment. They don't want to be biased, so they try to abstract themselves and their feelings out of the equation. So they shout in effect "I'm not listening" as the voice of ancient truths bellow, determined to believe only what they see under a microscope, determined that feelings do not matter in the scientific world. And thus the term "psychedelic" becomes problematic: it enthrones this myopic and passion-free materialism 4 as the baseline for further studies of psychedelics, with the working assumption being that there is "no there there" in the psychedelic experience, no greater truths to learn, no understanding of the human condition or of universal connectedness, no understanding of a greater reality of any kind.

It seems, however, that psychedelic drugs have to be believed in in order to work, or to work properly. If that's true, then approaching them dispassionately in the name of science is a huge mistake -- or is it a strategy on behalf of atheist materialists to exonerate their own existential pessimism about life with the help of a self-fulfilling prophecy: i.e., by making such drugs fail by failing to believe in them?



Author's Follow-up: October 11, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




With all due respect, if Rick really feels that "drugs" like DMT are just too dangerous for people, he should really stop writing books. Instead, he emulates Michael Pollan in trying to have it both ways. He wants to make money by exciting people about these substances while at the same time encouraging the police to continue cracking heads. Strange! America puts alcohol on a golden pedestal and then outlaws all possible competition. It's a faux morality. They turned simple prohibition into Prohibition writ large and now the prisons are overflowing. And Drug Warriors want it that way. Because the people jailed by this idiotic and unprecedented prohibition are "others" -- that one seldom meets -- and the fact that their inner-city landscapes have been turned into no-go zones by Drug War incentives seems to leave Rick and Michael cold.

Michael, for his part, freely uses the substances of his choice, while yet insisting that the average American is not capable of doing that safely (which will certainly be true if we follow the Drug Warrior's advice of failing to speak honestly about psychoactive substances). Michael is, in fact, the Leona Helmsley of the Psychedelic Renaissance. Drug laws are for the little people -- and that has, indeed, always been the case. Drug laws are designed to push around a certain kind of person -- and Michael can rest easily, knowing that he's not that kind of person -- especially since he has hedged his bets by signaling (albeit deep into his "Change Your Mind" book at page 405) that he does not believe that even Mother Nature's medicines should be freely available -- as they have always been until American politicians saw that they can destroy unwanted aspects of democracy (starting with the fourth amendment) by fearmongering about the kind of substances that we refuse to understand.

As for Rick, he reminds me of those police officers in the Leslie Nielsen movies who force a crowd to "move back" in order to protect them, thereby causing them to fall off of a cliff. Does he not realize that outlawing DMT is leading determined users to manufacture the drug themselves using highly toxic and dangerous chemicals? How safe is THAT, exactly?














Notes:

1: Three Problems With Rick Doblin's MAPS DWP (up)
2: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
3: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
4: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

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In fact, there are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???

It is a violation of religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate. The Hindu religion was inspired by just such a drug.

Ketamine is like any other drug. It has good uses for certain people in certain situations. Nowadays, people insist that a drug be okay in every situation for everybody (especially American teens) before they will say that it's okay. That's crazy and anti-scientific.

People talk about how dangerous Jamaica is -- but no one reminds us that it is all due to America's Drug War. Yes, cannabis and psilocybin are legal there, but plenty of drugs are not, and even if they were, their illegality elsewhere would lead to fierce dealer rivalry.

The media called out Trump for fearmongering about immigrants, but the media engages in fearmongering when it comes to drugs. The latest TV plot line: "white teenage girl forced to use fentanyl!" America loves to feel morally superior about "drugs."

The best harm-reduction strategy is to re-legalize drugs.

The UK just legalized assisted dying. This means that you can use drugs to kill a person, but you still can't use drugs to make that person want to live.

The drug war is a scare campaign to teach us to distrust mother nature and to rely on pharmaceuticals instead.

What prohibitionists forget is that every popular but dangerous activity, from horseback riding to drug use, will have its victims. You cannot save everybody, and when you try to do so by law, you kill far more than you save, meanwhile destroying democracy in the process.

I should have added to that last post: "I in no way want to glorify or condone drug demonization."


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