Forbidden Quotations about the beneficial use of drugs
Things that you're not supposed to know about outlawed substances
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 9, 2026
The U.S. government is spending over $50 billion dollars a year to make sure you learn all sorts of bad things about drugs. Here is a web page where we actually tell you the good things about drugs. The following are quotes from actual people who actually used drugs wisely for actual good purposes! Imagine that! This introduction continues below
AMT
"Before my eyes, the fractals started to morph into all sorts of beautiful and colorful things, I saw Chinese dragons floating all over the place, with a large blue window that shone an intense, but comfortable amount of colour from it; these colours would change every few seconds or so."
Perhaps you cannot teach creativity, but results like these prove that you can definitely "egg it on." There is prima facie potential here for overcoming mental blocks of all kinds, especially when one sets out with that benefit in mind.
"No visuals, just the feeling of being in a movie and knowing what everyone else is going to say or do before they do it. "
Such results invite speculation about the powers of the human mind when it encounters the raw atomic quanta of the "real" world absent Bergsonian filters and the restrictions imposed by the Kantian categories of rational thought.
"I realized that I could control what I saw. I could talk to people and they would hold still. But if I decided that I wanted them to morph into a dragon, they would do it without question. "
Drugs that produce such results are antidepressants. They work by leveraging anticipation rather than by adjusting brain chemistry according to biomedical theory. I would be cheered up by merely having such a "trip" to look forward to.
"The depression lifted from my mind like the sun coming out of the clouds.
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Drugs like cocaine can prevent suicides. We should be teaching safe use, not militarizing police forces and destroying the Bill of Rights, while depriving the depressed of their right to heal.
"My brain was extraordinarily clear. My self-confidence was boundless. I felt inspired. I saw the way out."
It is a crime that we are withholding such medicine from the suicidal. We should be teaching safe use and providing counseling to help folks choose substances wisely. Instead, we demonize honest education and call in the military to ruin lives.
"All reports are in complete agreement that the state of euphoria caused by coca is not followed by any condition of weariness or other form of depression. On the contrary I tend to believe that a part of the effect of coca taken in moderate doses (0.05-0.10 grams) can last for over twenty-four hours. "
How frustrating it must be for the puritan Drug Warriors that they can't make a morality tale out of the "morning after" effects of cocaine.
"My impression has been that the use of cocaine over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..."
This was written before self-interested doctors began judging cocaine only by misuse... and by whom? By people who had already shown a predisposition to become addicted to morphine. No one asked the millions of depressed what they thought about cocaine.
"The sun felt so warm and I felt so at peace, so comfortable. Any problems that plagued my normal life felt unimportant. What was important was the now. The light on the blades of grass, the flowers dropping from the tree. I didn't see objects so much as the way they fit into the world around them, there was no chair, there was the line it made contrasting the grass on one side, and the light reflecting its edges."
In a free world (dozens of centuries away, perhaps), we will have Walt Whitman day, a day when friends and family are encouraged to go out in nature under the influence of such substances to gain a deep appreciation of both nature and life itself.
And yet we are withholding drugs like these from the suicidal. Think about that. We truly feel that death itself is better than drug use. Mary Baker Eddy would be proud.
"I shuddered with bliss at the simple facts of my existence. I bathed in that bliss for a moment, and wriggled comfortably as one does in bed on a lazy Sunday morning, feeling like a child. "
The very existence of substances that produce such results gives the lie to our whole mental health system, which is based on the idea that depression can only be beat by the long-term use of Big Pharma meds combined with talk therapy.
"This is great fun, I feel jovial and in good spirits. There are striped bands of deep blues and hearty reds spinning and streaming faintly across my vision, tracing the surfaces around me. Textures on the walls begin to flow, like water running down a window, glitchy static in pink and turquoise. "
Shakespeare praised sleep because he understood the downsides of ratiocination. Even if substances like the above provided nothing but escapes from rational thought, they would be therapeutic for that very reason.
"I am in a daze under a great violet sun. I want to go on my laptop, read about the world around me, I feel ravenous to take in information and to be filled with all the energy that information carries."
"My curiosity is insatiable- every nugget of information I stumble upon becomes a deep rabbit hole of reading and taking in as much information as possible, even the most mundane little things on the internet, the most one-off mentions of anything I scroll by on social media attract immense fascination. "
It's amazing that no one talks about the potential of such substances to help those with trouble concentrating-- aka the "disease" called ADHD. Psychiatry is better at naming and classifying problems than in fixing them.
"In the meantime the morphine had its customary effect- that of enduing all the external world with an intensity of interest. In the quivering of a leaf- in the hue of a blade of grass- in the shape of a trefoil- in the humming of a bee- in the gleaming of a dew-drop- in the breathing of the wind- in the faint odors that came from the forest- there came a whole universe of suggestion- a gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical thought."
One wonders if Walt Whitman used a substance of this kind. It would seem that anyone with the desire to do so could become Walt Whitman for a day (in a free world, I mean).
"It is said that every excitation is followed by a commensurate exhaustion. The excitation caused by nitrous oxide is an exception at least, it leaves no exhaustion on the bursting of the bubble."
Americans like to place a "puritanical read" on the "day after" side effects of drugs. And yet: 1) not all substances have such downsides 2) such downsides can be obfuscated or transcended with the wise use of other substances.
"I lost all connection with external things; trains of vivid visible images rapidly passed through my mind and were connected with words in such a manner, as to produce perceptions perfectly novel. I existed in a world of newly connected and newly modified ideas. I theorized; I imagined I'd made discoveries."
Oliver Wendell Holmes mocked N2O, for failing to produce "useful" results. The use of N2O could prevent suicides. It raises questions about the supposed universal applicability of the Kantian categories. Is that not useful enough for him?
"Whereas wine disorders the mental faculties, opium, on the contrary (if taken in a proper manner), introduces amongst them the most exquisite order, legislation, and harmony. Wine robs a man of his self-possession: opium greatly invigorates it. "
Keep in mind that it is all about details of use. The more educated you are, the more open you are to new experiences, the more you'll benefit from such substances. Opium does not create genius, but it can facilitate it.
Here's where I am supposed to read you the riot act about the dangers of drugs and tell you how this page is not recommending drug use (oh, no, no, no!) and that you should always consult your board-certified doctor before so much as getting up in the morning... yadda-yadda-yadda. But I have big problems with that expectation. It's all well and good for kids, but I want to treat my readers like adults -- unless, of course, they actually are kids, in which case they should not be reading this page in the first place.
But, of course, Drug Warriors have done everything they can to turn all Americans into children when it comes to drugs, by prioritizing fear over education on the subject, so no wonder they want me to treat you like children. So I guess I'd better bring out some boiler-plate legalese to acquit myself of all responsibility going forward in this highly litigious and finger-pointing world of ours.
Please know, then, by these presents, that Brian Quass, videlicet the Drug War Philosopher, is hereby not advocating the use of any particular drug (say cocaine, for instance), nor is he advocating the abstention from any drug (say cocaine again, for instance), but that his adumbrations on such topics (to wit, the drug-specific commentaries supplied above) are meant to kindle an education process in the reader such that they can figure out for their own d--- self whether the use of any particular substance shall be deemed to have survived a cost/benefit analysis with respect to all relevant considerations in their life, including but by no means limited to the abstract toxicity of the substance in question, its toxicity with respect to the user's unique biochemistry, the anticipated benefits of potential use in advancing life goals, the timeframe to achieve those goals in light of any chronological pressures resulting from occupational or health concerns, the life goals of the user in general, putting drugs aside for the moment, the risk tolerance of that user in general, putting drugs aside for yet another moment, the potential negative consequences of their use in general, and the potential negative consequences of their non-use in general... always assuming, of course, that ultimate ingestion of any vetted substance will accord with all applicable local, state and federal laws, in default of which condition said Brian Quass, videlicet himself, shall be held harmless with respect to any legal consequences that might ensue from said dereliction, while yet reserving his (Brian's) right to say "I told you so" to any hard-luck cases whatsoever.
"You children are the flower of the new generation. You have got to fear nothing. You have got to conquer everything. You have got to learn to make use of drugs as your ancestors learnt to make use of lightning." --Aleister Crowley, The Diary of a Drug Fiend 1
In Mexico, the same substance can be considered a "drug" or a "med," depending on where you are in the country. It's just another absurd result of the absurd policy of drug prohibition.
"There has been so much delirious nonsense written about drugs that sane men may well despair of seeing the light." -- Aleister Crowley, from "Essays on Intoxication"
Alcohol is a drug in liquid form. If drug warriors want to punish people who use drugs, they should start punishing themselves.
We throw people out of jobs for using "drugs," we praise them for using "meds." The categories are imaginary, made up by politicians who want to demonize certain substances, but not cigs or beer.
There would be little or no profiling of blacks if the Drug War did not exist.
Drug War propaganda is all about convincing us that we will never be able to use drugs wisely. But the drug warriors are not taking any chances: they're doing all they can to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Big Pharma drugs have wrought disaster when used in psychotherapy, but it does not follow that the depressed should become Christian Scientists. The use of outlawed drugs can obviate the need for shock therapy.
In the Atomic Age Declassified, they tell us that we needed hundreds of thermonuclear tests so that scientists could understand the effects. That's science gone mad. Just like today's scientists who need more tests before they can say that laughing gas will help the depressed. Science today is all about ignoring the obvious.
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.
No substance is bad in and of itself. Fentanyl has positive uses, at specific doses, for specific people, in specific situations. But the drug war votes substance up or down. That is hugely anti-scientific and it blocks human progress.
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