I'm a 65-year-old Virginia man, and I have written hundreds of essays about the philosophical problems with the War on Drugs at my website, abolishthedea.com. I saw the interview with Tom Riedlinger and was fascinated to hear that Ligare actually exists, especially being a somewhat lapsed protestant myself. I've thought for years that Christianity needed to employ these sacred substances in order to become relevant again and to stir hearts and not just minds. For I think Quanah Parker was right when he said,
"The White Man goes into his church house and talks about Jesus, but the Indian goes into his tipi and talks to Jesus."2
I will be using psilocybin on a guided basis over the coming year as I taper entirely off of the SNRIs that I have been on for the last 35 years. The research that I have done on user reports gives me hope that my experience can reignite at least the mature part of my neglected faith.
I just don't understand, though. How does the DEA get away with it? It is so clear to me that the Drug War denies us our freedom of religion by outlawing sacred medicines of Mother Nature. Merely knowing about your group and what it stands for should be a wakeup call to any politicians who still believe in the freedom of religion. I wonder that you're not suing the DEA even as we speak. (Though the courts seem ready to trot out any ad-hoc argument when challenged on this topic. A court in the '70s ruled that a church could not use psychedelics because the members' ancestors had no religious history of such use, which is basically a law against human progress, let alone religious liberty.)
Best wishes!
Author's Follow-up: October 31, 2024
See, folks, this is why I do not get on wagon trains: nobody let's this poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games. Ligare's like, "Best wishes, indeed! Who are you, exactly?" They apparently reserve the right to ignore me entirely. Fair enough. I guess God never explicitly said: "Do not ghost your neighbor."
The Hindu religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. It is therefore a crime against religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate.
Prohibition is a crime against religious freedom.
William James found religious experience in substance use. See his discussion of what he calls "the anesthetic revelation" in his book entitled "The Varieties of Religious Experience."
The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.
The Drug War violates religious freedom by putting bureaucrats in charge of deciding if a religion is 'sincere' or not. That is so absurd that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. No one in government is capable of determining whether the inner states that I achieve with psychoactive medicine are religious or not. This is why Milton Friedman was so wrong when he said in 1972 that there are good people on both sides of the drug war debate. WRONG! There are those who are more than ready to take away my religious liberty and those who are not. If the former wish to be called 'good,' they will first need a refresher course in American democracy and religious freedom. They need to renounce their Christian Science theocracy and let folks like myself worship using the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions in the past. Until they do that, do not expect me to praise the very people who have launched an inquisition against my form of experiencing the divine.
There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.
"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda
One merely has to look at any issue of Psychology Today to see articles in which the author reckons without the Drug War, in which they pretend that banned substances do not exist and so fail to incorporate any topic-related insights that might otherwise come from user reports.
In "Psychedelic Refugee," Rosemary Leary writes:
"Fueled by small doses of LSD, almost everything was amusing or weird." -- Rosemary Leary
In a non-brainwashed world, such testimony would suggest obvious ways to help the depressed.
The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.
If America cannot exist without outlawing drugs, then there is something wrong with America, not with drugs.
Laughing gas is the substance that gave William James his philosophy of reality. He concluded from its use that what we perceive is just a fraction of reality writ large. Yet his alma mater (Harvard) does not even MENTION laughing gas in their bio of the man.
The Shipiba have learned to heal human beings physically, psychologically and spiritually with what they call "onanyati," plant allies and guides, such as Bobinsana, which "envelops seekers in a cocoon of love." You know: what the DEA would call "junk."
Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.
Irony of ironies, that the indignant 19th-century hatred of liquor should ultimately result in the outlawing of virtually every mind-affecting substance on the planet EXCEPT for liquor.
"Arrest made in Matthew Perry death." Oh, yeah? Did they arrest the drug warriors who prioritized propaganda over education?
The Drug War is the legally enforced triumph of human idiocy. We have rigged the deck so that our dunces can be right. The Drug War is a superstition. Indeed, it is THE modern superstition.
One merely has to look at any issue of Psychology Today to see articles in which the author reckons without the Drug War, in which they pretend that banned substances do not exist and so fail to incorporate any topic-related insights that might otherwise come from user reports.