Grounds for Concern

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Grounds for Concern

What if America outlawed coffee?

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

October 14, 2026

I have hit upon an analogy that should help you understand how drug prohibition has disempowered me when it comes to my ability to take care of my own health as I see fit. You have only to perform the following thought experiment in order to grasp whereof I have been writing for the last eight years in my essays as the Drug War Philosopher at abolishthedea.com. Are you ready? And begin.

You wake up in the morning and you go to the kitchen for a cup of coffee, only to remember that coffee has just been outlawed in your country. You have no coffee. Coffee is illegal. (If that sounds far-fetched, be advised that coffee was made illegal in Mecca in 1511, as it was in the Ottoman Empire in 1633, and in Sweden in 1746, and in Prussia in 1777.¹) So there you are, groggy and without a remedy for your grogginess. So far, so bad, but the thought experiment is far from over. You then buy what looks like coffee on the black market, but after drinking it, you become violently ill and are found on the floor by medics. You are then taken to a local hospital, where your stomach is pumped, after which you are told that you have a problem with drug abuse. You can dodge jail, but only if you receive counseling so that doctors can figure out why you have this perverse desire for a morning stimulant. These doctors subsequently inform you that you have a disease and that you need a series of dependence-causing psychiatric meds to cure that disease. (They don't actually tell you the bit about the "med" causing severe dependence, of course.) Meanwhile, you are ordered to group classes where you can try to figure out what happened in your past to make you fond of drugs.

This is precisely the situation that I am in regarding depression. There exists an ever-growing list of substances (both organic and synthetic) that can end my depression in a trice. In a trice. And yet they are all outlawed. This list of depression-busting substances starts, first and foremost with cocaine, the most demonized drug in the world, the use of which inspired the following user report from Aleister Crowley:

The depression lifted from my mind like the sun coming out of the clouds. ²

But this is a bad example. I would have to write a whole book to convince brainwashed Americans that we can use cocaine wisely, so thoroughly have self-interested doctors and demagogue politicians convinced us of the defeatist lie that we are all babies when it comes to drugs, and when it comes to cocaine in particular. (By the way, am I the only one who has noticed the self-interested nature of the medical world's demonization of the coca plant, which Freud ³, however, considered to be a godsend for the depressed?... until he realized which way the wind was blowing in terms of "drug spin" and how the depressed were not going to be considered stakeholders when it came to drug policy in the western world and in America in particular?) But I won't worry the reader's pretty little brainwashed head about naughty cocaine. Let the genteel reader consider instead the non-addictive phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin, which produced the following user reports that demonstrate the depression-busting power of the substances in question:

I experienced the desire to laugh hysterically at what I could only describe as the completely ridiculous state of the entire world. ⁴

Excellent feelings, tremendous opening of insight and understanding, a real awakening.⁵

I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing. ⁶

And if you have a prejudice against synthetic drugs, please be advised that ethnobotanists are finding a seemingly endless supply of drugs in the wild whose use conduces to all sorts of beneficial states, not just for ending depression but for bringing about relaxation, increasing physical endurance, treating various illnesses, bringing about sleep, inspiring creativity, elevating one's compassion level, etc. etc. etc.⁷ I ask myself how our scientists and doctors and reporters (like Robert Whitaker of Mad in America) keep up this sham act by pretending that depression is so hard to treat! They are either gaslighting the depressed -- or they are simply uneducated about drugs. Please read my many articles on the many drug biases of the New York Times for more on the seemingly willful ignorance of which I am talking about here. You'd think that the Times global healthcare reporter would be required to know about drugs -- but apparently she is just required to hate them, with all her heart, and all her soul, and all her mind. Even our ethicists cannot be bothered to learn about drug benefits: instead, they hold the politically correct superstition that drugs can have no positive uses whatsoever -- and so they debate the propriety of assisted suicide for the depressed without debating the propriety of the drug prohibition which alone makes that suicide necessary -- assuming, of course, that suicide is ever necessary for the depressed.

WARNING: INDIGNANT VERBIAGE AHEAD

And what about this defeatist ideology that drugs cannot be "beat"? Szasz slashed through that self-serving line when he showed how Malcolm X got his followers off of heroin -- not by turning them over to doctors, but by giving them a reason to stop using: namely, to get "The Man" off their back. One needs a good reason to get off a drug, and Malcolm X gave them what they considered to be a good reason ⁸.

But if Americans want to take the anti-democratic line that education cannot help -- not even the $51 billion worth of education that we could spend if we could gave up arresting Americans and busting in their doors for using substances of which racist politicians disapprove -- then the very least they could do is to allow other countries -- and individual states -- to set their own policies about drugs. In other words, they could cease practicing Drug War colonialism. In that case, I would leave the US in a flash. I would travel to a country where Mother Nature's godsends were as freely available to me as they were to Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in the 18th century. Unfortunately, the Drug War is America's number-one ideological export. It has gained favor in Communist and Capitalist countries alike: in Capitalist countries because it appeals to our puritanical, scientistic and economic prejudices, and in Communist countries, because it appeals to the "crackdown mentality" of tyrants who wish to keep their citizens in line. Of course, this latter desire has been a guiding force of American drug policy since we first outlawed opium to punish the hated Chinese, and this tyrannical motive is now unabashedly championed by our regime in Washington, D.C., where we now murder at will to stop the use of the plant that is considered divine by the Peruvian Inca. And, please, folks at home, don't tell me about your cousin who couldn't handle cocaine, or a few wasters at the local bar: I'll just respond by telling you of the hundreds of millions who have been left to a life of totally unnecessary despair thanks to drug prohibition -- and the hundreds of thousands who have been killed in Mexico alone in the 21st century thanks to your crackdown on a damn leaf.

In a word: let's educate and regulate instead of arresting and murdering. (Psst: the former duo may be just a trifle more in line with democratic values, don't ya think?)

A discerning reader may have noticed by now that I am just the least bit irritated this afternoon, just the least bit piqued. Good catch, by the way. Ah, but why am I so? Answer: it is for the same reason that the would-be coffee drinkers would be irritated in the example given above: they would know full well that there exists a substance that could improve the quality of their lives and that their government was not allowing them to use it based on the blatant gaslighting lie that there is no good reason for them doing so. The coffee drinkers no better, of course, not based on science, but based on common flipping sense. The good reason for them "doing" coffee is just too damn obvious for our brainwashed experts to even notice it. Just so with myself with respect to the ever-growing list of outlawed substances whose use can inspire and elate.

Did I mention that I was just a trifle "ticked" this afternoon?

Speaking of which, do you know what really bothers me? When I launched my website with the domain of abolishthedea.com, I thought I would immediately attract like-minded thinkers. I know, it was naive of me to a fault. But I figured that an effort to get rid of the DEA was long overdue. I figured that everybody was tired of an organization responsible for arresting so many minorities as to turn the country into a penal colony. Come to find out that I am the only one online who is calling for the abolition of the DEA -- at least among the drug pundits whom I've been reading over the last eight years -- either because the other pundits are justifiably afraid of saying "abolish the DEA" or because they actually believe that this monstrously bloated destroyer of American freedoms, this un-American paramilitary force devoted to establishing Christian Science Sharia, is serving a noble purpose. Let's be nice and charge these pundits with the lesser of these two offenses, videlicet option 1, an understandable fear for their own financial and reputational well-being. [sigh] But this is another topic which could only be sufficiently explicated for the brainwashed with the help of an entire book.

Did I mention that I was-- Oh, sorry, I already asked you that question!

To tell the truth, I had planned something else for today. I was actually going to provide you with a philosophically annotated copy of the testimony that William James gave to the Massachusetts State House regarding medical licensing in 1898. It would have done your heart good to read it! Unfortunately, I was just a mite too frazzled to write it today. Which is significant in itself, by the way, because this is what Americans don't get: that drug prohibition effects my life where the wheels hit the road -- or rather where they fail to do so thanks to the outlawing of all inspirational substances. It is not enough to say that, "Oh, he was not in the mood to do such-and-such today." For the truth is that the government would not ALLOW him to do such-and-such today insofar as they outlawed all substances that inspire and elate, many of which, being natural substances, were formerly his birthright as a denizen of Planet Earth. This is the downside of drug prohibition that no one mentions, the most intimate downside of drug prohibition imaginable. It shows how drug prohibition is a meta-crime. It comes in between myself and my most cherished goals in life. In The Hollow Men, TS Eliot writes that: "Between the idea and the reality falls the shadow.⁹" We can say today, in the age of drug prohibition, that: "Between the idea and the reality falls drug prohibition."

But "omittance is no quittance," as the Bard says. Who knows? I may confront you with that annotated business about William James as early as tomorrow. Fair enough?

For now, however, I leave you to contemplate both the counterfactual scenario above viz. the criminalization of coffee... and the following responses that I have vouchsafed the confused today on Substack. I would have vouchsafed more than two of the confused with even more responses were it not for the limitations imposed on my brain chemistry by an overreaching government -- a regime that actually believes -- get this! -- that it owns my very digestive system! Hail, hail, Freedonia, Land of the brave and free!

FROM: Wilding

NOTE:

Why do Americans hate each other?

COMMENT:

Because of drug prohibition. As Thomas Szasz wrote: “Lacking the usual grounds on which people congregate as a nation, we [Americans] habitually fall back on the most primitive yet most enduring basis for group cohesion, namely, scapegoating.”

FROM: SpaceJunk

NOTE:

In response to the quote from Thomas Szasz, “Freedom is more important than health.” ...SpaceJunkFireballs writes: 'Oh yeah? give yourself a chronic disease then talk about freedom.'

COMMENT:

I have a chronic disease. It is my lack of freedom (aka drug prohibition) that stops me from dealing with it. Because I am not free, I have to see a doctor 1/3rd my age every three months of my life for a refill on a “med” that is far harder to kick than heroin. I would rather live a shorter life and be free than live to 105 and be an eternal child, seen to by the government.

Interestingly enough, SpaceJunkFireballs gave my response a "heart" and apologized for his or her "nonchalance." That made my head spin. I was like, "Um... okay." But rest assured: the supplemental feedback was much appreciated. Incidentally, the idea of "safety first" is only maintained by a hypochondriac. If we fully believed in "safety first," i.e. if we were to place safety above every other consideration in life, we would no longer climb mountains or race cars, etc. For my part, I empathize with the opium-loving Avicenna, who has been quoted to the effect that he preferred a short and wide life to a long and narrow one. One thinks in this connection of Geza Csath's politically incorrect advocacy of the opium experience:

However, those who can grow to be men, who have taken things into account as befits their pride, should seize fourteen hours of it a day, every day. Those fourteen hours are equivalent to eight thousand years in the lives of four hundred generations. ¹⁰

In other words, there is more than one way to count time and hence longevity from an experiential point of view. We may live more in a short life than we would in a long one. The choice of lives must be our own based on what we consider to be important in life; it is a decision that only a tyrant government would dare to make for us based on an abstract and hypocritical definition of the word "safe."

Notes for essay entitled Grounds for Concern: What if America outlawed coffee?:

1: Shafley, Josh. 2024. “5 Times in History When Coffee Was Banned.” National Coffee Blog. July 19, 2024. https://nationalcoffeeblog.org/coffee-history/times-in-history-when-coffee-was-banned/. (up)
2: Arthur Crowley. “Full Text of ‘the Diary of a Drug Fiend.’” 1922. Archive.org. 2017. https://archive.org/stream/b29826433/b29826433_djvu.txt. (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: PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (up)
5: PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (up)
6: PiHKAL: A Chemical Love Story UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics (up)
7: “Schultes, Hofmann Plants of the Gods ( Healing Arts, 2001) : Alberto Hoffman : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2015. Internet Archive. 2015. https://archive.org/details/SchultesHofmannPlantsOfTheGodsHealingArts2001. (up)
8: “Ceremonial Chemistry – Syracuse University Press.” 1974. Syr.edu. 2026. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1114/ceremonial-chemistry/. (up)
9: Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University. 2021. “The Meaning of ‘Between the Idea and the Reality Falls the Shadow.’” Interesting Literature. June 23, 2021. https://interestingliterature.com/2021/06/ts-eliot-between-idea-reality-falls-shadow-meaning-anal (up)
10: “Artificial Paradises - Mike Jay.” 1999. Mike Jay. May 18, 2025. https://mikejay.net/books/artificial-paradises/. (up)

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The DEA is a Schedule I agency. It has no known positive uses.

Prohibitionists have blood on their hands. People do not naturally die in the tens of thousands from opioid use, notwithstanding the lies of 19th-century missionaries in China. It takes bad drug policy to accomplish that.

It is far better to "treat the symptoms" than to irreversibly modify brain chemistry in one particular way based on the theories of a financially-motivated biochemical determinist working for a pharmaceutical company.

There is more hope in dope than there is in the psychiatric pill mill.

The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.

SSRIs are created based on the materialist notion that cures should be found under a microscope. That's why science is so slow in acknowledging the benefit of plant medicines. Anyone who chooses SSRIs over drugs like San Pedro cactus is simply uninformed.

The Drug War is based on a huge number of misconceptions and prejudices. Obviously it's about power and racism too. It's all of the above. But every time I don't mention one specifically, someone makes out that I'm a moron. Gotta love Twitter.

The outlawing of opium eventually resulted in an "opioid crisis"? The message is clear: people want self-transcendence. If we don't let them find it safely, they will find it dangerously.

America takes away the citizen's right to manage their own depression by making opium and cocaine illegal. Then psychiatrists treat the resulting epidemic of depression and anxiety by damaging the patient's brain with shock therapy.

Psychiatrists prescribe drugs that muck about with a patient's biochemical baseline, making them chemically dependent and turning them into patients for life.

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Grounds for Concern

What if America outlawed coffee?

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend