Hey, you! You should have the right to take care of your own health.
Yes, YOU!
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 29, 2026
As a newcomer to Substack, I have been attempting to seek out Substack leaders in the realm of healthcare freedom and the field of so-called mental health. I am told that this is how one makes friends and grows one's Substack audience in one's chosen niche, by finding such movers-and-shakers and commenting usefully on their own posts and notes. "Fine," I think to myself, "let's get to work, then, shall we? We've got this." And yet in trying to stick to this sensical protocol, I am discovering a big problem. It seems that my outlook on these topics is so far ahead of the curve that any comments I might make on the work of my mainstream contemporaries are sure to "come off" as sounding like a reproach. This is because I have yet to find one psychiatrist or psychologist who sees -- or is willing to admit to seeing -- any connection between drug prohibition and the disempowerment of the depressed in the age of the psychiatric pill mill. Imagine that: no one can see why folks like you and I should have the right to take care of our own health as we see fit. Alas, Drug Warriors understood all too well that propaganda works, especially when the conglomerate media refuses to publish any stories about the wise, positive and beneficial use of demonized substances.
To be sure, the mental health field seems to have made some common-sense progress over the years. Many of the community leaders are now taking Szaszian criticisms on board and distancing themselves -- if not divorcing themselves entirely -- from the biochemical view of human beings as an automaton susceptible to one-size-fits-all pharmaceutical cures for problems that are inherent in the human condition. And yet these leaders -- who are often far less than half our age, by the way -- seem to have only read Szasz's views on psychiatry without studying his views on drugs, which, from a patient's point of view at least, are intimately connected. Szasz pointed out after all that drug prohibition is the outlawing of our right to heal, insofar as self-medication has always been the norm and the right of human beings by dint of their merely having been born on planet earth. Once we unlearn the self-interested lie of the medical community that self-medication is a sin, then the world's our oyster for strategic therapeutic interventions of our own, assuming only that we commit to using Mother Nature's medicines as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity.
In light of these considerations, what the depressed really need is the right to take care of their own health, and yet I find almost no one who supports this view, either inside or outside the medical field.
How do I comment on a thread about "ADHD" when everyone (like Peter Simons of Mad in America) is writing about that condition while pretending that drug prohibition does not exist and pretends instead that they are arguing from a natural baseline, as if they were writing in a free country, not one in which the government decides what plant medicines one can study and use for any given set of behavioral symptoms?
As I search Substack on the topic of health and philosophy, I find endless comments (aka "notes") that make it clear that the commentator is "reckoning without drug prohibition," that they are considering human emotions from the point of view that the only possible therapeutic substances in the world are those created by pharmaceutical companies. It is increasingly trendy to diss such drugs, but there is no corresponding readiness to evaluate the healing power of Mother Nature's psychoactive substances.
How do we comment on a thread wherein learn-ed credentialed professionals are debating the reasons for various conditions whose origin, prevalence and significance would look entirely different in a free world, one in which we did not outlaw all substances that can inspire and elate?
Sometimes just the username itself tells me that it would be rude to respond to a note. How do you tell "The Bipolar Bro" that his namesake "illness" would not even be a "thing" were we Americans merely free to use the plants and fungi of Mother Nature for human benefit?
I'd love to rush out there and say nice things about people who are talking sense on Substack -- but in my niche, I find that almost no one is talking sense. Everybody is "reckoning without drug prohibition," pretending that drug prohibition is a natural baseline from which to discuss the illnesses imagined by doctors in the DSM.
My only hope is that I will speak a home truth someday that will resonate with someone who is willing to change.
Having thus vented my frustrations as a newcomer to Substack, I now present my latest attempts to comment on health-related Substack posts while yet keeping a civil tongue in my head. The fact that you yourself (of all people!) have read thus far encourages me to think that I may have not entirely failed at this task.
COMMENT: With respect, the Drug War is a make-work project for law enforcement. Thanks to drug prohibition, I have to see a doctor 1/3 my age every three months of my life to get a refill on an expensive, underperforming, and dependence-causing "med" that is harder to kick than heroin. It was a crime against humanity to outlaw Mother Nature in the first place.
COMMENT: I’d thank you if I knew your name. You don’t seem to be AI, since AI responses are based on what most people think, and such common sense is rare these days. Drug prohibition has turned me into a ward of the healthcare state by “saving me” from drugs like opium and coca and shunting me off instead onto an expensive, underperforming and dependence-causing “med” that is harder to kick than heroin. I am pushing back against drug prohibition at my new Substack, in defense of my right to heal.
COMMENT THREE
SUBSTACK: Datura
AUTHOR: DATURA
POST: Various posts on the subject of "forced institutionalization" 3
COMMENT: Hi, Datura. I have been turned into a ward of the healthcare state by drug prohibition which has denied me the right to use the plant medicines that grow at my feet. Instead, I have been shunted off for 30 long years onto an expensive and underperforming "med" that is harder to kick than heroin. I have to see a doctor 1/3 my age every three months of my life to get a refill on this mind-scrambling drug. I believe that the outlawing of Mother Nature's medicines was a crime against humanity. I need hardly add that I am ignored by the mainstream, told to shut up and take my meds. If this story resonates, I invite you to visit my new Substack on the subject at substack.com/@brianquass
COMMENT FOUR
SUBSTACK: Sayer Ji's Substack
AUTHOR: Sayer Ji
POST: When an Ancient Spice Puts Modern Psychiatry to Shame 4
COMMENT: There are endless drugs that can work miracles for unique people. I am fighting for the end of drug prohibition as the outlawing of my right to heal. I am in the minority, however. Even Mad In America will not publish my views. Everyone seems to think that science has all the answers and that I should just shut up and take my meds. Actually, Mad in America has a Christian Science slant on these topics: they don't think that I should use any substances at all, tho' I suppose they would sign off on the odd beer and the daily use of coffee. But they would never condone my use of the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions. That would be going too far, that would be going native, I guess. So firmly are they convinced of the need for abstention from drugs that they see no connection between assisted suicide for the depressed and the fact that we have outlawed all drugs that could make the suicidal wish to live.
And so when I tipped them off about Claire Brosseau's attempts to have the state kill herself, they saw no need to rush to press. They don't consider that I have any standing on such topics, since I'm just a depressed "patient," despite my 45 years of use of an expensive and underperforming "med" that is harder to kick than heroin. What do I know? Until I get honorifics beside my name or until I write a bestseller, my job is to listen to my betters tell me about matters of mind and mood. Indeed, Robert told me they would not publish my story just minutes before I had to leave my house to travel 45 miles to see a doctor 1/3rd my age to request a refill on an expensive and underperforming "med" that is harder to kick than heroin. It seems like that day was specifically designed to put me in my place as a mere "patient."
There are plenty of sites out there that want to help the med-dependent, very few that want to listen to them -- unless they are speaking the party line according to which scientists and journalists are the experts on what people like you and I should or should not feel.
Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.
There are plenty of "prima facie" reasons for believing that we could eliminate most problems with drug and alcohol withdrawal by chemically aided sleep cures combined with using "drugs" to fight "drugs." But drug warriors don't want a fix, they WANT drug use to be a problem.
Being less than a month away from an election that, in my view, could end American democracy, I don't like to credit Musk for much. But I absolutely love it every time he does or says something that pushes back against the drug-war narrative.
A law proposed in Colorado in February 2024 would have criminalized positive talk about drugs online. What? The world is on the brink of nuclear war because of hate-driven politics, and I can be arrested for singing the praises of empathogens?
Self-medication is not a dirty word. It has always been a fundamental right to take care of one's own health -- until the medical establishment demonized the practice for obvious financial reasons.
Materialists are always trying to outdo each other in describing the insignificance of humankind. Crick at least said we were "a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." Musk downsizes us further to one single microbe. He wins!
SWAT raids have increased by 15,000 percent from the late 1970s to today, resulting in 50,000 to 80,000 SWAT raids annually in the US alone. --War On Us
Almost all of today's magazine articles about human psychology should come with the following disclaimer:
"This article was written from the standpoint of Drug War ideology, which holds that outlawed substances can have no beneficial uses whatsoever."
The International Observer says the "core issues" causing Mexican drug violence are: "corruption, inequality, and the demand for narcotics in the U.S." Wrong, wrong, wrong. The core issue is DRUG PROHIBITION.
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
As a newcomer to Substack, I have been attempting to seek out Substack leaders in the realm of healthcare freedom and the field of so-called mental health. I am told that this is how one makes friends and grows one's Substack audience in one's chosen niche, by finding such movers-and-shakers and commenting usefully on their own posts and notes. "Fine," I think to myself, "let's get to work, then, shall we? We've got this." And yet in trying to stick to this sensical protocol, I am discovering a big problem. It seems that my outlook on these topics is so far ahead of the curve that any comments I might make on the work of my mainstream contemporaries are sure to "come off" as sounding like a reproach. This is because I have yet to find one psychiatrist or psychologist who sees -- or is willing to admit to seeing -- any connection between drug prohibition and the disempowerment of the depressed in the age of the psychiatric pill mill. Imagine that: no one can see why folks like you and I should have the right to take care of our own health as we see fit. Alas, Drug Warriors understood all too well that propaganda works, especially when the conglomerate media refuses to publish any stories about the wise, positive and beneficial use of demonized substances.
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