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How Cocaine could have helped me

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 16, 2020



Ever since I was young, I have not understood the Drug War mentality. Why, for instance, could I not use cocaine in my late teens and early 20s when the symptoms that it produced were exactly what I was looking for at the time: namely, a release from morbid self-consciousness, thanks to which I could have capitalized on my innate talents for DJing - instead of self-destructing vocally before the microphone through self-doubt.

2025 Update

Freud himself praised cocaine to the skies, claiming that it relieved his depression without depriving him of energy needed for work. Indeed, he expected cocaine to 'win its place in therapeutics side by side morphine 1 and superior to it.' Nor did the drug hopelessly addict him. To the contrary, he used cocaine while it was useful to his work and quit it without fanfare (or the release of a self-pitying autobiography) when the drug no longer served his purposes in life.

Yet whenever I talked like this to psychiatrists, I was met with blank stares, and eventually warned that I sounded like an 'addictive personality.' An 'addictive personality'! How ironic, considering that these same psychiatrists then went on to addict me for an entire lifetime to Big Pharma pills, which I must take every day of my life, to this very day, and which I couldn't quit if I wanted to, not because I lack willpower but because my own shrink has told me not to bother, since the Effexor 2 I'm on has a recidivism rate equal to that of heroin 3.

An 'addictive personality,' indeed. Well, if you're just going to addict me anyway, why can't I be addicted to my poison of choice? Why can't I use cocaine instead of SSRIs and SNRIs?

The psychiatrist's absurd answer to that question illustrates all that is wrong with psychiatry today.

The psychiatrist will claim that cocaine 'only targets the symptoms,' you see, while Big Pharma has created pills that go right to the chemical imbalances that create depression in the first place.

This is wrong on a number of levels.



Notice that if the drug-warrior psychiatrist had had his or her way, Freud would never have been allowed to succeed in life. Cocaine, after all, would have been a big no-no. Instead, like myself, Freud would have been scheduled for weekly sessions where talk therapy would try to get 'to the bottom' of his depression, the supposed 'real' psychological cause - or where drugs would have been prescribed that would have supposedly targeted the 'real' chemical cause. Result: we would have never heard of Freud today, but you can be sure that he would have been dutifully 'taking his meds' until the last day of his life.

In fact, if the drug-warrior psychiatrist had gotten ahold of Robin Williams in time, the same thing would have happened to him: the world would have missed out on a comic legend, because Williams' coke use would have been considered a disease that needed to be cured so that Robin's 'real' problems could be addressed, by talk and/or Big Pharma chemicals.

Unfortunately, the drug-warrior psychiatrists did get ahold of me, however. That's why you've never heard of me as a DJ. The psychiatrists gave my self-doubt and depression free rein. My life was put on hold as I was told to wait for the 'real' cures to 'kick in.'

Well, it's been over four decades now, and I'm still waiting.

But on the upside, psychiatry's meds have made life just bearable. Perhaps that's the only benefit of modern SSRIs: they help one survive without achieving self-actualization in life. In fact, I am not a conspiracy theorist, but one could argue that the whole point of modern antidepressants 4 is to turn the user into a good consumer, one who will be tranquilized just to the point that he or she can stand the absurdity of modern life - without turning the user into a potentially disruptive force by actually helping them achieve self-actualization.

How can psychiatry hold a viewpoint that is so at odds with common sense? How can they so blatantly ignore the 'patient's' need for self-actualization in life? Why do they insist that patients survive on theories rather than on the real politik of drugs that actually do something to positively effect behavior? In short, why was cocaine a godsend for Sigmund Freud but a devilish drug as far as I'm concerned?

Why?

Because psychiatrists have been cowed by the Drug War into denying the obvious: that many illegal psychoactive substances do have therapeutic uses: not because they 'cause' happiness in and of themselves (as the philosophically-challenged drug-warrior would require them to do) but because they facilitate behavior that creates success. As noted above, this success then improves self-image, creating a positive feedback loop viz the patient's personality. Result: the patient can succeed in life, oftentimes without the long-term use of the substance that created this 'virtuous circle' in the first place.

Until psychiatry realizes these simple truths and ceases its pretentious search for 'real causes' (that search that has resulted in the addiction of 1 in 4 American women to the supposedly real 'targeted cures' mentioned above) they will continue sacrificing the vocational lives of ambitious Americans like myself on the altar of Drug War superstition.

POSTCRIPT: Yes, I was an addictive personality: I was addicted to self-actualization and I demanded it. I wasn't willing to accept the second-best life that psychiatry was proposing for me with its feeble theoretical half-measures.





Author's Follow-up: November 17, 2023






Freud is kind of like Coleridge. He bites the hand that feeds him. He determines eventually that cocaine is just too attractive to normal people -- but it's mere Christian Science piety to think that Freud would be known today for publishing over 320 books had he not employed vast quantities of cocaine . But the only message we're allowed to take from such stories is that cocaine is evil.5

Wrong. Wrong. Anti-scientifically wrong.

The message is: cocaine did some great things. How can we harness such power as safely as possible?

If we ask the right questions, then we can begin to get useful answers.

How can we harness such power as safely as possible?

I don't know, maybe, just maybe, we can start by being honest about drugs. Imagine that. Not that that's going to happen anytime soon in a society in which we sell dependence-causing Big Pharma meds like they were candy on prime-time television. Actually, it's government policy NOT to be honest about drugs. That's why we don't have a National Institute on Drug Use. We have instead a National Institute on Drug ABUSE -- since in the mind of the Drug Warrior, use and abuse are the same thing. That's why the Vancouver Police are arresting people for teaching safe use.

So, how CAN we harness such power as safely as possible?

Common sense reveals the answer once we take off the blinders of Drug War ideology:

Legalize all meds, and use drugs to fight drugs when problems arise. Psychiatrists would be replaced with pharmacologically savvy shaman: empathic individuals who have the authority to use ANY SUBSTANCE IN THE WORLD that might be helpful for their customers (not 'patients') to achieve their goals in life.

We have to finally recognize the obvious: that symptomatic fixes work, and that, in fact, it's actually wrong and nightmarish to seek a 'cure' for human sadness, lethargy, anxiety and angst.

What has the materialist search for that cure led to, after all, in America? It's led to nothing short of THE BIGGEST PHARMACOLOGICAL DYSTOPIA OF ALL TIME: namely, the fact that 1 in 4 American women are dependent upon Big Pharma meds for life.

We need to stop medicalizing mood and mind medicine. The doctor should tell us some basic info such as which doses are necessarily fatal -- but after that, they need to butt out and let people help people when it comes to mood and mind medicine. For doctors qua doctors have no special insight into the goals and desires of individuals and their views on self-transcendence and the meaning of life.



Author's Follow-up: March 17, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




I can go on and on with suggestions for the unconvinced, but really all the Drug Warrior needs to do to understand me is to start considering common-sense psychology. This is not as easy as it sounds because materialism 6 is the reigning ideology of our times and materialism is all about ignoring common sense when it comes to mind and mood. But if we can dare to be anti-scientific long enough to acknowledge common sense with respect to mind and mood medicine, then it becomes clear that drugs can be godsends. I can also guarantee the skeptic that all the problems that they no doubt envision from viewing drugs in this way can always be shown to be a result of some Drug Warrior belief or policy or law -- and not a result of the change of mindset that I recommend here.

That said, it must also be remembered that drug use is like every other risky activity on earth. Just like horseback riding and mountain climbing and drag-racing (not to mention alcohol drinking and gun firing), it will result in deaths. We have to accept that fact. We have to jettison the childish idea that one death is one death too many when it comes to drugs. We only hold such superstitious intolerance for 'drugs' because we fail to understand the endless ways that drugs can be beneficial to human beings. These benefits may not be obvious to scientists looking under a microscope, but they are clear even to a child. When a person is laughing and smiling after using laughing gas 7 , the child, at least, knows that this person is laughing and smiling, and that this is a good thing in and of itself. What is REALLY funny is the fact that the lab technician has to spend millions in research funds in order to arrive at the same conclusion based on microscopic evidence. That would even be hilarious, were it not for the fact that such glacially-proceeding stupidity has the effect of depriving billions of godsend medicines that they need right now -- not in a hundred years, when researchers have finally figured out what even a child knows today.

I should add something here that should be obvious to those who have read enough of my site to understand my basic philosophy of drugs, and that is the fact that many other drugs besides cocaine could have helped me back in the day. I mentioned cocaine because it is a drug that most people have heard of and whose effects had obvious benefits viz. my former psychological needs. But the above essay was written five years ago, before I was aware of the work of Alexander Shulgin and the wide variety of psychological effects that could be garnered from the strategic use of a wide variety of phenethylamines8. What I am trying to say here is that the point of the above essay was not to sing the praises of cocaine in particular, but rather to point out a common-sense psychological principle that is so thoroughly ignored today: namely, that ANY drug that took me out of my self-censorious 'mode of being' back then and inspired beneficial action on my part would have been a godsend.

I should add something that will be obvious for those familiar with basic drug effects: namely, that marijuana would not have been the right choice for me back then, at least vocationally speaking, insofar as the drug tends to enhance and exaggerate existing moods -- and for an insecure depressive, that's obviously not a good thing. That said, marijuana is a favorite of many DJs -- a fact that reminds us of something that Drug Warriors never understand: that psychological health is a balance of factors and not the result of any one input, be that drug use or genetics or upbringing, etc. etc. etc.

But imagine if I had lived in a free world back then, one in which we sought to do everything we could to help individuals achieve self-actualization in life rather than outlawing a vast psychoactive pharmacopoeia a priori under the absurd idea that drugs were bad in and of themselves. Imagine if I had been able to use substances like those that inspired the following user reports in the pharmacological studies of Alexander and Ann Shulgin9:

'Tremendous humor and laughter, which was truly delightful.'


'The feeling was one of great camaraderie, and it was very easy to talk to people.'


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


Could I have been destructively self-obsessed while in rapture? Come on, modern psychologists10, GET REAL!

And lest anyone believe that such common-sense drug use could have turned me into an egomaniac...

'A remarkable effect of this drug is the extreme
empathy felt for all small things; a stone, a flower, an insect.'


Now, sure, it would take some work to find the best drugs for my purposes back in the day, but one thing is clear: I would need the help of a what I call a pharmacologically savvy empath 11 to make that choice and NOT a psychiatrist, except insofar as the latter was willingly to renounce behaviorism for the nonce and acknowledge psychological common sense instead (psychology pre-JB Watson 12 13, that is). Such drug choices can be made without onsite help in the case of mature and educated adults.

Nothing could be clearer, once we jettison the purblind doctrine of behaviorism, that the business of choosing the right drugs for emotional and mental improvement is AN ART FORM, not a science.

Of course, we have all been brainwashed into envisioning a huge problem with addiction in embracing such common sense, but this is all based on Drug War presuppositions.

First, however, let's get one thing clear: dependence on a medicine is not the worst thing in the world. In fact, American society tacitly acknowledges this fact today given the psychiatric paradigm, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma 14 15 drugs for a lifetime! We must also remember that for most of us, a failure to achieve vocational goals is a WORSE fate than that of becoming dependent on a substance. Moreover, in a free world, wherein ALL psychoactive drugs could be used creatively to motivate change, the problem of unwanted substance dependence would be solved in most cases -- and for obvious psychological reasons! I could have gotten off of Valium in a month back in the '90s had I been free to use other drugs to get me through a few tough hours here and a few tough hours there. Instead it took me TEN LONG YEARS -- and all thanks to psychological issues that could have been easily overcome in a trice had Americans had the common sense (and compassion) to allow me to fight drugs with drugs16.

See? As I said above, the problems that one imagines with my common-sense ideas are always a result of drug-war assumptions and laws and policies. Indeed, this is how the Drug War continues to survive today: because Drug Warriors always blame drug reform for the problems caused by lingering drug laws, policies and mindsets. This is why I always say that we need to do more than change laws, we need to change our whole mindset about drugs and drug use-- based as it is on a host of lies and misapprehensions -- and the inhumane doctrines of behaviorism and reductionism17.












Notes:

1: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
2: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs DWP (up)
3: Hall, Wayne, and Megan Weier. 2016. “Lee Robins’ Studies of Heroin Use among US Vietnam Veterans.” Addiction 112 (1): 176–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13584. (up)
4: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
5: The Imperial Incas of Peru (from 'Travels in Peru') JJ, Tschudi (up)
6: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)
7: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
8: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
9: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
10: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)
11: pharmacologically-savvy empath: this is an empathic individual with an ethnobotanical knowledge of safe and beneficial drug use worldwide, someone who recognizes psychological common sense and can advise on protocols that meet user needs while avoiding unwanted dependency. (up)
12: JB Watson Britannica (up)
13: The purblind coldness of the Behaviorist doctrine is made clear in the following words of its founder, JB Watson, as quoted in the 2015 book "Paradox" by Margaret Cuonzo: "Concepts such as belief and desire are heritages of a timid savage past akin to concepts referring to magic." (Surely, Watson was proactively channeling Dr. Spock of the original Star Trek series.) (up)
14: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
15: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
16: Fighting Drugs with Drugs DWP (up)
17: After the Drug War DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

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Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.

In his book "Salvia Divinorum: The Sage of the Seers," Ross Heaven explains how "salvinorin A" is the strongest hallucinogen in the world and could treat Alzheimer's, AIDS, and various addictions. But America would prefer to demonize and outlaw the drug.

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.

The evidence has been in for well over a century now: people want to use psychoactive substances to transcend the rational mind. It's about time we stopped punishing them for that.

Thomas Szasz was not an extremist when it comes to drugs. The extremists are those who feel that psychiatrists know more about our mind and mood than we do.

Drugs are not the enemy, ignorance is -- the ignorance that the Drug War encourages by teaching us to fear drugs rather than to understand them.

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."

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.

The Partnership for a Drug Free America should be put on trial for having blatantly lied to Americans in the 1980s about drugs, while using our taxpayer money to do so!

The outlawing of coca and opium is a crime against humanity.


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