Ecstasy helps humans love each other. Time to use it therapeutically on hot heads.
It's hard to end mass shootings in America, because we're not allowed to come up with any solution that involves guns in any way. So we're hobbled from the start. It's like we're being asked to solve one of those crazy logic problems that says: "Using two match sticks, make 10 triangles... but you're not allowed to touch the match sticks at any time."
But I do have one idea of how to end -- or at least to seriously decrease -- mass shootings without (heaven forbid) inconveniencing gun owners in any way, shape or form. Here's the solution:
Force all haters to undergo talk therapy while under the influence of MDMA , aka Ecstasy. That's it. Problem solved (or at least seriously dented).
Why? Because the Drug Ecstasy has a long history of promoting pro-social feelings. The drug single-handedly brought about peace, love and understanding in Britain in the 1990s, when E-using folks of every ethnic group happily joined together on the dance floor to celebrate life without regard for racial, social or ethnic distinctions, a unity never witnessed before in the British Isles. That dance floor utopia would still be going on today except that Drug Warriors blamed one single solitary death on E, and used that as an excuse to crack down on the drug. The result: dancers switched from Ecstasy to anger-facilitating drugs such as alcohol and crack cocaine , and concert producers had to hire special forces troops to police their venues.
Yet another "victory" for the Drug War.
Of course, the Drug Warriors failed to notice that the E-related death which inspired their crackdown was caused by the Drug War itself. Why? Because the Drug War suppresses research on substances like Ecstasy, making it impossible to establish guidelines for safe use. Nor did they stop to think that Ecstasy was, in fact, FANTASTICALLY SAFE compared to alcohol, which racked up 5,460 deaths in Great Britain in 2020 alone* -- deaths over which the purblind British Drug Warrior never lost a moment of sleep, let alone launched a nationwide campaign to demonize alcohol.
So the good news is that Ecstasy could drastically decrease mass shootings if we were to use it therapeutically to treat angry people.
The bad news is that America is unlikely to hear this penny drop for many decades to come. Why not? Because guns are not the only thing that Americans are hung up about. They're hung up about the politically created scapegoat called "drugs" as well, unable to wrap their minds around the fact that the substances we dogmatically demonize today could actually be used for the good of a hate-filled humanity, if not to save us from nuclear annihilation, then at least to render mass shootings fewer and farther between.
Until America ends its illogical policy of substance demonization, Americans will remain as confused about mass shootings "as the Egyptians in their fog" as Shakespeare says, vainly trying to think of solutions to this problem that do not involve either guns OR drugs... a self-created dilemma that makes the above-mentioned matchstick problem sound solvable by comparison.
Do you know why I stopped you? That's right, because the Drug War gives me carte blanche to be a noxious busybody. That, and I wanted to give you a few more links showing how drugs can help us stop mass shootings, as soon as we drop the drug-war ideology of substance demonization, that is.
May 25, 2022
By the way, MDMA is already being fast-tracked by the FDA as a treatment for PTSD and depression. Of course, "fast-tracked" is a relative term. Brian is 64 years old, and he's been waiting his whole life for the FDA to approve medicines that grow at his very feet -- so there is nothing "fast" at all about the FDA approval process. But for those who doubt the ability of MDMA (aka Ecstasy) to change hearts, check out -- or better yet watch the documentary "United Nation" by concert promoter Terry Stone, in which we hear the following "rave reviews" about the peace and harmony that MDMA brought to the British dance floor in the 1990s (before Drug Warriors criminalized the drug and alcohol-fueled violence ensued).
"It was the first time that black-and-white people had integrated on a level... and everybody was one." -- DJ Ray Keith.
"It was black and white, Asian, Chinese, all up in one building," -- MC GQ.
"Everyone's loving each other, man, they're not hating." - DJ Mampi Swift.
The DEA outlawed MDMA /Ecstasy in 1985, against the advice of its own legal counsel. The result: American soldiers have gone without a godsend medicine for PTSD for almost 40 years now.
Imagine if there were drugs for which dependency was a feature, not a bug. People would stop peddling that junk, right? Wrong. Just ask your psychiatrist.
Imagine if we held sports to the same safety standard as drugs. There would be no sports at all. And yet even free climbing is legal. Why? Because with sports, we recognize the benefits and not just the downsides.
"Now, now, Sherlock, that coca preparation is not helping you a jot. Why can't you get 'high on sunshine,' like good old Watson here?" To which Sherlock replies: "But my good fellow, then I would no longer BE Sherlock Holmes."
Psychedelics and entheogens should be freely available to all dementia patients. These medicines can increase neuronal plasticity and even grow new neurons. Besides, they can inspire and elate -- or do we puritans feel that our loved ones have no right to peace of mind?
Drug testing should flag impairment only. Any other use is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment.
The DEA is a Schedule I agency. It has no known positive uses.
If opium and cocaine were legal again in America, the healthcare industry would suddenly have to undergo extensive downsizing, as Americans were once again put in charge of their own health.
It's interesting that Jamaicans call the police 'Babylon,' given that Babylon denotes a society seeking materialist pleasures. Drug use is about transcending the material world and seeking spiritual states: states that the materialist derides as meaningless.
Daily opium use is no more outrageous than daily antidepressant use. In fact, it's less outrageous. It's a time-honored practice and can be stopped with a little effort and ingenuity, whereas it is almost impossible to get off some antidepressants because they alter brain chemistry.
Drug warriors have taught us that honesty about drugs encourages drug use. Nonsense! That's just their way of suppressing free speech about drugs. Americans are not babies, they can handle the truth -- or if they cannot, they need education, not prohibition.