How Ketamine Advocates Reckon without the Drug War
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 3, 2025
An open letter to Phil Wolfson, M.D., and Mark Braunstein, D.O. of the Ketamine Research Foundation, authors of "Ketamine States: A Journey Through the Mind: An Excerpt about Dependency," published May 2, 2025 in the MAPS Bulletin: Volume XXXIV. 1
Dear Phil and Mark,
I have one overriding concern about your article in the MAPS Bulletin, and that is the fact that it fails to mention the biggest reason why Ketamine is dangerous in the first place, and that is because of drug prohibition. It is drug prohibition which outlaws all alternatives to Ketamine use, a fact which naturally leads both to overuse and to a difficulty in dealing with that overuse. By failing to point this out, the article gives a giant "Mulligan" to Drug Warriors for the problems that their policies have caused, meanwhile all-too-conveniently setting up Ketamine clinicians as the white knights who will ride to the rescue to clean up the mess for which this unmentioned prohibition is responsible. If one were cynical, one might suggest that Ketamine advocates had no interest in criticizing drug prohibition since that policy has given Ketamine a monopoly on creating the therapeutic dissociative states that might have been made available otherwise, by the phenethylamines created by chemist Alexander Shulgin, for instance. Indeed, an honest discussion of drug prohibition would beg the inconvenient question: why is Ketamine legal in America when many longer-lasting and non-addictive phenethylamines are not even being discussed, let alone researched and approved? Shulgin's book "Pihkal"2 is full of reports of drug use that harmlessly inspires and elates, with apparently little potential for addiction - and yet the only drug that we can legally use for providing human transcendence is of extremely short-duration and has been implicated in urinary problems for heavy users. Seen in this light, it is little wonder that Ketamine boosters do not mention drug prohibition.
I fear that the article's failure to reckon with drug prohibition has led to the drawing of at least one highly misleading conclusion, namely, your statement that "Ketamine dependence is difficult to overcome." While this statement is no doubt true in and of itself, it gives the impression that Ketamine withdrawal is difficult because of the nature of Ketamine. The fact is, however, that Ketamine withdrawal -- or withdrawal from almost any drug -- is made difficult only because we have outlawed all psychoactive substances whose strategic and as-needed use could get us through the emotional rough patches of the withdrawal process. What is recidivism, after all, but the product of a few tense hours (generally in the "wee" hours of the morning) when one is overcome by existential angst? One therefore obsesses on their supposed need to go back to using the problematic drug. And yet there are many outlawed substances that could easily get us over those emotional rough patches in the withdrawal process - and even in an enjoyable manner!
Take me, for instance. I am currently attempting to get off of the Big Pharma antidepressant known as Effexor so that, at age 66, after 40 years of "use," I can finally stop being an eternal patient and ward of the healthcare state. I originally tried to quit the drug rapidly - but discovered one day that I was feeling extreme angst. Never had I felt such despair. After an hour of dark brooding, I ended up reaching for a 75 mg. capsule of Effexor - while, of course, hating myself for doing so. Now, it is blazingly clear to me that the symptomatic use of laughing gas, or opium, or coca, or phenethylamines - could have EASILY gotten me over that "rough patch" in the withdrawal process. EASILY! I would not have needed to take that 75 mg. capsule. This is mere common sense for me! I feel therefore that I am being gaslighted when I am told that clinical therapy is the only hope for the patient who is seemingly "hooked" on Ketamine. I feel moreover that this is the same sort of gaslighting to which I am subjected when modern materialist doctors (like Dr. Robert Glatter in a June 2021 article in Forbes magazine3) try to tell me that laughing gas could not help the depressed: laughing gas, for God's sake. Even the Reader's Digest knows that laughter is the best medicine.
Consider the following first-person user report about nitrous oxide and similar anesthetics as written by a friend of William James in "The varieties of Religious Experience":
"Depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler... so sure is content, beyond duplexity, antithesis, or trouble, where I have triumphed in a solitude that God is not above.4"
And yet I am told (by inaction rather than words) that such experiences could not help prevent backsliding in my attempts to get off of Effexor? Clearly, I am being asked to ignore common sense!
This is why I say that it was a category error to place mind and mood medicine in the hands of materialists. Materialists are behaviorists5 when it comes to human psychology and thus are dogmatically obliged to ignore common sense. Otherwise, they would see that addiction is a "thing" in America only because we refuse to use godsend medicines wisely in a way specifically designed to end unwanted dependencies. We refuse, in short, to even think of "fighting drugs with drugs6." We would rather that the suicidal die than to do so, judging by our drug policies as opposed to our words on the subject. And why do we have such inverted values? Answer: Because we have a prior commitment to the Drug War ideology of substance demonization. Nothing comes ahead of our conviction that drugs are the root of all evil. This helps explain why the FDA actually encourages the use of brain-damaging shock therapy7 while yet refusing to approve of statistically safe drugs that inspire and elate, the sorts of drugs, in fact, that could make ECT unnecessary. Whatever their approval criteria may be, it clearly has nothing to do with common sense, or even common humanity, for that matter.
It will be objected, of course, that a doctor cannot legally prescribe these godsends to which I allude, or at least they cannot do so in any practical manner. But they can at least protest their inability to employ such holistically functioning substances on behalf of their patients, and yet almost all doctors fail to complain. And this is a problem, because by thus remaining silent, they help to normalize the drug prohibition thanks to which the psychological and spiritual health of their patient is being compromised.
A related concern of mine is that you are both medical doctors - albeit Mark is a D.O. and therefore presumably open to viewing Ketamine from an at-least partially holistic point of view, without forever reaching for a microscope to find out what Ketamine is "really" doing. And yet there is still the implication in reading the article that doctors are the experts on the whys and wherefores of Ketamine use - even though many of the subjects covered in the article are completely outside of the bailiwick of materialist medicine. What do MDs as such know about the human search for meaning and for self-transcendence? Whence comes their expertise in that field? Doctors are not experts on why I get up in the morning - nor on why I might think that it is pointless to do so. They do not know the degree of drug-related risk that makes sense for me given my internal mental states, which, for all they know, could be a nonstop jeering chorus of defeatist mental attitudes resulting from a dysfunctional upbringing. In the world of physical medicine, we recognize that tough conditions call for strong medicine. In the world of psychological medicine, however, we childishly pretend that no one should need strong medicine regardless of their internal emotional states, which, as far as the judgmental outsider is concerned, are "out of sight, out of mind."
A medical doctor can restate the issues involved in psychoactive drug use with the help of specialized terminology such as "ego dissolution" and "psycho-revelation," and they can replace the plebian "k-hole" with the lofty-sounding "transformational space"; but the true experts in the realm of psychoactive drug effects are actual human beings who have actually used the drugs in question and who can think and feel deeply about both drugs and drug users. The experts are empathic individuals with a wide-ranging knowledge of ethnopharmacology in the broadest sense of that word, people who make it their job to discover best-use practices, not just in the clinic but out in the real world where, as Carl Hart reminds us, most people actually use drugs wisely8. Unfortunately, this skill set to which I refer here is so undervalued by materialist society that we do not even have a word for the profession to which it would apply. I would suggest, however, that we might call such people "pharmacologically savvy empaths.9" (In this connection, it is worth remembering the views of William James with respect to the use of nitrous oxide. He believed that philosophers should use such substances in order to achieve philosophical insights - philosophers, mind, not medical doctors10!)
I should probably state explicitly here what I hope is obvious in any case: namely, that many doctors do, indeed, possess the attributes and qualifications to which I refer above. My point is merely that doctors qua doctors are not experts in matters of human self-transcendence, which is, after all, what most drug use is all about.
My third concern is your emphasis on the supposed need for using Ketamine in a clinical setting.
I cannot speak for everyone, but personally that suggestion is a nonstarter for me. The inhibiting effects of a clinical environment would more than offset any benefits that I might receive from using the drug in such a setting - especially when one factors in all the inherently irritating variables of travel and expense that are necessarily connected with on-site use. This is why I was so happy to have discovered two years ago that Dr. S. of Northern Virginia had taken the legal risks upon himself of making Ketamine available for use at home via prescription. In some ways, I consider such doctors to be heroes for going against the grain of America's lopsided focus on drug risks, as opposed to drug benefits. At the time, he was literally the only person in the world I could find who was making Ketamine available in this way, albeit at a daunting price point (which, however, is understandable given the legal position in which such good Samaritans find themselves). Having successfully used Ketamine myself at home for some months with the help of his remotely supplied assistance, I see no reason why a responsible user should use in a clinical environment - unless they have the time, money and desire to combine Ketamine use with psychotherapy, which I freely admit could have beneficial results.
The only problem I have with Ketamine-aided psychotherapy is that the very topic brings up the 6,000-pound gorilla in the room that your article ignores: namely, the fact that drug prohibition has outlawed all obvious alternatives to Ketamine use for such a purpose. As promising as Ketamine-aided therapy sounds to me, I am much more intrigued and optimistic about the benefits of using a wide variety of phenethylamines with psychotherapy - or even opium, as unthinkable as this will be for Americans who have been shielded for a lifetime from all reports of positive and safe drug use. The smoking of a weekly opium pipe while in psychotherapy - perhaps while one's own therapist is smoking their own pipe as well - has all sorts of prima facie arguments to recommend it. Indeed, therapy of this kind has already been tried, after a fashion, by 19th-century opium smokers. Consider this citation from the 19th-century short story entitled "What Was It?" by Fitz-James O'Brien:
"Those hours of opium happiness which the Doctor and I spent together in secret were regulated with a scientific accuracy. We did not blindly smoke the drug of paradise, and leave our dreams to chance. While smoking, we carefully steered our conversation through the brightest and calmest channels of thought.11"
"The drug of paradise"! And yet materialist doctors are going to tell me that such drugs have no benefits for improving mental states! What kinds of fools do they take us for? This is not merely gaslighting, but it is gaslighting with consequences, for such know-nothing "scientific" outlooks lend a veneer of "science" to the DEA's outrageous claim that there are no positive uses for the kinds of drugs that have inspired entire religions. The Hindu religion owes its existence to the use of a drug that inspired and elated, from which it follows that drug prohibition is nothing less than the outlawing of religion - nay, of the religious impulse itself12. In fact, if one looks at a lengthy and complete list of outlawed drugs, one finds that the substances have nothing in common whatsoever except for the fact that they all have the potential to inspire and elate. That is why Drug Warriors hate such drugs. They do not want to live in a world that is open to entirely new mindsets, especially mindsets that conduce to peace, love and understanding. This is why there was an establishment crackdown on the drug-fueled Summers of Love on both sides of the Atlantic: the LSD-aided lovefest of 1960s America and the Ecstasy-aided lovefest of 1990s Britain13.
Finally, I have a few comments about the subject line of the email through which the MAPS organization introduced me to your article. The subject line was not written by yourselves, of course, but an analysis of the blurb in question sheds some light on the sorts of problematic drug attitudes that have helped blind Americans to the downsides of drug prohibition in the first place -- attitudes that have blinded us to the very existence of the Drug War, let alone its pernicious ramifications for our everyday lives, such as the censorship (and self-censorship) of academia. This blindness runs deep indeed, to the extent that most authors today pretend that the Drug War does not even exist. Future generations might not even realize that a Drug War existed in America during our times thanks to the failure of modern historians to even mention the fact. The Drug War is not even mentioned in "A People's History of the United States" by progressive historian Howard Zinn14, nor in "The Birth of the Modern" by conservative Paul Johnson15.
Although this subject line might be excused as a way to catch the eyes of a notoriously fickle public, the phrase it employs for this purpose is loaded with philosophical presumption. The first and biggest problem with the subject line is that it implies that drugs can be voted up or down outside of all context. They are either good or bad. This is nothing less than a shorthand version of the Big Lie of drug prohibition: namely, that a drug that can be misused by white American young people when used at one dose, in one circumstance, and for one reason, must not be used by anybody, at any dose, in any circumstance, for any reason. It is thanks to this harebrained idea that hospice kids in India have to go without morphine, because Stateside politicians have so thoroughly demonized opiates (based on their supposed misuse by white American young people) that the drug has become bureaucratically and financially unavailable where it is needed most of all: namely, in hospice for the treatment of severe pain17. This is why, in a post-prohibition utopia, no one would think of judging a drug by itself, without regard for context. (I say "supposed" misuse because Drug Warriors have set up young American opiate users for failure: first by refusing to educate, then by refusing to regulate, and finally by refusing to legalize opiate alternatives, including a list of inspiring phenethylamines whose length, in the absence of drug prohibition, would be limited only by the human imagination.)
"Risky escape" is also a "loaded" term. It sounds like "victim blaming" to me. Drug use can be risky, of course, but why is that so? Not merely because there are irresponsible people in the world, as the Drug Warrior would tell us, but rather because drug prohibitionists have set users up to fail. Meanwhile, the propriety of "escape" can only be determined by knowing what the user was trying to escape from. If their sober reality consists of negative voices counseling despair then escape makes perfect sense. Drug warriors encourage us to reach breezy verdicts about the nature and propriety of complexly motivated human behavior like drug use, but we should not willingly dance to their tune by demonizing drug users with judgmental labels like "escape."
The fact is that, in a sane world, we would never even ask questions like "Is Ketamine a powerful ally or a risky escape?" We would never ask that question about ANY drug. Why not? Because it is exactly like asking, "Is H2O water, ice or steam?" The answer is simply, "Yes! But specifics count." And this is the fact that the Drug Warrior wants us to forget - because a consideration of specifics shows us that drug law outlaws all manner of wise use, this despite the fact that all drugs can be demonized if we wish to focus only on their downsides, as Drug Warriors have always done. Indeed, aspirin is said to cause 3,000 deaths a year in the UK alone18. The drug could easily be demonized by Madison Avenue had they any financial motivation to do so. The Drug Warrior's focus on drug downsides, however, is clearly all about "image" and not about objective reporting. Otherwise, we would hear and read endless stories about "the horrors" undergone by alcoholics and the fact that the drug kills 178,000 a year in America alone19. Instead, we see prime-time television ads for Jim Beam vodka that are targeted at young people, while a relative handful of drug-related deaths are plastered across the pages and screens of our billionaire-owned media as breaking news calling for an immediate legislative crackdown on drug use20.
But as GK Chesterton reminds us in "Eugenics and Other Evils,21" health is the outcome of a balance of factors and not of any one input. And so to ask if any particular drug is good or bad is absurd. A drug that is dangerous when used by one person at one dose for one reason may yet be a godsend when used by another person at another dose for another reason. To say otherwise is to endorse the superstitious mindset of the Drug Warrior, that a drug can be bad in and of itself without regard to context. It is this belief that leads to the indignant uttering of complaints like "Fentanyl kills!" and "Oxy kills!" and "Crack kills!" -- which, philosophically speaking, are identical to shouting "Fire bad!" All such statements urge us to fear and demonize dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity. It is no wonder then that we reap the whirlwind of gunfire and violence (and of silent, unnecessary suffering) when we attempt to enforce laws based on such a superstitious attitude about substances.
Finally, Drug War ideology has infantilized our whole notion of risk when it comes to drugs. There is a feeling among brainwashed Americans that one single prominent "drug-related" death is somehow, by itself, a knock-down argument in favor of outlawing the drug in question (or else of further cracking down on its already outlawed use). This is a bizarrely anti-scientific attitude. Had Matthew Perry died in a "drug-free car accident," no one would have concluded that we have a moral duty to outlaw cars. Had Matthew Perry fallen off of the North Face, no one would have been clamoring for the outlawing of mountain climbing. Had Matthew Perry even overdosed on plain old liquor, no one would be forecasting the imminent return of liquor prohibition. But somehow the Drug Warriors have convinced Americans that it is "one strike, you're out" when it comes to psychoactive drugs, that we need only find one way in which the use of a psychoactive substance can be problematic for a white American celebrity in order to justify the wholesale outlawing of that drug for anybody, at any dose, in any circumstance whatsoever. This statistically challenged ideology is particularly galling when one considers that substance prohibition is all about making drug use as dangerous as possible and thereby causing the very deaths whereby drug laws are supposed to be "justified" in the first place. It is a vicious circle that will not end until America realizes that prohibition is the problem, not drugs, that it represents a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some.
Do drug warriors realize that they are responsible for the deaths of young people on America's streets? Look in the mirror, folks: J'excuse! People were not dying en masse from opium overdoses when opiates were legal. It took prohibition to bring that about.
Even if the FDA approved MDMA today, it would only be available for folks specifically pronounced to have PTSD by materialist doctors, as if all other emotional issues are different problems and have to be studied separately. That's just ideological foot-dragging.
Many psychedelic fans are still drug warriors at heart. They just think that a nice big exception should be carved out for the drugs that they're suddenly finding useful. Wrong. Substance demonization is wrong, root and branch. It always causes more suffering than freedom.
There would be almost no recidivism for those trying to get off drugs if all drugs were legal. Then we could use a vast variety of drugs to get us through those few hours of late-night angst that are the bane of the recidivist.
We should no more arrest drug users than we arrest people for climbing sheer rock faces or for driving a car.
Drug Warriors will publicize all sorts of drug use -- but they will never publicize sane and positive drug use. Drug Warrior dogma holds that such use is impossible -- and, indeed, the drug war does all it can to turn that prejudice into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Your drug war has caused the disappearance of over 60,000 Mexicans over the last 20 years. It has turned inner cities into shooting galleries. It has turned America into a penal colony. It has destroyed the 4th amendment and put bureaucrats in charge of deciding if our religions are "sincere."
Opium is a godsend, as folks like Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus knew. The drug war has facilitated a nightmare by outlawing peaceable use at home and making safe use almost impossible.
If NIDA covered all drugs (not just politically ostracized drugs), they'd produce articles like this: "Aspirin continues to kill hundreds." "Penicillin misuse approaching crisis levels." "More bad news about Tylenol and liver damage." "Study revives cancer fears from caffeine."
I'd like to become a guinea pig for researchers to test the ability of psychoactive drugs to make aging as psychologically healthy as possible. If such drugs cannot completely ward off decrepitude, they can surely make it more palatable. The catch? Researchers have to be free.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, How Ketamine Advocates Reckon without the Drug War published on May 3, 2025 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, How Ketamine Advocates Reckon without the Drug War published on May 3, 2025 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
