How Ketamine Advocates Reckon without the Drug War
An open letter to Grace Cepe, managing editor of MAPS Bulletin
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 3, 2025
An open letter to Grace Cepe, managing editor of MAPS Bulletin, regarding the article entitled "Ketamine States: A Journey Through the Mind," by Phil Wolfson, M.D., and Mark Braunstein, D.O.1"
Dear Grace,
I have one overriding complaint about the article, and that is the fact that the authors completely fail 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 authors give a giant "Mulligan" to Drug Warriors for the problems that their policies have caused, meanwhile all-too-conveniently setting up the Ketamine Foundation's2 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 the Foundation's authors had no interest in criticizing drug prohibition since that policy has given Ketamine a monopoly on creating the therapeutic dissociative states that might have otherwise been available elsewhere. 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? The book "Pihkal" by chemist Alexander Shulgin3 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 use legally 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 the authors do not mention drug prohibition.
This dogmatic blindness to the negative effects of prohibition is not only disingenuous, but it leads the authors to draw false conclusions. Take the supposed difficulty of withdrawing from Ketamine. Withdrawing from most "drugs" is difficult ONLY BECAUSE WE HAVE OUTLAWED ALL EFFECTIVE ALTERNATIVES TO USE. 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? And yet there are many outlawed substances that could easily get one over those rough patches - and even in an enjoyable way!
Take me, for instance. I am attempting to get off of 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 have 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! Surely, then, when Wolfson and Braunstein tell us that clinical therapy is the only hope for the seemingly "hooked" Ketamine patient, they are gaslighting us - just as the materialist doctors do when they tell us that laughing gas could not help the depressed, a substance whose use has inspired visions of heaven itself4!
This is why I say that it was a category error to place mind and mood medicine in the hands of materialists. Materialists are behaviorists 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 drugs.5" 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. It will be objected that a doctor cannot legally prescribe these godsends to which I allude, and that is true. But they can at least protest their inability to employ such drugs on behalf of their patients, and yet almost all doctors fail to complain. 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.
Another concern is that the co-authors are both medical doctors - albeit one is a D.O. instead of an M.D. 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 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.
Sure, they can use impressive terminology like "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 wisely6. Unfortunately, the 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." (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 that substance in order to achieve philosophical insights - philosophers, mind, not medical doctors!)
I should probably state explicitly here what I hope is obvious in any case: namely, that many doctors certainly possess the attributes to which I refer, and Dr. Wolfson is no doubt one of them. 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 the authors' 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 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 clinical 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. At the time, he was literally the only person in the world I could find who was doing so. Having used Ketamine myself at home for some months with his remotely supplied assistance, I see no reason why a responsible user should use in a clinical environment - unless they have the time and 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 Wolfson and Braunstein ignore: 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.7"
"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 itself8. 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. The last thing they want is a world that is open to entirely new mindsets, especially ones 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 Britain9.
Finally, I have a few comments about the subject line with which you introduced the article on Ketamine:
"Ketamine: Powerful Ally—or Risky Escape?"
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 pain10. 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 out there, 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 make 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 uses, 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 alone11 . 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 alone12. Instead, we see prime-time television ads for Jim Beam vodka that are directed toward young people, while the relative handful of drug-related deaths are plastered across the page of our billionaire-owned media as breaking news calling for an immediate legislative crackdown on drug use13.
But as GK Chesterton reminds us in "Eugenics and Other Evils,14" 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. The fact is that statements like "Fentanyl kills" and "Oxy kills" make no more sense than saying "Fire bad!" All such statements urge us to fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humankind.
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 young person 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 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 the Drug War is not just wrong it parts: that it is wrong root and branch. It represents the inversion of common-sense values and the triumph of hate over compassion. It is, in fact, a childish and counterproductive view of the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some.
People say shrooms should not be used by those with a history of "mental illness." But that's one of the greatest potential benefits of shrooms! (They cured Stamets' teenage stuttering.) Some folks place safety first, but if I did that, I'd die long before using mother nature.
Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.
But that's the whole problem with Robert Whitaker's otherwise wonderful critique of Big Pharma. Like almost all non-fiction authors today, he reckons without the drug war, which gave Big Pharma a monopoly in the first place.
Every time I see a psychiatrist, I feel like I'm playing a game of make-believe. We're both pretending that hundreds of demonized medicines do not exist and could be of no use whatsoever.
Almost all addiction services assume that the goal should be to get off all drugs. That is not science, it is Christian Science.
There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.
LA Police Chief Daryl Gates said drug users should be summarily executed. William Bennett said drug dealers should be beheaded. These are the attitudes that the drug war inculcates. This racist and brutal ideology must be wiped out.
Trump supports the drug war and Big Pharma: the two forces that have turned me into a patient for life with dependence-causing antidepressants. Big Pharma makes the pills, and the drug war outlaws all viable alternatives.
Classic prohibitionist gaslighting, telling me that "drugs" is a neutral term. What planet are they living on?
Every video about science and psilocybin is funny. It shows nerds trying to catch up with common sense. But psychedelics work, whether the FDA thinks so or not. It's proven by what James Fadiman calls "citizen science," i.e. everyday experience.
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: An open letter to Grace Cepe, managing editor of MAPS Bulletin, 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: An open letter to Grace Cepe, managing editor of MAPS Bulletin, 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)
