How Ralph Metzner was bamboozled by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization

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How Ralph Metzner was bamboozled by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization

a review of essay number 15 in Hallucinogens: A Reader, edited by Charles Grob

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 29, 2025

The following remarks are part of a series of responses to the essays contained in the 2001 book "Hallucinogens: A Reader," edited by Charles Grob ¹. The comments below are in response to essay number 15: "Ritual Approaches to Working with Sacred Medicine Plants: an interview with Ralph Metzner, PhD"

red front cover of book called Hallucinogens: a read, a collection of essays by various drug pundits, edited by Charles Grob MD.

This is perhaps the most irritating essay of all in the entire "Hallucinogen" reader ². Ralph Metzner demonstrates clearly that he is completely bamboozled by Drug War propaganda. He agrees with the Drug Warrior notion that drugs can be judged up or down, outside of all context, especially by westerners who have never used them before and who have been blocked from reading positive usage reports for their entire lifetime! And so he tells us that the time-honored panacea called opium ³ can have no legitimate uses for anybody, anywhere, ever - except when administered for physical pain by a board-certified doctor. WHAT?! Ralph is thereby signing off on drug prohibition which brought incredible gunfire to inner cities and destroyed the rule of law in Latin America.

Author's follow-up for October 04, 2025

Meanwhile, he is ignoring common psychological sense - in a way that people can only do when they have no skin in the game. If Ralph was like myself and lived - totally unnecessarily - with depression on a day-by-day and hour-by-hour basis, he would not categorically rule out the use of a drug whose nightly smoking is far less dangerous than alcohol use and can give me pleasant and creativity-prodding dreams and a blessed respite from futile and masochistic introspection. But then Ralph would never think of asking a would-be opium user what they thought of its use, occasional or otherwise. No, Ralph knows best. He would prefer that I commit suicide ⁴ or have brain-damaging shock therapy ⁵ than to use an evil drug like opium, which he implies should be outlawed.

He fails to notice that by depriving me of almost all psychoactive drugs that truly work, he is thereby helping to shunt me off on Big Pharma pills that have turned me into a ward of the healthcare state ⁶. Ralph's view amounts to this: It is better for me to feel like crap and be on a regular antidepressant than for me to enjoy life with the help of opium. What outrageous presumption on Ralph's part! How can he "know" such things? Has he been inside my head and come away omniscient about what I "really" need?!

This is strange, because both Ralph and his interviewer, Timothy White, seem to agree that drug prohibition is politically motivated madness - and yet they implicitly "sign off" on prohibition by agreeing with its fundamental fallacy: namely, that we can and should judge a drug up or down, as good or bad, based on how we personally feel about that drug in our western world - a world in which all positive drug use is almost totally censored from media.

And so America operates according to this superstitious and imperialist algorithm when it comes to drugs:

A substance that might be misused by a white American young person when used at one dose for one reason must not be used by anybody at any dose for any reasons.

It is impossible to imagine a mindset more likely to bring about unnecessary suffering. My life is just one small example of that fact, the fact that I am rendered "ill at ease" in my own skin because folks like Metzner have decided to judge drugs outside of all context. Thanks, Ralph. The Drug War algorithm thus outlaws the individual's power to take care of their own unique health, which, as Chesterton ⁷ knew, is produced by a vast variety of inputs and their interactions, not by one single input such as a "drug."

As someone who has been "protected" by this fallacious and prejudiced mindset for an entire lifetime now - not simply from "drugs" but from all talk of their positive uses - I resent the way that the Metzners of the world cavalierly tell me in effect to "keep taking your meds," after they outlaw drugs like opium and cocaine that so clearly could lift me from my gloom and make me want to live - yes, even without addicting me - or at least by causing FAR FAR LESS DEPENDENCY than that caused by the Effexor ⁸ that I am on, which is almost impossible to "kick," especially in a world in which we have outlawed all drugs that could help make that possible.

Were we to treat SSRIs and SNRIs like we do any other drugs, their dependence-causing nature would be pilloried high and low in the media. Instead, we are told to "keep taking our meds."

Metzner reveals all that is wrong with his point of view about drugs in the following sentence:

"One of the problems in the United States is that psychedelics have been mistakenly lumped together with the addictive drugs -- heroin, cocaine, and crack."

No, Ralph, the problem is that we assume that there are drugs that are "beyond the pale" in the first place! The problem is that we believe we should judge drugs based on their worst imaginable use in a world in which we refuse to educate about drugs. What antiscientific hypocrisy! Even cyanide and Botox have positive uses in medicine. As Carl Hart reminds us, most people use drugs wisely ⁹, this despite the government's best efforts to see that drug use ends in disaster, by failing to educate, failing to regulate product and failure to provide drug choice. When we put politicians in charge of deciding in advance what medicines can and cannot work for specific unique individuals, we run roughshod over the right to heal.

THIS is the problem. It is not our failure to separate evil from good drugs - it is our decision that there are things called evil drugs in the first place. And what is the sinister and cynical way that prohibitionists go about doing this: by teaching Americans to fear for the safety of their poor little white kids in the suburbs - never realizing that by thus "protecting" them from themselves, we are outlawing the ability of millions to treat their own mental health - and thereby forcing them to seek help from materialist science and their dependence-causing medicines.

If the opium-loving Benjamin Franklin were living today, Metzner and company would insist that he belonged in a 12-step group!

As Paracelsus knew half a century ago, all drugs can be poisons at some dose: the details matter, and we can never, even in theory, decide about the utility of psychoactive drugs on an objective basis: this is because psychoactive drug use depends on the psychology of unique individuals. This is why prohibition of all kinds is folly. Because, as GK Chesterton reminded us, once you put the government in charge of public health, "there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between beer and tea.¹⁰" In such a world, drug laws are justified by well-heeled branding operations, political PR campaigns to make us "feel" a certain way about certain drugs -- whereas our individual feelings about drugs should never be given veto power over the contents of our pharmacopoeia based on some one-size-fits-all demonization campaign about the drug in question.

prohibition is the problem ¹¹ , not drugs.

This chapter of Grob's book reminds me of why it is so hard to make progress in ending substance prohibition. In their heart of hearts, most drug law reformers still believe in prohibition, despite the fact that the policy has destroyed inner cities and ended the rule of law in Latin America -- and destroyed democracy in America by arresting minority voters, thereby ensuring the election of fascists. These bamboozled proponents of Drug War Lite believe that there are, indeed, such things as good and bad drugs and that we can distinguish between the two without reference to the needs of unique individuals, whom we would rather treat as interchangeable widgets with the use of one-size-fits-all antidepressants ¹².

Author's Follow-up:

October 04, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

Let's talk specifics. Thirty-four percent of American soldiers in Vietnam used heroin, many on a daily basis, and yet only 5% of them required help to kick the habit when they returned to prohibitionist America ¹³. 5%. Meanwhile, my own psychiatrist tells me that the Big Pharma ¹⁴ ¹⁵ antidepressant that I am on called Effexor has a 95% recidivism rate ¹⁶ for long-term users. 95%!

I actually got off the drug after a year of effort -- during which I had to hire a compounding pharmacist since the manufacturers refuse to make low-dose versions of their "meds." I stayed the drug-free course for several months, until I noticed that I was NO LONGER ABLE TO THINK STRAIGHT!

It seems the Effexor had changed my brain chemistry such that I could no longer function in life without taking the drug!

Prohibition gave these companies a monopoly on mind and mood medicine, and they have used that monopoly to turn me into a ward of the healthcare state and an eternal customer. They have essentially taken control of my very soul. And yet simplistic brainwashed Americans want to demonize Mother Nature instead.

A jar labeled "Opium" with a warning about the dangers of outlawing the time-honored godsend.

A jar labeled "Opium" with a warning about the dangers of outlawing the time-honored godsend.

This is why I have no patience with those who demonize opium and coca. They are completely indifferent to the needs of the depressed -- nay, the rights of the depressed to take care of their own health -- something that was a "given" around the world until racist politicians began outlawing drugs in order to suppress and punish political opponents and foreigners.

Let me end with a couple of quotes about the drugs that Americans have been taught to hate since grade school. These are the drugs that Americans like Metzner like to call "hard" -- but the term "hard" is just our modern pejorative term for the kinds of medicines that doctors of yore used to call panaceas, as for instance opium was considered a panacea by Galen, Paracelsus and Avicenna.

ON OPIUM

"I only wish we could turn our drunkards into opium smokers. If the change would only save those wretched wives and their helpless children from ill-treatment by their husbands and fathers, we should have secured one valuable end." --William Brereton, The Truth about Opium / Being a Refutation of the Fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade ¹⁷

ON COCAINE

"My impression has been that the use of cocaine ¹⁸ over a long time can bring about lasting improvement..." --Sigmund Freud, On Cocaine ¹⁹ ²⁰

Cartoon depicting cocaine users before and after Drug War propaganda. The before picture shows suave and debonair Sigmund Freud, the after picture shows a loser madly snorting the drug.

As Carl Hart reports ²¹, most people use drugs wisely, despite the government's ongoing attempts to make drug use as dangerous as possible, by discouraging honest drug education, refusing to regulate product, and refusing to allow for drug choice.

Metzner and co. do not realize that drug prohibition is the killer, not drugs. To say things like "Fentanyl ²² kills!" is philosophically equivalent to saying things like "Fire bad!" as did our paleolithic ancestors. Both statements are attempts to make us fear dangerous substances rather than learning how to use them as safely as possible for the benefit of humanity.

This is why drug prohibition is a crime against humanity ²³. It outlaws the closest thing we have to panaceas and puts America's puritans in charge of deciding how and how much I can relax, how and how much I can think, and how and how much I can feel in this life! In so doing, they have also outlawed the freedom of religion ²⁴, since entire religions have been inspired by the use of substances that inspire and elate -- as Soma inspired the Vedic and hence the Hindu religion and coca inspired the religion of the Peruvian Indians. Indeed, one of the leading theories is that Soma contained opium in combination with ephedra and perhaps marijuana ²⁵ ²⁶. But prohibitionists run roughshod over our rights to think certain thoughts and to feel certain emotions. It is a meta injustice.

Prohibition has thus outlawed academic freedom -- as can be seen clearly in the FDA's attempts to treat laughing gas as a drug -- laughing gas ²⁷ , the substance that inspired William James' entire view of life and which he urged philosophers to use in order to investigate the nature of reality ²⁸ ²⁹.

And yet in the age of the Drug War, everybody feels free to chime in on which drugs they personally feel are "beyond the pale." GK Chesterton's observation is worth repeating here:

"It is said that the Government must safeguard the health of the community. And the moment that is said, there ceases to be the shadow of a difference between beer and tea. People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all. If he is to control the health of the community, he must necessarily control all the habits of all the citizens...." --GK Chesterton, Eugenics and Other Evils ³⁰

Again, NO drugs are beyond the pale. As Paracelsus told us, any substance can be deadly or beneficial -- it all depends on details like dosage.

This is why drug prohibition is maddeningly anti-scientific. It has us judge drugs based on the worst imaginable use. In the case of drugs like coca and opium, this means that we throw the depressed and anxious under the bus in our one-sided craze to keep white American young people from making mistakes -- the same white American young people whom we refuse to educate honestly about drugs.

And so America tyrannically runs around the world in the ultimate case of denial, trying to physically remove the drugs that we cannot handle because of our childish, racist, xenophobic, anti-indigenous and anti-scientific attitude about psychoactive medicines!

It is amazing to me that folks on the left still support a Drug War which is directly responsible for the election of Donald Trump himself. The Drug War hands otherwise close American elections to fascists by throwing hundreds of thousands of minorities in jail. And yet, even as one freedom disappears after another, prohibitionists continue to blame everything on the inanimate substances called drugs. It is inexcusable for a people that knows perfectly well that liquor prohibition first brought machine-gun fire to American streets and created the Mafia as we know it today. It is inexcusable for them to support a policy that ends academic freedom and denies me the right to take care of my own health -- shunting me off onto brain-damaging "meds" instead. It is inexcusable!

Please, please, wake up, drug pundits: PROHIBITION IS THE KILLER, NOT DRUGS!!!!!!!!!

Hallucinogens: a Reader, edited by Charles Grob

Cocaine

Opium

Notes:

1: Hallucinogens: a reader Grob, M.D., editor, Charles, Penguin Putnam, 2002 (up)
2: Hallucinogens: a reader Grob, M.D., editor, Charles, Penguin Putnam, 2002 (up)
3: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
4: Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use DWP (up)
5: Electroshock Therapy and the Drug War DWP (up)
6: How materialists turned me into a patient for life DWP (up)
7: Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument against the Scientifically Organized State Chesterton, GK (up)
8: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs DWP (up)
9: Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear Hart, Dr. Carl L. Hart, 2020 (up)
10: Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument against the Scientifically Organized State Chesterton, GK (up)
11: Drug Prohibition is the Problem, not Drugs: what the movers and shakers get wrong in the drug re-legalization debate DWP (up)
12: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
13: 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)
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: I have been unable to confirm this stat. But the WHO notes clinical recidivism rates for depression ranging from 50% to 85%. Do we count that as a recidivism rate of Effexor? Not when Biopharma is paying 75% of The FDA’s Drug Division Budget, as reported by John LaMattina in the Sep 22, 2022 edition of Forbes magazine. (up)
17: “The Truth about Opium, by William H. Brereton—a Project Gutenberg EBook.” 2024. Gutenberg.org. 2024. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44043/44043-h/44043-h.htm. (up)
18: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)
19: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
20: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
21: Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear Hart, Dr. Carl L. Hart, 2020 (up)
22: Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws Do DWP (up)
23: Drug Prohibition is a crime against humantiy DWP (up)
24: Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
25: “Blue Tide - Mike Jay.” 2025. Mike Jay. May 18, 2025. https://mikejay.net/books/blue-tide/. (up)
26: Blue Tide: The Search for Soma: a philosophical review of the book by Mike Jay DWP (up)
27: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
28: Why the FDA should not schedule Laughing Gas DWP (up)
29: The Varieties of Religious Experience James, William, Goodreads, New York, 1902 (up)
30: Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument against the Scientifically Organized State Chesterton, GK (up)

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That's why we damage the brains of the depressed with shock therapy rather than let them use coca or opium. That's why many regions allow folks to kill themselves but not to take drugs that would make them want to live. The Drug War is a perversion of social priorities.

I'm told that most psychiatrists would like to receive shock therapy if they become severely depressed. That's proof of drug war insanity: they would prefer damaging their brains to using drugs that can elate and inspire.

Psst! Drug use has benefits too. Pass it on!

Ug! Fire bad! There were 4,731 fire-related deaths in America in 2023. Learn more at the Partnership for a Death Free America.

Addiction was not a big thing until the drug war. It's now the boogie-man with which drug warriors scare us into giving up our freedoms. But getting obsessed on one single drug is natural in the age of choice-limiting prohibition.

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.

When psychiatrists write about heroin, they characterize dependency as enslavement. When they write about antidepressants, they characterize dependency as a medical duty.

The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.

Q: Where can you find almost-verbatim copies of the descriptions of religious experiences described by William James? A: In descriptions of user reports of "trips" on drugs ranging from coca to opium, from MDMA to laughing gas.

The fact that some drugs can be addictive is no reason to outlaw drugs. It is a reason to teach safe use and to publicize all the ways that smart people have found to avoid unwanted pharmacological dependency -- and a reason to use drugs to fight drugs.

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