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How the Drug War Blinds us to Godsend Medicine

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 16, 2021



In the story "Tale of the Ragged Mountains," Edgar Allan Poe describes the astonishingly deep appreciation with which a morphine "habitue" named Augustus Bedloe was enabled to see the world around him during his morning walks in the forested mountains around Charlottesville, Virginia. We're told that the external world of this politically incorrect anti-hero was endowed "with an intensity of interest"...

Author's follow-up for August 28, 2025
Author's follow-up for September 11, 2025

"In the quivering of a leaf—in the hue of a blade of grass—in the shape of a trefoil—in the humming of a bee—in the gleaming of a dew-drop—in the breathing of the wind—in the faint odors that came from the forest—there came a whole universe of suggestion—a gay and motley train of rhapsodical and immethodical thought.


Americans have been taught to shake their heads upon reading such a story and denounce Augustus Bedloe with the morally tinged epithet of "addict." But this is by no means the only sane reaction to the story. Personally, the story makes me envy Augustus Bedloe. I don't want to live my life seeing the natural world around me with bleary eyes: I want to appreciate it and understand it to the extent possible. I'm not saying that I would therefore choose to use morphine . In the absence of the Drug War, there would no doubt be plenty of less habit-forming alternatives that could be chosen to achieve the appreciation that I covet.

But I refuse to adopt the usual Drug Warrior reaction to this story, which turns it into a morality tale about addiction. The real bombshell for me is the story's revelation that there is at least one drug out there that can awaken such an enthusiasm for the natural world around us. Yet this is a lesson from the story that Americans cannot see, primed as they are by Drug War propaganda (both of omission and commission) to feel a Christian Science contempt for characters like Bedloe who avail themselves of psychoactive medicine -- especially when they do so without the blessing, or at least the reluctant toleration, of the medical industry.

As for Bedloe's habituation to morphine (what we would describe today moralistically as addiction), America has no leg to stand on in denouncing it. 1 in 4 American women are addicted to Big Pharma meds, yet this medical dystopia is completely ignored by Drug Warriors, proving that we simply do not consider addiction to be a problem per se. But if addiction is not a problem, then the real question becomes: is the substance upon which we're dependent something that is WORTH being dependent upon? As a 30-year veteran of the Big Pharma pill mill, I can tell you that the tranquilizing antidepressants 1 of Big Pharma are most definitely not worth the lifelong dependency that they cause. And that even if they were, I would drop them in a heartbeat to accept an alternative that helped me to see Mother Nature through the eyes of Augustus Bedloe, an addiction that would be no more problematic than an addiction to SSRIs were the Drug War not in force to run interference between myself and a safe supply of my poison of choice.

In a sane America where we do not politically demonize substances, we would be excited about morphine 's ability to stimulate an interest in the world around us. After learning of this godsend property, we would start asking questions that would power new research projects, such as: What other substances are out there, especially in the natural world, that can help us appreciate the world around us, and what are the safest protocols for using them. We would, of course, warn the world about the addictive potential of drugs like morphine (something that psychiatry failed to do when they introduced what turned out to be their extremely addictive SSRIs), but in a sane world, we would not limit our reaction to morphine to merely demonizing it. The fact that we do so is another indication that Americans live in a Christian Science theocracy where we're obliged to consider all criminalized substances as worthless, in spite of the contrary evidence that we see around us every day -- and of which we're reminded in stories written before that fatal day when American racists first started demonizing substances in order to remove minorities from the voting rolls.

Why do I care?

Because the Drug War has turned me into an eternal patient. By outlawing all the less-addictive psychoactive plant medicines of Mother Nature (including marijuana, the coca plant, the poppy, mushrooms, and a whole rainforest full of psychoactive medicine), the Drug Warrior has left a chronic depressive like myself with nothing but highly addictive Big Pharma meds to alter mood, and these medicines are expensive and have to be taken every day of my life. Worse yet, they are extremely demoralizing, since I have to travel 45 miles every three months of my life to visit a doctor who is, at most, only half my age in order to get his or her approval to keep taking an SNRI "medication" that the NMIH has determined to be harder to quit than heroin 2. They might as well give me a placard to wear which reads "eternal patients." Worse yet, these drugs neither inspire me, nor increase creativity, nor prod me toward self-fulfillment in life, as can the "drugs" described by Edgar Allan Poe. Instead, they numb me to disappointments and keep me feeling tranquilized.

Author's Follow-up: April 19, 2023





Of course, there is a pedantic difference between addiction and dependency, but the power of these words to conjure bugbears is based on aesthetic judgements. We recoil from seeing an addict "craving" a drug -- but we have no problem with a chemically dependent person who merely feels like hell because their supply has been interrupted. Let them suffer in silence, it's no skin off our backs. Addicts, on the other hand, are a bother to us. They are eyesores. They may even try to rob us. But the chemically dependent user keeps their hell to themselves. We wouldn't know one if we saw one. Besides, if they're chemically dependent on Big Pharma meds, the powers-that-be are more than happy to furnish the goods that the user requires, for a price, of course, of time, money, and the user's own self-esteem and sense of empowerment in life. For who wants to be turned into an eternal patient of psychiatry? That's why we seldom see a "ragged out" Big Pharma patient -- because their medicines are eternally forthcoming from the doctor's office and CVS Pharmacy.

In fact, the very idea of an addict is a Drug War creation -- or at least a creation of a parochial view of drugs. If we truly welcomed Mother Nature's pharmacy and were allowed -- and even encouraged -- to find the best medicines for ourselves, there would be no addiction. There would be conditions that a puritan outsider would be eager to call "addiction," but the user would be able to employ a wide variety of drugs to obfuscate the negative effects of such a pharmacological situation and to thereby move on -- if he of she so desired, of course, for addiction is objectively wrong only to the extent that one's poison of choice is no longer, in fact, one's poison of choice. In our world, that catastrophe is treated with Naloxone and cold turkey. In a truly free world, one in which nature is considered a benefactor rather than a kingpin, we would be constantly working to give the supposed 'addict' new ways to switch courses with the help of a vast pharmacopoeia of psychoactive substances (some "natural," some not), without the gnashing of teeth that we require in today's materialist and Christian Science "addiction protocols."



Author's Follow-up:

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




I well remember that when I wrote this essay almost four years ago now, I felt nervous writing anything positive about morphine , that is just how brainwashed I had become by Drug War propaganda and censorship. My skittishness shines through in the following retrospectively gratuitous line:

"I'm not saying that I would therefore choose to use morphine ."


Today, I would not throw such scraps to the dogs of prohibition. Knowing as I do that morphine can help the educated see Mother Nature in detail, I should have no scruples about using it WISELY in a free world -- as, for example, once a month, as part of a variety of drug-aided attempts to better appreciate the world around me.

But the Drug War is all about making such wise use unthinkable. This is why William Bennett reserved most of his hypocritical hatred for people who used drugs WISELY -- he thought that they should be made an example of, as who should say: "Here's what you get for being smart and intelligent about drug use!! We'll throw you in jail for decades, if not for life!" He even thought we should behead those who sold Mother Nature's medicines. The Hindu religion would not exist today had William Bennett been the Drug Czar of the Punjab in 1500 BCE.

In this connection, I recall a 2022 documentary about child star Punky Brewster. It included an interview with one of Punky's childhood friends who talked about how the group used to use drugs, from crack to psychedelics, but always in a way that they would avoid addiction -- by never using the same drugs repeatedly during a short time period. In other words, they used drugs WISELY. What more can we ask of people, right?

It's interesting, however, that this interviewee felt compelled to add the obligatory statement at the end of his honest spiel, stating for the record that the group's use of drugs was no doubt wrong in any case.

Oh, really? Why? Why did he make this partial recantation of his otherwise pro-drug testimony?

Answer: For the same reason that my original essay above contained that backpedaling on the topic of morphine :

I had been brainwashed since childhood in the idea that "drugs" cannot have positive uses. I had been taught that if drugs could cause a problem for one demographic at one dose and in one circumstance, then they should not be used by any demographic at any dose in any circumstances.

Speaking of Punky, despite her attempts to appear apologetic about her youthful drug use, she claimed that she could not regret her use of mushrooms, no matter how she tried. But the real story is not that some drugs are not "drugs" in the evil sense of that word: the real story is that NO drugs are "drugs" in the evil sense of that term -- that they can have beneficial uses for a wise person, even if they are used ill-advisedly by others or merely for kicks.

To repeat: There ARE no "drugs" in the Drug Warrior's sense of that term: there are no substances that are bad in and of themselves without regard for their context of use. All drugs have potential positive uses at some dose in some circumstance for some reason at some time. To say otherwise in advance, is completely anti-scientific and anti-progress.



Author's Follow-up:

August 28, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up






I have skin in this game. As I write, I am attempting to get off of the Big Pharma SNRI known as Effexor3, a drug notorious for being tougher to kick than heroin. Will I succeed? Who knows? And yet I could end that drug's tyranny over me right now-- this very instant-- if I only had the time-honored right to use Mother Nature's medicines as I see fit. It is common sense that I could use inspiring drugs in a strategic manner such that I never feel compelled to relapse back onto Effexor. I do not need a scientist to look under a microscope to determine this for me.

Drug prohibition is a crime against humanity4 because it denies me that access to Mother Nature and so denies me godsend relief. This drug prohibition is based on the following anti-scientific, racist and xenophobic algorithm: namely, that if a drug can be misused, even in theory, by a white American young person when used at one dose for one reason, then it must not be used by anybody at any dose for any reason.

And yet our right to Mother Nature is the most basic of rights. As Thomas Szasz wrote in "Our Right to Drugs":

"The right to chew or smoke a plant that grows wild in nature, such as hemp (marijuana), is anterior to and more basic than the right to vote." --p xvi5




Author's Follow-up:

September 11, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins University, was a lifelong morphine user. I refrain from using the word "addict" because his use was not problematic. He had a happy married life and was highly successful as a surgeon. It is highly hypocritical to bemoan his dependence on morphine , given that 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma 6 7 drugs for life! And there is plenty of reason to believe that Halsted's life would have been impacted negatively had he used brain-damping antidepressants for life instead of morphine .

Halsted's colleagues only learned of his morphine use after the surgeon's decease. They then expressed surprise that Halsted performed his job so flawlessly "despite" his drug use. As Szasz observed, however, they were incapable of conceiving the truth: namely, that Halsted performed so wonderfully, at least in part, BECAUSE of his use of morphine 8 !

This is only a surprise to westerners because we refuse on principle to accept the simple truth that drug use has benefits -- just as we refuse on principle to accept the equally obvious fact that drug prohibition has downsides, and enormous ones at that! Inner cities around the world lie in ruins today because of substance prohibition.



















Notes for essay entitled How the Drug War Blinds us to Godsend Medicine:

1: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
2: 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)
3: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs DWP (up)
4: Drug Prohibition is a crime against humantiy DWP (up)
5: Szasz, Thomas. 1992. Our Right to Drugs. Praeger. (up)
6: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
7: 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)
8: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

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Had we really wanted to "help" users, we would have used the endless godsends of Mother Nature and related synthetics to provide spirit-lifting alternatives to problem use. But no one wanted to treat users as normal humans. They wanted to pathologize and moralize their use.

Drug testing should flag impairment only. Any other use is a flagrant violation of the Fourth Amendment.

After a long life, I have come to the conclusion that when all the establishment is united, it is always wrong. (Harold MacMillan)

The Drug War brought guns to the "hoods," thereby incentivizing violence in the name of enormous profits. Any site featuring victims of gun violence should therefore be rebranded as a site featuring victims of the drug war.

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."

Orchestras will eventually use psychedelics to train conductors. When the successful candidate directs mood-fests like Mahler's 2nd, THEY will be the stars, channeling every known -- and some unknown -- human emotions. Think Simon Rattle on... well, on psychedelics.

Here is a sample drug-use report from the book "Pihkal": "More than tranquil, I was completely at peace, in a beautiful, benign, and placid place." Prohibition is a crime against humanity for withholding such drug experiences from the depressed (and from everybody else).

We live in a make-believe world in the US. We created it by outlawing all potentially helpful psychological meds, after which the number-one cause of arrest soon became "drugs." We then made movies to enjoy our crackdown on TV... after a tough day of being drug tested at work.

I hope that scientists will eventually find the prohibition gene so that we can eradicate this superstitious way of thinking from humankind.

There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.


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