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I hope to use cocaine in 2025

and other confessions of a drug war heretic

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher





May 19, 2024

I just noticed the Twitter bio of a certain NYT writer who tells us that she "quit cocaine & heroin in 1988." This got me thinking some heretical thoughts, which I formulated in the following Tweets, at the risk of a mass exodus of my five loyal followers... if five followers can be said to exit "en masse." But that's kind of like saying, "I was attacked by a horde of two, maybe three ruffians!" ... Er, but that's not important now.

Oh, and there's some notes to follow.



When people write "quit cocaine in 1988" in their bio, that's fine. That was a big moment for them given their psychological makeup and environment. For me, tho, the bio snippet would read: "Hopes to try cocaine in 2025." That makes as much sense since coke CAN be used wisely!




The problem is, many people who write that confession in their bio ("quit cocaine") figure that they've discovered a universal law: that cocaine is necessarily wrong for everybody. That evinces an unimaginative view of the psychological diversity of human beings.



I "quit valium" in 1994, but I don't include that in my bio because I don't think it's a huge thing. The only reason that quitting was "a big ask" for me was because all better drugs were outlawed -- including many that are non-addictive.



Please, nobody take offense. I just believe that in a sane world, "quitting" a given drug would not be such an earth-shattering event. When all drugs are re-legalized and used wisely, we would not find occasion to obsess about or blame any one drug.


Focusing like that on any one drug as evil (heroin, cocaine, etc.) is just the flip side of what the Drug Warrior does in demonizing them -- blaming the drug instead of prohibition, which outlaws of all of the endless alternatives to a given use pattern.


Confessions like "I quit cocaine in 1988" -- at least when featured prominently in a tiny bio -- turn cocaine into a real colossus, giving it powers to destroy that it would never have in a free world -- one in which we seek to use all psychoactive substances as wisely as possible. Again, I recognize that I do not know the person behind this particular biographical snippet, but in general, such confessions smack of the way that Drug Warriors turn drug use into a morality play. It's just, in this case, the morality play has a happy ending1 -- but the assumption behind the snippet at least seems to be that the villain of the piece was cocaine or heroin -- whereas I believe it is our failure to be adults about drugs and to learn everything we can about safe use, meanwhile legalizing the seemingly endless substances that provide the transcendence of heroin without unwanted dependence.

I would go on to state why I want to use cocaine in 2025, but that rarely spoken resolution is bound to arouse so many mistaken assumptions in the average bamboozled reader that it would take me another entire essay to unpack them. Suffice it to say, my goal in using cocaine would be to think as clearly as possible and to be productive in my work. My goal is not to go gambling in Monte Carlo with a call girl on my lap and a pocket full of blood-stained dollar bills.

Author's Follow-up: May 18, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


I should have mentioned, this writer actually specializes in writing on drug-related topics. With this in mind, the confession in her bio seems to be signaling the following: "I too believe that drugs are the problem and I have experience in overcoming their evil, so listen to me." So as friendly as she may be to decriminalization, she is arguing on the back foot, tacitly expressing the stubborn beliefs of the Drug War that the problem "is drugs," not prohibition and our failure to be adults and learn about substances and to use them wisely.

It's also interesting that this author specializes in neuroscience. Only in the west could a neuroscientist be deemed an expert in drugs that inspire us both psychologically and spiritually. Drug prohibition is all about limiting my ability to express myself and to live the sort of psychological and spiritual life that I want to lead. A neuroscientist has precisely zero expertise in such areas.

Someday folks will realize that there are very good reasons that one might wish to use cocaine. The idea that it can only be misused is a superstition. The superstition is basically made true, however, by prohibition, which outlaws alternatives and refuses to teach safe use.


And, of course, if all that doesn't ruin your life, then the DEA and company will do the ruining for you by putting you in a cage. That's why I say we live in the Dark Ages, where attempts to achieve great mental clarity are punished with lengthy prison stretches.


In fact, nothing against "drinkers," but there are far more good reasons to use cocaine than there are to drink whiskey. Except, of course, that whiskey drinking won't get you thrown in the pen and treated like a scumbag.


Cocaine






Cocaine can be used wisely, believe it or not. Just ask Carl Hart. Or Graham Norton, the UK's quixotic answer to Johnny Carson. Just ask the Peruvian Indians, who have chewed the coca leaf for stamina and inspiration since Pre-Inca days. You have been taught to hate cocaine by a lifetime of censorship -- and by an FDA which dogmatically ignores all positive aspects of drug use, just as they ignore all downsides to prohibition.

Laws are never going to stop westerners from using cocaine, nor should they. Such laws are not making the world safe. To the contrary, laws against cocaine have made our world unthinkably violent! It has created cartels out of whole cloth, cartels that engage in torture and which suborn government officials, to the point that "the rule of law" is little more than a joke south of the border.

This is the enormous price tag of America's hateful policy of substance prohibition: the overthrow of democratic norms around the world.

The eerie bit is that most leading drug warriors understand this fact and approve of it. Too much democracy is anathema to the powers-that-be.

  • Addicted to Addiction
  • Coca Wine
  • Colorado plane crash caused by milk!
  • Drug War Bait and Switch
  • How Cocaine could have helped me
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How The Drug War Killed Andy Gibb
  • I come not to praise coca
  • I hope to use cocaine in 2025
  • In Defense of Cocaine
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Scientific Collaboration in the War on Drugs
  • Smart Uses for Opium and Coca




  • Notes:

    1 Of course, even this statement is problematic. Is it really a "happy" ending merely because one is no longer using cocaine? That's a Christian Science belief, not a logical conclusion. It may well be a happy ending in a given case, but we have no reason for assuming that it is unconditionally so. (up)


    Next essay: How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
    Previous essay: Our Short-Sighted Fears about Long-Term Drug Use
    More Essays Here


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    Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

    I passed a sign that says "Trust Trump." What does that mean? Trust him to crack down on his opposition using the U.S. Army? Or trust him not to do all the anti-American things that he's saying he's going to do.
    The main form of drug war propaganda is censorship. That's why most Americans cannot imagine any positive uses for psychoactive substances, because the media and the government won't allow that.
    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 drug war controls the very way that we are allowed to see the world. The Drug War is thus a meta-injustice, not just a handful of bad legal statutes.
    What I want to know is, who sold Christopher Reeves that horse that he fell off of? Who was peddling that junk?!
    It's because of such reductive pseudoscience that America will allow us to shock the brains of the depressed but won't allow us to let them use the plant medicines that grow at their feet.
    We might as well fight for justice for Christopher Reeves: he was killed because someone was peddling that junk that we call horses. The question is: who sold Christopher that horse?! Who encouraged him to ride it?!
    It's rich when Americans outlaw drugs and then insist that those drugs did not have much to offer in any case. It's like I took away your car and then told you that car ownership was overrated.
    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."
    If I want to use the kind of drugs that have inspired entire religions, fight depression, or follow up on the research of William James into altered states, I should not have to live in fear of the DEA crashing down my door and shouting: "GO! GO! GO!"
    More Tweets






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    You have been reading an article entitled, I hope to use cocaine in 2025: and other confessions of a drug war heretic, published on May 19, 2024 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)