In Praise of Augustus Bedloe

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In Praise of Augustus Bedloe

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

November 23, 2019

In the short story "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" by Edgar Allan Poe, an artistic but moody young man named Augustus Bedloe walks off into the highlands, under the influence of an immoderate dose of morphine . As he begins to lose his way in the dense and foggy forest southwest of Charlottesville, Virginia, he describes the drug's onset as follows:

"In the meantime the morphine had its customary effect- that of enduing all the external world with an intensity of interest. 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."

I don't know about you, but that's the kind of wide-awake world that I want to live in - or at very least have access to - and I have no patience with the meddling Drug Warriors who insist by law that I renounce that desire. They seem determined to make me view Mother Nature with the same bleary eyes that they possess. "If God had wanted us to improve our minds," they seem to say, "he would have boxed up the relevant therapeutic plants, stamped them with a bar code and placed them on sale at the local Rite-Aid or CVS Pharmacy. Besides, surely a blade of grass is a blade of grass. If you've seen one, you've seen them all. Now, let's go bowling and have some brewskis."

Such Drug Warriors are like a self-satisfied Mr. Magoo who wants to outlaw glasses in the belief that his own natural vision is as good as it gets for anybody - or as good as it should get, according to Mr. Magoo's own glasses-scorning religion.

I don't say this to extol the virtues of addictive morphine . The rain forest is full of the sort of psychoactive plants that could help me see through Bedloe's wonder-filled eyes, none of which entails addiction if used with a full pharmacological appreciation of their effects. But the attainment of this essential knowledge is actively discouraged by the Drug Warrior, who seeks to outlaw - and if possible burn -- objectionable plants rather than to learn about them (thereby reminding one of the superstitious third-world villagers in the Frankenstein films rather than the educated citizens of a first-world country that prides itself on being scientific).

That said, modern society has no right to denounce Bedloe for his "addiction" (a morally tinged word that Poe never employs in this story), since most modern anti-depressants require lifelong administration, which is just a polite way of saying that they're addictive, too.

{^Poe didn't use drugs to "get high" -- he used drugs to truly appreciate the world around him. Freud didn't use cocaine to get high -- he used it to goad himself on to become prolific. Thomas De Quincey used opium to better enjoy the opera and Benjamin Franklin did so just because he wanted to -- but that was back at a time when people still judged other people for how they actually behaved, as opposed to what substances they happened to have ingested.}{

The only miracle is that the drug can have such a damnable recidivism rate and still be blithely prescribed by psychiatrists to this very day - many of whom will tell me that I have no right to use morphine . To which I can only respond: "Thanks for nothing, Mr. Magoo!" Apparently, I can become addicted, as long as the addiction fogs my mind and conduces to anhedonia. Heaven forbid that my addiction should give me anything that could be remotely construed as a "high."

This is the negative morality of the Drug Warrior, for whom the ideal tombstone epithet would read: "He/she just said no to Mother Nature's bounty!" Such a sheepish legacy may please the Nancy Reagans of the world, but my goal is to achieve the mental clarity of an Augustus Bedloe in my lifetime, not to curry favor with nature-hating fascists who encourage kids to report their parents for using Mother Nature's plants.

But how does one attain the awe-filled and grateful visions of Augustus Bedloe in drug-war America? Granted, a few of us are born with the ability, being blessed from birth with the supranatural vision of the reformed St. Francis of Assisi, able to literally "see a world in a grain of sand" thanks to our peculiar psychochemical nature (combined with what Poe might call a felicitous upbringing). For most of us, however, we require a little help - not from our friends, as the Beatles song would have it, but from Mother Nature herself, which appears, upon close inspection, to be full of precisely those kinds of plants that can assist us in our quest for mental clarity.

In a sane world, I could emulate Bedloe's nature-friendly disposition by visiting a pharmacologically savvy shaman ¹ who can prescribe for me safely based on his or her unfettered access to all of the naturally growing psychoactive plants of the world. Instead, I'm living under the ruthlessly enforced Sharia of Christian Science, subject to a government that has a metaphysical contempt for Mother Nature's psychoactive plants and their ability to improve the mind.

Thus Mother Nature remains inaccessible for my purposes, forcing me to rely instead on modern psychiatry's ineffective, addictive and expensive nostrums. Meanwhile, the millions of addicts that are thus created for Big Pharma continue to fall short of self-actualization in a needlessly dreary life, quietly envying the Augustus Bedloes of the world - those who insist on living life to the fullest and therefore "just say no" to the nature-hating morality of the Drug Warrior.

DISCLAIMER: I should explicitly state (or rather re-state) in this censorious age of ours that I am not advocating the use of morphine . Neither was Poe when he wrote this short story. Rather we both are merely pointing out, in our own ways, the inconvenient truth that many of the drugs that we vilify today have a positive side to them, a side which the Drug Warrior strategically ignores, preferring instead to focus exclusively on a substance's potential negative effects in the hands of irresponsible users. They have to argue in this way in order to make their desired crack down seem like a civic duty rather than like the war on consciousness which it actually is.

In this they are abetted by today's movies ² ³ , which never illustrate the mind-clarifying use of cocaine ⁴ (from which Sigmund Freud, for one, benefitted so enormously in his professional life), preferring instead to vilify the substance by associating it with grade-A morons (such as Neil Patrick Harris in the movie "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," in which the actor snorts cocaine off of the rear end of a half-naked lap dancer).

The newspapers are just as guilty of supporting this libelous drug-war sensibility about Mother Nature's plants. One can scour an early 20th-century newspaper archive for hours and never find a positive story about opium 's well-known ability to spur creativity, nor a reference to the fact that opium is non-addictive if used intermittently. Instead, we find countless references to foreigners and minorities using the substances while engaged in highly suspicious activities, such as frequenting opium dens, thereby turning opium into the very incarnation of anti-Christian evil rather than treating it as an amoral substance which, just like cocaine , can be used for good or ill.

editor note from abolishthedea.com

June 30, 2022

It's weird. Like all Americans, Brian has been told from his birth to just say no to Mother Nature's godsend medicines, so when he wrote this essay three years ago, it actually almost felt to him like he was performing a criminal act. He was like: "Can I really write honestly about morphine ??? Is that even LEGAL???" You've got to remember that the answer to this question was all but "no" in the '60s, when it was almost illegal to publish a "drugs song," namely a song that suggested that it might be okay to use the plant medicines that grow at our very feet. That's why, upon rereading this post today, after three years of writing essays against the Drug War, Brian finds the wording to be unnecessarily apologetic, as if the author were desperately trying to reassure his readers that he had not completely lost his mind, for Brian knew all too well back in November 2019 that his take on morphine was at odds with every bit of propaganda that he had ever consumed in Drug War America.

Had he written it today, trust me, he wouldn't be shuffling his Florsheims and looking down apologetically at his tightly grasped hands, knuckles glowing red. Oh, no. He'd be standing straight up, talking about:

What's wrong with properly guided morphine therapy, say, for the purposes of increasing our love for Mother Nature? Answer: absolutely nothing -- unless we believe the Drug War lie that medicines like morphine can only be used for evil purposes, that they absolutely have to end in addiction. Which, wrong! There are plenty of ways to avoid addiction, by the proper scheduling (on a calendar, I mean) of psychoactive substances. So those who seek the benefits of "drugs" -- like improved mental focus, creative dreaming, ability to appreciate nature, ability to appreciate music -- can be educated about substances (coca, opium ⁵ , morphine , and psychedelics respectively) and put on a schedule whereby they can use them wisely, for all the worthy purposes cited above and many many more (a list of benefits limited only by the imagination of the pharmacologically savvy empath ⁶ who might administer such demonized godsends in a free country).

But Americans are so thoroughly brainwashed by Drug War lies that it's impossible for them to even imagine this paradise of mental possibilities.

But wake up, America. Coca use does not have to be addictive. Opium use does not have to be addictive. Even morphine ⁷ use does not have to be addictive. And psychedelics just plain AREN'T addictive.

We can actually use our brains to use these godsend meds safely for good purposes. It's up to us. Do we want to demonize plant medicine or use it for the benefit of humanity and humankind?

(That said, even if they WERE addictive, why, exactly, is that any worse than being chemically dependent on brain-numbing Big Pharma meds for a lifetime, especially considering that these latter meds are not known to have any of the rejuvenating powers enumerated above?)

Sadly, Americans have been programmed to despise the above-listed medicines, which is odd given the fact that they could never be rightly banned in a country that professes to believe in natural law.

Yet the Drug War has so fried the American mind, that we not only have decided to hate godsend plant medicine, but we now believe it our right and duty to bully every other country in the world to follow suit -- so that when we ban a substance, everyone everywhere bans that substance. In other words, America has created a Drug War-inspired Christian Science theocracy that rules not just in the States, but worldwide, which leads to needless suffering by hundreds of millions who could have lived a fuller life with the help of the botanical medicine which grows all around them.

Why do we ignore these hundreds of millions who, thanks to our imperialist folly, must live diminished lives, emotionally, spiritually and mentally speaking? Because these "mass of men" lead lives of quiet desperation, and quiet desperation never makes it to the evening news (except in the case of a few prominent suicides) -- whereas the statistically rare misuse of substances by white American youth makes headlines, inspiring skinflint demagogues to irrationally blame their politically defined category called "drugs" for all the evils on the planet.

Author's Follow-up: September 25, 2022

follow-up on essay by the Drug War Philosopher

Regarding the non-addictive use of the coca plant, it should be noted that the coca leaf and cocaine are two completely different drugs. Cocaine is an alkaloid and not the major active ingredient in the coca leaf. To demonize the coca leaf for containing cocaine is like demonizing peaches for containing prussic acid. It's childish and anti-scientific. The fact is that the Peruvian Indians have used coca leaf for millennia for endurance and an improved outlook on life, in much the same way as Americans swear by their coffee. It is imperialist Christian Science for the US to demand that the world outlaw coca based on the supposed sins of cocaine .

Psst! The Drug Warrior does not want you to know this but even cocaine can be used non-addictively -- and as a practical matter, most people do so use it. Moreover, the way to assure that they do so is to educate them, not to arrest them. And what about the Robin Williams of the world (or the Sigmund Freuds, for that matter) who want to make a habit of cocaine use to achieve the "good life" as they themselves would define that term? Why are we so bothered by such use when we sign off on the mass addiction (or chemical dependence, if you must) of 1 in 4 American women to Big Pharma ⁸ ⁹ meds: that's a real-life Stepford Wives in Modern America that is completely invisible to the hypocritical and education-hating Drug Warrior! It's pure hypocrisy, clearly demonstrating that the persecution of drugs like cocaine is essentially carried on for esthetic and religious reasons, not medical ones.

Yes, yes, cocaine can be bad for weak hearts, but believe it or not, such facts could actually be taught! (Weird, huh: teaching folks instead of arresting them for attempting to improve their lives? What a novel idea!) Moreover, before we demonize cocaine ¹⁰ ¹¹ for its potential side effects, we should compare its side effects with those of the brand-name drugs in those prime-time TV commercial, in which the chipper narrator warns us in double-time of such gnarly downsides as sexual dysfunction, liver damage, and even death.

Learn the facts about coca leaf -- which, if legalized, would end depression in America, cut drastically down on suicides, end most inner city shootings, and free South America from US bullying -- and stop the civil war in Mexico for which the Drug War is directly responsible.

Potter, Carol. "Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas." Scribd.com. January 01, 2017. https://www.scribd.com/read/369871777/Coca-Divine-Plant-of-the-Incas.

Author's Follow-up: August 22, 2023

It's funny. Just four years ago, when I wrote this post, I actually felt like I had to apologize for talking honestly about drugs. I had been so bamboozled and indoctrinated, that it felt positively illegal to be speaking common sense and fact on the topic. Now I look back at my 2019 skittishness and blush. But that's what the Drug War does: it makes you feel that it's actually wrong to even discuss this subject unless one is spouting the party line: i.e., "drugs bad." And that's deliberate, of course, on the part of the government. The official government policy is to repress all honesty about drugs: there's no desire to teach safe use. Oh, no, because according to government logic, something as rational and sane as that is only encouraging drug use -- which apparently is prima facie bad. (Who knew? Certainly not Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson) But since when did Christian Science become America's state religion? Since when did we conclude that it's wrong to follow up the research of William James? Since when did we decide that the Vedic religion was immoral for tracing its inspiration to a psychedelic plant?

So much BS about the politically created boogieman called "drugs," so many lies, so much media and academic censorship ¹². Time to speak unapologetically.

"Drugs" is a word like "scabs" -- it doesn't just denote something, but it derides it as well. I find that most Americans are so bamboozled that they use the word whenever they're out of arguments. "Oh, you're in favor of 'drugs' then, are you?" as if merely to associate me with that scapegoat category is to dishonor and repudiate me now and for all time. Well, we've only been around a short time geologically speaking. We're not yet through our superstitious phase, apparently. First it was the lightning and wind gods that threatened us, then it was Satan, and now it's "Drugs." If the boogieman did not exist, racist conservatives would have to invent one.

Notes for essay entitled In Praise of Augustus Bedloe:

1: Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism DWP (up)
2: Glenn Close but no cigar DWP (up)
3: Running with the torture loving DEA DWP (up)
4: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)
5: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
6: pharmacologically-savvy empath: this is an empathic individual with an ethnobotanical knowledge of safe and beneficial drug use worldwide, someone who recognizes psychological common sense and can advise on protocols that meet user needs while avoiding unwanted dependency. (up)
7: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
8: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
9: 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)
10: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
11: “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)
12: Coverup on Campus DWP (up)

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And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.

That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.

If there was free speech in America, we would see billboards demanding freedom to use psychoactive substances for religious purposes, or to heal, or to follow-up on the research of William James regarding the nature of human consciousness.

Even prohibition haters have their own list of drugs that they feel should be outlawed. They're missing the point. We should not drugs "up or down" any more than we should judge penicillin or aspirin in that way.

Despite the 50 year-long war on drugs, the global cocaine supply has grown by 400%. --Elma Mrkonjic

Drug prohibition is a caustic lye that destroys every democratic freedom that it comes in contact with.

All uplifting drugs are potential antidepressants. Science denies that fact by claiming that drug efficacy must be proven quantitatively. And so they ignore anecdote, history and psychological common sense.

If the depressed patient laughs, that means nothing. Materialists have to see results under a microscopic or they will never sign off on a therapy.

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.

For those who want to understand what's going on with the drug war from a philosophical point of view, I recommend chapter six of "Eugenics and Other Evils" by GK Chesterton.

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In Praise of Augustus Bedloe

Author's Follow-up: September 25, 2022

Author's Follow-up: August 22, 2023

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Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend