replacing the modern barbaric treatment of so-called addicts with pharmacologically informed shamanism
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 15, 2020
magine a drug dealer: not just any drug dealer, but a drug dealer with a big heart, a thorough knowledge of all psychoactive plants and fungi, and free and unhindered access to every such substance in the world.
How do you think he (or she) would deal with my desire to get off of alcohol, or heroin - or worse yet, one of the modern brand-name anti-depressants, which, as Julie Holland points out, are often more difficult to quit than heroin.
Do you think this drug dealer would send me to a high-rent flophouse and plop me on a couch for three days of cold-turkey hell (in the case of heroin) or of three months of cold-turkey hell (in the case of antidepressants)?
Of course not. He or she would shun this barbaric pseudoscientific protocol and fight fire with fire. How? By prescribing drugs that shout 'YOU ARE OK!' just as loudly (or louder) than my withdrawal symptoms will be shouting 'YOU ARE DYING.' I'm talking about substances which, in the proper setting which our hypothetical dealer will naturally provide, will give me a new appreciation of the world of nature that surrounds me, will give me new insights into my place in the cosmos, and will help me adopt mindsets hitherto unimaginable for me by dint of which I can buck up against the down sides of withdrawal and march on in spite of them.
This dealer might even do the scientifically unthinkable and creatively use his vast natural pharmacopeia to give me an occasional 'high' for no reason at all - or rather for the exact same reason that most people drink alcohol these days: namely, to get a break from full-on 'reality' and thus a health-inducing vacation from stress in general.
One thing you can be sure of: My 'drug withdrawal' would not necessitate the continual retching and puking that our modern puritanical therapists consider to be the addict's due. Nor would it require my self-abasement in front of a crowd of fellow 'addicts,' where I'm encouraged to speculate-at-will on the hidden forces and motivations behind my fall from grace.
{^The best thing that a modern therapist can tell an addict is that there's light at the end of a tunnel, but our drug dealer knows better: he (or she) knows how to light up the tunnel itself and make one's journey through it both bearable and therapeutic.}{
It's not surprising then that the government has such antipathy toward drug dealers, to the point where Donald Trump even wants to execute them. The drug dealers are the ones who threaten to break modern science's puritanical stranglehold on mental health therapy by revealing that the emperor is wearing no clothes, that the bare-bones ministrations that pass as addiction therapy these days are at once barbaric and ineffective compared to what a pharmacologically savvy empath could provide. That's why the Drug Warrior feels compelled to keep psychoactive substances illegal, not for the benefit of addicts, but rather to ensure that the government and Big Pharma maintain their highly lucrative monopoly when it comes to 'treating' them.
Author's Follow-up: August 3, 2022
I knew a 'drug dealer' once (almost 40 years ago now) -- and he was a nice guy. At the time, I was already an addict, but I had been addicted, not by a 'dealer,' but by psychiatry. I was a Valium addict, you see. All perfectly legal, I assure you. I was new to the drug at the time and I figured that, the more Valium, the merrier. And do you know what this dirty evil 'drug dealer' told me? He said that he didn't deal in such drugs and would not recommend them. You see, the drugs HE dealt with could be used non-addictively and they could help you 'live large.' Whereas, Valium, as he well knew, brings neither self-transcendence nor self-insight and it is addictive into the bargain.
What irony! The common sense view of 'drugs' was provided for me, not by psychiatry, but by a dirty evil rotten drug dealer!
That's just how ass-backwards America is when it comes to drugs. For the Drug Warriors do not want to keep you off drugs, they want to keep you ON the right drugs, namely those which benefit the healthcare industry. They're interested in their own bottom line, not in the self-actualization of their 'patients.' Moreover, when I met with that 'drug dealer,' I was not a patient, I was an actual human being, meeting with him on an equal footing -- unlike my meetings with my 'shrink,' who sat behind a huge desk covered with vaguely Indian-looking paraphernalia and towered over me as I sat in a chair seemingly designed for grade-schoolers.
Author's Follow-up: August 12, 2022
I sent drug-reform pioneers DJ Nutt and Rick Doblin a copy of my first book a couple of years ago -- in which I describe how Big Pharma had turned me into an eternal patient -- and I never heard back. I wondered why at first, until I realized that both of these otherwise smart individuals (much smarter than myself, I am sure, in everything except philosophy) believe in the lie that psychiatry has found a cure for depression with SSRIs, a fact that I have learned the hard way is absolutely false, through 40-years of addiction to 'meds' that turned out to be harder to kick than heroin. This is another of the seemingly endless reasons why the Drug War is so hard to abolish, by the way, because even those who combat it have been sold on the idea that Big Pharma is doing a good job in treating depression.
But I have a lifetime of experience which screams 'WRONG!' And if a lifetime of experience counts for nothing (and I'm afraid it does, since, for instance, online psychiatric groups are for psychiatrists only, not for trouble-making 'patients' whom they 'treat'), then there are the books on this subject by Julie Holland, Irving Kirsch and Richard Whitaker, which tell how antidepressants actually cause the chemical imbalances that they purport to fix. (This incidentally is why they're so hard to 'kick,' because once one's neuro-chemical baseline is altered, it does not seem to snap back easily to its pre-anti-depressant status quo. This is presumably why the NIMH found that 95% of long-term Effexor users were back on the drug within three years after giving it up.)
It always irritates me when folks like Doblin, in particular, talk about how psychedelic drugs can help people who are 'treatment resistant,' since the use of this phrasal adjective implies that Big Pharma antidepressants are working just fine, thank you very much, except that some people are resistant to them, in the same way that some lactose-intolerant people cannot handle milk. If I personally created a drink that sickened 30% of Americans, I would be arrested. When the dairy industry does this, the problem is blamed on the drinkers, and their quirky digestive systems -- in the same way that the failure of antidepressants is blamed on the finicky pill popper, not on Big Pharma drugs.
Why am I irritated? Because folks like Doblin ignore the fact that antidepressant use has turned America into the most chemically dependent country of all time, and that Big Pharma (in collaboration with psychiatry) has been empowered to do this by the Drug War (because it gives Big Pharma a monopoly on providing mood medicines). In other words, perhaps the greatest downside of the Drug War is something that they are dogmatically obliged to ignore, under the naive assumption that antidepressants actually 'cure' depression. Never mind the arguments made by Holland and company against this false thesis, this notion does not pass muster philosophically. For if you tell me that you have a cure for my depression, I must ask you, 'How do you define cure?' If the idea is to keep me from killing myself, then perhaps you have a pill that will keep me satisfied with an unfulfilled existence... but this is YOUR idea of a cure for depression, not mine. My ideal cure is one that will make me live as fully as possible, like the live-wires of whom Jack Kerouac wrote: 'The ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn burn like fabulous yellow roman candles.'
The Effexor I take daily reminds me more of a lobotomy on the installment plan than a roman candle. At any rate, the last kind of cure that I would want for my depression -- had anyone bothered to ask me -- is one that turns me into an eternal patient and a ward of the healthcare state, which is a downside of the modern pill mill that no one but myself seems to have even noticed so far in America, thanks to the fact that Big Pharma money and propaganda has convinced folks who should know better to toe the party line by using Wall Street-friendly phrasal adjectives like 'treatment-resistant.'
So when it comes to arguing against the Drug War, Doblin and Nutt are hamstrung by their own credulity about Big Pharma meds. Being so, they are powerless to attack the Drug War in its most vulnerable point: namely, the fact that it has been responsible for the establishment of the greatest mass chemical dependency of all time -- a dystopia that has turned the plot of The Stepford Wives into an American reality, proving that the Drug War is not about getting Americans off drugs, but rather it's about getting America on the right drugs, namely those whose use benefits psychiatry and Big Pharma.
Author's Follow-up: February 4, 2023
Drug dealers would also provide adequate pain relief according to how the patient feels -- rather than holding back based on the anti-scientific lie of the drug-warrior that tells us that drugs are bad without regard for how or why they are used.
Author's Follow-up: March 7, 2023
The Drug Dealer would give the necessary pain medicine -- while the legal doctor would give less than necessary, for the selfish reason that the doctor does not want his prescriptions to be 'flagged' by the DEA. For the DEA is in charge of deciding how much pain relief we are allowed to have in this life.
Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths
In an ideal world, we would replace psychiatrists with what I call pharmacologically savvy empaths, compassionate healers with a vast knowledge of psychoactive substances from around the world and the creativity to suggest a wide variety of protocols for their safe use as based on psychological common sense. By so doing, we would get rid of the whole concept of 'patients' and 'treat' everybody for the same thing: namely, a desire to improve one's mind and mood. But the first step toward this change will be to renounce the idea that materialist scientists are the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine in the first place. This is a category error. The experts on mind and mood are real people with real emotion, not physical doctors whose materialist bona fides dogmatically require them to ignore all the benefits of drugs under the belief that efficacy is to be determined by looking under a microscope.
This materialism blinds such doctors to common sense, so much so that it leads them to prefer the suicide of their patient to the use of feel-good medicines that could cheer that patient up in a trice. For the fact that a patient is happy means nothing to the materialist doctor: they want the patient to 'really' be happy -- which is just there way of saying that they want a "cure" that will work according to the behaviorist principles to which they are dedicated as modern-day materialists. Anybody could prescribe a drug that works, after all: only a big important doctor can prescribe something that works according to theory. Sure, the prescription has a worse track record then the real thing, but the doctor's primary job is to vindicate materialism, not to worry about the welfare of their patient. And so they place their hands to their ears as the voice of common sense cries out loudly and clearly: "You could cheer that patient up in a jiffy with a wide variety of medicines that you have chosen to demonize rather than to use in creative and safe ways for the benefit of humankind!" I am not saying that doctors are consciously aware of this evil --merely that they are complicit in it thanks to their blind allegiance to the inhumane doctrine of behaviorism.
This is the sick reality of our current approach. And yet everybody holds this mad belief, this idea that medical doctors should treat mind and mood conditions.
How do I know this?
Consider the many organizations that are out to prevent suicide. If they understood the evil consequences of having medical doctors handle our mind and mood problems, they would immediately call for the re-legalization of drugs and for psychiatrists to morph into empathizing, drug-savvy shamans. Why? Because the existing paradigm causes totally unnecessary suicides: it makes doctors evil by dogmatically requiring them to withhold substances that would obviously cheer one up and even inspire one (see the uplifting and non-addictive meds created by Alexander Shulgin, for instance). The anti-suicide movement should be all about the sane use of drugs that elate. The fact that it is not speaks volumes about America's addiction to the hateful materialist mindset of behaviorism.
More proof? What about the many groups that protest brain-damaging shock therapy? Good for them, right? but... why is shock therapy even necessary? Because we have outlawed all godsend medicines that could cheer up almost anybody "in a trice." And why do we do so? Because we actually prefer to damage the brain of the depressed rather than to have them use drugs. We prefer it! Is this not the most hateful of all possible fanaticisms: a belief about drugs that causes us to prefer suicide and brain damage to drug use? Is it really only myself who sees the madness here? Is there not one other philosopher on the planet who sees through the fog of drug war propaganda to the true evil that it causes?
This is totally unrecognized madness -- and it cries out for a complete change in America's attitude, not just toward drugs but toward our whole approach to mind and mood. We need to start learning from the compassionate holism of the shamanic world as manifested today in the cosmovision of the Andes. We need to start considering the human being as an unique individual and not as an interchangeable widget amenable to the one-size-fits-all cures of reductionism. The best way to fast-track such change is to implement the life-saving protocol of placing the above-mentioned pharmacologically savvy empaths in charge of mind and mood and putting the materialist scientists back where they belong: in jobs related to rocket chemistry and hadron colliders. We need to tell the Dr. Spocks of psychology that: "Thanks, but no thanks. We don't need your help when it comes to subjective matters, thank you very much indeed. Take your all-too-logical mind back to the physics lab where it belongs."
If there is an epidemic of "self-harm," prohibitionists never think of outlawing razor blades. They ask: "Why the self-harm?" But if there is an epidemic of drug use which they CLAIM is self-harm, they never ask "Why the self-harm?" They say: "Let's prohibit and punish!"
If anyone manages to die during an ayahuasca ceremony, it is considered a knockdown argument against "drugs." If anyone dies during a hunting club get-together, it is considered the victim's own damn fault. The Drug War is the triumph of hypocritical idiocy.
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
As great as it is, "Synthetic Panics" by Philip Jenkins was only tolerated by academia because it did not mention drugs in the title and it contains no explicit opinions about drugs. As a result, many drug law reformers still don't know the book exists.
The Drug War is based on a huge number of misconceptions and prejudices. Obviously it's about power and racism too. It's all of the above. But every time I don't mention one specifically, someone makes out that I'm a moron. Gotta love Twitter.
The drug war is the defeatist doctrine that we will never be able to use psychoactive drugs wisely. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the government does everything it can to make drug use dangerous.
Almost all addiction services assume that the goal should be to get off all drugs. That is not science, it is Christian Science.
The drug war outlaws everything that could help both prevent addiction and treat it. And then they justify the war on drugs by scaring people with the specter of addiction. They NEED addiction to keep the drug war going.
What attracts me about "drug dealers" is that they are NOT interested in prying into my private life. What a relief! With psychiatry, you are probed for pathological behavior on every office visit. You are a child. To the "drug dealer," I am an adult at least.
We won't know how hard it is to get off drugs until we legalize all drugs that could help with the change. With knowledge and safety, there will be less unwanted use. And unwanted use can be combatted creatively with a wide variety of drugs.
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, In Praise of Drug Dealers: replacing the modern barbaric treatment of so-called addicts with pharmacologically informed shamanism, published on April 15, 2020 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)
magine a drug dealer: not just any drug dealer, but a drug dealer with a big heart, a thorough knowledge of all psychoactive plants and fungi, and free and unhindered access to every such substance in the world. 
You have been reading an article entitled, In Praise of Drug Dealers: replacing the modern barbaric treatment of so-called addicts with pharmacologically informed shamanism, published on April 15, 2020 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)
