Like almost every other scientist and philosopher today, Jonathan reckons without the Drug War. He discusses the effects of laughing gas but fails to even note by way of disclaimer that modern science is actually forbidden from investigating the potential insights that William James experienced under the influence of that gas. Sure, we can speculate on them at will from our "drug-free" universities, but even to repeat his modest experiment would risk bringing law enforcement down on our heads. As for undertaking his experiments using alternative mind enhancers, like psilocybin or MDMA 1 , the DEA will put every roadblock that they can find in the way as they struggle to maintain their pernicious relevance in 21st-century America.
For the fact is that we live in a world in which scientists are censored every bit as much as Galileo when it comes to what lines of research they can follow, and authors should be pointing that out via disclaimer in every single paper that they write about a subject dealing with expanded or improved consciousness and the use of psychoactive substances. After all, the anti-scientific Drug War will never end if we never admit that it actually exists, that science today is not being performed from a natural baseline but that we are forbidden from even accessing substances whose use might cause us to challenge the assumptions upon which reductive materialism 2 is based.
Of course, as a lifelong depressive, I applaud Jonathan for concluding that "we need not rush to criminalize" laughing gas , but for all intents and purposes, laughing gas is already criminalized, at least here in the States. I cannot legally obtain laughing gas to help with my depression and the only places it is available therapeutically are in very expensive clinics wherein the N20 sessions take place in a room filled with chart-holding clinical assistants. That emotionally sterile environment would be so off-putting to folks like myself that it would surely negate any benefit that the drug might supply.
Meanwhile, materialist doctors are still trying to wrap their heads around the once obvious fact that laughing can help the depressed. Take it from me, it would have to help, and not just the laughing itself but the mere looking forward to that laughter. It's called the power of anticipation, and it is (or at least it used to be) psychological common sense. And yet the eminent Dr. Robert Glatter asks (apparently with a straight face) in the June 9, 2021 edition of Forbes magazine: Can Laughing Gas Help People with Treatment-resistant Depression?
Are you kidding me? Of course it would help, by definition. Reader's Digest has known this for decades, hence their time-honored motto: "Laughter is the best medicine."
But Glatter is a materialist. He doesn't care how much I laugh when using laughing gas , he wants to know if it "REALLY" works: i.e., does it work in a reductive way that may be demonstrated quantitatively? This reminds one of Descartes, who wasn't convinced that animals felt pain, no matter how much they cried when they were being tortured. Descartes wanted to know if they "REALLY" experienced pain: i.e., do they experience it in a reductive way that may be demonstrated quantitatively? (His answer, alas, was no.)
It's ironic to think that it is materialists like Glatter, with their glacially proceeding search for "REAL" cures, who are keeping me from accessing substances whose use might help illuminate a non-materialist way of seeing the world. That sounds like ontological self-dealing to me.
But this illustrates a so-far unrecognized fact that materialism is a major beneficiary of the Drug War, because Drug Warriors demonize precisely those substances whose use might conduce to a non-materialistic way of seeing the world.
I'll close with just one example to demonstrate this point
About five years ago, I visited Arizona to take peyote legally (at least as far as that state's laws were concerned). Instead of gaining the sweeping ontological insights that William James reported with laughing gas , the drug experience provided me with a sharply focused neon-green slide show of what appeared to be pre-Columbian imagery of the type that may be seen today at the Mayan city of Yaxchilan or the Quetzacoatl of the Aztecs. This result raised fascinating philosophical questions for me, for pre-Columbian imagery was not in my mind when I traveled to Arizona, nor had I even consciously considered the subject since I took some related college courses a decade earlier.
It seemed to me like the peyote cactus was telling me something about how the world worked, that it was not a chaos of separate atoms but an integrally connected "web of being," so to speak, and that the whole was far greater than the sum of the parts. To put it poetically, I had what Wordsworth called "a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused."
And yet the Drug War prevents me from following up these hints about the true nature of reality by outlawing precisely those substances that provide such clues..
Surely this is the worst form of censorship imaginable, the kind that makes it illegal for us to pursue the Platonic goal of knowing ourselves and the world around us.
This is why I believe every author who writes on these subjects must remind their reader that we live in an age of a Drug War, for it is Drug War prohibition which tilts the philosophical playing field in favor of reductive materialism by outlawing mere research into other ways of "being in the world."
Related tweet: January 13, 2023
The use of laughing gas changed William James' ideas about the very nature of reality. To outlaw such substances is to outlaw human advancement.
Despite the 50 year-long war on drugs, the global cocaine supply has grown by 400%. --Elma Mrkonjic
The search for SSRIs has always been based on a flawed materialist premise that human consciousness is nothing but a mix of brain chemicals and so depression can be treated medically like any other physical condition.
Trump supports the drug war and Big Pharma: the two forces that have turned me into a patient for life with dependence-causing antidepressants. Big Pharma makes the pills, and the drug war outlaws all viable alternatives.
Doc to Franklin: "I'm sorry, Ben, but I see no benefits of opium use under my microscope. The idea that you are living a fulfilled life is clearly a mistake on your part. If you want to be scientific, stop using opium and be scientifically depressed like the rest of us."
All drugs have positive uses at some dose, for some reason, at some time -- but prohibitionists have the absurd idea that drugs can be voted up or down. This anti-scientific notion deprives the modern world of countless godsends.
Antidepressants might be fine in a world where drugs were legal. Then it would actually be possible to get off them by using drugs that have inspired entire religions. In the age of prohibition, however, an antidepressant prescription is usually a life sentence.
I might as well say that no one can ever be taught to ride a horse safely. I would argue as follows: "Look at Christopher Reeves. He was a responsible and knowledgeable equestrian. But he couldn't handle horses. The fact is, NO ONE can handle horses!"
Why does no one talk about empathogens for preventing atrocities? Because they'd rather hate drugs than use them for the benefit of humanity. They don't want to solve problems, they prefer hatred.
In Mexico, the same substance can be considered a "drug" or a "med," depending on where you are in the country. It's just another absurd result of the absurd policy of drug prohibition.
Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.
The use of laughing gas changed William James' ideas about the very nature of reality. To outlaw such substances is to outlaw human advancement. 
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