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Living in the age of Pharmacracy

how drug policy turns the depressed into patients for life

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

September 3, 2025



In Ceremonial Chemistry, 1974, Thomas Szasz introduced a crucial word for understanding our modern society in the age of drug prohibition.

"Inasmuch as we have words to describe medicine as a healing art, but have none to describe it as a method of social control or political rule, we must first give it a name. I propose that we call it pharmacracy, from the Greek roots pharmakon, for 'medicine' or 'drug,' and kratein, for 'to rule' or 'to control.'1"


This pharmacracy is all about disempowering human beings when it comes to their ability to take care of their own health, including, most critically, their most intimate mental and emotional states. This state of affairs could (and should) be challenged on all sorts of grounds by all sorts of stakeholders in the drugs debate -- including religious seekers, philosophical researchers, the anxious, pain patients, etc. -- but perhaps the best way to elucidate its tyrannous nature is to review the status quo from the point of view of the chronically depressed. In the age of pharmacracy, such individuals are forced to go without time-honored godsends like coca and opium while yet being shunted off onto modern Big Pharma meds which are harder to kick than heroin2 3. Freud considered cocaine to be a godsend for depression 4. Opium has been extolled by all the great ancient doctors -- including Galen, Avicenna and Paracelsus -- as a panacea5. And yet drug law outlaws these empowering substances. And why? On the grounds that they can be misused by the young people whom we refuse to educate about drugs.

The impact of such inhumane and anti-scientific prohibition drug policy is most egregious for the depressed; they are literally denied the ability to heal in such a world. Instead, they are turned into wards of the healthcare state by being shunted off onto modern dependence-causing antidepressants 6.

Amazingly, no one seems to be raising this objection in the pushback against drug prohibition. This is due to the unfortunate fact that many Drug War critics are materialists and so they themselves believe in the category error whereby Westerners placed materialists in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place. Even Carl Hart declares in "Drug Use for GrownUps7" that "drugs" are not to be used for mental health issues -- even though Sigmund Freud himself was convinced that cocaine was a godsend antidepressant8.

In reality, we have two causes of pharmacracy: first, drug prohibition which gave scientists a monopoly on treating mind and mood disorders, and second, the hubris of the scientists, which made them gladly except the lucrative baton and to run with it -- like a pharmacological Midas, pathologizing everything they touch so that all the psychological issues that can no longer be treated easily with coca and opium must now be treated by board-certified doctors. How? With Big Pharma 9 10 drugs that cause lifelong dependency and are harder to kick than heroin11.

And so our materialist scientists are gaslighting us12. They tell us -- by their actions and their words -- that there are no benefits for drugs that have glaringly obvious benefits: like the time-honored panaceas of coca and opium 13 . Consider the following positive drug use reports from Pihkal14 and then try to tell me that such emotional states could not be of enormous benefit to the depressed, to the point of even convincing them to refrain from committing suicide.

I experienced the desire to laugh hysterically at what I could only describe as the completely ridiculous state of the entire world.

I learned a great deal about myself and my inner workings.

I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing.

The feeling was one of great camaraderie, and it was very easy to talk to people.


These are just a few of the reports of users on the phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin. And yet our FDA sees no positive uses for the depressed. Surely they are gaslighting 15 us! This is the same FDA that promotes shock therapy for the severely depressed! This is the same FDA that approves of drugs whose side effects as advertised on prime-time television include death itself 16 .

This is what pharmacracy means for the so-called "mental health patient" in the age of the Drug War. It is very simply "the world turned upside down," a world wherein all obvious pharmacological aids are outlawed and all dubious and fiercely dependence-causing materialist remedies are foisted upon the depressed as the only game in town.









Notes for essay entitled Living in the age of Pharmacracy: how drug policy turns the depressed into patients for life:

1: “Ceremonial Chemistry – Syracuse University Press.” 1974. Syr.edu. 2026. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1114/ceremonial-chemistry/. (up)
2: Richard Louis Miller. 2017. Psychedelic Medicine : The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press. (up)
3: 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)
4: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
5: “Ceremonial Chemistry – Syracuse University Press.” 1974. Syr.edu. 2026. https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/1114/ceremonial-chemistry/. (up)
6: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
7: Drug Use for Grownups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear Hart, Carl (up)
8: “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)
9: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
10: 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)
11: Richard Louis Miller. 2017. Psychedelic Medicine : The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press. (up)
12: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)
13: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
14: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
15: The Semmelweis Effect in the War on Drugs DWP (up)
16: RINVOQ RX List (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




This is why I call the drug war 'fanatical Christian Science.' People would rather have grandpa die than to let him use laughing gas or coca or opium or MDMA, etc. etc.

If I smoke opium nightly, I am a drug scumbag. If I use Big Pharma "meds" every day of my life, I am a good patient.

Scientists are responsible for endless incarcerations in America. Why? Because they fail to denounce the DEA lie that psychoactive substances have no positive medical uses. This is so obviously wrong that only an academic in an Ivory Tower could believe it.

Prohibitionists have blood on their hands. People do not naturally die in the tens of thousands from opioid use, notwithstanding the lies of 19th-century missionaries in China. It takes bad drug policy to accomplish that.

The DEA stomped onto Thomas Jefferson's estate in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. And the TJ Foundation helped them! They sold out Jefferson.

Think you can handle a horse? So did Christopher Reeves. The fact is, NOBODY can handle a horse. This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.

Most psychoactive substance use can be judged as recreational OR medicinal OR both. The judgements are not just determined by the circumstances of use, either, but also by the biases of those doing the judging.

I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.

The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.

ME: "What are you gonna give me for my depression, doc? MDMA? Laughing gas? Occasional opium smoking? Chewing of the coca leaf?" DOC: "No, I thought we'd fry your brain with shock therapy instead."


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