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 heroin23. 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 910 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.
It is evil to give the depressed drugs to help them die while barring them from using drugs that could make them wish to live.
Health is not a quality, it's a balance. To decide drug legality based on 'health' grounds thus opens a Pandora's box of different points of view.
The FDA says that MindMed's LSD drug works. But this is the agency that has not been able to decide for decades now if coca "works," or if laughing gas "works." It's not just science going on at the FDA, it's materialist presuppositions about what constitutes evidence.
Prohibition is a crime against humanity. It forces us to use shock therapy on the severely depressed since we've outlawed all viable alternatives. It denies medicines that could combat Alzheimer's and/or render it psychologically bearable.
LA Police Chief Daryl Gates said drug users should be summarily executed. William Bennett said drug dealers should be beheaded. These are the Nazi attitudes that the drug war inculcates. This racist and brutal ideology must be wiped out.
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.
There would be almost no recidivism for those trying to get off drugs if all drugs were legal. Then we could use a vast variety of drugs to get us through those few hours of late-night angst that are the bane of the recidivist.
Pundits tell us that there are medical reasons not to "snort" cocaine. So what? There are medical reasons not to drive a car: you may have an accident. The question is: does cocaine use or car driving make sense in a given case! Details matter!
When it comes to "drugs," the government plays Polonius to our Ophelia:
OPHELIA: I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
POLONIUS: Marry, I'll teach you; think yourself a baby!
Drug use is judged by different standards than any other risky activity in the western world. One death can lead to outrage, even though that death might be statistically insignificant.
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