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Lord Save us from 'Real' Cures

in defense of 'treating the symptoms'

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

July 10, 2023



Ever since I began psychiatric therapy 45 years ago, I was told - both in words and in deeds - that psychiatry was going to help me find "real" cures, as opposed to the mere "crutches" and "copouts" that evil "drugs" could afford me. This sounded plausible enough at the time since my elders - both in words and in deeds - had been telling me from grade school that "drugs" were "dope" and "junk" and that they "were not the answer" to anything.

It took me a lifetime to realize that I had been sold a bill of goods.

Psychiatry has no cures for me, nor should it. I do not need a cure for sadness. No one does. Sadness is part of the human condition and should not be eradicated from life.

The search for cures has always been bad science, based as it is on the search for chemical causes of incredibly complex psychosocial behavior with roots in all sorts of beliefs, upbringing, genetics, and societal assumptions. But the search for cures is even worse philosophy: a philosophy that tells us that it's wrong to use drugs that "merely" cheer one up. This is not some ineluctable truth toward which all rational minds necessarily converge; it's rather a Christian Science prejudice about what constitutes what philosophers would call "the good life."

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why depression lives on today in America as a so-called crisis: not because people are more depressed than ever but because we have outlawed all the ways in which folks in freer times could have found to "take the edge off" of modern life. Why? Because of some unacknowledged puritanical assumption that it is wrong merely to cheer oneself up, except perhaps by numbing one's brain with alcohol. Other than that, the sufferer is directed to the evergrowing self-help section in the library, which becomes enormous in the age of a Drug War when all the obvious help has been outlawed.

If the coca leaf were legal in America, there would be no depression "crisis." The long-lived Peruvian Indians chewed it daily for millennia and had no existential angst of which historians are aware.

In fact, any drug or therapy that "takes the edge off" is NECESSARILY useful in fighting depression, since relaxation - and, crucially, the anticipation of that relaxation - is known (even by materialists these days) to contribute to overall health and happiness. Let's repeat that: Any drug or therapy that "takes the edge off" is NECESSARILY useful in fighting depression. It doesn't matter how much hot air politicians have expended in damning the drugs in question to hell.

But modern materialist psychology is blind to this once obvious truth. In fact, the naivete of modern psychologists is breathtaking in the age of the Drug War1.

Consider the following sample case and how they would respond to it.

John is an actor with a young family and bills to pay. He's doing great and winning accolades, but he is torn by self-doubt and finds himself purposefully sabotaging his work. This may be a puzzling concept for psychologists, that John would act in ways to sabotage his own career, but it's common sense to the hoi polloi: we know it as "choking." It's that last minute urge to frustrate oneself in the attempt to make a strike when bowling, that last minute doubt on the part of the punt kicker in which, at some level, he's telling himself that he's not the kind of person that makes the perfect punt. As Poe tells us in the Imp of the Perverse, the moment one has such a thought, they are lost. The moment one thinks consciously about what should be a subconscious act, the game is up: the masochistic death cycle has begun. In Poe's case, that might mean that the story narrator intentionally rats on himself to law enforcement; in the athlete's case, it means that the punt kicker intentionally kicks the ball ever so slightly to the right or the left of the usual target.

What is psychiatry's answer to this commonplace psychological phenomenon that we call choking,? Do they provide medications like coca that will help the afflicted individual rise above those impulses, drown them out with positive momentum, and thereby achieve vocational victories in life that will, over time, result in a virtuous circle of achievement, culminating in self-belief?

Oh, no. That protocol is far too obvious. The psychiatrist did not go to school for 8+ years to advocate common sense treatments. He or she will advocate counseling and the right Big Pharma 2 3 med to "REALLY" cure the "REAL" problems that the bowler or the punter has. Nine will get you ten that the psychiatrist will prescribe meds, which in some superstitious way are thought to "REALLY" cure problems - but he may also suggest a lifetime of counseling for the sufferer, so that, by the time the "patient" is on his deathbed, he may have at least some inkling as to why he is sabotaging himself (which the psych has failed to realize is a universal impulse of humankind, and not some oddball pathology to be treated like some rare board-certified illness).

Of course, this all comes a little late in the day for John, our actor, who has long since had to mortgage his family home, get out of the acting business and settle for a substandard salary as an assistant manager at a chain restaurant. The good thing is, his insurance pays for 80% of his weekly visits to the psychiatrists - those same psychiatrists who have been (ahem) "helping" John for the last 40 years.

Had Robin Williams encountered such treatment in his teens, he would not have been Robin Williams. He may have been a good unhappy consumer, taking SSRIs every morning, but he would not have been Robin Williams, especially as those pills are increasingly known to DECREASE what made Robin Robin: namely spontaneity.

Of course, prohibition and the Drug War work together to make safe use of outlawed substances as difficult and threat-laden as possible, not to mention socially frowned upon. This is why many stars first achieve success using drugs, profiting from that virtuous circle mentioned above, and then badmouth those same drugs in later life to print a trendy book according to the familiar narrative: Great star uses drugs in his youth, only to find out that he could have been just as good - nay, even better - had he been stone-cold sober."

Talk about ingratitude.

But then we're taught to be ashamed of all drug use in America, even if it's safe and rational.

Well, as someone who is just finally coming out of the fog of Drug Warrior assumptions at the end of his life, I call foul. I personally say "Long live crutches! Let's hear it for junk and dope! Let's hear it for treating the symptoms! Let's hear it for establishing virtuous circles! Let's stop curing things that do not need curing, and let's start giving the common sense help that we have denied for ages based on our unspoken puritanical and scientistic assumptions."









Notes for essay entitled Lord Save us from 'Real' Cures: in defense of 'treating the symptoms':

1: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)
2: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
3: 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)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Americans outlaw drugs and then insist that those drugs did not have much to offer in any case. It's like I took away your car and then told you that car ownership was overrated.

Scientists hold holistically working drugs to reductionist standards, thereby practicing a sort of pharmacological colonialsm.

Drug prohibition is the perfect racist crime. It brought gunfire to inner cities, yet those who seek to end the gunfire pretend that drug prohibition has nothing to do with it.

Scientists cannot tell us if using drugs is worth the risk any more than they can tell us if free climbing is worth the risk, or horseback riding or parkour.

The best harm-reduction strategy is to re-legalize drugs.

In his book "Salvia Divinorum: The Sage of the Seers," Ross Heaven explains how "salvinorin A" is the strongest hallucinogen in the world and could treat Alzheimer's, AIDS, and various addictions. But America would prefer to demonize and outlaw the drug.

Just saw a prosecutor gloating about the drug dealers she has taken down.How much is she getting paid to play whack-a-mole?

The real value of Erowid is as a research tool for a profession that does not even exist yet: the profession of what I call the pharmacologically savvy empath: a compassionate life counselor with a wide knowledge of how drugs can (and have) been used by actual people.

Mariani Wine is the real McCoy, with Bolivian coca leaves (tho' not with cocaine, as Wikipedia says). I'll be writing more about my experience with it soon. I was impressed. It's the same drink "on which" HG Wells and Jules Verne wrote their stories.

Psychiatrists refuse to acknowledge that it is hugely disempowering to turn patients into wards of the healthcare state with dependence-causing "meds." End drug prohibition and end the psychiatric pill mill.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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