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LSD for puritans

FDA gives breakthrough status to LSD Lite from MindMed

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 7, 2024



The drug makers even list euphoria and visions as "adverse effects."


Ugh! I cannot stand it. The FDA is now approving LSD for anxiety (from MindMed) -- but in a form that has gotten rid of all that pesky ecstasy and those silly visions that are associated with the drug1. This is so very telling: it wasn't public health after all that bothered Americans about LSD, it was the fact that it made us feel ecstatic and have visions. The ecstasy offended us because we're puritans and the visions offended us because we're scientific materialists. We don't believe in transcendence. Besides, we want drugs that are one-size-fits-all. The drug makers even list euphoria and visions as "adverse effects." Adverse effects! Adverse effects??? Give me the adverse effects, damn it! I would almost rather have prohibition than have legalization 2 limited to these "defanged" versions of drugs that have been doctored or diluted in such a way as to remove all ecstasy and insight that the substances are known to provide in their uncensored doses.

This is what we learn from the "breakthrough" status that has been given to LSD by the FDA: that our scientists think that euphoria and visions are adverse effects!

They should at least provide two versions of the drug, one of which INCLUDES the euphoria and the so-called "hallucinations." Otherwise the FDA is showing a pharmacological prejudice against those who believe in the cathartic nature of transcendent experience, those who, like myself, are convinced that ecstasy is actually good for us - and this, by the way, is not a question for which the FDA has any standing whatsoever, let alone some kind of expertise in resolving for us by regulatory fiat.

It's not enough that the government censors the truth about drugs: now they are censoring the drugs themselves. Instead of relegalizing godsend medicine, they are making that medicine safe for puritans and materialists - and for capitalists, who now can find a way to market LSD. So typical, that the drug had to be made profitable and inoffensive to our milksop zeitgeist before we could have the luxury of using it legally. Just look up the company, MindMed. I did so and thought I'd see all sorts of talk about LSD as a treatment. Instead, I saw articles about money from Forbes Magazine and Bloomberg News. It's all about turning LSD into a saleable product and thereby making a mint - but in the meantime denuding the drug of everything that had made it promising in the first place, its power to change lives and bring ethereal visions.

End prohibition. Get the FDA out of the business of deciding how much ecstasy and inspiration we're allowed to have in this life!

Here are a few Tweets I fired off as I groaned about this new development in politically correct medicine:

Author's Follow-up: March 10, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


I got slammed for this essay because the guy said, "It's all about money and power, you idiot!" -- or words to that effect. But we are talking about two different things. Yes, for the MindMed company, it's surely all about money -- but the question is: why do Americans (and the FDA) think that it makes sense to create a version of LSD that lacks the very attributes that made the drug popular in the first place?! Why do they not see this as absurd on the face of it? This is what we need to confront: we cannot eradicate greed from the human heart, but we can educate Americans whose attitudes are based on assumptions that they are not even aware of. For more, see this essay on the "causes" of the Drug War.









Notes for essay entitled LSD for puritans: FDA gives breakthrough status to LSD Lite from MindMed:

1: Single dose of LSD provides immediate and lasting relief from anxiety, study says LaMotte, Sandee, CNN, 2024 (up)
2: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




"Chemical means of peering into the contents of the inner mind have been universally prized as divine exordia in man’s quest for the beyond... before the coarseness of utilitarian minds reduced them to the status of 'dope'." -- Eric Hendrickson

When psychiatrists write about heroin, they characterize dependency as enslavement. When they write about antidepressants, they characterize dependency as a medical duty.

Prohibition never ended. Busybody Americans just gave alcohol a big Mulligan for killing 178,000 a year in America alone and then began fighting to outlaw everything else.

Two weeks ago, a guy told me that most psychiatrists believe ECT is great. I thought he was joking! I've since come to realize that he was telling the truth: that is just how screwed up the healthcare system is today thanks to drug war ideology and purblind materialism.

It is far better to "treat the symptoms" than to irreversibly modify brain chemistry in one particular way based on the theories of a financially-motivated biochemical determinist working for a pharmaceutical company.

If opium were legal, then most of the nostrums peddled by drug stores today would be irrelevant. (No wonder the drug war has staying power!)

Thanks to the Drug War, folks are forced to become amateur chemists to profit from DMT, a drug that occurs naturally in most living things. This is the same Drug War that is killing American young people wholesale by refusing to teach safe use and regulate drug supply.

Even if the FDA approved MDMA today, it would only be available for folks specifically pronounced to have PTSD by materialist doctors, as if all other emotional issues are different problems and have to be studied separately. That's just ideological foot-dragging.

Imagine a world in which we were told about both the potential benefits AND the potential harms of drugs like cocaine and opium.

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.


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






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