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
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.
What attracts me about "drug dealers" is that they are NOT interested in prying into my private life. What a relief! With psychiatry, you are probed for pathological behavior on every office visit. You are a child. To the "drug dealer," I am an adult at least.
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.
The DEA is still saying that psilocybin has no medical uses and is addictive. They should be put on trial for crimes against humanity for using such lies to keep people from using the gifts of Mother Nature.
It's no wonder that folks blame drugs. Carl Hart is the first American scientist to openly say in a published book that even the so-called "hard" drugs can be used wisely. That's info that the drug warriors have always tried to keep from us.
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."
"The Legislature deliberately determines to distrust the very people who are legally responsible for the physical well-being of the nation, and puts them under the thumb of the police, as if they were potential criminals."
-- Aleister Crowley on drug laws
Wade Davis wrote in Rolling Stone that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. SO WHAT?! 178,000 people die from alcohol every year in America alone.
The Drug War treats doctors like potential criminals and it treats the rest of us like children. Prohibition does not end drug risks: it just outsources them to minorities and other vulnerable populations.
Daily opium use is no more outrageous than daily antidepressant use. In fact, it's less outrageous. It's a time-honored practice and can be stopped with a little effort and ingenuity, whereas it is almost impossible to get off some antidepressants because they alter brain chemistry.
It's amazing. Drug law is outlawing science -- and yet so few complain. Drug law tells us what mushrooms we can collect, for God's sake. Is that not straight-up insane? Or are Americans so used to being treated as children that they accept this corrupt status quo?
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