or, why Big Pharma is justifiably afraid of psychedelic medicine
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
October 13, 2024
Author's note: I received immediate feedback to this post stating that psilocybin does not cause flashbacks. But I was not using "flashback" in the pathological sense of that term. For me, a flashback (in the positive sense) is a relevant reminiscence that is vouchsafed the individual, as if by miracle, at precisely the time in their life when that information is crucial to them. I am not talking about a classic "Wayne's World" flashback in which past events materialize gradually in the ether as Mike Myers makes silly noises. I was instead on a low dose of a medicine that sharpened my mind to the point that the information I needed from the past was suddenly present to me at the precise moment that I needed it. That is a "flashback" in the positive sense of the term, before Drug Warriors redefined it to apply only to pathological instances of sudden unwanted recall.
I would retitle the article to lose the reference to "flashback" -- except that I refuse to give up that word just because Drug Warriors have claimed it for their own as a pejorative, just like they have turned "drugs" into a pejorative term, which has led to great terminological confusion in the debate about psychoactive substances ever since.
I had a flashback tonight under the influence of psilocybin. I suddenly recalled a summer afternoon in the 1970s when I walked into my bedroom and tore down a long strip of colorful international flags with which I had decorated my walls just one week previous. I was 16 years old at the time and something had just "happened," as they say, something that caused me to suddenly and decisively sour on life. Tonight, 50 years later, I realized that the day in question marked the beginning of my lifelong depression, a fact of which I had never been consciously aware during my many years of psychotherapy as a young adult. It seems that some things are just so obvious that the mind refuses to recognize them, kind of like that guy in the gorilla suit who walks by college students unnoticed in those 20th-century experiments about "inattentional blindness" at American universities.
But put your hankies away, folks. I won't be going into detail here about that psychological belly-punch of yore. Nor do I seek any retroactive pity, especially since I am by no means sure that I would deserve any. True, I can imagine a good filmmaker convincingly portraying my teenage self as a clear-cut trauma victim. I can even see Jack and Jill America leaving the theater in tears on behalf of the former "me." Yet I fear that an even better filmmaker would dig through my adult archives and produce a movie to demonstrate convincingly that I deserved everything I got back then, and then some.
My point here is merely this, that this long-forgotten U-turn in my life came to mind tonight under the influence of psilocybin, as I was doing something quite unusual for myself as a chronic depressive: namely, creating a colorful display for my office walls not unlike the one that I had torn down in abject despair half a century ago.
I trust the reader grasps the significance of that last remark: Not only did the consumption of a mushroom reignite my passion for colorful decoration tonight, but it "tipped me off" to the specific event in my life that quelched my interest in eye-catching interior design in the first place.
No wonder Paul Stamets says that Big Pharma is worried about psilocybin. It actually works! It accomplishes in one night what psychiatrists try in vain to accomplish in an entire career.
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.
"Now, now, Sherlock, that coca preparation is not helping you a jot. Why can't you get 'high on sunshine,' like good old Watson here?" To which Sherlock replies: "But my good fellow, then I would no longer BE Sherlock Holmes."
If anyone manages to die during an ayahuasca ceremony, it is considered a knockdown argument against "drugs." If anyone dies during a hunting club get-together, it is considered the victim's own damn fault. The Drug War is the triumph of hypocritical idiocy.
Anytime you hear that a psychoactive drug has not been proven to be effective, it's a lie. People can make such claims only by dogmatically ignoring all the glaringly obvious signs of efficacy.
Now drug warriors have nitrous oxide in their sights, the substance that inspired the philosophy of William James. They're using the same tired MO: focusing exclusively on potential downsides and never mentioning the benefits of use, and/or denying that any exist.
That's the problem with prohibition. It is not ultimately a health question but a question about priorities and sensibilities -- and those topics are open to lively debate and should not be the province of science, especially when natural law itself says mother nature is ours.
But that's the whole problem with Robert Whitaker's otherwise wonderful critique of Big Pharma. Like almost all non-fiction authors today, he reckons without the drug war, which gave Big Pharma a monopoly in the first place.
We won't know how hard it is to get off drugs until we legalize all drugs that could help with the change. With knowledge and safety, there will be less unwanted use. And unwanted use can be combatted creatively with a wide variety of drugs.
In the board game "Sky Team," you collect "coffees" to improve your flying skills. Funny how the use of any other brain-focusing "drug" in real life is considered to be an obvious sign of impairment.
Had the FDA been around in the Indus Valley 3,500 years ago, there would be no Hindu religion today, because they would have found some potential problem with the use of soma.
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You have been reading an article entitled, My Psilocybin Flashback: or, why Big Pharma is justifiably afraid of psychedelic medicine, published on October 13, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, My Psilocybin Flashback: or, why Big Pharma is justifiably afraid of psychedelic medicine, published on October 13, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
