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Nietzsche and the Drug War

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 28, 2021



Nietzsche brought the western world's attention to its unrecognized and unacknowledged reliance on Christian moral precepts. It's time now for someone to bring the western world's attention to the fact that the Drug War is premised on the exact same religious attitudes. More specifically, the Drug War is premised on the Christian Science precept that it is immoral to use "drugs." Why? According to Christian Science, it is wrong because Jesus is the answer.

April 2025 Update

Of course, the Drug Warriors cannot rely on that argument in a country that at least gives lip service to the freedom of religion 1. That's why the Drug War is all about the demonization of plant medicine, a demonization that is practiced by outright lies (like the highly mendacious "frying pan" ad, which claims that a substance fries the brain 2 the moment it is criminalized by a politician) and the censorship of all history and biography that tends to illustrate the responsible use of substances that the Drug Warrior desires us to hate. Thus we suppress Poe's short stories which dare tell us of the perceptual and creative powers of morphine 3 and opium . We hide the fact that Marcus Aurelius and Ben Franklin enjoyed opium 4 . We never -- but never -- mention Freud's conviction that cocaine 5 6 was a godsend for depression or the fact that HG Wells and Jules Verne both swore by the invigorating power of Coca Wine when writing their stories. And we're completely hush-hush when it comes to politically incorrect histories such as the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries7, the Vedic religion's link to the worship of psychoactive plant(s) known as Soma, and the widespread Mesoamerican use of mushrooms for religious enlightenment and ritual.

American philosophers have long since "grokked" the general principle that the west is founded and continues to act (subconsciously, as it were) according to Christian precepts... but they have yet to recognize that the Drug War is the prime example of that fact and that it therefore represents the establishment of a state religion, namely the state religion called Christian Science, albeit a hypocritical version that is applied exclusively to psychoactive medicines and makes exceptions for the Drug Warrior's own favorite drugs of alcohol and tobacco. That's why, when in a mischievous mood, I like to imagine a Drug War that cracks down exclusively on those two biggest killers in the drug world, depriving jobs to any American who has so much as sipped alcohol in the last month or who is found to have a crushed cigarette butt in their car. I envision THOSE "drug fiends" tossed into overcrowded jails and removed from the voting rolls, denied public housing, and forced to attend government re-education camps known as "12 step groups." Now that's a Drug War that I could support, if only to give America's Christian Science Drug Warriors a taste of their own violence-spawning and racist medicine.

Author's Follow-up: August 18, 2022



How powerful words can be. The whole Drug War depends on the use of the word "drugs," which is not a subjective or scientific term in the modern world, but rather a political one. To use the word "drugs" without realizing this fact (as almost every writer does today, including Michael Pollan) is like using the word "scabs" to describe workers who fail to take part in a strike. There's nothing objective about such writing. No matter what the conclusions of the author who uses the word "scab," they are making an argument against strike breaking merely by employing said term. In the exact same way, today's authors are advancing an argument in favor of Drug War ideology every time they uncritically use the word "drugs," even if they imagine they are doing otherwise.

Why? Because "drugs" as defined today means:

"Psychoactive medicine for which there is no positive or legitimate use whatsoever: not now, not ever, not here in the United States or in the remotest corners of the globe." Presumably this definition will be broadened to include other planets should life be found in outer space.

Of course, there is no such substance in the world. Even the deadly botox has valid uses. Moreover, valid uses will never be discovered if we determine, a priori, via fiat as it were, that they do not exist.

How do we account for such a palpably false and anti-nature premise? Easy. For Drug War ideology existed over half a century before Congress first criminalized plant medicine. But back then it was honestly acknowledged as the religion that it was, namely Christian Science.

And so the Drug War is a religion, given its faith-driven belief in a dangerous Mother Nature from which human beings must be protected -- a religion that runs riot over the rights of those of us who consider Mother Nature to be a loving provider rather than a drug kingpin.

It does not just deny me my religious freedom (the freedom to value and rely on Mother Nature), but it does everything it can to convert me to the hypocritically-defined sobriety of mainstream Christian churches. How? First, by arresting me for using plant medicine that has inspired entire religions; then by forcing me into treatment centers where I'm forced to acknowledge my own powerlessness along with my need for a thinly disguised Christian god known as a 'higher power.' The fact is, however, that to the extent that I really feel powerless, it is because the state has denied me access to godsend medicines that could help me feel otherwise.

How many 'good Christians' would feel powerless if we took away their alcohol, their coffee, their tobacco and their anti-depressants cocktails, which 1 in 4 American women take daily?



Author's Follow-up:

April 21, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




Surely, at least Nietzsche would have seen the Drug War as an attempt to outlaw the Dionysian personality. It seeks to outlaw the "superman," an individual who lives life to the fullest without regard for the superstitious scruples of one's fellows. Nietzsche would have understood that utterances like "Fentanyl 8 kills" are precisely as idiotic and counterproductive as statements like "Fire bad" -- and for the same reason. Each statement implies that a substance that poses problems for one demographic when used unadvisedly for one reason must not be used by any demographic for any reason. This viewpoint is not just anti-superman, it is anti-progress itself. It is a belief that insists on mental and metaphysical conformity and demonization of the "other."

In this connection, it is worth noting that the decade of the flower children and peace-loving young people was followed in the seventies by the beginning of a demonization campaign against drug users that continues to this very day, a campaign which was part of a more general trend to define ourselves as Americans by our hatred for the problem-causing "other." Hence the popularity of shows like CSI in which we can all join together and hate on an individual who embodies all the evil that our society has created with its disregard for love and spirituality and its preference for outlawing such feelings to the extent possible. Americans outlaw empathogens that bring the world together because they would prefer to hate evil rather than to eradicate it to the extent possible. If this sounds far-fetched, please remember that I am the only one in the world, to my knowledge, who champions the use of empathogens to prevent school shootings -- namely, by pre-emptively treating hotheads with empathogen-aided therapy. I am the only one who insists on the legalization 9 of all drugs to prevent the need for shock therapy, to say nothing of suicide 10 and nuclear annihilation.









Notes:

1: Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
2: Meds fry the brain, not drugs DWP (up)
3: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School DWP (up)
4: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
5: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
6: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
7: The Eleusinian Mysteries: A Gateway to the Afterlife in Greek Beliefs (up)
8: Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws Do DWP (up)
9: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)
10: Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

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Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.

I passed a sign that says "Trust Trump." What does that mean? Trust him to crack down on his opposition using the U.S. Army? Or trust him not to do all the anti-American things that he's saying he's going to do.

In the 19th century, poets got together to use opium "in a series of magnificent quarterly carouses" (as per author Richard Middleton). When we outlaw drugs, we outlaw free expression.

I knew all along that Measure 110 in Oregon was going to be blamed for the problems that the drug war causes. Drug warriors never take responsibility, despite all the blood that they have on their hands.

We need to stop using the fact that people like opiates as an excuse to launch a crackdown on inner cities. We need to re-legalize popular meds, teach safe use, and come up with common sense ways to combat addictions by using drugs to fight drugs.

Prohibitionists have the same M O they've had for the last 100+ years: blame drugs for everything. Being a drug warrior is never having the decency to say you're sorry -- not to Mexicans, not to inner-city crime victims, not to patients who go without adequate pain relief...

Had we really wanted to "help" users, we would have used the endless godsends of Mother Nature and related synthetics to provide spirit-lifting alternatives to problem use. But no one wanted to treat users as normal humans. They wanted to pathologize and moralize their use.

How would we even KNOW that outlawed drugs have no positive uses? We first have to incorporate them in a sane, empathic and creative way to find that out, and the drug war makes such a sensible approach absolutely impossible.

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.

What bothers me about AI is that everyone's so excited to see what computers can do, while no one's excited to see what the human mind can do, since we refuse to improve it with mind-enhancing drugs.


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