On Szasz, Whitehead, Dualism and Beneficial Drug Use

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On Szasz, Whitehead, Dualism and Beneficial Drug Use

a companion piece to the essay entitled 'Why universities should offer degrees in Beneficial Drug Use'

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

July 11, 2026

In the afterword to my recent essay entitled Why universities should offer degrees in Beneficial Drug Use (or view on Substack), I was on the verge of broaching an important philosophical topic. I hesitated to continue writing, however, for at least two reasons: first, I did not want to turn the essay into a book (for which, indeed, there would have been plenty of material available), but I also did not want to try the patience of those readers who are not particularly interested in philosophical matters (though one wonders why such readers are visiting my Substack in the first place). And so I have created this entirely separate document for the philosophically minded, where I can write without fear of alienating the utilitarian-oriented reader. That said, I don't mean to give the impression that what I have to say here is of no real-world importance.

I am referring to some recent invalid yet very thought-provoking criticism that I have read about Thomas Szasz's insistence that "mental illness" is a metaphor. It has been alleged that Szasz is tacitly positing a kind of outdated dualism, according to which the body and the mind are completely separate entities, a viewpoint that these critics rightfully point out has long since been discredited. But when I read this criticism, I thought to myself, "This is another case of the pot calling the kettle black." The whole premise of the behaviorist and reductionist mindset that reigns today in the sciences is that drug efficacy must be established by citing quantifiable changes in physical matter and that user reports of drug benefits is irrelevant and even a potential biasing factor for tough-love scientists. This explains why scientists to this very day refuse to say that laughing gas (or opium or cocaine or phenethylamines, etc.) could help the depressed. The efficacy of such drugs, from their point of view, remains to be established by controlled experiments in which scientists can monitor, not how the user feels as expressed in their own words, but rather how their serotonin levels and dopamine levels are moving about during use to see if they are doing so in a way that flatters current theories about the biochemical way to "fix" depression. Anyone could cheer up the depressed in a free world: our biochemical determinists want to "REALLY" cheer us up -- which essentially means they want to cheer us up in such a way that doctors and scientists are not left out of the loop in the highly remunerating business of "treating" the human condition known as depression.

If such philosophical scruples do not convince the reader of the folly of placing biochemical determinists in charge of opining on the utility of mind and mood medicine, then they might want to consider financial motives. Literally billions of dollars ride on this question. In a free world in which human beings took care of their own behavioral health, most of Thomas Szasz's critics would be out of a job, and this is something that we must keep in mind whenever they publish their impressively annotated papers behind academic paywalls, thus giving those papers an air of authority and inevitability that is denied to the op-ed pieces of the victims of their materialistic biases, assuming that any modern platform will even publish the latter's criticism in the first place. I have found that they generally do not. In fact, Mad in America will not publish my own views on this subject, even though they claim to be the champions of the rights of the med-dependent "patient." MIA is just one of many organizations that purport to speak for the med-dependent depressed, but which lack all relevance in my view since they refuse to directly challenge the policy of drug prohibition which rendered me med-dependent in the first place. They refuse, above all, to acknowledge the most obvious of facts: that depression would not even be a "thing" in America if drugs were legal again and our society were determined to promote their wise and safe use to achieve various desirable outcomes for specific individuals with specific needs, goals, and risk tolerances.

As Aleister Crowley wrote of his first use of cocaine:

The depression lifted from my mind like the sun coming out of the clouds. ¹

Aleister Crowley -- The Diary of a Drug Fiend

We can talk for days about ways to limit misuse of such drugs, but until groups like MIA see the glaringly obvious connection between such quotations and my disempowered status as a med-dependent depressed "patient," then they have nothing to teach me.

A close look at the MIA Substack shows that they hold the same materialist viewpoint that I have criticized above. One can tell merely by reading the title of their articles, such as 'The Hype for Psychedelic Drugs Relies on Unblinding', written in April 2026 by Robert Whitaker's scientific partner, Peter Simons. ² (See my response to that paper: Blinded by the Scientific Light ³). Simons accuses the psychedelic researchers of hype -- failing to realize that the drug approval process is political in the age of drug prohibition. If psychedelic researchers are guilty of cheerleading, then materialist scientists are equally guilty of jeerleading. (See my comments on this subject in What Rick Strassman Got Wrong ⁴ .) Simons' very title assumes a very debatable point: namely, that scientists should have veto power over forms of healing that have been used by indigenous cultures for millennia! The only useful thing that scientists can tell us about such substances are the dangers of use in the abstract, outside of all particular contexts. That's it. They have no more business telling us whether psychedelics "really" work for us than they have telling us whether "religion" really works for us or "prayer" or "positive thinking." They should go back to their labs and start studying the inanimate objects for which they have apparently mistaken us.

Szasz's critics imply that non-dualism means that psychological problems can indeed be treated as physical problems. And yet behavioral problems have never been treated as physical problems in the past. Before we start declaring the need to start doing so, we have to first give human beings (once again) their right to treat those problems the way that they have always treated problems like depression in the past, namely, in a symptomatic manner. Just as modern beer drinkers "treat" their angst at the end of the workday with "a cold one," adult human beings should be allowed (once again) to use the drugs of their choice to facilitate or promote the mental states that they find useful given their unique circumstances in life, whether they've just come home from a busy workday or from a grueling session of radiation therapy for colon cancer. The alternative, as Thomas Szasz pointed out, is a "system of chemical statism" in which psychiatrists become double agents, "helping politicians to impose their will on the people by defining self-medication as a disease, and helping the people to bear their privations by supplying them with drugs," ⁵ not the drugs of their choice, of course, but rather the drugs that are chosen for them based on the prudish prejudices of politicians and the metaphysical biases of scientists.

The interesting question on the subject of dualism is: how many physical diseases will disappear or become much more amenable to treatment once we begin -- for the first time in human history -- to sound the depths of the mind's ability to affect the body in beneficial ways? Notice that phrase: "for the first time in human history." For humanity has never stopped everything it was doing and asked from a humanistic rather than a political point of view: "What can these substances -- and derivatives thereof -- do for human beings in various circumstances given the various expectations of users and their various needs and goals and risk tolerances, etc. etc. etc.?" Although the secret has so far been kept under wraps by our drug-bashing media, the use of demonized substances can produce truly miraculous benefits and outcomes. This is something that anyone who studies drug user reports will discover. (For a quick sampler of such benefits, see Forbidden Quotations about the beneficial use of drugs ⁶.) The fact that Americans are so ignorant about the amazing potential for drugs is proof of my thesis, that we need to start studying and teaching beneficial drug use to adults in our schools and universities. To repeat the conclusion of my original essay: the mere existence in our universities of Departments for the Study of Beneficial Drug Use would make it impossible for Drug Warriors to pretend that poor defenseless white suburban children are the only stakeholders in the debate over drug prohibition. In such a world, the truth of the following statement by Thomas Szasz would be clear to everybody:

The laws that deny healthy people 'recreational' drugs also deny sick people 'therapeutic' drugs. ⁷

Thomas Szasz -- Our Right to Drugs

Notes for essay entitled On Szasz, Whitehead, Dualism and Beneficial Drug Use: a companion piece to the essay entitled 'Why universities should offer degrees in Beneficial Drug Use':

1: Arthur Crowley. “Full Text of ‘the Diary of a Drug Fiend.’” 1922. Archive.org. 2017. https://archive.org/stream/b29826433/b29826433_djvu.txt. (up)
2: Simons, Peter. 2026. “The Hype for Psychedelic Drugs Relies on Unblinding.” Substack.com. Mad in America. March 27, 2026. https://substack.com/home/post/p-192311543?. (up)
3: Blinded by the Scientific Light DWP (up)
4: What Rick Strassman Got Wrong DWP (up)
5: Szasz, Thomas. 1992. Our Right to Drugs. Praeger. (up)
6: Forbidden Quotations about the beneficial use of drugs DWP (up)
7: Szasz, Thomas. 1992. Our Right to Drugs. Praeger. (up)

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"Just ONE HORSE took the life of my daughter." This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.

American businesses judge people, not by the color of their skin but by the contents of their digestive systems.

The Drug War is the most important evil to protest, precisely because almost everybody is afraid to do so. That's a clear sign that it is a cancer on the body politic.

Why don't those politicians understand what hateful colonialism they are practicing? Psychedelics have been used for millennia by the tribes that the west has conquered -- now we won't even let folks talk honestly about such indigenous medicines.

ME: "What are you gonna give me for my depression, doc? MDMA? Laughing gas? Occasional opium smoking? Chewing of the coca leaf?" DOC: "No, I thought we'd fry your brain with shock therapy instead."

Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs: It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.

And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.

I'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

Did the Vedic People have a substance disorder because they wanted to drink enough soma to see religious realities?

It's interesting that Jamaicans call the police 'Babylon,' given that Babylon denotes a society seeking materialist pleasures. Drug use is about transcending the material world and seeking spiritual states: states that the materialist derides as meaningless.

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On Szasz, Whitehead, Dualism and Beneficial Drug Use

a companion piece to the essay entitled 'Why universities should offer degrees in Beneficial Drug Use'

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend