Pity the Ethnobotanist

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Pity the Ethnobotanist

in the age of the war on drugs

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher (Substack version)

August 14, 2026

I don't know how American ethnobotanists do their jobs today. Any time that they find a psychoactive substance overseas that works in any obvious way -- say, by dramatically improving the mood of a formerly depressed person or by giving extraordinary and informative visions to a laconic homebody -- they must be thinking to themselves, "By rights, I should report this drug to the DEA, since it is yet another of the endless ethnobotanical substances that could be misused by our white American young people, whom we have to protect from the psychoactive facts of life 'by any means necessary'. Sure, these locals seem to be using the drug wisely, but wait until our poor, helpless young people get ahold of it, especially given the fact that we refuse to teach them about safe use or to regulate product as to quality and quantity." Indeed, one can imagine a whole new profession of ethnobotanical police officers, who travel overseas with a book of laws in their suitcase rather than a book of plants, not to find new substances that would be of benefit to a suffering humanity but in order to confiscate such substances for the sake of our young people prior to eliminating the plant and all of its determined users from the face of the earth. In fact, I fear I may be naive in supposing that such an ethnobotanical police force does not already exist.

But then if our classical ethnobotanists work for a pharmaceutical company, they won't be particularly impressed by any miraculous drugs that they encounter overseas in the first place. They know that a one-size-fits-all "med" for depression must not produce any glaringly obvious beneficial effects, but rather must be shown to work by known chemical pathways: in other words, an antidepressant must work as far as chemists are concerned, not as far as end users are concerned. The drug can have some beneficial effects, of course -- but those effects must not be "anything to write home about" lest the substance should rouse the fury of the Christian Science establishment and the DEA in particular, whose $51 billion budget is contingent upon the public's belief that any psychoactive drug that clearly works is evil and that its use can only end in sorrow and death. The end user merely has to be convinced of the "scientific" nature of their antidepressant, just long enough to make them dependent on it for life. The doctors merely have to tell them that the drug works scientifically, according to known chemical pathways, and henceforward their science-worshipping customer will be downright proud to take their "meds" every single day of their life. "I may not be happy," says the pill-popper, "but at least I am scientific! Humph!"

I make this point after reading the excellent book by Toro Gianluca and Benjamin Thomas entitled "Drugs of the Dreaming,¹" a text that American chemist Jonathan Ott describes as a "multi-disciplinary approach" to the dream-facilitating substances known as oneirogens. In his introduction to this short but data-packed title, Ott praises the authors for considering the subject from the points of view of ethnobotany, anthropology, medical research, chemistry, and the recorded experiences of "psychonauts." And this approach is, indeed, praiseworthy as far as it goes. The book does more than provide a chemical breakdown of the substances that seem to generate dreams. The seemingly lab-coated authors take their no-doubt bifocaled eyes out of the periodic table long enough to give us some concrete examples of how these substances are -- and have been -- used throughout the world, by cultures who have yet to adopt the drug-scorning ideology of the west.

Yet while I appreciate the authors' attempts to be inclusive, I have to note the absence of philosophy in the list of fields to which they have assigned importance. Their book raises a basic philosophical question, however, one that never seems to have occurred to the scientist-authors, probably because they have, like most scientists, already tacitly answered that question in the affirmative without ever having stopped to consider the implications of that response. That question is: Are scientists really the experts when it comes to psychoactive medicines?

Permit me to answer 'no.'

Western scientists do indeed have two important roles to play when it comes to psychoactive medicines: 1) telling us about abstract medical risks associated with the use of any given drug, and 2) working to find and/or synthesize new beneficial psychoactive substances with the help of their biochemical understanding of known drugs whose informed use can provide obvious benefits for the user.

But books like "Drugs of the Dreaming" should ideally be written by empathic human beings with an interest in bringing godsend medicines to the attention of suffering humanity. The real experts on drug use are drug-using philosophers and psychologists and empaths who have renounced the western world's disastrous belief that drug efficacy should be established by looking under a microscope and who wish to develop drug-use suggestions and best practices for human sufferers based on actual substance use in the real world. (Of course I should really be referring to these drug users as bioessayists, given the way that Drug Warriors have spoiled the informational value of the word "drugs" for all time.) Now, I have every reason to believe that both authors of "Drugs of the Dreaming" meet that latter criteria of mine, that they are indeed experts on their subject matter and for all the right reasons. My point here is merely that they are qualified to write such a title, not because of their scientific bona fides but in spite of them.

Americans assume that every subject under the sun can and should be approached using the scientific method, but this is clearly false. The scientific method is all about isolating variables and looking at things out of context. This way of viewing the world has brought about great progress in the inorganic realm, but it is a category error to use such an approach when studying the psychological responses of human beings. When we commit that error, we are tacitly assuming the validity of reductionism and the falsity of holism. In other words, such an approach to drugs, especially when exported overseas, represents a kind of pharmacological colonialism. To illustrate this point, consider the following description of an op-ed cartoon. An American chemist, modeled after "Bull Dog" Teddy Roosevelt, struts unceremoniously into a sacred drug-fueled ritual in the Amazon Basin. "You say this drug gives you helpful visions?" he asks the meditating devotees. "Well, I'll be the judge of that! Humph. Helpful visions, indeed. It's all probably just a result of acetylcholine binding to your muscarinic receptors!"

It's interesting how westerners have not one, but two ways of disparaging drugs -- apart from the disparagement implicit in jailing people for using them, of course. The scientists disparage drugs by saying that the effects produced are "nothing but" the result of chemistry, as in the op-ed pic that I just described above. But the hoi polloi have their own way of disparaging drugs. They join the drug-bashing bandwagon by insisting that the use of psychoactive substances is all about getting "high." They typically make this claim while snickering and/or giving their audience a "knowing wink," as who should say, "We all know why they're really using those substances, thank you very much. We weren't born yesterday, after all!" In other words, they project their trendy American cynicism onto less scientific cultures, those cultures that have yet to learn to hate drugs.

I recently saw this cynicism displayed by the British host of a video review of a board game on the Board Game Arena website. It was a tutorial for Delphi, a game set in Ancient Greece. The game's action is set at a time when the famous female Oracle of the town was trusted to give god-inspired answers to the great political questions of the day. While introducing the game, the host informed his viewers of a new scientific study to which our authors also refer in their book. The study claimed that the notoriously melodramatic Oracle pronounced her verdicts under the influence of ethylene gas. It seems that this substance was exuded from the limestone cave that the woman tenanted and that its hallucinogenic vapors sent her into that trademark state of rapture that she always assumed while answering questions. "In other words," quoth the tutor, with such a smug look on his face that I almost wanted to slap him, "she was off her flippin' face! Ha ha ha!" He cracked this joke, of course, because he knew (all too correctly) that it would generate a laugh in his western audience. I myself might have laughed at such a joke 30 years ago. But at the risk of being a party pooper, I see a dark side to such jokes now after studying American drug attitudes for the last seven years.

Not only does this joke imply a scientistic contempt for indigenous cultural practices, but it renders a premature verdict on a question for which the jury is still out: namely, "What is the ontological status of the various transcendent perceptions that are facilitated by the use of psychoactive substances?" William James certainly believed that there was a "there there" when it came to altered states. He believed, in contradistinction to the philosophers of the past, that there were multiple worlds of consciousness, each with its own potential "application and adaptation." Our British video host would appear to think otherwise. But this is a debate that can never take place fairly in academia (or anywhere else) until America stops the childish and antiscientific practice of outlawing psychoactive substances wholesale, merely because they can be misused by the American young people whom we refuse to educate about safe drug use. Until that time, the believers in an interconnected world will have to fight back against pharmacological colonialism with one hand tied behind their back, forbidden as they are from acquiring first-hand knowledge on the topics of which they speak.

Meanwhile, our ethnobotanists will find themselves in an increasingly awkward situation, publishing articles about substances that are considered godsends among the indigenous yet are devil's brew in the eyes of the modern descendants of the Conquistadores. But then you don't have to leave the US in order to encounter diametrically opposed viewpoints about psychoactive substances. You can possess psilocybin mushrooms in Colorado and even grow them in your own home, whereas you can be charged with a felony and thrown in jail for five years if you pull that stunt in Alabama. The really sad thing is that there is only one state in the Union in which it is unequivocally legal to be in possession of a psilocybin mushroom, and even there the state limits how many mushrooms you can have truck with at any one time. What do you do when the best behaved state of the Union is still an unconscionable tyrant, claiming that it has the right to control your access to the plants and fungi that grow at your very feet?

One can only pity the ethnobotanist who arrives on Earth from a distant planet.

ZOLTAN: "But where are all the effective plant medicines in this country of yours, Earthling? I have heard you have plants and fungi on this planet that can make great things happen: you know, focus the mind, make the depressed wish to live, instill compassion in the hard-hearted? Why, I have even heard that entire religions have been inspired on Planet Earth by the use of the psychoactive plants and fungi that grow all around you."

EARTHLING: "Oh, those? They're are all illegal, of course."

Notes for essay entitled Pity the Ethnobotanist: in the age of the war on drugs:

1: Gianluca, Toro, and Benjamin Thomas. 2007. “Drugs of the Dreaming.” Barnes & Nobel. Simon and Schuster. 2007. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/drugs-of-the-dreaming-gianluca-toro/1136795490. (up)

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Pity the Ethnobotanist

in the age of the war on drugs

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