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Plants Divine, All Plants Excelling

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

November 14, 2019



Live from the Second Church of the Eleusinian Mysteries1 -- at a location that the DEA has been torturing suspects to discover for the last ten years...



Let's all turn to hymn #355, "Plants Divine, All Plants Excelling." And a one, and a two, and a one, two, three, four...




Verse 1


Plants divine, all plants excelling
Not a gift for man to shun
Psychoactively restoring
Weary souls a sense of fun

But the prudish claim this bounty's
From a source we should not tap
So they outlaw Mother Nature
What a pile of bovine crap


Verse 2


Age-ed souls in homes of sadness
Shorn of meaning and of hope
Find in psilocybin's madness
Ways to prosper and to cope

Yet the narc with IQ zero
Seeks to keep the status quo
Forcing sick and dying patients
To encounter needless woe



Verse 3


Thank we now the forest shaman
Who dispenses sacred balm
Plants and fungi from the jungle
Sure to teach us as they calm

Yet the despots slander nature
Curse the plants that ease the brain
Check our urine at the job site
To ensure we all refrain


Verse 4


Bursting with ungrateful chutzpah
Tyrants outlaw healing plants
Drugs that when provided rightly
Make the suicidal dance

Yet, the heartless politician
Claims that "drugs" are just the pits
Yet they never give up liquor
What amazing hypocrites


Verse 5


Ayahuasca's non-addictive
Grows new neurons in the brain
Makes the most besotted drinker
From his poison to refrain

Yet, the shrinks from here to Parma
Make it clearly understood
We must buy pills from Big Pharma 2 3
Till we're hooked upon them good



Okay, you may all be seated. Thanks for that rousing performance of hymn #355, "Plants Divine, All Plants Excelling," a paeon of praise to the therapeutic power of rain forest plants, both known and yet to be discovered. Let's all take one complete silent minute to thank God for providing us with such. And... begin!

[one minute transpires]

Good thing that we don't outlaw those plants and try to burn them almost any chance we get, right, folks? I mean, wouldn't that be stupid? The work of a real jackass, in fact!

Oh, wait a minute, I forgot: that's exactly what we "do do," isn't it, Ben, in this so-called scientific country of ours? We confiscate and burn those psychologically therapeutic plants. And then we monitor the country's piss to make sure that no one dares apply to nature for psychological healing and perfection. Am I right or am I right?

Ben Stupidson, ladies and gentlemen, DEA agent, third pew from the back. Oh, sorry, apparently that's STUARTSON.

I don't wanna call Ben on the carpet, but he's so seldom in church, I can't pass up this opportunity to make him squirm.

No, just kidding, Ben. Just kidding. All do offend. I say all.

Mind you, we don't all go out of our way to burn and confiscate plants that improve consciousness, give us an inkling of divinity, and even have the potential to cure Alzheimer's 4 by growing new neurons.

Where are you going, Ben? I repeat: we're all sinners. It's just that your sin of choice happens to align with the subject of today's sermon.

OK, well, if you have to go. I trust we're still going to see you at tonight's pot luck.

Ben's like: "Right. I'm gonna be there, if only to make sure that you're not using actual pot!"

Just kidding, Ben, come back here.

Let's pause for a moment and pray for Ben's soul. That's right: let's forgive him for permitting over 40 years of needless suffering by outlawing plants, especially those non-addictive psychedelics that can pack the benefits of five years of psychotherapy into one afternoon.

God, we come before you today, saddened that Ben Stupidson - sorry, God, I mean STUARTSON - is determined to block mere research, let alone actual use, of your mind-improving natural plants. Please don't be too harsh on him. Remember that he lives in a country that has scapegoated plants for many decades, thus giving dirty politics and lame social policies a free pass. Amen.

We've forgiven you, Ben, if that helps any. No, I think he's gone now. Fiddlesticks. Well, I guess you can't save everybody, especially on MY salary.

No, seriously, folks.

And now my sermon, based on the hymn of the same name: "Plants Divine, All Plants Excelling."

As always, if there are any penitent Drug Warriors in the room, feel free to come up during the sermon, kneel here at the altar, and receive forgiveness for your role in preventing the therapeutic use of Mother Nature's godsend plants.

We've got a two-fer going on today, by the way, folks: I will forgive you not simply for blocking valuable drug research, but also for callously locking up millions of Americans for the mere possession of.... horror of horrors... NATURALLY GROWING PLANTS!!!











Notes:

1: The Eleusinian Mysteries: A Gateway to the Afterlife in Greek Beliefs (up)
2: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
3: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
4: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




"Judging" psychoactive drugs is hard. Dosage counts. Expectations count. Setting counts. In Harvey Rosenfeld's book about the Spanish-American War, a volunteer wrote of his visit to an "opium den": "I took about four puffs and that was enough. All of us were sick for a week."

In America, they save the depressed from cocaine and opium by turning them into patients for life with dependence-causing "meds." Now 30-year-old doctors get to treat 67-year-olds like children, with new visits every damn three months.

No substance is bad in and of itself. Fentanyl has positive uses, at specific doses, for specific people, in specific situations. But the drug war votes substance up or down. That is hugely anti-scientific and it blocks human progress.

The book "Plants of the Gods" is full of plants and fungi that could help addicts and alcoholics, sometimes in the plant's existing form, sometimes in combinations, sometimes via extracting alkaloids, etc. But drug warriors need addiction to sell their prohibition ideology.

It wasn't until western prudery and racism came along that we started to judge people by the substances that they chose to ingest, rather than by their actual behavior in the world.

Amphetamines are "meds" when they help kids think more clearly but they are "drugs" when they help adults think more clearly. That shows you just how bewildered Americans are when it comes to drugs.

When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.

I have nothing against science, BTW (altho' I might feel differently after a nuclear war!) I just want scientists to "stay in their lane" and stop pretending to be experts on my own personal mood and consciousness.

Thanks to the Drug War, folks are forced to become amateur chemists to profit from DMT, a drug that occurs naturally in most living things. This is the same Drug War that is killing American young people wholesale by refusing to teach safe use and regulate drug supply.

Kids should be taught in grade school that prohibition is wrong.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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