Richard Rudgley condemns 'drugs' with faint praise
a philosophical review of The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
November 7, 2022
Rudgley, Richard. The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances. New York: Macmillan Publishers, 2014
"I do not condone the use of many of these substances and... I believe that some are socially and individually destructive..."--Richard Rudgley
Kudos to Rudgley for using the word "substances" in the title rather than "drugs," a label which is to psychoactive medicines as the label "scab" is to labor disputes: it's anything BUT objective. Still, Drug War propaganda has gotten to Rudgley, I'm afraid. In his introduction, he adopts the Drug Warrior habit of judging medicines in the abstract, telling us that some are "destructive." Really? In what circumstances are they so? In what doses? For what people? At what times? Or does he believe, like the Drug Warrior, that there are substances in the world that have no positive uses, ever, anywhere, at any time, for anybody? That's the anti-scientific lie that has kept academia off the trail of godsend cures for depression and Alzheimer's for the last 40-plus years, as researchers shy away from studying what they consider to be "destructive" substances.
There are no "destructive" substances, Richard, only good uses and bad uses, informed use and uninformed use. Even deadly toxins like Botox and cyanide have legitimate medical uses, however "destructive" they may seem in the abstract. When we condemn drugs as "destructive," we turn those substances into scapegoats for the bad social policies that rendered them dangerous in the first place.
If Rudgley thinks there are no positive uses for some drugs (a typical Drug Warrior belief), he should remember that almost no one in academia has ever dared to LOOK for those positives. Take morphine , for instance: we're told implicitly by the Drug War that it has almost no positive uses whatsoever, but in reality, morphine can give one a profound appreciation of Mother Nature (see Poe's "Tale of the Ragged Mountains"). But today almost everyone would call that use destructive. Why? Because they believe the Drug Warrior lie that addictive drugs have to be USED addictively, that education will never work and that human beings will always be gullible infants when it comes to Mother Nature's medicines. And so when we "look at the science" about such substances, we will find that almost every scientist self-censors themselves on the topic. Just look at the papers on academia.edu and you will see thousands of papers about the misuse and abuse of "drugs," but almost none about their potential positive uses, as, for instance, how shrooms could help one appreciate music or MDMA 1 can help one love their fellow human being.
That's how thoroughly westerners have been duped by Drug War propaganda. Even the most sensible opponents of the Drug War, like Richard Rudgley, are influenced by Drug War lies without even recognizing that fact. In Richard's case, he has learned to believe the anti-scientific notion that substances can be bad in and of themselves. Wrong. Substances are amoral. They become "socially and individually destructive" only thanks to ignorance and social policies, chiefly the policy of substance prohibition itself. When we ignore that once-obvious fact, we make a scapegoat for all our social problems out of the politically created straw man called "drugs."
Author's Follow-up: January 5, 2023
It is, in fact, Richard's superstitious view of "drugs" which is "socially and individually disastrous." To see this, consider the use of shock therapy. The therapists tell us that it is only used as a last resort. But that is a lie. The fact is that there are hundreds of psychoactive substances that could help the depressed tolerate -- and even enjoy -- this life without frying their brain in order to accomplish that goal. This would be all too obvious in a world that wanted to profit from psychoactive medicine, but in a time in which Drug War ideology reigns, I have to "spell it out" for folks:
The severely depressed could be given what today we disparage as "feel good" medicines on a weekly basis, in such a routine as to avoid addiction when desirable (remembering that even addiction is surely preferable to frying one's brain). The depressed could be taken on guided psychoactive trips to examine their lives and hopefully identify and surmount the conceptual hurdles that depress them. We could pharmacologically let them experience happiness so that they know that such a thing exists. The only thing holding us back is the puritan ethos of the Drug War, which fanatically tells us that it's better to fry this person's brain than to let them use a so-called "crutch." And that is utter Christian Science nonsense. If people are severely handicapped, then they NEED crutches, but modern 'psychology' says we should kick such crutches out from under them -- and fry their brains into the bargain.
Let's hope that someday this ideology will be seen for the hateful and fanatical expression of Christian Science that it is -- the same attitude that keeps kids in hospice from getting adequate pain relief thanks to our ideologically fueled fear of prescribing morphine 2 -- and/or of prescribing it in the necessary dosage.
Most authors today reckon without the drug war -- unless they are writing specifically about "drugs" -- and even then they tend to approach the subject in a way that clearly demonstrates that they have been brainwashed by drug war orthodoxy, even if they do not realize it themselves. That's why I write my philosophical book reviews, to point out this hypocrisy which no other philosopher in the world is pointing out.
It's really an insurance concern, however, disguised as a concern for public health. Because of America's distrust of "drugs," a company will be put out of business if someone happens to die while using "drugs," even if the drug was not really responsible for the death.
Imagine the Vedic people shortly after they have discovered soma. Everyone's ecstatic -- except for one oddball. "I'm not sure about these experiences," says he. "I think we need to start dissecting the brains of our departed adherents to see what's REALLY going on in there."
Many in the psychedelic renaissance fail to recognize that prohibition is the problem. They praise psychedelics but want to demonize others substances. That's ignorant however. No substance is bad in itself. All substances have some use at some dose for some reason.
Drug Warriors should be legally banned from watching or reading Sherlock Holmes stories, since in their world, it is a crime for such people as Sherlock Holmes to exist, i.e., people who use medicines to improve their mind and mood.
The fact that drugs have positive uses for human beings is a psychological corollary of Husserl's phenomenology and Whitehead's philosophy of organism.
The "scheduling" system is completely anti-scientific and anti-patient. It tells us we can make a one-size-fits-all decision about psychoactive substances without regard for dosage, context of use, reason for use, etc. That's superstitious tyranny.
It's always wrong to demonize drugs in the abstract. That's anti-scientific. It begs so many questions and leaves suffering pain patients (and others) high and dry. No substance is bad in and of itself.
If there were no other problem with antidepressants, they would be wrong for the simple reason that they make a user dependent for life -- not as a bug (as in drugs like opium) but rather as a feature: that's how they "work," by being administered daily for a lifetime.
As such, "we" are important. The sun is just a chaos of particles that "we" have selected out of the rest of the raw data and declared "This we shall call the sun!" "We" make this universe. Consciousness is fundamental.
All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.
It's really an insurance concern, however, disguised as a concern for public health. Because of America's distrust of "drugs," a company will be put out of business if someone happens to die while using "drugs," even if the drug was not really responsible for the death.