Science's job is not to investigate drugs

Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass

Science's job is not to investigate drugs

It's to prove that drugs are not safe

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 26, 2024

In the sane world of the distant future, philosophy professors will hand out psychiatric research papers about drugs written in the age of the Drug War and ask the students to identify the many logical fallacies that the authors employ. Students who flag the most egregious errors will move to the head of the class.

The profs of the future might start by handing out a 1978 paper by Graham Glancy et al. entitled "Abuse of indigenous psilocybin mushrooms: a new fashion and some psychiatric complications,¹" a philosophically challenged paper that was unfortunately republished by the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2013, no doubt as a part of a coordinated effort to regain the materialistic high ground in the age of the Psychedelic Renaissance.

The title itself begs the question, how exactly do you abuse a drug? Do you stomp on it? Do you tell it that it's a piece of crap? Do you write letters to the editor blaming it for non-existent shortcomings? The author's paper never defines "abuse."

Are we to assume, then, that the use of the mushrooms itself constitutes abuse? This would certainly be the DEA's party line: if it's not prescribed by a doctor, it's abuse. Or is abuse implied by the fact that the drug experience "went south"? Or is abuse established by the patient's mere desire to experience hallucinations during his or her drug use? One gets the feeling that Graham considers it unseemly to desire hallucinogenic experiences. Perhaps the way to avoid being labeled an abuser of psilocybin is to approach the experience like Dr. Spock, assuring all bystanders that you're using the drug in a materialistic search for mental improvement, and not to satisfy any selfish desire to see exotic images, much less to commune with any touchy-feely god or life force or whatever!

In fact, that's my greatest fear about psilocybin's ongoing success in treating issues like depression: Some money-grabbing company is going to do for psilocybin what the MindMed company did for LSD: which is to say neuter it. The MindMed company has created a kind of LSD that gives no visions and provides no ecstasy yet purports to treat anxiety (no doubt providing that the patient uses it daily for a lifetime)!² In fact, visions and ecstasy are specifically listed as negative side effects for the drug. I'm sure that biotech companies are doing everything they can to make psilocybin acceptable in the same way to the puritanical and materialistic FDA.

Here are a few other scruples I have with Graham's paper.

Graham is really writing about three highly atypical cases of drug MISUSE, but the fact that he does not use that term is instructive. He was writing at a time when the mere use of illegal substances was deemed pathological. If he used the word "misuse," he would be implying that the situation could be improved with education, that there is indeed a proper way to USE the drug, and that's in clear violation of Drug War orthodoxy. Drug warriors refuse on principle to educate anyone about drugs: they consider it their job to scare people away from drugs and to arrest anyone for whom this scare campaign proves to be ineffective. Thus when Graham describes these drug users as "abusers" he is conniving with the know-nothing philosophy of the Drug War, saying in effect: "No need to educate these guys because they should not have been 'doing drugs' in the first place! So there!"

Unfortunately, many drug "experts" continue to confound drug misuse with drug abuse today.

Some readers may object: "What's wrong with telling psychiatrists about a potential condition with which their patients may 'present'?"

Nothing, of course. Except Graham produces no evidence that there is any mass problem with the use of psilocybin mushrooms. He is merely showing us three exceptions to the rule of safe and even positive use in Britain. All of the problematic cases that he cites involve users consuming an unusually large number of shrooms in one sitting, 20 or more, with at least one of the users purposefully going without food and sleep "for mystical effects." But when it comes to drugs, one swallow makes a summer, and so statistical significance is thought to be established by merely adducing one or two cases of apparent misuse. Nor did the hospital staff have to figure out on their own why these patients were appearing at the ER. At least Graham never tells us that they were unable or unwilling to communicate their circumstances upon arrival.

But the real problem with the paper is the title: "Abuse of Indigenous Psilocybin Mushrooms." This is a headline that could only be written by a man with an agenda: namely, to slander psychoactive medicine. If Graham had read his own article, he would have seen that the big story he was telling was not about drug abuse. The big story was the fact that such a readily available and powerful drug as psilocybin was being used safely and without incident by so many thousands of Britons, even though the country refused to teach them anything about safe use. Indeed, Graham cites only three relatively small cases of problematic use nationwide, two of which resolved themselves nicely in 24 hours and all of which could have been avoided if healthcare workers had not been silenced by Drug War ideology. Yet he tells us that a new fashion is afoot? Such a rash conclusion would only occur to a Christian Scientist who is on the qui vive for any unapologetic drug use whatsoever.

Actually, the paper should have been titled:

"Psilocybin use proving to be exceptionally safe."

It's as if the banner headline for VE Day had been:

"SEVERAL DEATHS REPORTED DURING REHEARSALS FOR VICTORY PARADES!"

In fact, the safety statistics for psilocybin are vastly superior to those for most drugs in the UK, including aspirin, which has been blamed for 3,000 deaths per year across the pond ³. Let's see now, that's 3,000 deaths per year for aspirin and zero deaths per year for psilocybin....

Well, you do the math.

Author's Follow-up: May 26, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

Here's a thought-provoking and related Tweet: Prohibitionist "science" doesn't really do "research" they perform "studies". There's a huge difference. -Brian Macisaac

Notes for essay entitled Science's job is not to investigate drugs: It's to prove that drugs are not safe:

1: Abuse of indigenous psilocybin mushrooms: a new fashion and some psychiatric complications Glancy, Graham, 1978 (up)
2: LSD for puritans DWP (up)
3: “Daily Aspirin Linked To More Than 3,000 Deaths Per Year, Scientists Warn.” 2017. HuffPost UK. June 14, 2017. https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/daily-aspirin-causes-more-than-3000-deaths-per-year-scientists-warn_uk_593fb481e4b0b13f2c6daa10. (up)

read more essays here

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Before anyone receives shock therapy -- or the right to assisted suicide -- they should have the option to start using opium or cocaine daily -- in fact, any drug that makes them feel that life is worth living again.

The best harm-reduction strategy is to re-legalize drugs.

Any self-respecting mycologist should denounce the criminalization of mushrooms.

The fact that drugs have positive uses for human beings is a psychological corollary of Husserl's phenomenology and Whitehead's philosophy of organism.

All drugs have potential positive uses for somebody, at some dose, in some circumstance, alone or in combination. To decide in advance that a drug is completely useless is an offense to reason and to human liberty.

John Halpern wrote a book about opium, subtitled "the ancient flower that poisoned our world." What nonsense! Bad laws and ignorance poison our world, NOT FLOWERS!

The real value of Erowid is as a research tool for a profession that does not even exist yet: the profession of what I call the pharmacologically savvy empath: a compassionate life counselor with a wide knowledge of how drugs can (and have) been used by actual people.

The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.

Drug warriors abuse the English language.

Anyone who has read Pihkal by Alexander Shulgin knows that the drug warriors have it exactly backwards. Drugs are our friends. We need to find safe ways to use them to improve ourselves psychologically, spiritually and mentally.

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

No cookies, no ads paid for by amoral and immoral billionaires (or trillionaires).

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.

The Partnership for a Death Free America is a proud sponsor of The Drug War Philosopher website @ abolishthedea.com.

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP

(up)

Science's job is not to investigate drugs

It's to prove that drugs are not safe

Author's Follow-up: May 26, 2024

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