Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass
blog icon orange rss icon with stylized radio waves bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter substack icon


back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow


Scientism and America's Drug War hypocrisy

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 16, 2021



America's addiction to scientism has addicted 1 in 4 American women to SSRIs, because of the mistaken belief that such therapy is "scientific" and therefore warrants the creation of such an unprecedented pharmacological dystopia -- dystopia for human beings, but a godsend for Big Pharma of course, whose bottom line has increased by several orders of magnitude over the last half century. Americans feel all warm and cuddly when they hear the party line that such antidepressants 1 fix some chemical imbalance in the brain, failing to realize that, A, this was originally a PR line, not a medical claim, and B, the latest evidence shows that such meds cause the imbalance that they claim to fix.

Even if we grant the idea that some chemical imbalance is being fixed, the real question is, what constitutes a cure for depression? Is depression cured when a tranquilizing med keeps folks from worrying as much about their lack of satisfaction in life, or is depression cured when a patient sees through the fog of masochistic bad habits and begins seeing the wonders in the world around them? The psychoactive medicines that we fear and criminalize hold the ability to waken new worlds in our minds and make us finally see the world around us in all its wonderful detail and possibility. But psychiatry is never so ambitious as to aim for that kind of cure, one that can restart a life. A real solution for depression does not pay very well, and if they truly championed such a move, they would have to risk their jobs by publicly holding the Drug War in contempt, something very few American professionals are willing to do.

So we westerners shrink in horror at the thought of tribal men in robes availing themselves of non-addictive psychoactive plants to cure what ails a person -- or an entire community -- yet we have our own superstitions. We worship the kindly men and women in white robes who lead us through the ritual of clinic visits and prescription writing, even though the meds in question make us lifelong patients. Well, at least we're being cured scientifically, we think, and not by those evil plants of the rainforest. So we're addicted for life? So what? We're still proudly scientific!

This is just one of those problems that is just too enormous to be seen by anyone in America, immersed as we are in the omnipresent self-congratulatory banter of the status quo, our proud scientific country marching forth with "cures" -- cures that make everyone cheer except the patient, who finds themselves disempowered and abandoned, even by the so-called addiction experts who know better than to characterize Big Pharma 2 3 dependency as addiction. Why not? Because "addiction" is a political term in a Drug War society, where we ban medicines, not based on science but based on the fears and prejudices of pharmacologically challenged politicians.









Notes for essay entitled Scientism and America's Drug War hypocrisy:

1: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (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)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




I'm told that most psychiatrists would like to receive shock therapy if they become severely depressed. That's proof of drug war insanity: they would prefer damaging their brains to using drugs that can elate and inspire.

America is an "arrestocracy" thanks to the war on drugs.

To say that taking SSRIs daily is better than using opium daily is a value judgement, not a scientific one.

Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.

News flash: certain mushrooms can help you improve your life! It's the biggest story in the history of mycology! And yet you wouldn't know it from visiting the websites of most mushroom clubs.

Some outlawed drugs grow new neurons in the brain. To refuse to use them makes us complicit in the dementia of our loved ones!

Americans believe scientists when they say that drugs like MDMA are not proven effective. That's false. They are super effective and obviously so. It's just that science holds entheogenic medicines to the standards of reductive materialism. That's unfair and inappropriate.

Brits have a right to die, but they do not have the right to use drugs that might make them want to live. Bad policy is indicated by absurd outcomes, and this is but one of the many absurd outcomes that the policy of prohibition foists upon the world.

The drug war is a whole wrong way of looking at the world. It tells us that substances can be judged "up" or "down," which is anti-scientific and blinds us to endless beneficial uses.

The Drug War treats doctors like potential criminals and it treats the rest of us like children. Prohibition does not end drug risks: it just outsources them to minorities and other vulnerable populations.


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






back navigation arrow forward navigation arrow
Book Cover

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

This book features 150 annotated images, designed to force brainwashed Americans to confront the fact that drug prohibition is wrong. Here is what author Richard Parrish II says of the book's compiler: "The drug prohibition philosopher provides first-hand, principled, persuasive, and insightful arguments against the current drug prohibition regime..."

Purchase Your Copy
Book Cover

Diary of a Drug Fiend

This is the only full-cast recording of Aleister Crowley's 1922 classic paeon to common sense. It is the first book -- and so far almost the only book -- to stake out a philosophy of drug use that is compatible with human freedom, one in which we learn to use drugs as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity. This recording was produced by the Drug War Philosopher and your purchases help support his effort to push back against the tragically counterproductive policy of drug prohibition, in the name of human freedom and of humanity's right to heal.

Purchase Your Copy



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.


Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP (up)