Scientists are not the experts on my mind and mood
an open letter to David Gems, in response to his review of Pihkal by Alexander Shulgin
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 6, 2026
Dear David,
I would like to share a few ideas about your book review1 of Pihkal and Tihkal by Alexander and Ann Shulgin2. I write about this topic from a unique perspective, since I am a 67-year-old chronic depressive who has been turned into a ward of the healthcare state by drug prohibition. In order to "save me" from drugs like cocaine and opium, I was shunted off onto Big Pharma "meds" that are harder to kick than heroin and whose withdrawal aftereffects include cognitive impairment.
You talk about the "Californian effect,"3 but there is another side to this story. There is also the "medicalization effect," in which scientists declare that they are the specialists when it comes to how I personally think and feel in this life. It is because of this hubristic western attitude about human behavior (this biochemical determinism) that I am not even considered a stakeholder in my own disempowerment. I have been on "meds" for over 40 years now, using the drugs that were created for me by pharmaceutical companies, and yet I am told that I am not a stakeholder in this topic, that scientists know best. Google will not even index my essays on this subject. And Mad in America says that I have no "standing." I was even "fired" by my previous psychiatrist last year after I brought these matters up during a session. I am, in short, invisible -- except to a doctor who is one-third my age and whom I have to see every three months of my life in order to request a refill on an expensive, dependence-causing, and underperforming med. Before each session, I am asked if I have considered suicide over the last three months, to which I always want to respond: "Only when I consider how drug prohibition and scientism have turned me into a child for life."
"Scientists are making entire livings trying to figure out what's best for ME as a chronic depressive"
Sure, Leary and McKenna speculated freely about a new way to view drugs, but scientists have their own biases as well, biases which I have found (to my cost) to have huge real-world downsides. Scientists feed us the laughable line that there is no proof of efficacy for substances like laughing gas4 and cocaine5 and opium6-- when such substances have blazingly obvious common-sense strategic uses for chronic depressives, and especially those depressives who are determined to kill themselves or who will relapse on some withdrawal plan if not provided with psychological relief in real-time, now. Science is completely blind to such drug benefits -- completely blind -- and their blindness helps to normalize and "justify" the drug prohibition that has turned me into a ward of the healthcare state -- and led to completely unnecessary suicides, to say nothing of unnecessary shock therapy (like for my uncle). Even as I write this, depressed Canadian Claire Brosseau is demanding her right to assisted suicide, this despite the fact that drugs exist that have inspired entire religions and therefore have prima facie potential for helping the depressed -- at very least to the point that they will no longer demand the right to kill themselves 78! Did the Vedic people need scientists to tell them that they should found a religion based on the effects of the Soma juice? Would scientists have told them, "No, you are not REALLY having any religious experience?" Can science overrule entire religions?
The benefits of drugs are just too obvious for scientists to see.
The use of MDMA at rave concerts brought about unprecedented peace, love and understanding among different ethnicities, and yet scientists do not see that as a benefit,9 this despite the fact that the world is on the brink of nuclear destruction because of interpersonal hatred, this despite the fact that hate-driven gunmen engage in mass shootings everyday somewhere on the globe. Scientists are not being scientific when they ignore these benefits, they are being political. This is why it was a category error to place scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place. They are blind to everything but molecules -- and then they tell us that we are luddites if we do not abide by their decisions about the "usefulness" of a drug. Cui bono? Who benefits from this point of view? Not the depressed! Scientists are making entire livings trying to figure out what's best for ME as a chronic depressive -- while, of course, limiting their study to those substances whose effects would pass muster with racist politicians and Christian Science prudes and pharmaceutical executives who want to TREAT a problem rather than CURE it.
This is why drug prohibition is wrong. Once we give up the basic right to control our own minds, literally anything can be plausibly declared to be dangerous for us. As GK Chesterton wrote about liquor prohibition: "People can certainly spoil their health with tea or with tobacco or with twenty other things. And there is no escape for the hygienic logician except to restrain and regulate them all."
"Pharmaceutical companies do not want to end my depression, they want to TREAT it"
This approach to drugs has destroyed my right to heal. As Pihkal and Tihkal make clear, drugs exist that could end my depression in a trice. In a trice. The problem is that pharmaceutical companies do not want to end my depression, they want to TREAT it10. That's where all the money is. This is why I have no voice: because everyone to whom I write is making a living by deciding what is best for me. Even without Shulgin, depressed people like myself understood (as did Sigmund Freud) that cocaine was a godsend for the depressed, albeit, like any drug, it has to be used wisely. But self-interested doctors demonized the drug by looking only at downsides, exactly as if they were to judge alcohol by studying drunkards. And this mindset continues to this day. Wade Davis wrote an article about coca in Rolling Stone magazine in 2025 in which he implied that the cocaine alkaloid was justifiably outlawed because doctors discovered 400 cases of cocaine toxicity around the world in the early 20th century11. What Wade fails to mention is that aspirin is associated with 3,000 deaths a year in the UK alone12.
And so millions of folks like myself have to suffer a lifetime from depression because our scientists claim to know better than we do what is good for us.
And this bias is built into the system now. Anyone who researches these subjects will be taken to scientific papers behind academic paywalls, papers full of impressive annotations, hair-splitting titles and lengthy lists of honorifics. Scientists try to overawe us with their professionalism, implicitly telling us that they are speaking ex-cathedra while those of us who feel the effects of drug prohibition are assumed to know nothing.
When I read the user reports in Pihkal, I long and pray to have the kinds of experiences that are documented there. And yet scientists tell me that those experiences could not help me? Please! Surely, that is the height of presumption. I might as well tell YOU that you could not benefit from a cup of coffee in the morning or a "cold one" after a long day at University College London. You would be upset with me, correct? And justifiably so! And this "know-it-all" attitude on the part of science has consequences. It has helped to normalize the deadly policy of drug prohibition and given a veneer of "science" to the absurd claim of America's DEA that time-honored godsends have no positive uses whatsoever. This attitude, in turn, has helped to create an environment in which hundreds of millions of the depressed around the world have no right to heal -- none -- and no right to complain about that fact, either. It is utter disempowerment, courtesy of "medicalization" and drug prohibition.
As for Jay Stevens, he is a typical Drug War pundit. He sees only one stakeholder in the drugs debate: the white young people whom we refuse to educate about safe drug use. The depressed are never considered to be stakeholders. It doesn't make the evening news when we commit suicide -- or simply sit behind closed curtains and wish we were dead. Whenever the modern pundit talks about "the children," I run for my copy of the Bill of Rights, which has already been decimated in America by the idea that we must protect children against chemicals at all cost. That is a childish way to look at substances. That viewpoint is antiscientific, full of willful ignorance and a cruel disdain for the needs of a suffering humanity. We need to learn how to use substances as safely as possible for the benefit of humanity, like grown-ups would do. The US spends over $50 billion a year trying to ruin the lives of drug users13. Imagine if we spent even 1/50th of that amount on teaching kids the true facts of life -- the fact that people in a free society have always desired self-transcendence, as the popularity of alcohol alone makes clear.
We need to realize that saying things like "Drugs kill!" is philosophically equivalent to saying "Fire bad!" This is a caveman attitude, which tells us to fear dangerous things rather than to learn how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity. We need honest education for kids, both about the adult activity of drug use and about personal responsibility in general. Meanwhile, we need to recognize the following long-ignored fact, that if kids in the west are determined to use drugs unwisely, that tells us something about western society and its policies and attitudes, not about drugs! When we ignore this fact, we invade other countries, in the ultimate case of denial, insisting that they too enact draconian drug laws because of our own country's inability and/or refusal to use drugs as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity.
AFTERWORD
Nor are the depressed the only forgotten stakeholders in the drug debate. Drug prohibition outlaws the philosophical viewpoint of William James by denying us the use of the kinds of substances that changed James' entire view about human consciousness and gave us crucial hints about how to evaluate the Kantian critiques. And yet this is a point that literally no pundit in the world seems to notice except for myself. No one but myself! I alone stood up on behalf of academic freedom in opposition to the FDA's plans to treat laughing gas as a "drug." I alone submitted testimony to the FDA in defense of the legacy of William James.141516
And why is everyone so blind to these issues? It's the power of propaganda. For almost a century now, we have been protected by our media from seeing any downsides to drug prohibition and any upsides to drug use.
No one recognizes the power of this self-interested indoctrination to blind them to the obvious. But propaganda works, and freedom-loving westerners ignore that fact at their own peril.
Key Takeaways:
The medicalization effect: when scientists set themselves up as the authorities on how we think and feel.
Drug prohibition turns med-dependent patients into wards of the healthcare state and children for life.
Scientists deny the existence of glaringly obvious drug benefits.
The Vedic people did not need scientists to tell them that Soma juice should inspire the creation of a new religion.
Science is political in the age of drug prohibition.
Pharmaceutical companies want to treat depression, not cure it.
Wade Davis was statistically challenged when he wrote about cocaine in his 2025 article in Rolling Stone, 'The Secret History of Coca'
The depressed have no right to heal, and no right to complain about that disempowerment, either.
Children are not the only stakeholders in the drugs debate.
Saying DRUGS KILL is philosophically identical to saying FIRE BAD.
Drug prohibition outlaws the philosophical viewpoint of William James.
The media censors the positive effects of drug use and the negative effects of drug prohibition.
Do drug warriors realize that they are responsible for the deaths of young people on America's streets? Look in the mirror, folks. People were not dying en masse from opium overdoses when opiates were legal. It took your prohibition to accomplish that! Stop arresting, start teaching safe use!
Thomas Szasz was not an extremist when it comes to drugs. The extremists are those who feel that psychiatrists know more about our mind and mood than we do.
In the Atomic Age Declassified, they tell us that we needed hundreds of thermonuclear tests so that scientists could understand the effects. That's science gone mad. Just like today's scientists who need more tests before they can say that laughing gas will help the depressed. Science today is all about ignoring the obvious.
There will always be people who don't use drugs wisely, just as there are car drivers who don't drive wisely, and rock climbers who fall to their death. America needs to grow up and accept this, while ending prohibition and teaching safe use.
We give kids drugs to improve their concentration -- but if adults use drugs to concentrate, we call them names and throw them in jail.
The proof that psychedelics work has always been extant. We are hoodwinked by scientists who convince us that efficacy has not been "proven." This is materialist denial of the obvious.
When scientists refuse to report positive uses for drugs, they are not motivated by power lust, they are motivated by philosophical (non-empirical) notions about what counts as "the good life." This is why it's wrong to say that the drug war is JUST about power.
I don't believe in the materialist paradigm upon which SSRIs were created, according to which humans are interchangeable chemical robots amenable to the same treatment for human sadness. Let me use laughing gas and MDMA and coca and let the materialists use SSRIs.
Imagine someone starting their book about antibiotics by saying that he's not trying to suggest that we actually use them. We should not have to apologize for being honest about drugs. If prohibitionists think that honesty is wrong, that's their problem.
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.
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