in response to 'Entheogens and Sacred Psychology,' by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 18, 2024
In response to "Entheogens and Sacred Psychology," by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, published 2024 on Academia.edu1.
Good afternoon, Samuel.
I have just read your wonderful paper entitled "Entheogens and Sacred Psychology." It is one of the few papers about "drugs" in which I find nothing to gainsay. However, it has inspired me to make a series of observations based on my own experience with these topics. As I believe I have mentioned, I am a 65-year-old chronic depressive and I have just traveled to Peru in order to learn about psychedelic plant medicine, aka master plants or plant teachers, from a philosophical and psychological point of view. I had hoped to use some of those medicines as well (particularly the huachuma cactus) to gain some of the routinely acknowledged benefits of that drug (a feeling of love and oneness with humanity), thinking I could eventually find therein the motivational mindset needed to break my lifelong dependence on Big Pharma meds (the kind upon which one and four American women are dependent for life). But I have been forced to delay the experience until an upcoming trip to Peru in June.
I will not give you a blow-by-blow account of the obstacles that I encountered in my attempts to use huachuma on my first trip to South America, but those experiences, frustrating as they were, highlighted some interesting issues yet to be explored about the fusion of psychoactive drugs and the western mindset, such as: "Should I feel guilty about trying to 'score' huachuma powder in Cusco in order to create a drinkable concoction of the San Pedro cactus by myself and for my own psychological, religious, philosophical and spiritual purposes?" I certainly felt rather low as I was slinking around Cusco, in my unexpectedly difficult quest to find the drug (coca leaves, on the other hand, were prominently available in every other street stall) though maybe that's a good thing: maybe shaman should be the gatekeepers of substances like huachuma cactus. That said, I am not sure how that situation would jibe with the western ideal of free academic inquiry, to have all my psychedelic experiences mediated through the rites and ceremonies of a religious tradition of which I am largely ignorant, especially when that religion is itself being mediated in many cases merely through the informed imaginations of well-meaning outsiders with respect to those shamanic traditions of the Inca that were so ruthlessly suppressed by the Spanish in colonial times.
After all, William James himself exhorted us as philosophers to study altered states2. For me, that would mean systemically using the substance under various circumstances, at various doses, at various times, in various situations and environments, in order to see what can and perhaps cannot be learned and/or felt thanks to such use. So the idea that I must necessarily associate a drug and its effects with Andean rituals seems problematic to me, it seems to me a bit of a "science stopper," even though I personally love what I'm learning about the Andean Cosmovision and the religious culture of the Inca. It is true, as I think you say, that westerners really do not have a religious tradition that they can "bring" to such drugs, but I would also point out that the DEA is doing everything it can to keep this from happening. If one wants to have their religion outlawed in America, all they need do is announce that the use of a drug like huachuma is part of their religious rites. The DEA will hound that church to the Supreme Court if necessary to prevent sacred usage. Even if the DEA fails in court, they will subsequently bind the church in question with such bureaucratic red tape and expensive "safety" requirements as to effectively nullify the victory thus obtained.
Thanks again for the fascinating paper. If you find time, I invite you to read below some further thoughts that occurred to me while reading it.
Sincerely Yours
Materialism
As you correctly point out, materialist dogma and presuppositions make it difficult for westerners to approach drugs from a spiritual mindset. I would add the following: that materialist dogma blinds doctors to common sense. This is why Dr. Robert Glatter could publish an article in Forbes Magazine in 2021 with the following hilarious title: "Can laughing gas help those with treatment-resistant depression?3" As a 65-year-old lifelong depressive, I say, "Of course it could." And why? For the same reason that MDMA could, and the coca leaf could, and even opium and cocaine could. Because feeling good is feeling good - materialist dogma notwithstanding - and "looking forward" to feeling good also makes one feel good. This is common psychological sense - or it used to be until doctors decided that they would henceforth believe in "empirically validated techniques only." Such doctors forget that psychoactive drug use is not just about chemicals but also about the hopes and dreams of the user, regarding which the doctor has no expertise whatsoever. Psychologically speaking, drug use is not just about a cheap high, or even about spiritual ecstasy, but it is about the health-producing ANTICIPATION of such experiences4.
This reductionist bias helps normalize drug-war tyranny by telling us, in effect, that psychoactive drugs have no positive uses after all, so why should we complain about the new prohibition? This is why I consider modern scientists to be co-conspirators in the government's war on drugs. Most of this normalization, however, comes from the fact that scientists today have "damned" drugs in the sense that Charles Fort used that term in "The Book of the Damned.5" As far as many scientists are concerned, psychoactive drugs do not exist. That is why we see endless articles in Psychology Today, and Science News, and Scientific American, announcing some new treatment for depression, which we're told is a tough nut to crack, and yet the authors never tell us that they are ignoring drugs that could obviously cheer up the user. For just one instance: Laughing gas kits could be made available to the suicidal in the same way that Epi pens are made available for the allergic6. But instead of taking this common sense step to prevent suicides, the FDA is currently considering laws to treat laughing gas like a drug, thereby making it even less available to the suicidal7 (not to mention the followers of William James). Instance two: the outlawing of "feel good" drugs means, in practice, that we would rather fry the brains of the depressed than to let them use "drugs.8" Thus the Drug War is nothing less than the perversion of the normal values of Christianity into those of a fanatical form of Christian Science.
Western Doctors
A number of providers of plant medicine retreats conspicuously involve a number of western doctors in their ceremonies, complete with white lab coat, which to me is something of a turnoff (not to mention a kind of cultural appropriation, replacing the shaman, at least for the nonce, with a chart-holding western doctor). Certainly, we should be informed of all contraindications for any upcoming drug experience - but at some point this care becomes infantilization and is completely outside the spirit of shamanic care, at least as I understand it. It smacks of the Drug Warrior effort to keep us all children when it comes to drugs: to make drug use the one area of human risk in which "one swallow makes a summer," in which any risk is too much risk - a viewpoint that we westerners do not adopt with regard to any other risky activity on earth - not to the free-climbing of mountains nor even to the shooting of guns.
Hallucinogens?
The term "hallucinogens" is problematic in the light of Aldous Huxley's 'filter theory' and the bifurcationist critique of Whitehead. To use the term "hallucinogens" seems to imply that there is one single visual impression that all normal people should perceive at any given time and that to see the world otherwise is to be pathological. "Hallucinogens" seems to imply that there is an ultimate indisputable reality out there, and that sounds like the noumena to me, of which Immanuel Kant said that we can know nothing.
Cultural Appropriation?
I am wary of the term "cultural appropriation" because as a westerner (and one who has gone without godsend medicine for a lifetime now), I fear that the response to such a threat will introduce yet another roadblock to my eternally postponed use of naturally-occurring entheogens even before they have been entirely legalized (or rather re-legalized) in the States and, perhaps ultimately, in the world. A couple comments, therefore:
First, I think the issue of appropriation arises mainly because of drug prohibition, which naturally results in psychedelic tourism, in which both spirit seekers and "drug fanatics" feel compelled to travel to countries in which psychoactive substances are legal. No "thrill seekers" would need to travel south if prohibition were ended. To paraphrase a recent thrill seeker on Reddit (one who deemed the use of huachuma cactus to be both gastrically problematic and unnecessarily labor-intensive): "Why would I travel to Peru when I can just pop a tablet of XYZ in the States?" Of course, most of us are deterred by the illegality of the latter drug, but in the absence of prohibition, there would be far fewer Americans traveling to South America to buy their drugs and thus far less potential for the erosion of local religious purity in the name of international capitalism.
I do not deny that cultural appropriation is a problem, however, especially when it seeks to turn the experience of time-honored medicinal drug use into yet another capitalist product. But the worst appropriation for me is exemplified by the FDA's recent fast-tracking of a form of LSD to fight anxiety9. It sounded great, until I read that visions and euphoria were to be considered adverse reactions for this medication. Then it was so clear to me: the FDA was approving the drug only because the manufacturer had emasculated it, removing everything that had made it popular in the past. In this way, the manufacturer could benefit from the notoriety of the drug while not incurring the wrath of the "straight" community in so doing. They could no doubt do this with a clear conscience because as materialists, they saw no value in fluffy-feely outcomes like "visions and ecstasy," whereas, for myself and many others, the visions and ecstasy were the whole reason for using LSD. This is a clear case of cultural appropriation. The manufacturer seeks to profit from LSD's notoriety in the Bohemian community while yet suppressing all the aspects of the drug that made it objectionable to the power broker culture in Washington, D.C.
It's as if the FDA had spoken to the manufacturers as follows: "We will approve the drug, as long as there is no chance of it inspiring the user with a new religion or a new way of viewing the world. Above all, they must not enjoy it too much!" I need hardly add that these are ideological stipulations, not medical ones.
Also, taken to their extreme, the arguments used in attacking cultural appropriation can be uncomfortably reminiscent of the racist views in many U.S. courts today that access to certain drugs and religions may be restricted based on ethnicity10. Thus a Native American may use peyote in the Native American Church on a legal basis, whereas I am unable to use peyote because I am a Caucasian and have no genetic linkage to such a practice. I find that kind of reasoning ignorant, hateful and prejudiced in the extreme, and far from any American value that I have ever heard of. Therefore I think we need to progress carefully in rectifying perceived cultural appropriation, lest our cure proves worse than the illness.
Safety First? (How about second?)
Avicenna once said that he valued a "wide" life over a "long" one. This is a world view that Drug Warriors cannot seem to understand. For most of us, safety is not the number-one goal in our life. And yet when science is in charge of determining the legality of drugs, safety is always placed first, leaving the goals and aspirations of the potential drug users in a distant second. This is why laughing gas is close to being completely illegal: it might hurt a few ignorant teens - those teens whom we have refused on "principle" to educate about safe use. (Somehow the millions of depressed who have to go without drugs like laughing gas are never considered as stakeholders in America's criminalization debates.) This is also why we have a National Institute of Drug Abuse rather than a National Institute of Drug Use. The government's ideology is that use is unsafe and therefore wrong. Needless to say, such an attitude when applied to horseback riding would result in the immediate end of all equestrian activity, the more so in that horseback riding is the number-one cause of traumatic brain injury in America11.
The Psychedelic Renaissance
The Psychedelic Renaissance ignores the one demographic that has the most right to profit from it: namely, the millions of depressed Americans who have been turned into eternal patients thanks to the War on Drugs, which outlawed all drugs that really work for depression, shunting the depressed off onto Big Pharma medicines that cause the very chemical imbalances that they purport to solve12. This is why I went to Peru: because I am having to perform clinical trials on myself that materialist doctors refuse to perform, based largely on liability and PR fears over a wildly overblown threat called "serotonin syndrome." No, I am not a scientist, but I know some prima facie truths: like, "feeling good is good," and "looking forward to feeling good" is good, and "feeling a sense of oneness with the world and my fellow human being cannot HELP but increase my ability to rely less on the psychoactive substances that I have come to detest, insofar as they have turned me into a ward of the healthcare state.13"
Tech Crazy
We Americans are excited about Elon Musk inserting technology into the bodies of human beings, but I think it's bizarre that we would seek to solve problems like depression with technology in a world in which we refuse to solve such problems with plants and fungi14. It bespeaks a truly hubristic faith in "the latest thing" and an ignorant disdain for the blessings of Mother Nature.
Mind Control
Americans fret about mind control with drugs: but it is already happening! One in four American women take a Big Pharma med every day of their life. This is the greatest mass pharmacological dystopia of all times. But as we might expect, such REAL dystopias are invisible to its victims because of the existing weltanschauung. These women are not on DRUGS after all, they are on blessed MEDS! Cui bono? The drug industry and its fat-cat champions in media and Washington.
Since these drugs do not end the depression that they are targeting, it begs the question: what are they for? Keeping women from committing suicide? If 1 in 4 American women would kill themselves without these "meds," there is something wrong with America, not with women. One can only conclude that the drugs are meant to keep American females content (if not actually happy) with the spiritually meaningless world of unfettered capitalism. That sounds like "The Stepford Wives" to me, but it seems that science is America's new religion, and no one doubts the power of science to "solve" problems like depression. Surely only a Creationist could think otherwise.
The question is not, are SSRIs and SNRIs worthwhile in the abstract? It is rather: does it make sense to use them while yet denying access to an untold number of Mother Nature's potential godsends that clearly inspire love and peace of mind, almost none of which are as dependence-causing as Big Pharma meds? Surely the answer is no!
Cure-Alls
Finally, you rightly say that there are no cure-alls. However, opium is pretty close. It was considered a panacea by most ancient doctors. That's why it seems so ignorant that America increasingly claims that it has no positive uses whatsoever. This defamation campaign against opium has consequences in the real world: hundreds of Indian hospitals no longer carry morphine because of the bureaucratic hurdles that have been put in place in response to stateside fearmongering. In reality, opium is actually a cure for the common cold - but don't look to find that on any politically correct list of facts. And there would be no euthanasia debate if opium were re-legalized, for everyone would have the right to decide on a peaceful death without the approval of their government, merely by taking what Edgar Allan Poe would describe as "an immoderate dose of morphine."
As Jim Hogshire wrote in "Opium for the Masses":
"The poppy's central and indispensable position in our civilization makes access to it important, and thus forbidding public access to the poppy is staggeringly cruel. Ceding control of opiates means ceding control of pain relief to the State." --Jim Hogshire15
As for psychedelics, Paul Stamets cured his teenage stammering problem in one afternoon "on mushrooms." It helped him "get outside of himself" and see what was really going on, psychologically speaking, with his pervasive tic, thus giving him the power to change16.
Everyone knows that no drug is a cure-all. Unfortunately, many also claim to know that "drugs" have no positive uses whatsoever, except those that are illusory and or fatal. Of course, to the extent that this is true, it is so because of Drug War prohibition itself, which results in a corrupt drug supply while refusing to teach safe use.
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You have been reading an article entitled, Searching Peru for Sacred Plant Medicine: in response to 'Entheogens and Sacred Psychology,' by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, published on April 18, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, Searching Peru for Sacred Plant Medicine: in response to 'Entheogens and Sacred Psychology,' by Samuel Bendeck Sotillos, published on April 18, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)