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Self-Censorship in the Age of the Drug War

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

February 9, 2020



The more I learn about western society's wilful ignorance of naturally occurring psychoactive medicines, the harder it is for me to find good books to read. Almost all self-help books studiously avoid any reference to the power of psychoactive plants to facilitate the miraculous psychological changes that the authors advocate. Almost all scientific books pretend to be giving us the last word on consciousness and meaning, while yet ignoring the profound insights on these subjects that psychoactive plants can provide. Almost all books on depression speculate on what can be done with modern anti-depressants and/or talk therapy, as if psychoactive plants did not exist, as if the drastically limited pharmacy available to us under the Drug War was a natural condition with which all suggested treatment protocols must conform in order to be scientific. In other words, all of these books take the Drug War prohibitions as a natural given of life, and thence proceed to speculate and deduce at will, with the author never realizing that he or she is engaging in self-censorship in order to curry favor with the puritan sensibilities of the Drug War.

I don't know what's worse, however, authors who ignore speaking about psychoactive substances or those who speak about them -- because the latter authors almost ALWAYS adopt invalid drug-war premises when they attempt to analyze the so-called "drug problem" in America.

Take the book by David and Nic Sheff called "High." They say that you can't judge a book by its cover, but this is clearly the exception that proves the rule.

One can just look at the cover to see that the authors subscribe to all the usual drug-war assumptions. The cover features a frenetic and jagged color-scheme obviously intended to be the abstract depiction of an abnormal state of mind associated with the phenomenon of "getting high."

Thus the authors accept the drug-war presupposition that psychoactive substance use (when not prescribed by a board-certified physician, keen to get one addicted to Big Pharma 1 meds) can only be for hedonistic purposes -- which is simply false. One person's high is often another person's self-enlightenment, is another person's making peace with the world, is another person's healthy break from reality -- in the same way that moderate alcohol is said to constitute healthy relaxation.

Are the tribal members of the Native American Church getting "high" when they consume peyote for religious purposes? Are alcohol addicts getting "high" when they take ibogaine to kick that habit? Was Sigmund Freud getting "high" when he used cocaine 2 3 to get his work done in the wee hours of the night? Was Benjamin Franklin getting high when he resorted -- frequently -- to the use of opium 4 ?

Of course not.

So the depiction of the word "High" on such a book cover is pejorative and meant to imply all the narrow views of the Drug Warrior -- designed to separate Americans from Mother Nature's medicines under the drug-war lie that such substances can only be used for the nonsensical and dangerous practice of "getting high."5

This is time-saving, however. I simply need not read the Sheffs' books, because their very book cover shows that they're philosophically in the thrall of all the usual Drug War propaganda and presuppositions. And given the dictum that "confused thinking in, confused thinking out"... the judicious reader will move on.

How many so-called authoritative books on depression completely ignore the fact that drug law outlaws all the most promising cures?6 How many books on relaxation ignore the fact that the motivated mind-set that you need for exercising is just one mushroom away? How many books on consciousness completely ignore the testimony that psychoactive plants have to give on this topic? Welcome to self-censorship in the age of the Drug War.


Author's Follow-up: January 19, 2024

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up



In fact, the most censored books are the ones whose authors claim to be dealing directly with the subject of drugs. Because almost none of these authors ever tell you about the downsides of prohibition: how it lures young inner-city poor people around the world into lives of crime by dangling the prospect of immense profit in front of them -- then punishes these mere kids by removing them from the voting rolls and giving them decades-long prison sentences. Nor will these authors tell you how prohibition has destroyed the rule of law in Latin America and empowered a self-described Drug War Hitler in the Philippines, nor how the Drug War has so Nazified government that cabinet members like William Bennett have actually called for the beheading of drug users and is still considered an upright human being in our so-called freedom-loving democracy.

Nor are they going to tell you about all the good things that drugs can do. Their job is political; their job is to demonize drugs; and this is what they call "being honest" about drugs these days.











Notes for essay entitled Self-Censorship in the Age of the Drug War:

1: 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)
2: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
3: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
4: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
5: See my essay "Childish Drug Warriors" for more on how drug warriors see ethereal mental states through the eyes of immature prudes. (up)
6: Depressed? Here's why you can't get the medicines that you need DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

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Attention People's magazine editorial staff: Matthew Perry was a big boy who made his own decisions. He didn't die because of ketamine or because of evil rotten drug dealers, he died because of America's enforced ignorance about psychoactive drugs.

This is why America is creeping toward authoritarianism -- because of the prohibitionists' ability to get away with everything by blaming "drugs."

In America, they save the depressed from cocaine and opium by turning them into patients for life with dependence-causing "meds." Now 30-year-old doctors get to treat 67-year-olds like children, with new visits every damn three months.

That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.

Judging from research articles, they do not even teach the many obvious benefits of drugs in med school.

My cousin says we should punish drug dealers. I say we should punish those politicians who created those drug dealers out of whole cloth by passing unprecedented laws against the use of Mother Nature's bounty.

The FDA is not qualified to tell us whether holistic medicines work. They hold such drugs to materialist standards and that's pharmacological colonialism.

Drug warriors blame all of the problems that they cause on "drugs" and then insist that the entire WORLD accept their jaundiced view of the natural bounty that God himself told us was good.

This just in on the drug scene: A new New York Times report shows that America has been flooding the world with antidepressants, alcohol and cigarettes!

Drug warriors have harnessed the perfect storm. Prohibition caters to the interests of law enforcement, psychotherapy, Big Pharma, demagogues, puritans, and materialist scientists, who believe that consciousness is no big "whoop" and that spiritual states are just flukes.


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






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