It's really a hoot to have scientists tell us how to achieve a sense of purpose in the age of the Drug War. The scientist is in the position of a doctor who is permitted to recommend anything whatsoever for a headache except an aspirin. Mother Nature's psychoactive medicines are custom-made to give us a sense of purpose when used advisedly. The natural substance Soma produced such powerful insights of this kind that it spawned the entire Vedic religion. Opium increased Benjamin Franklin's sense of purpose and coca wine inspired the stories of such authors as HG Wells, Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas. Plato, Aristotle and Cicero were philosophically inspired by the psychedelic-fueled Eleusinian Mysteries. Yet America, a supposedly scientific country (and one based on Natural Law at that) chose to start demonizing psychoactive plant medicines in 1914 and essentially forced the rest of the world to follow suit through economic blackmail. We even claimed the right to rush overseas and burn the plants of which racist stateside politicians disapproved, without, of course, bothering to ask the mere citizens of those countries how they felt about the matter.
The result: when our authors write about personal improvement, they ignore the therapeutic 64,000-pound gorilla in the room: viz plant medicine, leaving us with sterile theoretical adjurations from the world of science to eat these foods, sleep at these hours, consume these sorts of vegetables, and think all kinds of warm and fuzzy thoughts, under the demonstrably false assumption that we can think our way to psychological health, let alone to full-on self-actualization in life. But until we stop demonizing plant medicines and start figuring out how to use them wisely to achieve our psychological goals, I for one do not want to listen to science's latest theoretical advice about finding purpose in life. I've read countless articles of that kind before, and I'm still depressed as ever at age 62. The only difference is I'm not only depressed now, but I'm hooked on Big Pharma's tranquilizing antidepressants and will have to take them for the rest of my life, despite the fact that, unlike plant medicine, they were never created with my self-actualization in mind. Meanwhile, if Americans seek a purpose in life, let them start fighting the long-overdue battle to end America's disgracefully anti-scientific Drug War, which is also anti-minority, anti-patient, and the establishment of a religion: namely that of Christian Science, which tells us that we have some moral duty to say no to the life-enhancing plant medicines that grow at our very feet.
Author's Follow-up: December 2, 2022
Obama launched a BRAIN initiative while continuing to support the outlawing of almost all psychoactive substances that provide insight into the nature of consciousness and how the brain actually works1. Learn more in my essay entitled The Brainless Initiative.
"Can I use poppies, coca, laughing gas, MDMA?" "NO," says the materialist, "We must be SCIENTIFIC! We must fry your brain and give you a lobotomy and make you a patient for life with the psychiatric pill mill! That's true SCIENCE!"
"Users" can be kept out of the workforce by the extrajudicial process of drug testing; they can have their baby taken from them, their house, their property -- all because they do not share the intoxiphobic attitude of America.
What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.
Addiction was not a big thing until the drug war. It's now the boogie-man with which drug warriors scare us into giving up our freedoms. But getting obsessed on one single drug is natural in the age of choice-limiting prohibition.
AI is inherently plagiaristic technology. It tells us: "Hey, guys, look what I can do!" -- when it should really be saying, "Hey, guys, look how I stole all your data and repackaged it in such a way as to make it appear that I am the genius, not you!"
America created a whole negative morality around "drugs" starting in 1914. "Users" became fiends and were as helpless as a Christian sinner -- in need of grace from a higher power. Before prohibition, these "fiends" were habitues, no worse than Ben Franklin or Thomas Jefferson.
We have a low tolerance for the downsides of drug use only. We are fine with high risk levels for any other activity on earth. If drug warriors were serious about saving lives, they'd outlaw guns, free flying, free diving, and all pleasure trips to Mars.
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.
If psychoactive drugs had never been criminalized, science would never have had any reason or excuse for creating SSRIs that muck about unpredictably with brain chemistry. Chewing the coca leaf daily would be one of many readily available "miracle treatments" for depression.
There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Self-help nonsense in the age of the Drug War published on April 7, 2021 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, Self-help nonsense in the age of the Drug War published on April 7, 2021 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)
