William James discusses how the use of anesthetic compounds such as laughing gas can provide one with a tantalizing glimpse of new realities. "Our normal waking consciousness," quoth James, "is but one special type of consciousness." He fails to realize, however, that such "anesthetic revelation 3 s," as he calls them, comprise but a subset of the transcendent experiences that have been invoked purposefully for millennia by indigenous religious seekers with the use of psychoactive substances. Although James makes half a dozen references to Hinduism in this book, he never mentions the fact that the Hindu religion was inspired by the use of a psychoactive substance called Soma. Had he made the connection, America's demagogue politicians would have had a harder time convincing us that drugs were evil. Instead, they have succeeded so well that even James's alma mater, Harvard University, does not mention either laughing gas 4 or the anesthetic revelation 5 in their online biography of James6.
Any self-respecting mycologist should denounce the criminalization of mushrooms.
Magazines like Psychology Today continue to publish feel-good articles about depression which completely ignore the fact that we have outlawed all drugs that could end depression in a heartbeat.
This is why "rock stars" use drugs: not just for performance anxiety (which, BTW, is a completely UNDERSTANDABLE reason for drug use), but because they want to fully experience the music, even tho' they may be currently short on money and being hassled by creditors, etc.
"Arrest made in Matthew Perry death." Oh, yeah? Did they arrest the drug warriors who prioritized propaganda over education?
Pundits tell us that there are medical reasons not to "snort" cocaine. So what? There are medical reasons not to drive a car: you may have an accident. The question is: does cocaine use or car driving make sense in a given case! Details matter!
Properly speaking, MDMA has killed no one at all. Prohibitionists were delighted when Leah Betts died because they were sure it was BECAUSE of MDMA/Ecstasy. Whereas it was because of the fact that prohibitionists refuse to teach safe use.
It is actually illegal to be a Ben Franklin in 21st century America. To put this another way: we outlaw far more than drugs when we outlaw mind and mood medicine.
The first step in harm reduction is to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Then hundreds of millions of people will no longer suffer in silence for want of godsend medicines... for depression, for pain, for anxiety, for religious doubts... you name it.
Chesterton might as well have been speaking about the word 'addiction' when he wrote the following: "It is useless to have exact figures if they are exact figures about an inexact phrase."
America arrests people whose only crime is that they are trying to be all that they can be in life... in such a way that psychiatrists are not getting THEIR cut.
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