Homepage of the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass
blog icon orange rss icon with stylized radio waves bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter substack icon


back navigation arrow


Speaking Truth to Substack

It's another Notes Day for the Drug War Philosopher

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher (Substack version)

August 5, 2026









Aha! It's your lovable old Drug War Philosopher here, going through the notes from the Kingdom of Substackia that have caught my attention over the last seven days. I noticed in doing so that the "regretful Libertarian" from last week is still spreading misinformation and hasty conclusions to anyone who will listen. You remember RL: he regrets being a Libertarian because he now sees that cracking heads is called for when it comes to stopping human beings from accessing the bounty of Mother Nature. He somehow has no interest in cracking the heads of beer drinkers, however. He apparently thinks that the ingredients for that beverage bypassed Mother Nature and were handed directly to humankind from the Godhead (him, her or itself). But I am silent. I have a policy in place whereby I do not allow myself to get irritated by the same person two weeks in a row, so I will not bother to show wherein he does offend THIS week. (Grumble, grumble, grumble.)

I'm glad to say that most of this week's notes are not actually wrong in any way since they are really just click-bait designed to get people chatting. There are, however, one or two posts that are not necessarily wrong in themselves but whose wording implies a wrong way of looking at the world. I'm always tempted to respond to such implicit falderal, even in advance of the erroneous individual's attempts to formulate his or her basic misunderstanding into words. That's basically the tack that I took on the post by Dr. Muir below, because I just knew from experience that the end of antidepressants that both he and Mark Horowitz were apparently advocating was going to end up being an attempt to get people off drugs entirely, and not just an attempt to get us off "meds." Of course, there's always the small chance that Dr. Muir will turn out to be the first doctor I know of who advocates an end to drug prohibition on behalf of his patients' right to heal, in which case, won't I have egg on my face! -- but I will be the first to apologize (and to sign up for an office visit) should my scruples be gainsaid in that manner. Hey, I'm nothing if not fair, folks.

Irritation Level: low
FROM: Mental Health 4 Men
NOTE:
If you were to give a Ted talk to men regarding their mental health, what would be your main point? (And why?)
COMMENT:
That the outlawing of drugs is the outlawing of our right to heal, and that drugs actually have benefits, even though our government is spending $50 billion a year to convince us otherwise.


Irritation Level: medium
FROM: Owen Scott Muir, M.D.
NOTE:
Ending Antidepressants: a conversation with Mark Horowitz.
COMMENT:
I am a 67-year-old chronic depressive who has to see a doctor one-third my age every three months of my life to qualify for yet another prescription for an underperforming and dependence-causing “med” that is harder to kick than heroin. Yes, we have to “end” antidepressants, but not to turn the world into drug-hating Christian Scientists. We need to end the drug prohibition which tells us that time-honored panaceas have no positive uses whatsoever. [It turns out that Oscar only allows subscribers to comment.]


Irritation Level: low
FROM: Liv Kissper
NOTE:
What subject can you talk about for hours without repeating what everyone already says?
COMMENT:
Drug prohibition.


Irritation Level: low
FROM: Amalya Sukiasyan
NOTE:
What are the enemies of truth?
COMMENT:
Drug prohibitionists.


Irritation Level: medium
FROM: Andrew M. Weisse
NOTE:
Psilocybin Potency Is Far Less Predictable Than Most Think
COMMENT:
This is pretty much true of all psychedelics. The effects produced are a joint production of the user and the substance. I have read many user reports from Erowid and Fadiman and Stanislav Grof and Alexander Shulgin that verify this fact. I also have personal experience in which a small physical amount produced an experience much greater than that produced by many times that physical amount. Even the same amount in the same person has different effects when taken at different times. This is less surprising when we consider that the outcome of use is not just a product of the drug but of the enormously complex human mind working with the drug. It is not so much that the drug is unpredictable bur rather that the human mind is unpredictable, and can get different things out of the same substance at different times — sometimes even nothing, and sometimes even “the face of God.”


Irritation Level: medium
FROM: Mental Health 4 Men
NOTE:
Best mental health advice you can give someone? Go!
COMMENT:
Learn all the things about drugs that our government does not want you to know. Read books like Pihkal, Tihkal, Ceremonial Chemistry, and the Truth about Opium by William H. Brereton. You'll slowly come to realize that drug prohibition is the outlawing of your right to heal.









read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




For those who want to understand what's going on with the drug war from a philosophical point of view, I recommend chapter six of "Eugenics and Other Evils" by GK Chesterton.

Conservatives say they're against Big Government -- but they let bureaucrats decide what medicines they can use.

Scientists are making entire livings from trying to figure out what's best for ME as a chronic depressive. They owe their jobs to drug prohibition.

Immanuel Kant wrote that scientists are scornful about metaphysics yet they rely on it themselves without realizing it. This is a case in point, for the idea that euphoria and visions are unhelpful in life is a metaphysical viewpoint, not a scientific one.

Here is a typical user report about a drug that the DEA tells us has no positive uses whatsoever: "There is a profoundness of meaning inherent in anything that moves." (reported in "Pikhal" by Alexander Shulgin)

Even fans of sacred medicine have been brainwashed to believe that we do not know if such drugs "really" work: they want microscopic proof. But that's a western bias, used strategically by drug warriors to make the psychotropic drug approval process as glacial as possible.

Musk and co. want to make us more robot-like with AI, when they should be trying to make us more human-like with sacred medicine. Only humans can gain creativity from plant medicine. All AI can do is harvest the knowledge that eventually results from that creativity.

We should start taking names. All politicians and government officials who work to keep godsends like psilocybin from the public should be held to account for crimes against humanity when the drug war finally ends.

The Drug War has turned America into the world's first "Indignocracy," where our most basic rights can be vetoed by a misinformed public. That's how scheming racist politicians put an end to the 4th amendment to the US Constitution.

Philip Jenkins reports that Rophynol had positive uses for treating mental disorders until the media called it the "date rape drug." We thus punished those who were benefitting from the drug, tho' the biggest drug culprit in date rape is alcohol. Oprah spread the fear virally.


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






back navigation arrow
Book Cover

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

This book features 150 annotated images, designed to force brainwashed Americans to confront the fact that drug prohibition is wrong. Here is what author Richard Parrish II says of the book's compiler: "The drug prohibition philosopher provides first-hand, principled, persuasive, and insightful arguments against the current drug prohibition regime..."

Purchase Your Copy
Book Cover

Drama lovers: collect full-cast recordings of classic plays

In my spare time, when I am not shaming drug warriors for their heartless drug policies, I create full-cast recordings of classic plays using the latest in synthetic voices licensed by the Natural Reader company. Snag your copy of my production of Volpone, by Ben Jonson... and follow me on Payhip for more where that came from, including classics like The Post Office, The Double Dealer and The Inspector General. -- Yours in all-too-justified outrage, the Drug War Philosopher @ abolishthedea.com.

Purchase Your Copy



No cookies, no ads paid for by amoral and immoral billionaires (or trillionaires).


Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

The Partnership for a Death Free America is a proud sponsor of The Drug War Philosopher website @ abolishthedea.com.


Copyright 2026, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

tombstone for American Democracy, 1776-2024, RIP (up)