hose who support the Drug War do so based on a kind of materialist version of Christian Science. The Drug Warrior does not discount medical cures entirely, as does the Christian Scientist, but he or she insists that the medical pharmacy of Mother Nature "should not" be used to bring about psychological happiness and that such usage is somehow tawdry and unbecoming of a sane and sober American.
As a dissenter to this doctrine, I believe that there is no reason why Mother Nature's bounty cannot be justly used to improve my mind in the same way that I use Mother Nature's bounty to improve my physical health. In other words, I disagree with both the classic theology of Christian Science and its modern-day interpretation that is presupposed by the Drug Warrior. It is therefore a violation of my religious liberty to deny me access to Mother Nature's bounty on the theory that I should not require that bounty to live a happy and fulfilled life, for that is an unprovable and hence theological assumption and one that I do not share.
We talk about an aborigine's religious right to use time-honored natural substances such as peyote and ayahuasca, but this is beside the point. Indeed, to frame the issues in this way is to tacitly acknowledge the Drug Warrior's right to deny the rest of us our God-given right to access Mother Nature's bounty for the benefit of our own psyches. And how is this justified by the Drug Warrior? As stated above, it's justified based on a theological notion, a religious assumption, an article of faith: namely, that it is morally wrong to expand one's mind through the use of certain psychoactive substances.
To repeat, this is one possible way to look at life (namely the Christian Science way), but it is not MY way, and to insist otherwise is to force me to adopt the religious practices and taboos of Christian Science.
June 7, 2022
12-Step Programs are religions, which require their devotees to confess their powerlessness in the face of problems like addiction. Why is this religion? Because the powerlessness is a necessary result of the substance criminalization upon which the 12-Step church is based. It is powerlessness by design, not by necessity. The generally WASP proponents of the 12-step group first render the "user" powerless in a practical sense by denying them access to all pharmacological godsends. Then they urge the former "user" to consider themselves powerless in a fundamental ontological sense, in a religious sense that is, a sense which is almost made explicit by the 12-step requirement that the user place their fate in the hands of a thinly disguised Christian God called a higher power. "We are all powerless sinners in need of higher help," rings the puritanical refrain. Yes, but would this be true had you not criminalized almost all the godsend psychoactive medicine in the universe?!
This proposition that we are powerless when faced with problems like habituation is by no means a logical truth that is self-evident to a rational mind. It is rather an article of faith of the modern Drug Warrior and a self-fulfilling prophecy thanks to Drug Warrior legerdemain in the civic and legal realms. The fact that this dour prognosis rings true statistically is meaningless in a world that has dogmatically shunned many hundreds of godsend psychoactive medicines that might have changed outcomes for the better. And so the Drug Warrior rigs the therapeutic deck in favor of failure when they deprive a human being of all psychoactive medicine that might actually empower them to thrive in the world, habituation or no habituation. It's as if the Drug Warrior takes away my Tylenol and then tells me, "We all must rely on God for headache relief," to which the sane response would be: "Well, yes, I guess so, but only because you've confiscated all the flippin' medicine that might otherwise have fixed my headache!"
Religion
The Hindu religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. It is therefore a crime against religious liberty to outlaw substances that inspire and elate.
Prohibition is a crime against religious freedom.
William James found religious experience in substance use. See his discussion of what he calls "the anesthetic revelation" in his book entitled "The Varieties of Religious Experience."
The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.
The Drug War violates religious freedom by putting bureaucrats in charge of deciding if a religion is 'sincere' or not. That is so absurd that one does not know whether to laugh or cry. No one in government is capable of determining whether the inner states that I achieve with psychoactive medicine are religious or not. This is why Milton Friedman was so wrong when he said in 1972 that there are good people on both sides of the drug war debate. WRONG! There are those who are more than ready to take away my religious liberty and those who are not. If the former wish to be called 'good,' they will first need a refresher course in American democracy and religious freedom. They need to renounce their Christian Science theocracy and let folks like myself worship using the kinds of substances that have inspired entire religions in the past. Until they do that, do not expect me to praise the very people who have launched an inquisition against my form of experiencing the divine.
There would be no Hindu religion today had the drug war been in effect in the Punjab 3,500 years ago.
"They have called thee Soma-lover: here is the pressed juice. Drink thereof for rapture." -Rig Veda
Drug-designing chemists have no expertise in deciding what constitutes a cure for depression. As Schopenhauer wrote:
"The mere study of chemistry qualifies a man to become an apothecary, but not a philosopher."
This is why it's wrong to dismiss drugs as "good" or "bad." There are endless potential positive uses to psychoactive drugs. That's all that we should ask of them.
The government makes psychoactive drug approval as slow as possible by insisting that drugs be studied in relation to one single board-certified "illness." But the main benefits of such drugs are holistic in nature. Science should butt out if it can't recognize that fact.
Democratic societies need to outlaw prohibition for many reasons, the first being the fact that prohibition removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, thereby handing elections to fascists and insurrectionists.
The drug war has created a whole film genre with the same tired plots: drug-dealing scumbags and their dupes being put in their place by the white Anglo-Saxon establishment, which has nothing but contempt for altered states.
"When two men who have been in an aggressive mood toward each other take part in the ritual, one is able to say to the other, 'Come, let us drink, for there is something between us.' " re: the Mayan use of the balche drink in Encyc of Psych Plants, by Ratsch & Hofmann
The DEA is a Schedule I agency. It has no known positive uses and is known to cause death and destruction.
"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.
The DEA has done everything it can to keep Americans clueless about opium and poppies. The agency is a disgrace to a country that claims to value knowledge and freedom of information.
Prohibition turned habituation into addiction by creating a wide variety of problems for users, including potential arrest, tainted or absent drug supply, and extreme stigmatization.
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, The Drug War as Religion published on April 24, 2019 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)
hose who support the Drug War do so based on a kind of materialist version of Christian Science. The Drug Warrior does not discount medical cures entirely, as does the Christian Scientist, but he or she insists that the medical pharmacy of Mother Nature "should not" be used to bring about psychological happiness and that such usage is somehow tawdry and unbecoming of a sane and sober American.
You have been reading an article entitled, The Drug War as Religion published on April 24, 2019 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)
