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The Drug War = Christian Science

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

April 29, 2019



Philosophically speaking, the Drug War is merely Christian Science as applied to psychoactive drugs.

April 2025 Update

It is premised on an article of faith: namely, that the best life is one lived without the aid of psychoactive medicines. Therefore it is a violation of Church and State when government tells me I must live my life according to the Drug War ethic of prohibition. For I do not find it morally reprehensible for a man or woman to access the medicinal bounty of Mother Nature to improve his or her mind. It is not part of MY religion to be repelled by such behavior. To the contrary, I find it a moral responsibility to be all that I can be in this life, and if that goal can be aided by Mother Nature's plants, herbs, and fungi, then I consider it a moral obligation to pursue that enlightenment.

Author's Follow-up: September 2, 2022



The Drug War is a greater outrage than almost anyone else seems to give it credit for. It's not just a good idea that was bound to fail -- it's a bad idea that is already failing spectacularly as we write (by causing civil wars overseas, denying medical godsends to billions, denying morphine 1 to kids in hospice, killing thousands of inner-city Americans every year, censoring scientists -- or rather bamboozling them with so much tacit drug-war ideology that said scientists do not even recognize that they're being censored). The government has no business trying to get citizens to stop using plants and fungi whose psychoactive powers have inspired entire religions. The use of such proscriptions is inherently a war on religion, essentially requiring the whole world to green-light only those drugs that have been approved of by WASP politicians, namely alcohol, tobacco and coffee. And if one doesn't like the world without godsend medicines, they can always "come home" to the Christian church, by accepting the existence of a higher power while declaring yourself incapable of using so much as aspirin safely.

Thus conscience (or rather false consciousness) doth make cowards of us all.

Thus via prohibition, the Drug War hopes to turn everyone into a practicing Christian -- or else execute them for drug dealing: the more things change... It's a religious war by another name.



Author's Follow-up:

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




The above essay was written almost six years ago, when I had just begun to unmask the hateful but unspoken premises upon which the Drug War is based. Spoiler alert: the takeaway message from my subsequent six years of study could be wrapped up in one short sentence: "Prohibition is evil." The proof is extant.

Another summary of my conclusions about the Drug War over the past six years could be stated as follows:

"The Drug War is based on two huge lies: 1) that drug use has no upsides, and 2) that prohibition has no downsides."

Better yet, prohibition is a crime against religious liberty insofar as it outlaws the same kinds of medicines that inspired the Hindu religion: namely, drugs that inspire and elate.

But returning to the theme of the above 2019 essay:

If anyone doubts my thesis that the Drug War represents the outlawing of religion, I have just three words for them: the Hindu religion. As much as even Hindus might refuse to admit it, the Hindu religion was inspired by drug use. It was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. Just consider the following handful of citations about Soma in Vedic scripture:

"Soon as his song of praise is born, the Soma, Indra's juice, becomes A thousand-winning thunderbolt."

"Swift to the purifying sieve flows Soma 2 as exalted Law, Slaying the fiends, loving the Gods."

"Effused as cheerer of the men, flowing best gladdener, thou art A Prince to Indra with thy juice."

"Flow on, Sage Soma, 3 with thy stream to give us mental power and strength."


The take-home message from the Rig Veda is the following: A religion was created thanks to the use of a drug that inspired and elated. From this it follows that prohibition is a crime against religious liberty. It is worse than the outlawing of a specific existing religion -- prohibition is the outlawing of the religious impulse itself.




Notes:

1: Three takeaway lessons from the use of morphine by William Halsted, co-founder of Johns Hopkins Medical School (up)
2: Blue Tide: The Search for Soma: a philosophical review of the book by Mike Jay (up)
3: Blue Tide: the Search for Soma (up)


Christian Science




On a superficial level, Christian Science may be seen as a drug-hating religion and so its very existence tends to support the effort of drug warriors to outlaw godsend psychoactive medicines. On a deeper level, however, the religion's founder Mary Baker-Eddy was fighting not so much against drugs as against the failure of modern science to acknowledge the power of the human mind. In Mary's case, of course, this was the mind as influenced by Jesus Christ, but yet she recognized a principle with which even a non-believer can agree and which, moreover, is clearly true in light of drug user reports from the Vedic days to the present: namely, that the human mind has a great as-yet untapped power to control one's outlook on life and to therefore positively affect overall human health to some as-yet undetermined degree. Mary does seem to have overestimated the mind's ability to cure the body, of course, but it is worth noting in her defense that the government has outlawed the very research that would be required to determine exactly where the line should be drawn between the mind-curable condition and that which is beyond the help of this sort of holistic healing.

We would need to be able to use psychoactive medicines freely in order to generate the sort of user reports that could help us answer such questions adequately. And this would be research of the greatest philosophical importance, because it would essentially be a search into the true nature of mind-body dualism.

Mind-body dualism is like the weather when it comes to the field of philosophy: everybody talks about it but nobody does anything about it. Well, here is a chance for philosophers to launch a first-hand investigation of the interaction between mind and body and to thereby determine the nature of each -- as well as the nature of the interactive whole which they in some sense comprise. Philosophers just have to decide: Do they want to perform the kind of hands-on philosophic research that William James advocated viz. altered states, or do they want to keep pretending that the drug war does not exist and that it has no downsides for philosophical research. For the opposite is so obviously true: namely, that drug prohibition forbids us from performing the kind of research that could blow the whole "mind-body" problem wide open from the western point of view and so inspire whole new fields of research.

For more on this subject, please see my essay entitled "Christian Science and Drugs: what Mary Baker-Eddy Got Right.



  • Addicted to Christianity
  • America's Puritan Obsession with Sobriety
  • Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Heroin versus Alcohol
  • How the DEA determines if a religion is true
  • How the Drug War Banned my Religion
  • Libertarians as Closet Christian Scientists
  • Meister Eckhart and Drugs
  • Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches: LSD, Cannabis, and Spiritual Sacraments in Underground America
  • Take this Drug Test
  • The Christian Presuppositions of the Drug War and Why They're Important
  • The Church of the Most Holy and Righteous Drug War
  • The Drug War = Christian Science
  • The Drug War as Religion
  • Using Ecstasy in Church
  • Why the Drug War is Christian Science Sharia
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than a Religion
  • America's Imperialist Christian Science War on Drugs
  • American Sharia
  • Boycott Singapore
  • Christian Science and Drugs
  • Christian Science Rehab
  • Drug Testing and the Christian Science Inquisition
  • Drug War Uber Alles
  • Even Howard Zinn Reckons without the Drug War
  • Goodbye Patient, Hello Client
  • Our Short-Sighted Fears about Long-Term Drug Use
  • PROTEST DRUG TESTING NOW!
  • The Christian Science SWAT Teams of the Drug War
  • The Drug War = Christian Science
  • What You Can Do
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
  • Why the Drug War is Christian Science Sharia





    • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    "Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death." -Jean Cocteau

    Healthline posted an article in 2021 about the benefits of getting off of antidepressants. They did not even mention the biggest benefit: NO LONGER BEING AN ETERNAL PATIENT -- no longer being a child in the eyes of an all-knowing healthcare system.

    Everyone's biggest concern is the economy? Is nobody concerned that Trump has promised to pardon insurrectionists and get revenge on critics? Is no one concerned that Trump taught Americans to doubt democracy by questioning our election fairness before one single vote was cast?

    In the age of the Drug War, the Hippocratic Oath has become "First, do no good."

    That's why I created the satirical Partnership for a Death Free America. It demonstrates clearly that drug warriors aren't worried about our health, otherwise they'd outlaw shopping carts, etc. The question then becomes: what are they REALLY afraid of? Answer: Free thinkers.

    Had the DEA been active in the Punjab and 1500 BCE, there would be no Hindu religion today.

    If we cared about the elderly in 'homes', we would be bringing in shamanic empaths and curanderos from Latin America to help cheer them up and expand their mental abilities. We would also immediately decriminalize the many drugs that could help safely when used wisely.

    The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.

    The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?

    Kids should be taught in grade school that prohibition is wrong.


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






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    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

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