It’s amazing how many American gun owners fiercely defend their right to firearms while gladly relinquishing their right to the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet. Talk about misplaced priorities! Any government that claims the right to criminalize naturally growing plants will not refrain from outlawing man-made firearms should the winds of political expediency happen to blow in that direction. Yet these gun owners gladly (and even proudly) support the Drug War’s efforts to keep naturally-occurring plant remedies out of the hands of those who need them most: the depressed, the lonely, the anxious, and the victims of chronic pain – all because our government (conveniently assisted by tabloid journalism and a self-interested medical establishment) has launched a propaganda campaign to paint all such users of these substances as irresponsible outlaws and hooligans.
Gun owners like to style themselves as defenders of liberty, insisting proudly with Clint Eastwood that:
“They can have my gun when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.”
But if these gun fanatics were truly interested in individual rights (and not just in the fetishization of this man-made object known as a “gun”), then they would transform their defiant mantra as follows:
“They can have my psilocybin mushroom when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.”
Author's Follow-up:
December 29, 2025
NOTE BENE: I indited this admittedly charming harangue seven years ago, when I was still a kid, scarcely even 60 years old yet! I have since learned that 47,000 people die in America thanks to guns every single year. 47,000! And yet these gun fanatics are worried that their young people might access substances that have been considered medical godsends in the past? Please. 47,000 people! And guess how many Americans died from using MDMA? Zero. Zilch. Nada. There are only a handful of deaths associated with the drug, and those were all caused by drug prohibition, which refuses to teach safe use (in this case about proper hydration) and refuses to regulate product as to quality and quantity.
Americans love guns and violence, but they are terrified by freedom of thought. And so they judge people, not by the content of their character, but by the content of their digestive system.
Ten Tweets
against the hateful war on US
America never ended prohibition. It just redirected prohibition from alcohol to all of alcohol's competitors.
SWAT raids have increased by 15,000 percent from the late 1970s to today, resulting in 50,000 to 80,000 SWAT raids annually in the US alone. --War On Us
The International Observer says the "core issues" causing Mexican drug violence are: "corruption, inequality, and the demand for narcotics in the U.S." Wrong, wrong, wrong. The core issue is DRUG PROHIBITION.
I wonder if Nixon knew what a favor he was doing medical capitalism when he outlawed psychedelics. Those drugs can actually cure things, and there's no money in that.
America takes away the citizen's right to manage their own depression by making opium and cocaine illegal. Then psychiatrists treat the resulting epidemic of depression and anxiety by damaging the patient's brain with shock therapy.
There is an absurd safety standard for "drugs." The cost/benefit analysis of the FDA & co. never takes into account the costs of NOT prescribing nor the benefits of a productive life well lived. The "users" are not considered stakeholders.
Scientists are not the experts on psychoactive medicines. The experts are painters and artists and spiritualists -- and anyone else who simply wants to be all they can be in life. Scientists understand nothing of such goals and aspirations.
Problem 2,643 of the war on drugs:
It puts the government in charge of deciding what counts as a true religion.
Mad in America solicits personal stories about people trying to get off of antidepressants, but they will not publish your story if you want to use entheogenic medicines to help you. They're afraid their readers can't handle the truth.
At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.
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