a shamanic approach combining the best of western and eastern medicine
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 24, 2025
The ideal world would be one in which the east and west got together to bring shamanic healing to suffering humanity. Let me describe how this might work.
A team of psychonaut researchers and Latin American shaman would get together -- say, in the Sacred Valley of Peru for symbolic purposes. At least one of the psychonauts would be proficient in the western reductionist approach to medicine, which is to say that approach which focuses on potential psycho-physical downsides of particular drug use to the exclusion of everything else. For this is the only aspect of drug use that western medicine seems to understand these days, given that its behaviorist bona fides make it incapable of appreciating the holistic nature of drug benefits. And yet the western medical establishment will cry "foul" if the materialist mindset is not "at the table" during the development of the shamanic protocols that are in view here. This "westerner" will point out generic contraindications of certain drugs and drug combinations. It must be remembered, however, that these warnings will be largely a-contextual and will not take into account the influence of the psycho-spiritual atmosphere of the shamanic procedure as a whole, whose meta-influence, so to speak, may counteract the envisioned downsides or even turn them to benefits.
The team would be free to use any drug in the world - imagine that -- in order to bring about a specific outcome desired by their clients. Notice that I call these people "clients," for these envisioned shamanic protocols would abolish the concept of "patient" by regarding every "customer" as a seeker. Whether these people are seeking an end to depression or merely seeking spiritual growth, they are all the same: imperfect human beings attempting to improve themselves through shamanic healing.
It should be noted that this has never been tried before. Never have human beings sat down and considered how to use psychoactive drugs in general for the benefit of humanity. Both shamans and western "healers" have been sharply limited as to the drugs that they could consider for this purpose. The indigenous healers, lacking mobility, have been limited to the plant medicines of which they were aware in their local region -- while the western healers have been limited even more dramatically by government fiat. The anti-scientific laws of racist politicians have barred them from using an entire pharmacopeia of psychoactive medicine, typically leaving such would-be healers with no pharmacological options except for those provided by Big Pharma 12 , drugs which tend to cause lifetime dependencies while having results that pale in comparison to the effects of the many medications thus outlawed.
There would be no templated cures for given conditions. Rather, the cross-cultural shamanic team would devise custom protocols for each individual, based on that person's goals in life, their interests, their beliefs, their risk tolerance, and so forth. These protocols would be based on psychological common sense, the common sense that western medicine is dogmatically obliged to ignore thanks to its belief in the behaviorist principles of JB Watson 34, according to which all that matters is quantifiable data when it comes to human psychology. This is the hateful doctrine that renders western doctors stupid these days, causing them to doubt the efficacy of drugs that have glaringly obvious benefits and which have even been considered panaceas in the past. Only a dogmatic behaviorist, for instance, could tell us that anesthetics like nitrous oxide have no positive uses for the depressed5.
Consider this description of an anesthetic experience that is quoted by William James in "The Varieties of Religious Experience":
"I thought that I was near death; when, suddenly, my soul became aware of God, who was manifestly dealing with me, handling me, so to speak, in an intense personal present reality. I felt him streaming in like light upon me.... I cannot describe the ecstasy I felt!6"
And yet our modern doctors claim that such experiences have no benefits? Actually, it's worse than that: modern doctors completely ignore such experiences, insisting that we should only pay attention to data that can be quantified.
This is the whole reason that we need this new liberated shamanic psychology of which I write: because modern doctors are mad. They are willfully stupid. They completely ignore psychological common sense. We need an approach to healing that recognizes transcendent experiences as obviously beneficial, not something to be rejected out of hand because of our dogmatic adherence to the obsolete and inhumane principles of behaviorism and the purblind reductionism for which it stands.
The new protocol would also reject the materialist fear of using a variety of medicines to bring about psychological growth and healing. This fear is understandable in western society, thanks both to litigious concerns and the fact that materialist scientists strive for certainty. They would rather have easily quantifiable results than to help their patients. When we use a variety of medicinal combinations, there are more variables and so our procedures are not easily presented to potential funders in the form of compelling Power Point presentations. But the new protocol that we envision is not searching for a one-size-fits-all cure that requires such data. It approaches healing as an art form, given that it requires the intelligent consideration and ranking of a wide variety of psychosocial inputs relevant to a specific individual, those inputs that materialists ignore by dealing only with generic biochemistry.
Thus far, we have established that the new shamans would be able to use any drug on the planet which shows potential in a protocol based on psychological common sense. We have also noted that multiple drugs may be used for this purpose, either alone or in combination. But there is an additional way in which these new protocols would differ from the western approach to mind and mood therapy. The new shamans would not have any Christian Science presuppositions about the need for suffering in treating mental health problems, even in cases of addiction. There may be some protocols for specific people in which a degree of suffering is deemed therapeutic and which may be undertaken with the agreement of a specific seeker... but there will be no suffering for suffering sake. The suffering that we associate with withdrawal today is largely due to the fact that we have outlawed all substances that could keep one's mind off the withdrawal process. Imagine withdrawing from a substance while yet being able to look forward to nightly experiences of the kind described above. Remember that psychological common sense we were talking about? Well, it is psychological common sense that one could easily stay the course in withdrawing from a drug if they had such bliss to look forward to.
I have experience with withdrawing from meds, and I can tell you that the worst parts of the experience are those few hours, generally late a night, when one half imagines and half feels downsides to withdrawal without being able to look forward to any relief. The mere knowledge of certain upcoming relief can annihilate the current suffering and render one able to survive it without reaching for the drug or liquor that one had hoped to foreswear. Again, this is psychological common sense, the common sense that western medicine refuses to let us profit from during the healing process and for which we therefore envision this new shamanic protocol.
The question may be asked, what would the Latin American shaman bring to the table? They bring the understanding of the holistic nature of the individual. This is why the protocol that I envision would be first trialed in the Sacred Valley of Peru, for it is the region where the west first began to impose its cramped and dismissive view of drugs on the New World. Of course, the trial could take place anywhere on the globe, but by locating it geographically in this epicenter of holistic understanding, it would presumably be more difficult for the west to interfere with and/or block this experiment, particularly if the proponents of this new form of therapy were to continually underscore the historical local belief in holism, as expressed today in the philosophy of Cosmovision7, and remind the world that plant medicine is neither good nor bad in the shamanic view, generically considered, except as regards the purposes to which it is put.
Of course, even today one can go to the Sacred Valley and hook up with an ayahuasca ceremony or engage in the ritual use of huachuma cactus. But such specific protocols merely hint at the kinds of changes that I am proposing here. The goal is a kind of individualized therapy that looks at the entire world of psychoactive medicines and asks, "How can we best employ this vast pharmacopoeia to leverage the power of common sense psychology to help this particular seeker to improve their mood and mentation in the way that they desire? How can we holistically help this person based on who they are rather than adopting the western materialist approach, according to which the "patient" is a mere widget susceptible to a one-size-fits-all cure for whatever ails them? How can we safely profit from drugs instead of demonizing them and ignoring all their obvious and time-honored benefits?"
I hope these considerations give the reader an idea of the sort of new shamanic protocol that I am proposing here. This is my attempt to create a new common-sense alternative to the purblind behaviorism of the west, an alternative which, for the first time in human history, would view all drugs as potential godsends, judging them entirely based on their ability to help a specific person in a specific protocol rather than judging them based on the superstitious belief that such drugs are evil in and of themselves. For the holistic thinker realizes that if drugs are misused in a society, there is something wrong with that society, not with drugs. To think otherwise creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, a world in which our social policies render drugs dangerous, thereby giving us an "excuse" to adopt the hypocritical imperialist mindset of the Francisco Pizarros of the world toward holistic medicine.
Author's Follow-up: February 24, 2025
It might be objected that this protocol still leaves healthcare providers as gatekeepers, but the point here is to successfully develop and publicize an holistic attitude toward drugs. In creating a healthy, common sense attitude toward drugs, we will be taking a step in the direction of the full drug freedom that we need and which comports with the requirements of a free society. The ultimate goal is a world in which a shamanic class is available for consultation as needed but in which an educated person would have the knowledge and ability to advisedly use drugs on their own for a variety of positive purposes.
The goal is not to create a world that focuses exclusively on drugs. We already live in such a world thanks to drug-warrior fearmongering. The ultimate goal is to have drugs become just one aspect of life, a tool of which folks can understandably avail themselves without great fanfare, a world in which the shamanic class, with their empathic skills and pharmacological savvy, can guide them in avoiding unwanted dependency and ill-advised use, given their specific circumstances in life. It is a common-sense approach to drugs that refuses to impose colonialist biases and fears on holistic cultures. It is a way of thinking about drugs that robs them of their potential to foment civil wars and inner-city shootings and keeps them from eroding time-honored democratic freedoms, as the Drug War has done in destroying the 1st and 4th amendments to the U.S. Constitution, meanwhile censoring academia and turning America into a penal colony8.
The Drug War is one big entrapment scheme for poor minorities. Prohibition creates an economy that hugely incentivizes drug dealing, and when the poor fall for the bait, the prohibitionists rush in to arrest them and remove them from the voting rolls.
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.
Let's arrest drug warriors, confiscate their houses, and deny them jobs in America -- until such time as they renounce their belief in the demonstrably ruinous policy of substance prohibition.
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
Now the folks who helped Matthew get Ketamine must be sacrificed on the altar of the Drug War, lest people start thinking that the Drug War itself was at fault.y
The outlawing of opium eventually resulted in an "opioid crisis"? The message is clear: people want self-transcendence. If we don't let them find it safely, they will find it dangerously.
By reading "Drug Warriors and Their Prey," I begin to understand why I encounter a wall of silence when I write to authors and professors on the subject of "drugs." The mere fact that the drug war inspires such self-censorship should be grounds for its immediate termination.
Today's drug laws tell us that we must respect the historical use of sacred medicines, while denying us our personal right to use them unless our ancestors did so. That's a meta-injustice! It negatively affects the way that we are allowed to experience our world!
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.
Anyone who has read Pihkal by Alexander Shulgin knows that the drug warriors have it exactly backwards. Drugs are our friends. We need to find safe ways to use them to improve ourselves psychologically, spiritually and mentally.
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.
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