The Philosophical Significance of the Use of Antidepressants in the Age of Drug Prohibition
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 22, 2025
A meaningful discussion of the philosophical significance of antidepressants 1 cannot be undertaken without acknowledging the context in which these drugs are used. If they were used in a free world in which they were freely chosen, we would not even be having this discussion, because we would then view the situation as a matter of free choice - and who am I to second-guess the health-related decisions of my fellow human beings? But this is not the case. Antidepressants are used in a world in which all psychoactive alternatives have been outlawed. Given this momentous caveat, it is clear why antidepressant use is problematic in the real world. For if they really "work" for millions of the depressed, then that means the following: that the only way that millions of Americans can feel comfortable in their own skins is to rely on dependence-causing medicines that are approved by their government - a government that has outlawed all plausible alternatives to such materialist-based nostrums. This is nothing less than government control of how you think and feel about your life - and nothing is more tyrannical than to limit how and how much I can think and feel in life. By comparison, the despotic regimes of yore were mere tyros. In the past, they sought to control what you could read - today they seek to control how you can think and feel about what you read - or whether you even have the spirit to read anything at all in the first place rather than just sitting back and wishing that you were dead.
I hope that my readers remember this downplayed backstory before characterizing me as a hothead and an extremist on the subject of drugs. There is, in reality, plenty for an observant critic of drug prohibition to be furious about, for what we have here is the ultimate tyranny: a world in which our very attitude about life is micromanaged by a government that is determined to keep us thinking "inside the box" when it comes to what is possible in life.
In other words, antidepressants are the new Soma - not the Soma of the Vedic religion that inspired and elated, but rather the Soma 2 of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, a drug that helped the government to control its people.
DISCLAIMER
This essay was written in a world in which the government has outlawed all drugs that could have helped the author to concentrate and so to write more clearly. So, if you are not completely convinced by the argumentation above, then consider that very outcome to be yet another proof of the author's thesis: that drug prohibition is a meta-injustice because it outlaws my very ability to push back against the racist and violence-spawning fallacies of Drug Warriors.
AFTERWORD
This short essay rehashes one of my recurring themes on the subject of drugs: the idea, that so much of what we discuss in this world can be seen in two ways: in light of the reality of drug prohibition and in willful ignorance of that prohibition. The vast majority of authors today write about the world from the latter point of view, and so they pretend to give us the last word on the nature of human consciousness, or on conditions like depression and anxiety, all without ever mentioning the fact that we have outlawed a vast pharmacopoeia of drugs whose strategic use could inform our views on the subject and even suggest obvious cures to pathology. The reader of magazines like Psychology Today and Science News will come away from those magazines believing that depression is a tough nut to crack and that we need more heavily funded studies to get to the bottom of the condition. Why? Because the authors pretend that drug prohibition does not exist, or rather that it is a natural baseline for scientific study. But nothing could be further from the truth. The fact is that depression could be solved "in a trice" by the strategic and common-sense use of a wide variety of drugs that inspire and elate... but we have ruled out this possibility a priori, for ideological reasons, based partly on the hypocritical puritanism of the Drug Warrior and partly on the modern scientists' embrace of passion-scorning behaviorism when it comes to drug effects. According to the behaviorist, the proof of drug benefits has to be established by looking under a microscope. If a drug merely "works" for a person from that person's point of view, tough luck. In the age of the materialist Drug War, the scientist claims to be the expert on how we think and feel - and we are encouraged to ignore our own assessments of our own mental health needs. What do WE know, after all? Sure, we may be laughing under the influence of laughing gas 3 , but is it "real" laughter? That is the absurd metaphysical question to which we are reduced when we place materialist doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine, a step which I maintain is the great category error of modern times.
Of course, part of the challenge of someone in my position is convincing the brainwashed reader that drugs can and do have positive effects in the first place. Americans have been brainwashed since childhood to "feel" that this cannot be so. Speaking of which, I saw a banner headline yesterday about the trial of P. Diddy, stating in emboldened font that "Diddy was incredibly creative on drugs." As Horatio would point out, "There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave to tell us this." Yet, in the age of the Drug War, an age in which we discourage education, such common-sense statements end up, laughably enough, as front-page news, as who should say: "Hold the presses! Drugs might actually have positive uses after all!"
AFTER AFTERWORD
Speaking of depression, it is depressing to read the status quo articles on this depression. A casual search of "depression" tells us that it is a drastically undertreated condition. Those claims always come from self-interested parties who want to increase the numbers of "butts on seats" at the local mental health clinic. But these pleas on behalf of the medicalization of depression totally ignore the role that drug prohibition itself plays in disempowering the depressed in the first place and so leaving them at the mercy of the local mental health clinics! It is as if a country had outlawed everything but gruel, and then we created clinics to ensure that citizens could access high-quality gruel under hygienic conditions. That approach is all well and good, but it ignores the huge question: why the hell are we outlawing everything but gruel in the first place?!
We give kids drugs to improve their concentration -- but if adults use drugs to concentrate, we call them names and throw them in jail.
Now drug warriors have nitrous oxide in their sights, the substance that inspired the philosophy of William James. They're using the same tired MO: focusing exclusively on potential downsides and never mentioning the benefits of use, and/or denying that any exist.
If Americans want less government, they should get rid of the Drug War Industrial Complex, rather than abandoning democracies around the world and leaving a vacuum for Russia and China to fill.
If anyone manages to die during an ayahuasca ceremony, it is considered a knockdown argument against "drugs." If anyone dies during a hunting club get-together, it is considered the victim's own damn fault.
Orchestras will eventually use psychedelics to train conductors. When the successful candidate directs mood-fests like Mahler's 2nd, THEY will be the stars, channeling every known -- and some unknown -- human emotions. Think Simon Rattle on... well, on psychedelics.
Endless drugs could help with depression. Any drug that inspires and elates is an antidepressant, partly by the effect itself and partly by the mood-elevation caused by anticipation of use (facts which are far too obvious for materialists and drug warriors to understand -- let alone materialist drug warriors!).
We need a scheduling system for psychoactive drugs as much as we need a scheduling system for sports activities: i.e. NOT AT ALL. Some sports are VERY dangerous, but we do not outlaw them because we know that there are benefits both to sports and to freedom in general.
Talking about being in denial: drug warriors blame all of the problems that they cause on "drugs" and then insist that the entire WORLD accept their jaundiced view of the natural bounty that God himself told us was good.
Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
Wade Davis wrote in Rolling Stone that cocaine was outlawed because 400 people consumed toxic doses worldwide. SO WHAT?! 178,000 people die from alcohol every year in America alone.
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