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The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment

an open letter to Dr. Jonathan Stea

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 13, 2023



Dear Dr. Stea:

As a 64-year-old lifelong depressive, I would suggest that science is not free in the age of the Drug War and that it is therefore pseudoscience.  The proof can be seen by looking at academic articles about drugs that elate and inspire.  Almost all of the articles are about abuse and misuse.  This is because organizations like NIDA 1 are all about abuse and do not generally fund articles about positive use.  This again is in line with the ideology of the ONDCP which is to ignore positive talk about "drugs" for fear of encouraging use. This is politics, not science. Moreover, scientists know that their jobs are at stake if they adduce positive evidence about the use of the drugs that we have been taught to hate since childhood.

Scientists do not seem to realize the anti-science nature of the Drug War, which tells us falsely that drugs can be panned entirely based on their worst imaginable usage -- which, of course, is a standard whereby no drug in the world could ever pass muster.

I would further suggest that modern science IS pseudoscience when it comes to mental health.  It is focused exclusively on reductive "evidence" for things like happiness, meanwhile ignoring obvious things like laughter, first-person user testimony, and the history of psychoactive substances through the ages, some of which have inspired entire religions, as coca inspired the Peruvian Indians, Soma inspired the Vedic-Hindu religion and the psychedelic kykeon inspired a who's-who of western elites for 2,000 consecutive years -- until the ritual was tellingly outlawed by Emperor Theodosius in 392ce as a threat to Christianity. Dr. Robert Glatter epitomizes this purblind reductionism in his 2021 article in Forbes magazine asking "Can laughing gas help those with treatment-resistant depression?"  The answer is an obvious yes for the depressed like myself, but Glatter has to ask because mere laughter and user reports are not considered "scientific." 

That is why, in order to save a few kids whom we refuse to educate about safe use, drugs like laughing gas can be made illegal for everybody in the world -- notwithstanding the fact that William James himself said we should study the effects of such substances to learn about the ultimate nature of reality.  That's how depressed folk like myself are thrown under the bus by science.  That's why I have had to go my entire lifetime now without godsend medicines that grow at my feet, because scientists are collaborating with the Drug War to normalize prohibition by ignoring all the many obvious benefits of illegal drugs. This is why I've been asking science magazines like SciAm and Science News to start adding disclaimers to their articles about subjects like consciousness and depression, to make it clear that the authors and researchers are taking Christian Science substance prohibition as a natural baseline from which to draw deductions and inferences about the topics in question. My many suggestions on this topic have never even been acknowledged, let alone acted upon.

Consider the state of affairs for the folks on the receiving end of science's current treatments:  If I am depressed, the doctor can prescribe me Big Pharma 2 3 meds that will fog my brain and turn me into an eternal patient via chemical dependency -- but they cannot prescribe me the drugs that grow at my feet and which obviously inspire and elate.  They tell me laughing gas 4 won't REALLY make me happy, that chewing the coca leaf won't REALLY make me happy, but that is all scientism and politics. God save me from drugs that "REALLY" make me happy, because they have turned me into a patient for life. 

If, as a result of prohibition, I get really depressed, what is the scientific go-to treatment? Shock therapy! Talk about scientism and politics! 

Currently we would rather damage the brain of the depressed with shock therapy than to let them use time-honored substances that obviously cheer one up and elate.  My uncle was subjected to that treatment 40 years ago and if the treatment "worked," it was only in the sense that it made him more docile and easier to be around -- because he simply muttered rather than musing gloomily.

This is why I am somewhat taken aback by your fierce attacks on mental health pseudoscience on Twitter.  Based on my 60+ years of experience, mental health treatment is and will continue to be pseudoscience until scientists stop collaborating with the Drug War while tacitly agreeing with them that drugs that elate and inspire do not "really" elate and inspire.  Until they do so, they are not advancing the cause of science, but rather the cause of Christian Science, which tells us that drugs are immoral.

Not only is this Christian Science ideology, but it is fanatically so.  Many states and countries now allow euthanasia. This means that the depressed can kill themselves with drugs, but they are not allowed to use drugs in order to make them want to live.

I also am unclear as to what you meant by your August 12th Tweet about "weaponizing kindness" (which is the vague but button-pushing post that inspired me to write to you in the first place). It did not seem to be in response to any other Tweet, so it's hard to agree or disagree with it. However, I would say that we SHOULD be weaponizing kindness when it comes to drugs like MDMA 5 . These drugs can inspire compassion in users and should therefore be "weaponized" -- that is, used therapeutically to stop haters from shooting up grade schools. Instead, drugs like ecstasy are pilloried for killing a handful of people, all of whom died because the prohibitionists failed to teach safe use. In short, if we fail to weaponize kindness with drugs like Ecstasy, then we are tacitly weaponizing real weapons in the hands of mass murderers.












Notes for essay entitled The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment: an open letter to Dr. Jonathan Stea:

1: Blocks, NIDA. 2016. “How the NIDA Blocks Marijuana Research over and Over.” Cannabis.net. 2016. https://cannabis.net/blog/opinion/how-the-nida-blocks-marijuana-research-over-and-over. (up)
2: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
3: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
4: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
5: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

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Thomas Szasz was not an extremist when it comes to drugs. The extremists are those who feel that psychiatrists know more about our mind and mood than we do.

"Arrest made in Matthew Perry death." Oh, yeah? Did they arrest the drug warriors who prioritized propaganda over education?

New article in Scientific American: "New hope for pain relief," that ignores the fact that we have outlawed the time-honored panacea. Scientists want a drug that won't run the risk of inspiring us.

Most people think that drugs like cocaine, MDMA, LSD and amphetamines can only be used recreationally. WRONG ! This represents a very naive understanding of human psychology. We deny common sense in order to cater to the drug war orthodoxy that "drugs have no benefits."

I have nothing against science, BTW (altho' I might feel differently after a nuclear war!) I just want scientists to "stay in their lane" and stop pretending to be experts on my own personal mood and consciousness.

It's always wrong to demonize drugs in the abstract. That's anti-scientific. It begs so many questions and leaves suffering pain patients (and others) high and dry. No substance is bad in and of itself.

Drug testing labs are the modern Inquisitors. We are not judged by the content of our character, but by the content of our digestive systems.

Laughing gas is the substance that gave William James his philosophy of reality. He concluded from its use that what we perceive is just a fraction of reality writ large. Yet his alma mater (Harvard) does not even MENTION laughing gas in their bio of the man.

"In consciousness dwells the wondrous, with it man attains the realm beyond the material, and the peyote tells us where to find it." --Antonin Arnaud

Scientists cannot tell us if using drugs is worth the risk any more than they can tell us if free climbing is worth the risk, or horseback riding or parkour.


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