Using Ecstasy in Church

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Using Ecstasy in Church

Reviving church attendance with the use of entheogens

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

February 1, 2023

It's a well-known fact that the attendance numbers at houses of worship are in decline. For the first time in 2021, the percentage of attendees dipped below 50%, from a high of 73% in 1937, when Gallup first started keeping scoreFN0058. Pews are going empty. Ministers are wringing their hands. And yet nobody mentions the obvious solution to the problem, one that's been staring theists in the face for at least the last 50 years, were they not blinded by the light of the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.

It's time for churches (and dare I say mosques and synagogues as well) to start using Ecstasy (and/or similar entheogens) in their religious rituals.

In this way, church-going would become a sensual sort of full-body experience and not just a mental exercise for the tired brain of overthinking homo sapiens. Instead, the churchgoer would experience the oft-cited truths of the gospels, namely, that God is love.

Quanah Parker of the Native American Church best summed up the problem with the status quo as follows:

"The White Man goes into church and talks about Jesus. The Indian goes into his tipi and talks with Jesus."FN0057

This statement should be read as a wake-up call for the hand-wringing preachers mentioned above, but unfortunately said preachers are carrying on with business as normal, apparently convinced by their drug-war indoctrination that to do otherwise would be heresy, if not against the church itself then against the reigning orthodoxies of our time.

For the Drug Warrior has taught us to associate the super-safe drug called Ecstasy with irresponsible youths, notwithstanding the fact that those "irresponsible youths" took part in the most peaceful multi-ethnic get-togethers in world history during the rave phenomena of late 20th-century Britain. You remember how that ended, right? The politicians demonized ecstasy, cracked down on the same, and the dance floor soon devolved into liquor-fueled violenceFN0059. This shows the insane priorities of the Drug War: they do not want even peace and safety if it means okaying the use of substances that help the mind think sanely about the world.

And ecstasy is far from the only entheogen whose ritual use could increase church attendance. Alexander Shulgin has synthesized literally hundreds of substances whose use safely conduces to emotional harmony and love for one's fellows.

In fighting for these new experiential religions, which I call Church 2.0, we would be doing our bit to end the hateful Drug War by insisting to the brainwashed world that drugs are not evil in and of themselves, but that they can have beneficial uses as well. This fact would have been obvious to our 18th-century forebears, but it needs to be vigorously defended in an age in which agenda-driven and bribe-taking politicians are determined to quash our right to freedom of thought and consciousness.

By creating these new religions, we will be calling the Drug Warrior's bluff: saying, in effect: "Go on, tell me that I can't practice my religion, so that the world can see the full anti-democratic ignorance of the Drug War ideology that you represent."

Not that the DEA will back down without taking every challenge to the Supreme Court if necessary. Even as I write, the DEA is denying the legitimacy of a Florida religion which seeks to use ayahuasca in its religious rituals. This is such an obvious attack on religious thinking -- one in which a government organization is second-guessing the calls of a religious group -- that one scarcely knows where to begin in protesting it.

This is why the DEA needs to be abolished, not argued with. And then its leaders should be tried for crimes against humanity, in light of the billions who have gone without godsend medicines since that organization started criminalizing and lying about drugs in its politics-based scheduling system in 1973.

MDMA/Ecstasy

Religion

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It is a truism to say that we cannot change the world and that therefore we have to change ourselves -- but the drug war outlaws even this latter option.

I hope that scientists will eventually find the prohibition gene so that we can eradicate this superstitious way of thinking from humankind.

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.

Drug testing labs should give high marks for those who manage to use drugs responsibly, notwithstanding the efforts of law enforcement to ruin their lives. The lab guy would be like: "Wow, you are using opium wisely, my friend! Congratulations! Your boss is lucky to have you!"

I will gladly respect the police once we remove them from Gestapo duty by ending the war on drugs. Police should also learn to live on a budget, without deriving income from confiscating houses and dormitories, etc.

I knew democracy was in trouble when most Americans in the '80s saw no problem with allowing drug testers to go on a fishing expedition in their bodily fluids for substances of which politicians disapprove.

If fearmongering drug warriors were right about the weakness of humankind, there would be no social drinkers, only drunkards.

That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.

The Drug War is the ultimate example of strategic fearmongering by self-interested politicians.

Here is a typical user report about a drug that the DEA tells us has no positive uses whatsoever: "There is a profoundness of meaning inherent in anything that moves." (reported in "Pikhal" by Alexander Shulgin)

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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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Using Ecstasy in Church

Reviving church attendance with the use of entheogens

MDMA/Ecstasy

Religion

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Break the ice with a sledgehammer: place this book on your coffee table.

Diary of a Drug Fiend