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War on Us by Colleen Cowles, J.D.

a philosophical review

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 5, 2026



Colleen's book is a great compendium of well-researched facts about the Drug War that should make any sane person think twice about supporting that demonstrably deadly policy. I myself have garnered a trove of insights from the book, particularly when it comes to the seemingly endless life-destroying injustices to which young people are subjected when they are arrested for mere possession of drugs. And yet I come at the issues raised in the book from a completely different perspective and a point of view of which Colleen seems to be completely unaware, and so I see a whole list of issues that do not even seem to be on the author's radar. This is partially no doubt because we are writing for two different audiences and hence we are emphasizing different aspects of Drug War injustice -- and yet there is no escaping the fact that we draw different conclusions as well, at least on the subject of drugs in general. We both agree, however, that drug relegalization is the way forward -- not the half-baked policy of drug decriminalization, which only keeps the cartels and gangs in business.

As for our differences...

Colleen is writing to convince American mothers like herself that their children can be saved from "substance abuse disorders" with the help of the medical establishment -- whereas I am writing to convince adult freedom-lovers around the world that they can be free from unnecessary pain and depression, not with the help of the medical establishment but by ignoring it altogether -- by taking care of their own psychological health as they see fit. How? By strategically using the many medicines that were never justifiably denied them in the first place. The medical establishment has demonized this practice as "self-medication" for obvious financial reasons, and yet self-medication has been the norm since prehistoric times. Only in profit-driven America has taking care of one's own health become a veritable crime: indeed, the crime "par excellence" as far as the healthcare industry is concerned.

Sigmund Freud knew that cocaine was a godsend for the kind of depression that I have experienced since childhood, and yet the medical establishment had a vested interest in having cocaine outlawed and so they studied it only by looking at downsides, precisely as if they were to study alcohol by studying only alcoholics. The question of course is, "Cui bono?" The medical establishment stood to gain billions if this panacea were outlawed, just as they profited so massively from the outlawing of the time-honored panacea called opium. Where do hospitals get the money to be the only good-looking building in many small American towns? Answer: from the complete disempowerment of Americans when it comes to taking care of their own health. Every time that the police drag in a suspect for drug possession, they are working on behalf of the healthcare industry to enforce its unearned monopoly in distributing mind and mood medicine.

And what did the medical establishment give me in lieu of the cocaine that they had helped to demonize? They gave me a drug that they assured me worked "scientifically," one which in reality, however, gave me only modest relief, without making me able to return to my profession of choice (which was, after all, the whole point of my seeking medical help in the first place!) -- a drug that later turned out to cause extreme dependence (indeed, a drug that could NEVER be kicked, ever!) Instead of apologizing for that fact and giving me a discount coupon for my next 100 refills, my doctors flipped the script on me and told me that I now had a medical duty to take that drug every day for the rest of my life! A medical duty! (Again: Cui bono? Answer: Not the "patient," that's for sure! Or rather, not the "patient malgré lui"!)

Eventually, I learned that even the claims about the scientific nature of my antidepressant were false. I had always been told that this drug worked "scientifically" to correct a chemical imbalance in my brain that caused my depression. In 2022, Dr. Noam Shpancer said otherwise in Psychology Today. "We don't know how antidepressants work," wrote Shpancer, to which I would add, we don't know that they DO work, if by "work" we mean that they help the user to thrive in life rather than to merely refrain from committing suicide, which is a low bar for efficacy indeed.

Real drug studies

If you give the medical industry billions of dollars to look for a cause for depression -- or for addiction, for that matter -- by golly, they're going to find a cause: a physical cause amenable to a one-size-fits-all "cure" from Big Pharma "meds," even if, in doing so, they mistake correlation for causation. But the question is, whom should we be asking for a cure for depression in the first place? It is pharmacological colonialism to place reductive science in charge of determining the benefits of the kinds of mood medicines that have been used holistically for ages by non-western cultures. If we wanted to help depressed people instead of those seeking research grants, then we would spend our research dollars on the kinds of hands-on investigations of drugs carried out by Alexander Shulgin in the early 1990s, when he determined the efficacy of a variety of phenethylamines, not by looking under a microscope, but by asking the actual users what they thought about their actual experiences on those drugs. Those user reports read as follows:

More than tranquil, I was completely at peace, in a beautiful, benign, and placid place.

A glimpse of what true heaven is supposed to feel like... A true healing potential.

I was caught up with the imagery, and there was an overriding religious aspect to the day.


And yet such reports mean nothing to today's drug scientists. They are just anecdotal reports after all! What do the USER's know? The point of scientific drug research is to establish that a drug works by some known or previously hypothesized biochemical mechanism -- not that it merely changes lives for the better. Humph! Any drug can "work" after all. A drug needs to "really" work in order to be scientific!

Laughable blindness

This is why Dr. Robert Glatter could write an article in Forbes magazine in 2021 questioning whether laughing gas could help the depressed1 2. Laughing gas! This is a gas whose profound and uplifting effects changed the entire philosophy of William James, a drug that gave many users an encounter with what they considered to be heaven itself. And yet our purblind drug scientists are gaslighting us, telling us that a godsend is not a godsend and that many more well-funded studies are required before they can sign off on its use, this despite the fact that a child knows that laughter can help the depressed.

Medical boosterism

This is why I have trouble with Colleen's boosterism for the medical industry, which is present throughout the book, to the point that she comes close to likening self-medicators to Luddites.

Let's examine this more closely. Consider what it means to place medical doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine. If they are to tell us if psychoactive drug use stands up to a risk/benefit analysis, they would have to take into account the benefits that we find in our drug use. Now, suppose I wanted to use cocaine to sharpen my mind a la Sherlock Holmes and to beat my depression. Please tell me: what makes medical doctors the experts in deciding the relative importance of such goals in life? And if they tell me, "No, a sharpened mind is not worth the risks," that is not a medical judgment, it is a value judgement concerning what life is all about and what kinds of risks we should or should not take as human beings, and whether life is about self-actualization or merely about "getting along."

Suppose I tell them that life is not worth living for me if I cannot succeed in my job because of my depression. They would be dogmatically obliged to respond like a callous Dr. Spock of Star Trek: "Tough luck, Captain. Science tells us that cocaine is not good for you. You would not want to be unscientific, would you?" No, I myself am the expert on deciding the appropriateness of cocaine use in my own case, given my own concerns, not the abstract concerns of a disinterested party. I am the expert in what I think and feel in life, not doctors, no matter how many initials they may have beside their name or how many research papers they may have written and placed behind expensive academic firewalls.

Beer lovers might better understand the following analogy.

Suppose that a doctor tells you that you cannot drink alcohol because there is no recognized benefit for you in doing so. You say, "Oh, yeah, but it helps me unwind after a long day." Yet the doctor is unmoved: "There is no evidence to prove this. Many more expensive studies need to be performed until we can know if beer could REALLY help you. Until that time, I will thank you to forebear in the name of science... lest I should demonize you as a Luddite!"

Meds ARE drugs

This is why it was a category error to place medical doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place. But then Colleen has nothing good to say about such drugs, except with respect to marijuana's power as a pain killer replacement -- but that's, of course, a replacement that we would not need were opium to be relegalized. Colleen also is guilty of describing healthcare nostrums as "meds" and "medications" while only referring to outlawed substances as "drugs." She may do this in part to render herself intelligible to readers who are used to our prejudicial vocabulary about psychoactive substances, but it really seems like she actually believes there is a difference between meds and drugs, since she has so little to say about the benefits of the latter while she continually praises the blessings of the former. And yet psychoactive substances are psychoactive substances, and the labels applied to them are just a form of self-interested PR. A medicine IS a drug; a drug IS a medicine.

But then it's no wonder that Colleen says little about drug benefits. Like all Americans, she has been shielded since childhood from all positive reports of drug use by media censorship. And yet drug use inspired the Vedic and Hindu religions, opium was considered a blessing by Benjamin Franklin, and cocaine cured Sigmund Freud's depression in a trice3 -- without addicting him, let alone turning him into a patient for life, as do modern antidepressants.

CONCLUSION



And so Colleen and I clearly have different attitudes about drugs and their relevance in life. She sees drugs as either recreational or habit-forming, and never as positively beneficial, whereas I know better from lived experience and, if I may say so, from psychological common sense as well, the kind of common sense that a lifetime of propaganda has convinced most Americans to ignore.

The good news is that these differences in outlook should not matter once drug relegalization is in place. In such a world, citizens can vote with their pocketbooks for the healthcare approach of their choice. Indeed, I have been told by one psychiatrist, that in such a world, many depressed people would still opt for using antidepressants. This seems crazy to me: why would one opt for a drug for which lifelong dependency is a feature and not a bug, a drug which makes it difficult to use any alternative drugs due to a wide variety of contra-indications for combined use? But then we live in an age wherein psychiatrists are now promoting assisted suicide for the depressed, thereby making it clear that they believe that death itself is better than using "drugs."4 Indeed, a poster on X once told me that a poll of psychiatrists shows that most would prefer brain-damaging shock therapy if they were to become chronically depressed. Yes, they would rather damage their brains than to experience the apparently naughty bliss of substances like laughing gas, or phenethylamines, or cocaine, or opium. Call me mad, but I would choose otherwise. I would actually prefer to use brain inspiring drugs than to undergo brain damage -- or to commit suicide, for that matter -- but I guess that just shows you how totally unscientific I am!

I will close this philosophical review of "War on Us" with some comments about specific statements in Colleen's book:

p. 24



"It's not surprising that drug use as a choice is prevalent in policy and in societal beliefs."


This is one of the many times when the author writes as if drug use is the same thing as drug addiction, or substance use disorder. This suggests in turn that Colleen is not familiar with the endless positive uses for drugs -- uses which drug users have always known about, but of which scientists claim to be ignorant, apparently for dogmatic reasons.

Why would one NOT choose to improve their mind, to think more clearly, to investigate new forms of consciousness, to inspire creativity a la the opium-using poets of the 19th century? Why would one not use drugs? And if this leads to dependence in some, the most obvious reason for that dependence is a lack of drug choice and a lack of drug education -- although one can always find physical correlates with the help of lab grants in order to proclaim: "No, a brain disease caused these people to want to live large and make the most of their lives!"

Sure, there are no doubt such things as predilections that spring from biochemical roots. Some good friends of mine are obviously prone to overdrinking whereas I have never had that problem. And yet we can never know the full role of biochemistry in "causing" addiction until we end drug prohibition and so get rid of all the social factors that promote addictive behavior. In other words, we cannot study the question from a normal baseline until drug prohibition is ended, along with all the problematic limits and unhealthy incentives that it creates for users.



Regarding addiction, the author writes as follows:

"There are alternate views to the more black and white 'Choice vs. Detox' model. The disease model minimizes the risk that patients will be blamed and punitive penalties applied. However, some are concerned that the disease model may send the message that the individual has no control or personal responsibility in finding recovery. -page 26"


We will never be able to gauge the true threat posed by addiction until we outlaw the prohibition that encourages it. And how does prohibition encourage addiction? Answer: by denying the user drug choice and education as to safe use. Instead, we set the users up to fail. And after they do so, we welcome them into our Christian Science rehab programs, where we insist that they take their problems to "a higher power." This is not science. It is sheer religious coercion on behalf of the totally unacknowledged Christian Science metaphysic of the Drug War.

But then this whole discussion of addiction seems to have been going on long before drug prohibition took hold in the early 1900s, as western doctors tried to explain why people would want to ingest "poisons." The answer, of course, was just too easy to see. These substances were NOT poisons: substances like cocaine and opium improved mentation and gave the users new creative ways to think about the world around them. To say that such drugs are poisons is not a medical opinion but a sociological and political opinion instead, and a closed-minded one at that. One could as easily say that the doctors who make that claim are pathological, for they masochistically refuse to use any drug that could improve their mind and mood -- except for a few hypocritically chosen exceptions blessed by their own cynical and atheistic culture.

Detox as torture

And what is detox but torture in the age of drug prohibition? Why? Because drug law outlaws all those substances whose strategic use could make detox work without the grinding of teeth! What is recidivism after all but the result of a few hours in the day of exquisite mental torture? And there are all sorts of drugs (both extant and potential, both alone and in combinations) that could help one get through those downtimes. This is psychological common sense, that a drug that lets you see heaven, like laughing gas, could help one get through the downtimes of withdrawal. I am not prescribing here, of course: the precise drugs to be used to prevent recidivism in any given case must depend on the precise circumstances of any given case -- those circumstances that Drug Warriors always ignore with their blanket condemnation of drugs. But it is common sense that drugs could be used to fight drugs in the way that I am suggesting here. Common sense. To put it philosophically, there is a "prima facie" case for such protocols, and yet the only drugs that even the most progressive pundits want us to use for the so-called "addict" are those "medicines" that have been created by Big Pharma and/or administered by the government.

Colleen calls for fighting drugs with meds, but she does not seem to understand that drugs can also be fought with DRUGS!

Weirdo!

There is something odd about the whole discussion of addiction as pathology in the age of the unprecedented wholesale outlawing of psychoactive medicine. First, the powers-that-be outlaw all time-honored godsends. Then they tell us that we have a bona fide illness if we still desire to use those substances. Consider the enormous financial interest that the medical industry had in demonizing cocaine. Not satisfied with having thereby turned millions of the depressed into patients for life, they now want to label us with an illness if we feel the desire for better medicines than those provided by Big Pharma, even though our desired alternatives are far less likely to cause dependence, and even those which do so would be far easier to kick than those created by most Big Pharma meds. There is just something too damned convenient about this, isn't there?!

Hypocrisy

This is another problem with the whole addiction debate. It is hypocritical in the extreme, given that we live in a world in which we praise tens of millions of Americans for becoming dependent for life on Big Pharma drugs! We praise them for being dependent for life! They are taking care of their own health, after all, right?! And yet you are going to tell me that I am pathological if I want to use the drug that inspired Ben Franklin and Marcus Aurelius, or the drug that ended the depression of Sigmund Freud without yet addicting him?!

Why then do we think of heroin 5 dependency as a huge problem? If we wish to be consistent, we should either, A, supply the heroin to the heroin user on a regular basis as we do antidepressants to the depressed, or B, start treating antidepressant users as if they have a problem with their dependency and force them to use some biochemical equivalent of Narcan!

Colleen writes about our need (and indeed our responsibility) to find recovery. But that's not our real need. We have a need to find a world in which we have a right to take care of our own health as we see fit. Besides, what would I find if I did look for recovery for my love of a drug that sharpened my mind or gave me pleasant and inspiring dreams? Answer: I would find a variety of stealth Christian Science organizations determined to convince me that the only good drugs are Big Pharma "meds." That is not recovery, that is political indoctrination.

This is why I have no interest in the minutiae of the 'choice versus detox' debate, because it is taking place in the context of a raft of false assumptions and hypocritical presuppositions, all designed to ensure that we view drugs as a problem and "meds" as the answer.



"Simply needing a medication for a medical purpose is not addiction. -page 59"


No, nor is simply needing a medication in order to focus one's mind, or to study new forms of consciousness, or to increase one's poetic creativity, etc. One does not need a "medical" purpose in order to have a valid reason for using a drug.



"If all patients unite to advocate for their rights, advocacy will be more powerful. -page 65"


Yes, including advocacy for the depressed. Colleen never mentions the depressed -- apparently because she is one of the many who have been duped into believing that "science" has taken care of depression, that it can only be cured by science. How else can we explain the fact that no one recognizes the obvious power of drugs like cocaine and phenethylamines and laughing gas to cheer us up in a trice?! It is because we have an unqualified belief in "science uber alles." It is a misplaced faith, however. When we place reductionist scientists in charge of mind and mood medicine, it leads to disempowering absurdities. As for myself, I would rather be unscientific and happy than to be scientific and depressed -- and stuck on an underperforming Big Pharma drug for life, for which I have to get an expensive refill every three months by visiting a doctor one-half my age as an eternal patient and sharing the intimate details of my life with a stranger.

"The benefits of using medications in treatment are scientifically indisputable." -page 72


Maybe so. But the benefits of using DRUGS in treatment is psychologically obvious -- to anyone who hasn't been indoctrinated in the invincibility of western science in both the organic and inorganic realms.

"Addiction often comes from self-medicating physical or emotional pain that isn't properly treated. -page 101"


No, addiction comes from a lack of information and from drug prohibition which outlaws all choice and leaves purchasers open to a kind of psychoactive "pot luck." Colleen here implies that there's something wrong with self-medicating: but self-medicating is the time-honored norm. The problem is not that people still want to take care of their own psychological health. Thank God for that. The problem is that we make doing so as dangerous as possible with drug prohibition. Instead of recognizing prohibition as the problem, the Gabriel Mates of the world want to change the subject by finding the "true" source of the problem in the user's "inner pain." Please, let's not look for causes other than the obvious ones until we've removed the huge biasing factor of drug prohibition from the equation, the social policy which incentivizes and promotes all kinds of negative outcomes!

And what does Colleen mean by "properly treated"? Does she mean "sent to a psychiatrist who will put them on an expensive and underperforming drug that they will have to take for a lifetime"?!

"Few believe that the War on Drugs has worked. -page 104"


The War on Drugs never had the right to succeed in the first place! It would be a disaster if it did succeed! It would be a world in which the only allowed mindset would be that of the self-satisfied boozer -- and no one would be able to improve their mind, or sharpen it, or open it to the forms of consciousness that William James himself urged us to study. It would be a world in which we could form no new religions like the Vedic and Hindu, which were inspired by the use of psychoactive substances! It would be a world in which we could find no new psychoactive cures for endless illnesses because we had decided a priori that the most promising drugs were all just too dangerous to use. It would be a world in which the cavemen philosophy of "Fire bad!" had never been transcended, a world in which we lived in a self-imposed Dark Ages. It would be a world in which indigenous medicines were literally eradicated from the face of the earth, a fate that the UN is still technically dedicated to bringing about today with respect to the divine coca plant of the Inca.

"Saying 'legalize it' out loud, or even suggesting that it should be talked about, can get funding pulled from your organization." -page 196


The real taboo today is placing opium or cocaine in anything but a negative light. Unfortunately, Colleen is never guilty of that crime. And yet it was the outlawing of those two drugs alone that has outlawed the right to heal for hundreds of millions.

"Most cannabis reform has been legalization. -page 214"


This is not really true. True legalization would mean that the damn plant is legal again and that we do not need permission to grow a bit of Mother Nature. In my youth, one could buy and grow the simple plant. Now one has to go to an entrepreneur who has doubled and trebled the cost of the product and made it almost impossible to buy the simple damn plant. Now it's little unopenable boxes of "Cherry Dreams Tea" or "Mango Meltdown Gummies," in dosages that are completely unclear and whose effects have little resemblance to the gentle relaxation provided by a few puffs on an old-school joint.

"Harm reduction acknowledges that a drug-free world is neither practicable nor achievable. -page 240"


Nor desirable!

"Would it be preferable for loved ones to never use an unprescribed drug? Yes. -page 267"


No! A thousand times no! I would much rather that my friends and loved ones use cocaine than to die because of depression! I would much rather that they use laughing gas! I would much rather that they use one of the bliss-inspiring phenethylamines synthesized by chemist Alexander Shulgin! But then we live in a world in which psychiatrists now believe that suicide itself is better than drug use -- as in the case of Claire Brosseau6.

Roadblocks

Finally, beginning on page 153, Colleen speaks of 12 roadblocks to progress on re-legalizing drugs, including political fears, prosecutor and law enforcement lobbies, bail bond companies, etc. She omits one obvious roadblock, however: namely the medical industry itself, which owes its economic clout largely to drug prohibition, and especially to the outlawing of the time-honored panaceas of opium and cocaine. No one has a greater financial stake in running interference between Americans and their right to take care of their own health as they see fit.



Author's Follow-up:

March 06, 2026

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


Colleen writes on page 289:

"Lives can be saved simply by a kind word to a person who has been stigmatized by everyone else... One little sentence of support can change a life."


I must mention, however, that no one -- literally no one -- is going to give someone in my position a kind word: no one is going to grieve with me in the fact that "science" has used drug prohibition to turn me into a patient for life with "meds" that can never be kicked! No one is going to spend one single kind word on me -- because I am the necessary sacrificial victim upon which the enormously profitable business of medicine today is founded.

If, like myself, you have been turned into a ward of the healthcare state by medical industry, no one will even acknowledge your existence, let alone give you a kind word. You are the canary in the mine shaft that the mine owners refuse to recognize, knowing that if they do so, their entire enormously enriching mine operation will be threatened. Your fate is ignored because our science-loving country refuses to think that science can do no wrong. Yet it is clear that the modern medical industry has used drug prohibition to turn me into a patient for life -- denying me godsends like cocaine to "save me" by turning me into an eternal child and making me see a doctor half my age every three months for the refill of an under-performing and immensely dependence-causing medicine.




Key Takeaways:






Notes:

1: Or like asking materialists like Dr. Robert Glatter if laughing gas can help the depressed. (up)
2: Glatter, Robert. 2021. “Can Laughing Gas (Nitrous Oxide) Help People with Treatment-Resistant Depression?” Forbes, June 9, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2021/06/09/can-laughing-gas-nitrous-oxide-help-people-with-treatmentresistant-depre (up)
3: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
4: No one would need assisted suicide if we ended drug prohibition: what Claire Brosseau's case tells us about the warped mindset of the west when it comes to drugs DWP (up)
5: Heroin versus Antidepressants DWP (up)
6: No one would need assisted suicide if we ended drug prohibition: what Claire Brosseau's case tells us about the warped mindset of the west when it comes to drugs DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




"Judging" psychoactive drugs is hard. Dosage counts. Expectations count. Setting counts. In Harvey Rosenfeld's book about the Spanish-American War, a volunteer wrote of his visit to an "opium den": "I took about four puffs and that was enough. All of us were sick for a week."

When Rick Strassman and Michael Pollan call for continued prohibition to protect young people, they ignore the ENORMOUS fact that prohibition has destroyed inner cities around the world. Wake up, guys! Prohibition is evil, not drugs! Ignorance is evil, not education!

We might as well fight for justice for Christopher Reeves: he was killed because someone was peddling that junk that we call horses. The question is: who sold Christopher that horse?! Who encouraged him to ride it?!

First we outlaw all drugs that could help; then we complain that some people have 'TREATMENT-RESISTANT DEPRESSION'. What? No. What they really "have" is an inability to thrive because of our idiotic drug laws.

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.

All drugs have positive uses. It's absurd to prohibit them because one demographic might misuse them.

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.

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'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.

In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort writes about the data that science has damned, by which he means "excluded." The fact that drugs can inspire and elate is one such fact, although when Fort wrote his anti-materialist broadside, drug prohibition was in its infancy.


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