What I Did on my Summer Vacation

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What I Did on my Summer Vacation

and what it tells us about the evils of drug prohibition

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher (Substack version)

July 21, 2026

TEACHER: Today we will finish up our class presentations on the theme of what you children did on your summer vacation. Billy, I understand that you just traveled to Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, for a family reunion. Would you care to tell us something about that trip? That's in the Poconos Mountains around the beautiful Delaware Water Gap, isn't it, Billy?

STUDENT: Well, Mrs. McGillicutty--

TEACHER: Please stand up so that everyone can see you, Billy.

STUDENT: Well, I can't say that everything went to plan, Mrs. McGillicutty. Two of our extended family members -- let's call them X and Y -- were "at each other's throats" the entire time.

TEACHER: Oh, what a shame!

STUDENT: But that got me thinking, Mrs. M. Now, we know that there exist substances whose use conduces to understanding between enemies, and so I'm thinking to myself, even while X and Y were shouting at the tops of their male and female lungs, respectively -- bearing in mind that the two are brother and sister with a long history of verbal altercations, nay, since they were toddlers disputing over the ownership of a blankie -- "Billy," I says to myself, "why can't these two get together under the influence of an empathogen like MDMA or a chemically related phenethylamine (as I believe they call it) and hash out their differences in a loving and supportive environment, perhaps with the help of a drug-savvy moderator who would guide a face-to-face chat so as to produce the most practical therapeutic outcomes as quickly as possible?"

TEACHER: What is Billy doing wrong, here, class? That's right, he is giving medical advice without a license! What else? That's right, he is also glorifying drug use!

STUDENT: But it's not like anything else is going to work, Mrs. M! At least one of the two parties -- let's call him X -- has already declared his refusal to accept a traditional talk-mediated intervention on the part of a therapist who would oversee some sort of conciliatory chat online.

TEACHER: Please change the subject, Billy.

STUDENT: Oh, I also went golfing at the Pocono Manor Golf Course, with my father and father-in-law.

TEACHER: That's more like it. And how did that go, Billy?

STUDENT: I'm glad you asked, Mrs. M. Well, I'm "stood there" in front of the ball, as the Brits might put it -- bearing in mind that I play no more than once a year and that my very golf clubs and ball were on loan from my adversaries: in this case, the driver from my in-law and the Titleist golf ball from my dad.

TEACHER: And your shoes were no doubt from your mother. Please, go on!

STUDENT: How did you know that? Well, anyway, you won't believe this, Mrs. McGillicutty, but suddenly a little devil appears on my shoulder, so to speak, whispering in my ear, saying in effect: "Wouldn't it be terrible if you missed this shot?" I swear to God, that's what it said! "Wouldn't it be terrible if you missed this shot?" And it just went on like that, from the first hole to the last, talking smack, trying to make me think of all the things that could go wrong with my upcoming shots!

TEACHER: Okay, I see where you're going with this, Billy. You're obviously going to allude to our study of Heidegger last week, when we realized that the Das Man distracts us from the Eigentlichkeit of Dasein by regarding the self from the standpoint of other people -- which is to say by overthinking.

STUDENT: Well, yes and no, Mrs. McGillicutty. I was thinking more of the psychological doctrine of the "imp of the perverse" as elucidated by Edgar Allan Poe in his short story of that name. I was thinking in particular of the homicidal protagonist of that story when he realized that he had, indeed, committed the perfect crime. "I am safe," he said to himself, "I am safe -- yes -- if I be not fool enough to make open confession!"

TEACHER: So?

STUDENT: SO? SO? Don't you get it, Mrs. M.? As I looked down at that Titleist ball from my dad, I was saying to myself: "I am safe, I am safe, yes -- provided that I be not fool enough to strike the ball off-center with my golf club!"

TEACHER: Aha! Good point, Billy. Credit where credit's due, you know.

STUDENT: But do you know what, Mrs. M.?

TEACHER: No, Billy, I don't "know what." Surprise me.

STUDENT: My voracious (if perhaps somewhat indiscriminate) reading over the last few years admonishes me that there are drugs whose use conduces to an almost surreal level of concentration!

TEACHER: On the count of three, children: HERESY!

STUDENT: Whence it follows that the strategic employment of certain drugs makes absolute 100% sense, however we may frown upon the practice from a moral point of view. Such drug use would silence that sadistic inner voice, that "nattering nabob of negativism," thereby keeping me from needlessly slicing the ball off into the woodsy no-man's land that presses about one in every direction on this claustrophobic golf course.

TEACHER: I'm not listening, Billy -- at least not until you get a medical degree! Beneficial drug use, indeed! Humph! Class, with me on the count of three: HUMPH!

STUDENT: I'm just sayin', Mrs. M. I mean, it's funny, isn't it? The Gabriel Mates of the world try to tell us that drug users have hidden problems, and I'm like, "Maybe so, but then don't we all? But why cannot we just as well say that our 'evil drug user' is someone who values intense concentration and mental clarity? I mean, come on, now. Even kids like myself can see THAT much!"

TEACHER: Now, Billy. People cannot help it if they are brainwashed dupes of a hateful status quo. I myself am such a dupe: my paycheck depends on it!

STUDENT: Only imagine! We have police officers who are running around arresting people because they are trying to increase their mental power! And we wonder why the courts are so crowded that trials are a thing of the past, that 97% of all cases are handled with plea deals arranged by district attorneys whose job is to frighten the defendant into giving up their time-honored legal rights!

TEACHER: I fear we're going to have to call on Nebbie, the school psychiatrist, to find some "meds" that you can take in order to get you onboard with the modern biases on the pharmacological front. Meanwhile, though, we could all benefit from hearing some specifics about your summer vacation. Who was in attendance at this getaway of yours, apart from your golfing competition?

STUDENT: Well, the dozen attendees at our Pocono Vrbo rental ranged in age from 6 to 70. The QR code for the property is available on request, by the way. SPOILER ALERT: It's a drab gray split-level in a woodsy but overbuilt community called Pocono Country Place.

TEACHER: That's a good start. And now give us some details about the individuals who were present.

STUDENT: Well, take Y, for instance, from the example above.

TEACHER: Oh, dear.

STUDENT: I actually wrote down some words that she uttered in order to share them with the class.

TEACHER: Hmm. I suppose that's all right, seeing as you're keeping these people anonymous.

STUDENT: At one point this Y person was making the usual big fuss about taking her "meds." She's one of the 1 in 4 American women who take a Big Pharma psychiatric drug every day of their life. This time she pulled one of the two six-year-old boys aside and told him, and I quote:

I'm not sick but I take a medicine every day. They're going to dissolve inside my body and help me out throughout the day.

She literally said that. And what killed me is the fact that we're talking about a very progressive and strong-minded woman here and a major fan and booster of the concept of "My Body, My Self." Wouldn't it break a heart of stone?! Racist legislators have written laws that have placed the creation of mind and mood medicine in the hands of financially interested parties, parties that have so controlled the dialogue on the topic that she actually thinks she is a health-conscious woman for taking their dependence-causing pills every day of her life!

TEACHER: Okay, you asked for it, Billy. Class, on the count of three: BLASPHEMY!

STUDENT: I mean, imagine if I were to take some demonized drug every day of my life and then say:

I'm not sick but I take a medicine every day. They're going to dissolve inside my body and help me out throughout the day.

Everybody would be like, "No, the only way you can be helped is with the use of dependence-causing meds created by self-interested pharma companies and prescribed by self-interested doctors!"

TEACHER: Billy, Billy! Is there not one thing you can say about your summer vacation that is completely unrelated to the subject of drugs? What about your father? I bet he had a great time, didn't he?

STUDENT: He no doubt WOULD have had a great time, except that he himself "came out" as being depressed five years ago and since then has been limited to taking Big Pharma drugs for therapeutic purposes, which is to say that he is still as depressed as ever -- this despite the fact that everybody who thinks for themselves knows that there are a wide variety of substances in the world (both existing and synthesizable) that could drastically improve his mood in a freaking instant! In other words, his depression IS COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY!

TEACHER: All right, all right, calm down, now.

STUDENT: And I know what you're gonna say. You're gonna say: "That's no long-term solution!" And yet the man is 70 years old, for Peter's sake! What are you waiting for?! Why the blankety-blank are you drug prohibitionists determined to keep this guy from living life to the full and thereby making the world a brighter place for the others around him at a summer getaway in Pennsylvania, including his own highly atypical genius children such as yours truly?!

TEACHER: Enough hysterics. What about your trip home? You live in the scenic and mountainous western part of the state of Virginia, after all. So it must have been a fun ride back home!

STUDENT: Yes, indeed, it was, the more so in that my sister was driving while I was listening to the novel commentaries of my six-year-old great nephew as he pronounced on the vagaries of the passing scenery, speaking of which, I read somewhere that babies and young kids are always tripping. They have not yet learned to pin the objects of the world down, like the dead specimens of an entomologist, into known categories, and so when they observe the world, they are theorizing about connections between things which we as adults (and child geniuses) have already lazily subsumed under our "utilitarian" categories, as that modifier is defined by the society in which we live.

TEACHER: It's time to wrap this speech up, Billy. Yes, indeed. It's time to wrap it up and take it down to the psychiatrist's office so that the Nebs can read it with an eye toward determining the precise nature of the antisocial pathology from which you are clearly suffering.

STUDENT: That's so funny, I forgot to laugh. It was also a trifle verbose, Mrs. M. Keep in mind that not everybody in your class is a child genius like yours truly.

TEACHER: You've got just one more minute, Billy.

STUDENT: Fair enough. Well, just when I thought that the offbeat speculations of the 6-year-old had completely taken my mind off of the hydra-headed evils of drug prohibition, what do I see out of my left rear window but a cop in the town of Front Royal, Virginia, circling about a small car with a beagle, obviously attempting to see if the young driver and passenger inside were carrying any of the many naturally occurring substances of which our racist politicians disapprove. This stocky guy with a badge is getting ready to ruin these guys' lives, and to add insult to injury, he is making a lovable dog breed complicit in his state-sponsored Gestapo tactics. And I'm thinking to myself, "We think that 'Fahrenheit 451' was science-fiction because the government was arresting people for possessing books; here we are in 21st-century America living the plot of 'Fahrenheit 452,' in which the government is arresting people for possessing plants!"

TEACHER: Heresy! Treason! (Shout with me, class.) Blasphemy!

STUDENT: In fact, do you know what, Mrs. M.?

TEACHER: Would it matter if I did?

STUDENT: Someone recently posted some click-bait on Substack asking the following question: "Should we pass a federal bill that prevents states from adopting Sharia Law?" And I was like, what!? What kind of question is that in Drug War America?! I couldn't keep myself from responding as follows: "The whole country is already under Sharia Law! We live in a world of Christian Science Sharia, in which we are determined to ruin the life of anyone who dares to use Mother Nature for the purposes of mental healing! In Alabama, you can get a 20-year prison stretch for merely possessing a psychoactive mushroom! As in, 'Yes, Your Honor, I admit it: I was in possession of a mushroom with the express intent of improving my life!'"

TEACHER: You know what, class? I'm beginning to think that Billy here might benefit from a healthy dose of that wonderful scientific treatment that we call electroshock therapy!

STUDENT: Okay, okay, I retract everything I said.

TEACHER: And everything that you IMPLIED therewith?

STUDENT: That too.

TEACHER: I somehow thought you might. Before you go, class, here's tonight's homework assignment: I want you to give me ten reasons why drugs are the suckiest thing in the world. Really think about it. I want to feel your unreasoning animus for psychoactive substances in every single line!

STUDENT: Um, Mrs. MacGillicutty?

TEACHER: Yes, Cuthbert?

STUDENT: What is "unreasoning animus"?

TEACHER: It's what every sensible westerner evinces today with respect to the very idea of drug benefits. You know, Cuthbert. Hatred! Sheer, primitive, prehistoric hatred!

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Kids should be taught beginning in grade school that drug prohibition is wrong.

Drug-designing chemists have no expertise in deciding what constitutes a cure for depression. As Schopenhauer wrote: "The mere study of chemistry qualifies a man to become an apothecary, but not a philosopher."

No imaginable downside could persuade westerners that guns and alcohol were too dangerous. Yet the DEA lies about almost all psychoactive drugs, saying there are no good uses.

Almost all talk about the supposed intractability of things like addiction are exercises in make-believe. The pundits pretend that godsend medicines do not exist, thus normalizing prohibition by implying that it does not limit progress. It's a tacit form of collaboration.

Richard Evans Schultes seems to have originated the harebrained idea (since used by the US Supreme Court to suppress new religions) that you have no right to use drugs in a religious ritual if you did not grow up in a society that had such practices. What tyrannical idiocy!

To say that taking SSRIs daily is better than using opium daily is a value judgement, not a scientific one.

The drug war outlaws everything that could help both prevent addiction and treat it. And then they justify the war on drugs by scaring people with the specter of addiction. They NEED addiction to keep the drug war going.

Drug prohibition is the perfect racist crime. It brought gunfire to inner cities, yet those who seek to end the gunfire pretend that drug prohibition has nothing to do with it.

Clearly a millennia's worth of positive use of coca by the Peruvian Indians means nothing to the FDA. Proof must show up under a microscope.

Outlawing substances like laughing gas and MDMA makes no more sense than outlawing fire.

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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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What I Did on my Summer Vacation

and what it tells us about the evils of drug prohibition

Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

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