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What if Arthur Schopenhauer Had Used DMT?

Psychotropic plants as a cure for modern pessimism

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

December 6, 2019



In the "Wisdom of Life," Arthur Schopenhauer sums up an unspoken assumption of Western philosophy when he writes:

"Every man is pent up within the limits of his own consciousness and cannot get directly beyond those limits any more than he can get beyond his own skin."


Update: May 30, 2025

Indeed, Schopenhauer's famous pessimism is derived from the daily observance of this supposed "fact of life."

But what if it's not a fact? What if we discovered that human psychology was quite therapeutically pliable after all? Wouldn't such a finding require a revision, not only of Schopenhauer's pessimistic philosophy but of Western philosophy in general, insofar as it presupposes stark limitations on the ability of individual human beings to change their own psychology for the better? Wouldn't it require the doomsayers of today to admit that there may be hope for humanity after all, if we only open our eyes (and our research laboratories) to the astonishing psychological healing potential of psychedelic plants?

These are not just hypothetical questions, for a scientific study of psychoactive plants is now proving to Western researchers what partakers of these substances have known for millennia, namely that plants like ibogaine, ayahuasca, and psilocybin can be used strategically to foster new understandings in the human mind, to help one rise above a parochial and neurosis-making upbringing, as well as problematic genetics, and to thrive in the world, in spite of the negative cards that they may have been dealt both by nurture and by nature.

But Western philosophy has entirely missed the implications of these developments. Why? Because most philosophers (like most European-Americans) are stealth puritans who are suspicious of psychoactive plants, unfavorably associating them with witches in Medieval times and with hippies in the present, a jaundiced view of Mother Nature that no doubt traces its origins to the Garden of Eden and that fiasco with the apple (or was it a pomegranate?).


Moreover, the Western penchant for materialism 1 has encouraged drug researchers to dismiss psychedelic mental states out of hand as mere madness, refusing to consider the time-honored evidence of their psychologically therapeutic value, while they dogmatically search instead for reductively formulated nostrums whose chemical effects on the body may (at least in theory) be quantified. It's as though today's scientific credo with respect to psychological cures was:


Better a theoretically justifiable materialist solution with dubious results than a non-quantifiable solution that actually works.


How would a change in such attitudes benefit philosophy?

To make this clear, we can ask the following question:


"What would Schopenhauer's philosophy have been like had he experienced the mind-expanding effects of naturally occurring DMT?"



I think the answer is obvious: he would have rewritten his largely normative credos in a far more prescriptive fashion, insisting that humanity had no justifiable reason to abjure psychological plant medicines and that, to the contrary, there is every reason to think that such use can be philosophically therapeutic, and even ontologically revealing.

Why? Because this hypothetical Schopenhauer of ours would have discovered that psychedelics are custom-made to provide the user with a kind of intuitive proof of the tenets of what Aldous Huxley identified as "the perennial philosophy," that unifying view of life that has long been recognized and advocated by the non-materialists of the world.

I may be giving Schopenhauer too much credit here, but his use of DMT may have even spurred him to propose the following instructive syllogism:

Proposition 1: The unexamined life is not worth living.

Proposition 2: Psychedelics provide us with an unrivaled means to examine life.

Conclusion: Psychedelic plants are an indispensable part of every philosopher's tool chest.


Such a syllogism, developed in the 19th century, could have prevented America's march toward drug-war fascism, by reminding us that plants are our friends and that problems with their misuse are precisely that - problems with their misuse and not with the substances themselves. Meanwhile, if other philosophers were to take Schopenhauer's lead, the materialist west could begin a long-awaited merger with eastern thought and a unifying understanding of reality could finally be assayed.

As for what would be left behind by such a philosophical rebooting, good riddance, for it would be nothing but desperate materialist arguments about Matrix conspiracies, brains in a vat, and the supposed illusory nature of consciousness (and even reality) itself -- all of which mad speculation is elegantly refuted by the intuitive lessons provided by the psychedelic experience, at least when said experience is undertaken with due reverence (even if such reverence is only adopted heuristically by a materialist skeptic) and a willingness to learn.

Pessimism got the final word in Schopenhauer's actual philosophy, but that is only because, like most western thinkers then and now, he was reckoning without a consideration of what psychoactive plants might have to say on the matter. Of course, in his day, he had an excuse. He was no doubt unaware of the philosophically empowering potential of Mother Nature.

But today's materialists have no such excuse. Therefore, when they try to tell us that life is even bleaker than Schopenhauer implied, they should follow all such pronouncements with an asterisk, to inform the reader that the philosopher in question has not yet evaluated his dour outlook in the light of any ontological intuitions provided by psychedelic plants.

Perhaps someday there will even be a sort of reverse drug test at the Philosophy Department's front door, so that no one can enter who has not had at least one experience with psychedelic medicine. At very least, today's materialist philosopher should come clean about their willful renunciation of nature's pharmacy. If they want to tell us that reality itself does not exist, that's fine - as long as they admit to having unscientifically discounted a priori the contrary evidence provided by the reverent and strategic use of Mother Nature's plants.



May 5, 2022 The above author, bless him, (this Ballard Quass chappie) is writing under the perhaps somewhat naive assumption that his audience is conversant with the potential of psychoactive medicines to help human beings survive and thrive in the world, both individually and collectively. In response to this concern, I adduce the following remedial reading list, so to speak, to bring the challenged reader up to speed on this topic, starting with a heart-warming essay about the rave scene in Britain, in which MDMA 2 (aka Ecstasy) brought unprecedented peace, love and understanding to the dance floor -- until Drug Warriors looked that gift horse straight in the mouth by cracking down on Ecstasy, after which -- surprise, surprise -- dance floor violence went through the flippin' roof! Another "victory" for the truly bone-headed war on psychoactive medicine.

How the Drug War Killed Leah Betters and ended the peaceful rave scene in Britain.



Oh, and do notice, please, that nitrous oxide is discussed by William James in a book about religious experiences -- not a book about the danger of narcotics but a book about religious experiences! This is why the Drug War is a war on religion -- indeed, it's a war on the religious impulse itself. Brian has said as much in several essays. See, for instance, Why the Drug War is Worse than a Religion.

Oh, and how about using psychedelic medicine to HUGELY increase music appreciation? Check out The Educational Use of Psychoactive Plants.



Author's Follow-up:

May 30, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




In looking back on my old writings, I love to play the role of a schoolmarm reading a student essay, as if I were no longer the person who actually wrote the words but rather a completely disinterested party who is now critiquing them from afar.

In this case, my schoolmarm has only two criticisms really: first, she is unhappy with the author's failure to include synthesized substances like phenethylamines in his understanding of the word "drugs." That oversight brought the paper down from an A to a B-plus, darn it!

In the second criticism, the persnickety old schoolmarm questions the very idea that Schopenhauer was a pessimist. "He was certainly a curmudgeon, Brian," quoth the belle dame, "but he still believed that 'truth' would eventually prevail in the world, and that is optimism." She then adduces the following lines from the German philosopher in support of her claim.

"I cannot refrain from adding that, so long as truth is absent, error will have free play, as owls and bats in the night; but sooner would we expect to see the owls and the bats drive back the sun in the eastern heavens, than that any truth which has once been known and distinctly and fully expressed, can ever again be so utterly vanquished and overcome that the old error shall once more reign undisturbed over its wide kingdom. This is the power of truth; its conquest is slow and laborious, but if once the victory be gained it can never be wrested back again."
-- The World as Will and Idea -- Arthur Schopenhauer 3


Fortunately, the schoolmarm did not take off any further points based on my former incarnation's failure to recognize this subtle but important caveat to the view of Schopenhauer as "the great pessimist." Brian couldn't help wondering, however (or so he later told me) if Schopenhauer would have been so optimistic about the triumph of truth had he lived in our times, an age in which public attitudes about drugs seems so thoroughly controlled via the propaganda of a conglomerate media owned by billionaires, a world in which all positive stories of drug use are ruthlessly removed from the public commons.











Notes for essay entitled What if Arthur Schopenhauer Had Used DMT?: Psychotropic plants as a cure for modern pessimism:

1: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)
2: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
3: The World as Will and Idea Schopenhauer, Arthur (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




There would be almost no relapses for those trying to get off drugs if all drugs were legal. Then we could use a vast variety of drugs to get us through those few hours of late-night angst that are the bane of the recidivist.

We've created a faux psychology to support such science: that psychology says that anything that really WORKS is just a "crutch" -- as if there is, or there even should be, a "CURE" for sadness.

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?!

Michael Pollan is the Leona Helmsley of the Drug War. He uses outlawed drugs freely while failing to support the re-legalization of Mother Nature. Drug laws are apparently for the little people.

Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.

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.

Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.

Governor Kotek is "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.

I wonder if Nixon knew what a favor he was doing medical capitalism when he outlawed psychedelics. Those drugs can actually cure things, and there's no money in that.

A lot of drug use represents an understandable attempt to fend off performance anxiety. Performers can lose their livelihood if they become too self-conscious. We only call such use "recreational" because we are oblivious to the common-sense psychology.


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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