how the Black leader refused to view substance misuse as a medical problem
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
September 1, 2025
One of Thomas Szasz's most striking insights is revealed in his explanation of how Malcolm X fought heroin1 addiction, both his own and that of his followers. He did so without relying on the medicalization model championed by modern (white) science. As Szasz writes:
"Here, then, is the basic conflict and contradiction between the Muslim and methadone; the former eliminates the problem, and thus the need for the white man and the doctor, by making the Negro self-responsible and self-reliant; the latter makes the white man and the doctor indispensable by making the Negro a permanent medical cripple and a lifelong patient, on the model laid down long ago by Benjamin Rush.2"
This points in turn to the larger problem of drug prohibition and the medicalization of mind and mood matters, the fact that these two impulses for societal control are all about disempowering and infantilizing Americans when it comes to their most basic right to take care of their own health as they see fit3. I am attempting to kick the SNRI known as Effexor 4 for the same reason that Malcolm was attempting to kick heroin: because he believed that he had been shunted off onto the drug thanks to the incentives supplied by a corrupt society. In my case, I believe I was shunted off onto Effexor thanks to incentives supplied by a materialist society, one that is dogmatically blind to common sense, anecdote and history when it comes to the glaringly obvious benefits of drug use. I was thus transformed into a permanent medical cripple and a lifelong patient.
I was trying to promote these ideas on X this morning, but it is quite depressing to encounter so much knee-jerk resistance to common sense. One runs into constant gaslighting 5 . We are told that we are being paranoid merely because we dislike being forced to rely on a mind-numbing Big Pharma 67 med in a world wherein we do not have the right to use medicine that grows at our very feet.
Note here that I am not saying that antidepressants 8 are evil in themselves: merely that drug prohibition makes them so by turning them into "the only game in town" for the depressed. This in turn makes these dependence-causing meds almost impossible to quit -- since drug prohibition denies us the common-sense ability to fight drugs with drugs.
Malcolm X at least vaguely sensed an important truth about drugs: the fact that it was always a self-interested category error for Americans to place medical doctors in charge of mind and mood medicine in the first place. He would not have phrased his insight in this way, but this view is implicit in his determination to keep his flock out of the doctor's office. Drug use is all about the hopes, dreams and desires of a human being, after all -- things about which the doctor qua doctor has no expertise whatsoever. Indeed, medical doctors are antithetical to such topics insofar as they view patients through a behaviorist lens, as lacking free will and as subject to biochemical forces beyond their control and therefore requiring a lifetime worth of government-sanctioned medical interventions.
The real monkey on our backs today, however, is neither heroin nor antidepressants: the monkey on our back is the medical industry which has been illegitimately placed in charge of mind and mood medicine. That was the mother of all category errors, and until America recognizes that fact, we will continue infantilizing patients and turning them into wards of the healthcare state by using pills specifically designed for that purpose.
This is an uphill battle, to put it mildly, since we need to change more than our laws: we need to change the simplistic and inherently racist way that America thinks about the world. Only imagine: our view of drugs is based on the following inhumane and antiscientific algorithm: namely, that if a drug can be misused, even in theory, by a white American young person, then it must not be used by anyone for any reason ever.
Just look how that algorithm renders every single stakeholder invisible when it comes to drugs except for Western young people -- the very young people whom we Westerners refuse on principle to teach about wise drug use! On what principle, you ask? Answer: On the Christian Science principle that drug use is somehow wrong in and of itself without regard for context of use!
It would be so easy to despair in light of the wholesale bamboozlement of a gullible and self-interested humanity on this subject, especially considering the vast financial incentives that are in place for ensuring that so-called "mental health" patients remain subservient and disempowered. Let me end, therefore, with an inspirational quote from Jeffrey Singer's 2025 book entitled Your Body, Your Health Care. I hope the following snippet will encourage the countless disempowered "patients" like myself to keep the faith.
"Restoring patient autonomy and the right to self-medicate 9 will be a challenging task. Like most precious things, it requires perseverance and commitment. Like all precious things, it is worth the effort." - --p. 6310
NOTES: The sad fact is that many (if not most) of our drug-law reform advocates believe in the medical model of drug abuse. Szasz himself saw how far America was "behind the curve" on this topic when he wrote the following in "Our Right to Drugs":
"When even so staunch a defender of the free market as Milton Friedman regards treatment as the proper response to the drug problem, how can we expect ordinary people to resist this deadly illusion?" --p. 14711
If politicians wanted to outlaw coffee, a bunch of Kevin Sabets would come forward and start writing books designed to scare us off the drink by cherry-picking negative facts from scientific studies.
Trump is the prototypical drug warrior. He knows that he can destroy American freedoms by fearmongering.
The fact that some drugs can be addictive is no reason to outlaw drugs. It is a reason to teach safe use and to publicize all the ways that smart people have found to avoid unwanted pharmacological dependency -- and a reason to use drugs to fight drugs.
Self-medication is not a dirty word. It has always been a fundamental right to take care of one's own health -- until the medical establishment demonized the practice for obvious financial reasons.
Racist drug warriors make cities dangerous with drug prohibition -- then they use that danger as an excuse to send in the National Guard.
The drug war is a meta-injustice. It does not just limit what you're allowed to think, it limits how and how much you are allowed to think.
Many articles in science mags need this disclaimer: "Author has declined to consider the insights gained from drug-induced states on this topic out of fealty to Christian Science orthodoxy." They don't do this because they know readers already assume that drugs will be ignored.
Every time I see a psychiatrist, I feel like I'm playing a game of make-believe. We're both pretending that hundreds of demonized medicines do not exist and could be of no use whatsoever.
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
If I want to use the kind of drugs that have inspired entire religions, fight depression, or follow up on the research of William James into altered states, I should not have to live in fear of the DEA crashing down my door and shouting: "GO! GO! GO!"
(up)