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What Malcolm X got right about drugs

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 heroin 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.1"


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 fit. I am attempting to kick the SNRI known as Effexor 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. We are told that we are being paranoid merely because we dislike being forced to rely on a mind-numbing Big Pharma 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 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 will be a challenging task. Like most precious things, it requires perseverance and commitment. Like all precious things, it is worth the effort." - --p. 632


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. 1473


Antidepressants




WARNING: Don't bother trying to get off antidepressants unless you are truly committed to the idea in the name of healthcare liberty. You have to be committed to such a goal heart and soul, merely to have a chance at success. For long-term users, it can be a real challenge. It is interesting how psychiatrists flip the script on this subject, by the way: they claim that the hideous withdrawal symptoms somehow prove that the user needed the drug all along. But this is obvious nonsense. This can be seen in the fact that these same psychiatrists would never say such a thing about heroin users: that their angst upon quitting the drug is a sign that the drug was actually working for them.

Note that I am not saying that antidepressants are drugs from hell -- but rather that they BECOME drugs from hell thanks to drug prohibition. Drug prohibition outlaws all drugs that could help you get off of antidepressants and so live a fulfilled life without becoming a ward of the healthcare state. We need merely to re-legalize Mother Nature's medicines. Why do we fail to do so? Because we judge drugs based on the following silly and inhumane algorithm: namely, that a substance that can be misused, even in theory, by a white American young person at one dose when used for one reason in one circumstance must not be used by anybody at any dose in any circumstances...

Suppose you lived in the Punjab in 1500 BCE and were told that Soma was illegal but that the mental health establishment had medicines which you could take every day of your life for your depression. Would it not be an enormous violation of your liberty to be told that you could not worship Soma and its attendant gods and incarnations? Would it not be an enormous violation of your liberty to be told that you cannot partake of the drink of the Gods themselves, the Soma juice?

Well, guess what? Your liberty is suppressed in that very fashion by modern drug prohibition: you are denied access to all medicines that inspire and elate. Seen in this light, antidepressants are a slap in the face to a freedom-loving people. They are a prohibitionist replacement for a host of obvious treatments, none of which need turn the user into a patient for life, and some of which could even inspire new religions.

The Hindu religion would not exist today had the DEA been active in the Punjab in 1500 BCE.

So do antidepressants make sense?

This question has two very different answers, depending on whether you recognize that prohibition exists or not. Of course, most Americans pretend that Drug War prohibition does not exist, or at least that it has no effect on their lives -- and so they happily become Big Pharma patients for life. They flatter themselves that they are thereby treating their problems "scientifically." What they fail to realize, of course, is that it is a category error for materialist scientists to treat mind and mood conditions in the first place.

Why? Because scientists are behaviorists when it comes to drugs, which means that they ignore all obvious positive effects of drugs: all anecdote, all history and all psychological common sense -- and instead try to cure you biochemically. And what has been the result of this purblind approach to mind and moods, this search for the Holy Grail of materialist cures for depression? The result has been the greatest mass pharmacological dystopia of all time, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma pills for life.



  • America's Great Anti-Depressant Scam
  • And don't get me started on antidepressants!
  • Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant
  • Depressed? Here's why you can't get the medicines that you need
  • Depressed? Here's why.
  • Depression is real, says the APA, and they should know: they cause it!
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the Drug War
  • How the Drug War Screws the Depressed
  • How the Drug War Tramples on the Rights of the Depressed
  • How to end the war in Mexico, stop inner-city killings and cure depression in one easy step
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
  • Surviving the Surviving Antidepressants website
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Crucial Connection Between Antidepressants and the War on Drugs
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Philosophical Significance of the Use of Antidepressants in the Age of Drug Prohibition
  • The real reason for depression in America
  • Using Opium to Fight Depression
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • What Malcolm X got right about drugs
  • Why doctors should prescribe opium for depression
  • Why SSRIs are Crap


    • Notes:

    1: Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers (up)
    2: Your Body, Your Health Care (up)
    3: Our Right to Drugs: The case for a free market (up)







    Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    Almost every mainstream article about psychology and consciousness is nonsense these days because it ignores the way that drug prohibition has stymied our investigation of such subjects.

    Did the Vedic People have a substance disorder because they wanted to drink enough soma to see religious realities?

    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.

    There's more than set and setting: there's fundamental beliefs about the meaning of life and about why mother nature herself is full of psychoactive substances. Tribal peoples associate some drugs with actual sentient entities -- that is far beyond "set and setting."

    The Drug War is based on a huge number of misconceptions and prejudices. Obviously it's about power and racism too. It's all of the above. But every time I don't mention one specifically, someone makes out that I'm a moron. Gotta love Twitter.

    Drug Warriors should be legally banned from watching or reading Sherlock Holmes stories, since in their world, it is a crime for such people as Sherlock Holmes to exist, i.e., people who use medicines to improve their mind and mood.

    Aleister Crowley actually TRIED to get addicted to drugs and found he could not. These things are not inevitable. The fact that there are town drunkards does not mean that we should outlaw alcohol.

    Just think how many ayahuasca-like godsends that we are going without because we dogmatically refuse to even look for them, out of our materialist disdain for mixing drugs with drugs.

    As such, "we" are important. The sun is just a chaos of particles that "we" have selected out of the rest of the raw data and declared "This we shall call the sun!" "We" make this universe. Consciousness is fundamental.

    Hollywood presents cocaine as a drug of killers. In reality, strategic cocaine use by an educated person can lead to great mental power, especially as just one part of a pharmacologically balanced diet.


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






    How drug prohibition makes it nearly impossible to withdraw from antidepressants
    Ceremonial Chemistry by Thomas Szasz


    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

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