f anyone on the planet might be imagined to "get it" with regards to drugs in the modern world, you'd think it would be Terence McKenna, and yet he too was bamboozled by Drug War ideology. In specific, Terence swallowed the drug-war lie that a psychoactive drug with addictive potential can have no beneficial uses whatsoever. And so, in his lectures in "History Ends in Green," he speaks with disdain about drugs like cocaine and opium. With regard to the latter drug, he alludes only to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas DeQuincy, as if to suggest that opium, the world's time-honored panacea, can only be used addictively and destructively. The fact is, however, that laudanum (a form of opium) was to be found in the majority of British medicine cabinets in the 19th century and addicts were the exception to the rule (although prototypical Drug Warriors like Coleridge preferred to blame their problems on the opium itself rather than on their uninformed use of the drug). As author Richard Middleton wrote, the drug in that era was used by poets of the time in "a series of quarterly carouses" in order to glean inspiration, in part through the synesthetic properties of the drug. In other words, the poets used the drug wisely, being aware of the potential for addiction.
Even many of the Chinese whom today's Drug Warrior would retrospectively label as addicts were more fairly characterized as "habitues," those for whom the daily use of opium was a cultural norm and did not cause a problem in their life. (See "The Truth About Opium" by William Brereton.) This is especially clear when one compares that lifetime use to the lifetime use of mind-numbing Big Pharma meds upon which 1 in 4 American women are addicted for life, drugs that are known for such side effects as brain zaps, weight gain and anhedonia (See William Brereton's "The Truth About Opium," written to refute the fearmongering lies and mischaracterizations of the Anti-Opium Society, the moral equivalent of America's Anti-Saloon League in 19th-century Britain.)
It's simple to prove that drugs like coca and opium have value. Just consider the case of a chronically depressed individual who has been scheduled for a lobotomy or shock therapy. Do we really think that it's better to physically injure that patient's brain with ECT rather than to give them some joy in life with coca and opium?
Of course not. It is clearly better to give the patient plant medicine than to injure their brain. In fact, it is the moral thing to do. Even a die-hard Drug Warrior would have to admit that, at least if the ECT or lobotomy candidate was a member of their own family.
The sad truth, however, is that we moderns would actually prefer to injure the patient's brain, judging by Drug War legislation which outlaws "drug use" even in this dramatic case. But surely this preference to injure the brain smacks of the most fanatical Christian Science zealotry imaginable, Christian Science being the religion of Mary Baker Eddy who told 19th-century Americans that drug use was immoral. And why did she think drug use was immoral? Because she believed that we should seek all help, whether mental or medical, from Jesus Christ. The modern Drug Warriors adopt the same notion with regard to psychoactive medicine, except that they replace our need for Jesus Christ with our need for "a higher power." The courts have long recognized the invalidity of Eddy's claim when it comes to physical medicine, yet have signed off on laws that mandate a Christian Science approach to psychoactive medicines, thereby establishing Christian Science as the law of the land when it comes to mind- and mood-affecting drugs.
Like all Drug Warriors, Terence implicitly ignores the power of anticipation to boost mood. Take me, for instance. If I knew I could intermittently use drugs like coca and opium, the mere knowledge of that upcoming use would be therapeutic: for anticipation of happiness leads to happiness itself. This is an obvious psychological truth, but one which the Drug Warrior completely ignores.
Why do Drug Warriors ignore the obvious, like the therapeutic power of anticipation?
1) Because of Freudian psychology, which keeps us from looking at obvious cures, forcing us to doubt anything but subconscious and hidden motivations.
2) Because of reductive materialism, which tells us that the "real" source of one's problems is biochemical and hidden to the naked eye or to the untrained individual (those untrained in reductive materialism).
3) Professionalism: the desire to appear to know things that a civilian does not know (because they're hidden, don't you see?).
So, for the prestige of their job and to give their jobs a veneer of being "scientific," psychiatrists ignore the obvious and look for "real" answers either in dreams or under the microscope. And so I could be laughing my ass off in front of Dr. Robert Glatter while inhaling NO2, but the doctor would tell me that laughing gas is not helping my depression. For Glatter has to find body chemistry that tells him that I'm being helped -- the mere fact that I'm happy means nothing to him.
Thus the Drug War turns today's doctor into Mr. Magoo, to the detriment of the patient.
This is why we need a philosophy of the Drug War, because Drug War assumptions skew our thinking in entire fields of human endeavor, thereby blinding us to the glaringly obvious. In psychology, they keep us grasping about for "cures" for depression, when obvious cures are staring us in the face. The legalization and aggressive promotion of laughing gas could put an enormous dent in America's depression epidemic. So could the chewing of the invigorating coca leaf. The properly scheduled use of opium and psychedelics, etc. -- scheduled in the calendar, I mean -- could give the depressed hope (not to mention esthetic insights) through anticipation and even help, under the right set and setting, to open their mind's to therapeutic self-criticism.
But Drug War ideology has blinded us to all of these obvious approaches to mood and mind "problems."
The fact that even Terence McKenna was blinded by Drug War lies shows how insidious the problem has become. Even he was duped by the Drug War propaganda of omission, thanks to which Americans never learn about the positive uses of the substances that we've been told to hate in grade school -- with television, films and academic articles being devoted entirely to misuse and abuse and never to positive and beneficial use.
Of course, it's being generous to say that doctors ignore the benefits of drugs for only the reasons enumerated above. A more cynical mind would point to their financial reasons for doing so, namely the fact that the Drug War gives them a hugely remunerative monopoly in prescribing the addictive meds of Big Pharma -- drugs for which addiction is not merely a bug, as it is with cocaine and opium, but rather a feature -- as is clear from the popular injunction to "take your meds," as if addiction in these cases was a public duty, whereas a similar use of opium or coca is considered a crime and a sin.
Author's Follow-up: January 3, 2023
Let me confirm again that I believe McKenna's speculations and insights are of great value in generating important discussions on the subject of drugs. That said, I have another qualm upon listening to his lectures featured in "History Ends in Green." McKenna keeps repeating the phrase that "ontology recapitulates phylogeny," which means basically that human beings rapidly morph through a variety of related evolutionary stages in the womb before becoming full-blown human beings at birth. This idea has been discredited in recent decades. It is now known, in fact, that the chief champion of the concept, Ernst Haeckel, drew misleading sketches of the development of the human embryo in order to advance this idea.
Also, Terence pays short shrift -- indeed he pays no shrift at all -- to the power of drugs like opium and coca to inspire great writers and intellects. He is just like the Drug Warrior in that he judges drugs based upon the apparent value systems of those whom he sees using them -- and in his social milieu, that would have been mostly party people. Meanwhile the Drug War culture is silent about all positive uses of drugs like coca and opium. The result? Terence talks as if the only possible use for such drugs is to get "stoned" by them. What then are we to say about HP Lovecraft and Poe, who were inspired by their opiate experience to create fantastic literature? What are we to say about HG Wells and Jules Verne who used coca wine to give them the focus and follow-through they needed to write great stories? To paraphrase Shakespeare, does Terence think, because he is virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale -- i.e., no more great story writing or outlandishly creative painting, etc.?
Author's Follow-up: May 11, 2023
Even if opium use is for the mere purpose of getting "stoned" in the most prejudicial acceptation of that word, it does not follow that the poppy should be criminalized. The whole idea of outlawing Mother Nature should be anathema to Terence McKenna of all people -- but then he is in good company. Even Michael Pollan believes that it makes sense to criminalize Mother Nature. How else can we explain his lukewarm support for legalization. He still advocates a "watch and see" approach -- although that approach has already denied me godsend medicines for a lifetime. It is a testament to the success of Drug War indoctrination that even American botanists agree that Mother Nature can be rightfully outlawed. It's as if the government outlawed Moon dust and NASA shrugged.
Whatever these brainiacs know, they are unaware of one thing at least: the fact that this nation was founded upon Natural Law, and that nothing is more antithetical to that law than the interdiction of freely given godsend medicine. God himself said it was good -- proving that the Drug War ideology is a religion -- or an anti-religion if you please. It is based on the metaphysical assumption that plant medicines are bad, not good, and the anti-scientific idea that they can have no beneficial uses -- which is anti-scientific for the simple reason that there are no such substances on planet earth. Even cyanide has beneficial uses. When we rule out such uses a priori, we deny ourselves medical godsends and possible treatments for Alzheimer's and autism, etc. -- insofar as psychedelics grow new neurons in the brain.
No Drug War Keychains The key to ending the Drug War is to spread the word about the fact that it is Anti-American, unscientific and anti-minority (for starters)
Monticello Betrayed Thomas Jefferson By demonizing plant medicine, the Drug War overthrew the Natural Law upon which Jefferson founded America -- and brazenly confiscated the Founding Father's poppy plants in 1987, in a symbolic coup against Jeffersonian freedoms.
The Drug War Censors Science Scientists: It's time to wake up to the fact that you are censored by the drug war. Drive the point home with these bumper stickers.
You have been reading essays by the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass, at abolishthedea.com. Brian is the founder of The Drug War Gift Shop, where artists can feature and sell their protest artwork online. He has also written for Sociodelic and is the author of The Drug War Comic Book, which contains 150 political cartoons illustrating some of the seemingly endless problems with the war on drugs -- many of which only Brian seems to have noticed, by the way, judging by the recycled pieties that pass for analysis these days when it comes to "drugs." That's not surprising, considering the fact that the category of "drugs" is a political category, not a medical or scientific one.
A "drug," as the world defines the term today, is "a substance that has no good uses for anyone, ever, at any time, under any circumstances" -- and, of course, there are no substances of that kind: even cyanide and the deadly botox toxin have positive uses: a war on drugs is therefore unscientific at heart, to the point that it truly qualifies as a superstition, one in which we turn inanimate substances into boogie-men and scapegoats for all our social problems.
The Drug War is, in fact, the philosophical problem par excellence of our time, premised as it is on a raft of faulty assumptions (notwithstanding the fact that most philosophers today pretend as if the drug war does not exist). It is a war against the poor, against minorities, against religion, against science, against the elderly, against the depressed, against those in pain, against children in hospice care, and against philosophy itself. It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions, Nazifies the English language and militarizes police forces nationwide.
It bans the substances that inspired William James' ideas about human consciousness and the nature of ultimate reality. In short, it causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, meanwhile violating the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. (Surely, Jefferson was rolling over in his grave when Ronald Reagan's DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants.)
If you believe in freedom and democracy, in America and around the world, please stay tuned for more philosophically oriented broadsides against the outrageous war on godsend medicines, AKA the war on drugs.
PS The drug war has not failed: to the contrary, it has succeeded, insofar as its ultimate goal was to militarize police forces around the world and help authorities to ruthlessly eliminate those who stand in the way of global capitalism. For more, see Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley.
Rather than apologetically decriminalizing selected plants, we should be demanding the immediate restoration of Natural Law, according to which "The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." (John Locke)
Selected Bibliography
Andrew, Christopher "The Secret World: A History of Intelligence" 2019 Yale University Press
Aurelius, Marcus "Meditations" 2021 East India Publishing Company
Mate, Gabriel "In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction" 2009 Vintage Canada
Maupassant, Guy de "Le Horla et autres contes fantastiques - Guy de Maupassant: Les classiques du fantastique " 2019
McKenna, Terence "Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution " 1992 Bantam
Miller, Richard Louis "Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocybin, and Ayahuasca Kindle " 2017 Park Street Press
Pinchbeck, Daniel "When Plants Dream" 2019 Watkins Publishing
Poe, Edgar Allan "The Essential Poe" 2020 Warbler Classics
Pollan, Michael "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence " 2018 Penguin Books
Reynolds, David S. "Beneath the American Renaissance: The Subversive Imagination in the Age of Emerson and Melville " 1988 Oxford University Press
Richards, William "Sacred Knowledge: Psychedelics and Religious Experiences Hardcover" 2015 Columbia University Press
Rosenfeld, Harvey "Diary of a Dirty Little War: The Spanish-American War of 1898 " 2000 Praeger
Straussman, Rick "DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences " 2001 Park Street Press
Streatfield, Dominic "Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography" 2003 Picador USA
Swartzwelder, Scott "Buzzed: The Straight Facts About the Most Used and Abused Drugs from Alcohol to Ecstasy" 1998 W.W. Norton
Szasz, Thomas "Ceremonial Chemistry: the ritual persecution of drugs, addicts, and pushers" 1974 Anchor Press/Doubleday
Whitaker, Robert "Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America " 2010 Crown
Zinn, Howard "A People's History of the United States: 1492 - present" 2009
Zuboff , Shoshana "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power" 2019 Public Affairs
Site and its contents copyright 2023, by Brian B. Quass, the drug war philosopher at abolishthedea.com. For more information, contact Brian at quass@quass.com.
f anyone on the planet might be imagined to "get it" with regards to drugs in the modern world, you'd think it would be Terence McKenna, and yet he too was bamboozled by Drug War ideology. In specific, Terence swallowed the drug-war lie that a psychoactive drug with addictive potential can have no beneficial uses whatsoever. And so, in his lectures in "History Ends in Green," he speaks with disdain about drugs like cocaine and opium. With regard to the latter drug, he alludes only to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas DeQuincy, as if to suggest that opium, the world's time-honored panacea, can only be used addictively and destructively. The fact is, however, that laudanum (a form of opium) was to be found in the majority of British medicine cabinets in the 19th century and addicts were the exception to the rule (although prototypical Drug Warriors like Coleridge preferred to blame their problems on the opium itself rather than on their uninformed use of the drug). As author Richard Middleton wrote, the drug in that era was used by poets of the time in "a series of quarterly carouses" in order to glean inspiration, in part through the synesthetic properties of the drug. In other words, the poets used the drug wisely, being aware of the potential for addiction.
