Essay date: January 2, 2023





What Terence McKenna Got Wrong About Drugs




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.


Buy the Drug War Comic Book by Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans


THE DRUG WAR AND RELIGION

Unfortunately, the prohibitionist motto is: "Billions for arrest, not one cent for education." To the contrary, drug warriors are ideologically committed to withholding the truth about drugs from users.
This is a "prima facie" truth, based on the already established power of drug-aided sleep cures combined with the drug-aided ministrations of a pharmacologically savvy empath, especially in a world in which we spend billions on achieving this goal, rather than on arresting users.
The Drug War is a religion. The "addict" is a sinner who has to come home to the true faith of Christian Science. In reality, neither physical nor psychological addiction need be a problem if all drugs were legal and we used them creatively to counter problematic use.
Today's war against drug users is like Elizabeth I's war against Catholics. Both are religious crackdowns. For today's oppressors, the true faith (i.e., the moral way to live) is according to the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.
The Holy Trinity of the Drug War religion is Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and John Belushi. "They died so that you might fear psychoactive substances with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength."
The DEA conceives of "drugs" as only justifiable in some time-honored ritual format, but since when are bureaucrats experts on religion? I believe, with the Vedic people and William James, in the importance of altered states. To outlaw such states is to outlaw my religion.
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."
Next essay: The Handicapped NEED Crutches
Previous essay: Modern Addiction Treatment as Puritan Indoctrination

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SUOs

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Sana Collective
Group committed to making psychedelic therapy available to all regardless of income.




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. (For proof of that latter charge, check out how the US and UK have criminalized the substances that William James himself told us to study in order to understand reality.) It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions (like the Vedic), Nazifies the English language (referring to folks who emulate drug-loving Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin as "scumbags") and militarizes police forces nationwide (resulting in gestapo SWAT teams breaking into houses of peaceable Americans and shouting "GO GO GO!").

(Speaking of Nazification, L.A. Police Chief Daryl Gates thought that drug users should be shot. What a softie! The real hardliners are the William Bennetts of the world who want drug users to be beheaded instead. That will teach them to use time-honored plant medicine of which politicians disapprove! Mary Baker Eddy must be ecstatic in her drug-free heaven, as she looks down and sees this modern inquisition on behalf of the drug-hating principles that she herself maintained. I bet she never dared hope that her religion would become the viciously enforced religion of America, let alone of the entire freakin' world!)

In short, the drug war 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.

Brian Quass
The Drug War Philosopher
abolishthedea.com

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. Oh, and did I mention that most Drug Warriors these days would never get elected were it not for the Drug War itself, which threw hundreds of thousands of their political opposition in jail? Trump was right for the wrong reasons: elections are being stolen in America, but the number-one example of that fact is his own narrow victory in 2016, which could never have happened without the existence of laws that were specifically written to keep Blacks and minorities from voting. The Drug War, in short, is a cancer on the body politic.

PPS Drugs like opium and psychedelics should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."

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

  • Bandow, Doug "From Fighting The Drug War To Protecting The Right To Use Drugs"2018
  • Barrett, Damon "Children of the Drug War: Perspectives on the Impact of Drug Polices on Young People"2011 IDEBATE Press
  • Bernays, Edward "Propaganda"1928 Public Domain
  • Bilton, Anton "DMT Entity Encounters: Dialogues on the Spirit Molecule"2021 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Boullosa , Carmen "A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the 'Mexican Drug War'"2016 OR Books
  • Brereton, William "The Truth about Opium / Being a Refutation of the Fallacies of the Anti-Opium Society and a Defence of the Indo-China Opium Trade"2017 Anna Ruggieri
  • Burns, Eric "1920: The year that made the decade roar"2015 Pegasus Books
  • Carpenter, Ted Galen "The Fire Next Door: Mexico's Drug Violence and the Danger to America"2012 Cato Institute
  • Chesterton, GK "Saint Thomas Acquinas"2014 BookBaby
  • Filan, Kenaz "The Power of the Poppy: Harnessing Nature's Most Dangerous Plant Ally"2011 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Gianluca, Toro "Drugs of the Dreaming: Oneirogens"2007 Simon and Schuster
  • Griffiths, William "Psilocybin: A Trip into the World of Magic Mushrooms"2021 William Griffiths
  • Grof, Stanislav "The transpersonal vision: the healing potential of nonordinary states of consciousness"1998 Sounds True
  • Head, Simon "Mindless: Why Smarter Machines Are Making Dumber Humans"2012 Basic Books
  • Hofmann, Albert "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications"2005 Inner Traditions/Bear & Company
  • Illich, Ivan "Medical nemesis : the expropriation of health"1975 Calder & Boyars
  • Irwin-Rogers, Keir "Illicit Drug Markets, Consumer Capitalism and the Rise of Social Media: A Toxic Trap for Young People"2019
  • James, William "The Varieties of Religious Experience"1902 Philosophical Library
  • Lindstrom, Martin "Brandwashed: tricks companies use to manipulate our minds and persuade us to buy"2011 Crown Business
  • Mariani, Angelo "Coca and its Therapeutic Application, Third Edition"1896 Gutenberg.org
  • Miller, Richard Lawrence "Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to Police State"1966 Bloomsbury Academic
  • Mortimer MD, W. Golden "Coca: Divine Plant of the Incas"2017 Ronin Publishing
  • Nagel, Thomas "Mind and Cosmos: why the materialist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false"2012 Oxford University press
  • Newcombe, Russell "Intoxiphobia: discrimination toward people who use drugs"2014 academia.edu
  • Partridge, Chiristopher "Alistair Crowley on Drugs"2021 uploaded by Misael Hernandez
  • Rosenblum, Bruce "Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness"2006 Oxford University Press
  • Rudgley, Richard "The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Substances"2014 Macmillan Publishers
  • Shulgin, Alexander "PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story"1991 Transform Press
  • Shulgin, Alexander "The Nature of Drugs Vol. 1: History, Pharmacology, and Social Impact"2021 Transform Press
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Cosmos and Transcendence: Breaking Through the Barrier of Scientistic Belief"0
  • Smith, Wolfgang "Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology"2022
  • St John, Graham "Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT"2021
  • Szasz, Thomas "Interview With Thomas Szasz: by Randall C. Wyatt"0
  • Wedel, Janine "Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom and Politics and Created an Outsider Class"2014 Pegasus Books
  • Weil, Andrew "From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs"2004 Open Road Integrated Media
  • Whitaker, Robert "Mad in America"2002 Perseus Publishing
  • 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.