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What's Drugs Got to Do With It?

the importance of psychoactive substances in modern philosophy

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

February 5, 2025



Anyone with an eye on futurity must be careful about criticizing great thinkers, lest they thereby betray to future generations their inability to properly understand the pundits in question. But in reading the works of Schopenhauer, I have identified two fundamental assumptions of his which are clearly false, or at least highly problematical in the light of modern scientific understanding. I do not claim that these discoveries of mine invalidate his claims about the existence of the will or even about its supposedly unchangeable nature through time; however, they do seem to require that his theories be qualified and modified in such a way as to bring them back in line with the world as we understand it today, over 150 years after his publication of "The World as Will and Idea1" and its ground-breaking prequel, "On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason.2"

Issue 1: Schopenhauer maintains that the will of an individual is unchangeable. Unfortunately, he supports this claim by asserting that human personalities do not - indeed, cannot -- fundamentally change over time, that even brain injuries will merely mute a given personality, not change it. One has a given will, says Schopenhauer, and it will seek its "ends" consistently in one's life, to the extent that it is physically possible for it to do so, even in the face of grave injury to the physical body in which said will is manifested.

In making this claim, the philosopher was apparently unaware of the celebrated case of Phineas Gage of New Hampshire3. Gage was a railroad construction foreman whose personality changed dramatically after his skull was pierced by an iron rod in a railroad accident in 1848. Before the mishap, Gage's work crew considered him to be a "capable and efficient foreman." After the accident, the same workers found him to be impatient, volatile and profane. In other words, his personality had changed dramatically. Similarly drastic changes in personality have since been associated with brain pathology, especially in Alzheimer's 4 cases, whose victims occasionally betray a belligerence that is totally out of keeping with their erstwhile peaceable demeanor. And then there is the case of Charles Whitman, that seemingly peace-loving ex-Marine who climbed to the top of the clock tower at the University of Texas on August 1, 1966, and then methodically shot and killed 14 people5. Although the case remains controversial to this day, the subsequent autopsy revealed that the 25-year-old veteran had a pecan-sized tumor pressing against his amygdala, a group of neurons thought to play a key role in stimulating aggressive behavior.

Such transformations would seem to cast doubt on Schopenhauer's idea that the will is set decisively in stone, as it were, before we are even born.

There is, however, at least one way to salvage Schopenhauer's concept of an unchangeable will. The first step is to clearly distinguish an individual's will from their personality and to give the former a transcendental residence outside of time and contingency, a location outside of the highly changeable human body and brain through which said will is attempting to manifest itself. This, in turn, suggests an appeal to the implicate order of David Bohm and/or the holographic order of Stanislav Grof, to a theory of the universe in which everything is connected outside of time6. It suggests considerations raised by the so-called quantum enigma and Einstein's "spooky action at a distance," aka entanglement.7

I have no intention of going into detail here, however; my goal is merely to suggest possibilities. The important point is that the physical brain in such a scenario would be like a radio receiver when it comes to human consciousness. A radio receiver can be damaged and so produce crazy noises and static, but it does not follow that the original signal was full of crazy noises and static: it simply means that the mechanism for reproducing the signal was damaged. Just so, the fact that our personality changes after a brain injury does not mean that our will - our primum mobile - has changed, but simply that our body's ability to channel that will accurately, so to speak, has been compromised.

Issue 2: Schopenhauer insists that the universe is eternal, without a beginning. My question is: how does this square with the 1922 "Big Bang" theory of Alexander Friedmann8?

I am not yet qualified to go into any detail here. For now, I merely hope to facilitate a relevant discussion for my readers on the topic of this seeming discrepancy. And so I say with Mike Myers of Saturday Night Live: "Talk amongst yourselves."

NOTE:

To those readers who are unfamiliar with my philosophical approach to drugs, this essay will appear out of place. "What's drugs got to do with it?", they will ask, in the manner of an academically oriented Tina Turner. This is why the Drug War ideology of substance demonization sticks around like an unwelcome guest: few people realize its pernicious influence on almost everything that we do, say, and think.

So work with me here if you're still at sea.

Schopenhauer explains how the seemingly unchangeable will can yet be modified and even denied by those who acquire certain focused transcendent mental states. In defense of this thesis, he adduces the reports of mystical states compiled by the German mystic Meister Eckhart9. This much we know.

But here's the important part, the part which most of Schopenhauer's readers overlook:

Meister Eckhart's description of mental states are often indistinguishable from the trip reports of psychonauts using drugs like mescaline, LSD and/or high doses of psilocybin. Both speak of an ultimate oneness and a feeling of fundamental and transcendent love, one that cannot be properly conveyed by words.

Philosophers may argue about the extent to which the German quietist's spiritual states are identical to those facilitated by the use of drugs, but by outlawing those drugs, we prematurely hand the victory on this question to the Christian Scientists and Drug Warriors, to those who deny any ontological similarities between the two experiences. Moreover, Eckhart may well have used drugs for all we know. In his time, "drugs" did not exist, at least not in the prejudicial sense in which that term is defined today, namely, as a substance that can have no positive uses for anybody, anywhere, ever. Had Eckhart been a "user" of some psychoactive substance(s), he may have seen no need to tell us of that fact, just as a modern writer would see no need to tell us that he or she was imbibing coffee or alcohol during the writing process. Such facts are deemed irrelevant by the "users" -- at least until such time as a drug-war society ascribes determinist causative powers to all such "drug use."

It should be remembered, moreover, that the great philosopher and psychologist William James believed that drug-inspired states had much to tell us about the nature of ultimate reality and that it was our duty as philosophers to investigate such states.

"No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded."10


Hence the subject of drug prohibition is extremely important in the world of philosophy -- and that is why it's so sad that most modern philosophers fail to realize this. Instead, they write as if the Drug War does not exist. They write as if they are philosophizing from a natural baseline, a world of academic freedom11, and so they feel free to ignore the implications that drug-inspired experiences would otherwise have on modern theories of consciousness, the self, and the nature of the universe. They rule out all forms of consciousness except for a presupposed neutral "sober" state, thereby placing their ontologies on the shaky ground of human perception, a stance that has made no sense since Immanuel Kant 12 arrived on the scene with his Critique of Pure Reason13.

So we see that modern philosophers are fundamentally stymied and misled by their own self-censorship in fealty to the substance-demonizing ideology of the War on Drugs.

I once asked Professor Patrick Grim in a video conference how he could teach a class (on Wondrium) about self and mind without a discussion of drugs and the fact that the Drug War had outlawed almost all substances that could affect mind and mood. His answer...? Well, he did not answer at all. He changed the subject.

And I do not mean to pick on Patrick. Almost all philosophers 'go dark' on the subject of drugs, except maybe in a throw-away line used by way of example, a line in which the evil of so-called drug use is presupposed. Otherwise, it is considered impolite to bring up the subject of drugs in academia. That certainly seems to be the take-home message from my own experience. I have written to almost 200 philosophers on this subject over the last five years and none of them have ever responded. Not one of them14.

But I should thank them, really. Their reticence on this topic has ceded to me a great privilege. I am the only philosopher in the world who has protested to the FDA about their plans to treat laughing gas 15 as a "drug." I am the only philosopher in the world who stood up for William James and the freedom of philosophical inquiry. I am the only philosopher who gave a damn.

Thanks for the privilege, guys.

One finds oneself shining in this world sometimes simply because all other luminaries have gone dark.

Author's Follow-up: February 5, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




After posting the above essay, it occurred to me that brain damage (or at least brain injury) is not always a bad thing. On rare occasions, it results in so-called Acquired Savant Syndrome, a case in which an individual develops uncharacteristic abilities after a concussion. After being hit in the head by a baseball at age ten, Orlando Serrell discovered that he could "name the day of the week for any date." After being attacked outside a karaoke bar, a furniture salesman named Jason Padgett found that he suddenly possessed the instincts of a mathematical genius. After being struck by lightning, then-surgeon Anthony Cicoria was inspired with a multitude of melodies, this despite the fact that music had never played a big role in his life.

What does this have to do with drugs?

Patience, folks, patience.

In her 2022 article in Readers Digest on this subject, Emily DiNuzzo quotes neuropsychologist Mara Klemich as follows:

"The challenge, of course... is how to access that hidden ability and skill without some sort of brain-related disaster.16"


Well, here's an answer that will never occur to any drug-hating westerner but which makes perfect psychological common sense and comports with reports of drug-user experience...

The strategic use of a variety of drugs that we have outlawed have the potential to awaken and/or facilitate talents of which our sober selves would be totally incapable.

So you see that drugs has everything to do with it, even when it comes to Savant Syndrome. Indeed, our attitude toward drugs is so cramped that I am no doubt the only philosopher to point out this psychologically obvious connection. Drug war censorship ensures that such an angle will never be discussed in public, least of all on a mainstream platform like RD.com.



Author's Follow-up: February 7, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




But how can Acquired Savant Syndrome be squared with Schopenhauer's eternal will, ontologically speaking?

It first must be remembered that, as I understand it, there are two wills in Schopenhauer's system: namely, the individual will and the Will writ large, which, again according to my understanding, is essentially a unitary expression of ALL will, of which each individual will is but one idiosyncratic iteration.

We then combine this understanding with the filter theory of Bergson and Huxley to suggest that brain injuries, besides blocking "signals," can sometimes have the effect of "bringing in" certain signals (or elements of the Will) more clearly, signals that were muted -- or even absent -- prior to the injury.

To picture this more concretely, let us consider the case of a radio set that is playing rock music but is suddenly knocked off a table and onto the ground.

We can imagine two different outcomes to this accident.

In the first scenario, the radio goes from playing rock music to playing static. This is analogous with a "normal" brain injury.

In the second scenario, the radio goes from playing rock music to playing classical music. This is analogous with Acquired Savant Syndrome.

This all presupposes the instantaneous availability of information from a transcendent source, as, for instance, from the implicate order of David Bohm.

Materialists may deny that information is available to the brain from outside of the brain, but personal experience tells me that this is likely the case. During my use of peyote some years ago in the tribal lands of Arizona, I saw (or rather experienced) a neon-green slide show of Mesoamerican imagery, seemingly drawn directly from what I was later to see in a Mayan codex. Now, I had never seen a Mayan codex at the time of this experience, nor was my mind on such topics. So the idea that a local cactus would inspire such visions in such a place seems of the highest philosophical interest to me and immediately brings to mind the ideas of Joseph Campbell about archetypes. The experience gave me a sense of "something far more deeply interfused," of something that transcends my own personal brain chemistry.












Notes for essay entitled What's Drugs Got to Do With It?: the importance of psychoactive substances in modern philosophy:

1: The World as Will and Idea Schopenhauer, Arthur (up)
2: On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason Schopenhauer, Arthur (up)
3: Phineas Gage: His Accident and Impact on Psychology Olivia, Guy-Evans, MSc, Simply Psychology, 2023 (up)
4: What the Honey Trick Tells us about Drug Prohibition DWP (up)
5: Charles Whitman: American Assassin Britannica (up)
6: Exploring the Cosmos & Consciousness: An Adventure Through the Ideas of David Bohm, Stanislav Grof, and the Mystery of Quantum Physics and Neutrinos Crisp, B.A., bacrisp.com (up)
7: Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness Rosenblum, Bruce, Oxford University Press, 2006 (up)
8: Friedmann Universe Britannica (up)
9: Meister Eckhart and Drugs DWP (up)
10: James, William. 2016. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28820.The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience. (up)
11: Coverup on Campus DWP (up)
12: What drug use could tell us about the rationalist triumphalism of Immanuel Kant DWP (up)
13: The Critique of Pure Reason Kant, Immanuel, Project Gutenberg, 1781 (up)
14: I asked 100 American philosophers what they thought about the Drug War DWP (up)
15: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
16: 5 People Whose Brain Injuries Gave Them New Abilities DiNuzzo, Emily, Readers Digest, 2022 (up)




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Ten Tweets

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If psychoactive drugs had never been criminalized, science would never have had any reason or excuse for creating SSRIs that muck about unpredictably with brain chemistry. Chewing the coca leaf daily would be one of many readily available "miracle treatments" for depression.

In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort shows how science damns (i.e. excludes) facts that it cannot assimilate into a system of knowledge. Fort could never have guessed, however, how thoroughly science would eventually "damn" all positive facts about "drugs."

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.

The drug war is a slow-motion coup against democracy.

After watching my mother suffer because of the drug war, I hate to hear people tell me that the problem is drugs. WRONG! That's a western colonialist viewpoint. God loved his creation (see Genesis). He did not make trash. We need to use entheogenic medicines wisely.

You can get a Ph.D. in healthcare, and not learn a thing about the glaringly obvious benefits of drugs, as demonstrated by history, anecdote and common sense.

Most psychoactive substance use can be judged as recreational OR medicinal OR both. The judgements are not just determined by the circumstances of use, either, but also by the biases of those doing the judging.

A pharmacologically savvy drug dealer would have no problem getting someone off one drug because they would use the common sense practice of fighting drugs with drugs. But materialist doctors would rather that the patient suffer than to use such psychologically obvious methods.

All the problems that folks associate with drugs are caused by prohibition. Thousands were not dying on the streets when opioids were legal in America. It took prohibition to bring that about.

News flash: certain mushrooms can help you improve your life! It's the biggest story in the history of mycology! And yet you wouldn't know it from visiting the websites of most mushroom clubs.


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