Whitehead and Psychedelics

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Whitehead and Psychedelics

an open letter to Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes at the University of Exeter

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

February 27, 2024

Dear Dr. Sjöstedt-Hughes

I wanted to write to say that I enjoyed your prerecorded comments on YouTube from the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Center for Process Studies ¹. I have been recently studying Whitehead and am also excited about the metaphysical implications of his ideas. In "The Concept of Nature," Whitehead himself alludes to some potential metaphysics that might be contemplated based on his views, especially when he quotes the Dean of St Paul's from a speech that he gave before the Aristotelian Society in May of 1919:

"The spiritual world is not a world of unrealised ideals, over against a real world of unspiritual fact. It is, on the contrary, the real world, of which we have a true though very incomplete knowledge, over against a world of common experience which, as a complete whole, is not real, since it is compacted out of miscellaneous data, not all on the same level, by the help of the imagination. There is no world corresponding to the world of our common experience. Nature makes abstractions for us, deciding what range of vibrations we are to see and hear, what things we are to notice and remember.²"

I take it that these are the kinds of insights to which you are referring when you suggest that Whiteheadian metaphysics could be of use in debriefing the psychedelic user after a therapeutic trip.

I find this all fascinating. However, I am deeply troubled by the ongoing quest (now both in the UK and the US) to outlaw even laughing gas ³, and frankly I am disappointed that the philosophical community has not stood up and complained in a loud voice, pointing out to politicians that William James himself said that we must study the effects of such substances in order to understand the world.

"No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." -The Variety of Religious Experiences ⁴

In fact, I wrote individual emails to every single philosopher at Oxford University on this topic (70-plus in number) and did not hear back from any of them ⁵. Nor has James' alma mater, Harvard, complained about the ongoing attempts to outlaw laughing gas . In fact, their main page about James does not even mention nitrous oxide.

In my view, laughing gas should not only remain legal, but it should be packaged in kits for easy use by the suicidal, in the same way that we give epi pens to those with severe allergies ⁶. But we still shock the brains of the severely depressed rather than give them medicines that could cheer them up in real time. We do this based on a metaphysical materialist claim that we have (or should have) a "real" cure for them in the form of a pill - combined with the mad idea that psychoactive drugs can be outlawed for everyone in the world, at every possible dose, for every possible indication, provided merely that white American young people can find a way to misuse the drugs in question.

You correctly point out that LSD was outlawed for political reasons, but I would contend that all drugs are ultimately outlawed for political reasons. If safety were the only issue, then prohibitionists would outlaw horseback riding and car driving as well. We would see documentaries about people whose lives were ruined by such activities. Survivors would traverse the high-school circuit, urging kids to forebear. The fact that they do not badmouth such activities - but only badmouth "drugs" -- can only mean that they deny, a priori, the utility of any psychoactive drug. And this, I believe, has had a disastrously stultifying effect on the field of psychology.

One merely has to look at any issue of Psychology Today to see articles in which the author reckons without the Drug War, in which they pretend that banned psychoactive substances do not exist and so fail to incorporate any topic-related insights that might otherwise have come from users of those substances. Take Science News, for instance, and their series by Laura Sanders on a new kind of shock therapy for the depressed ⁷. Laura muses that depression has proved really hard to beat - but she can only say that by ignoring psychoactive medicine, for as a depressed person myself, I can tell you that depression would not be hard for me to beat in the least if I could occasionally use MDMA ⁸ , and/or laughing gas ⁹ , and/or coca, and/or opium ¹⁰ .

In short, depression is only hard to beat because politicians have decided that it should be.

In fact, I would suggest that we live in a psychological dark ages due to self-censorship about psychoactive substances. I take the liberty of mentioning this because I see that we have three areas of mutual interest: philosophy, psychology, and psychedelics.

Thanks again for the interesting chat. I wish they had given you longer to speak!

Open Letters

Notes:

1: Process Psychonautics: Whitehead and Psychedelic Research Sjöstedt-Hughes, Peter , 2023 (up)
2: The Concept of Nature Whitehead, Alfred North (up)
3: Why the FDA should not schedule Laughing Gas DWP (up)
4: The Varieties of Religious Experience James, William, Goodreads, New York, 1902 (up)
5: How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England DWP (up)
6: Suicide and the Drug War DWP (up)
7: Science News Unveils Shock Therapy II DWP (up)
8: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
9: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
10: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)

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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

The drug war tells us that certain drugs have no potential uses and then turns that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by outlawing these drugs. This is insanely anti-scientific and anti-progress. We should never give up on looking for positive uses for ANY substance.

Drug testing labs should give high marks for those who manage to use drugs responsibly, notwithstanding the efforts of law enforcement to ruin their lives. The lab guy would be like: "Wow, you are using opium wisely, my friend! Congratulations! Your boss is lucky to have you!"

I'm looking for a United Healthcare doctor now that I'm 66 years old. When I searched my zip code and typed "alternative medicine," I got one single solitary return... for a chiropractor, no less. Some choice. Guess everyone else wants me to "keep taking my meds."

The depressed Canadian Claire Brosseau wants the state to kill her. This is the same state that refuses to let her use drugs that could make her want to live. https://abolishthedea.com/drug_use_is_not_worse_than_death

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.

Even the worst forms of "abuse" can be combatted with a wise use of a wide range of psychoactive drugs, to combat both physical and psychological cravings. But drug warriors NEED addiction to be a HUGE problem. That's their golden goose.

No wonder the "Justice" Department relies on plea deals; otherwise juries could use nullification to free those charged with mere drug possession.

If they're going to throw doctors in jail for prescribing too much pain medication, they should also throw them in jail for prescribing too LITTLE.

Governor Kotek is "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.

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."

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

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