Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use

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Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use

how the drug war blinds us to lifesaving medicine

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

March 14, 2025

A relative of mine recently visited an emergency room complaining of severe depression. Did they offer her something that would cheer her up right then and there? Did they offer her a free 'trip' on the kind of medicine that had inspired the Hindu religion or that was used in ancient Greek ritual? Did they offer her laughing gas that makes people experience heaven itself? Of course not. That would not be scientific. Instead, they started her on a long-term dependence-causing treatment on Big Pharma ¹ ² anti-depressants - and crossed their fingers that she would not commit suicide while waiting for the drugs to begin altering her personality and numbing her pain. The working assumption here seems to be that suicide itself is better than 'drug use,' as that term is hypocritically and unscientifically defined by racist demagogue politicians.

I despair of convincing brainwashed Americans of the many ways that potentially addictive drugs could be used safely to end depression as part of a wide variety of psychologically common-sense protocols that smart people have not even dared to imagine yet. Drug war propaganda has too thoroughly frightened them into believing that human imagination can never find ways to use drugs safely, that we are eternally gullible children with respect to psychoactive medicine. But the pharmacological work of Alexander Shulgin reveals that there exists a potentially endless list of phenethylamines that could elate and inspire without even theoretically causing addiction in the user ³. This should be good news to Americans, given that their safety standard for drug use is so much higher than that for any other risky activity on the face of the globe. In this essay, therefore, I will cite qualitative testimony from Shulgin about the mood-elevating benefits of phenethylamines, thereby tacitly demonstrating the inhumanity implicit in denying such medicines to the severely depressed, as we do today, apparently on the fanatical assumption that suicide itself is better than using drugs to elevate mood.

My goal is to wake the reader up to the obvious: namely, that suicide is a big problem today only because we have made it so as a society with the superstitious Drug War ideology of substance demonization.

Here is what Shulgin writes about his experience with Pikhal drug #2:

'I moved into the creative, free-flowing kind of repertoire which I dearly love, and found everything enormously funny. Much of the laughter was so deep that I felt it working through buried depressions inside me and freeing me.'

And this is the kind of medicine that we refuse to even consider using for the severely depressed? We would truly rather that the suicidal commit suicide or have their brain damaged by ECT than for them to use such drugs. America, take a look in the mirror, for God's sake!

In evaluating Pihkal drug #5, Shulgin writes:

'I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing. All moved over to the plus side with time, and the evening was gorgeous. I have never seen the sky so beautiful.'

And yet Laura Sanders at Science News considers depression to be a tough nut to crack ⁴? What she really means to say is: 'Depression is hard to beat in a socially acceptable way, a way that will be accepted by our simultaneously materialist, professionalist and puritanical society.'

Of PihKal drug #20, Shulgin writes:

'My body was flooded with orgasms-- practically from just breathing.'

Okay. And yet we drug-haters cannot figure out a way to cheer people up and thus prevent suicide? What kind of fools does modern science take us for? Answer: Fools who have been brainwashed by the Drug War ideology of substance demonization.

The real problem here is a category error: the false idea that materialists are the experts when it comes to mood and mentation. This is a problem because materialists are behaviorists when it comes to human psychology: they dogmatically ignore all the glaringly obvious positive effects of drugs, insisting instead that drug efficacy must be established quantitatively, by looking under a microscope. This means that they can completely ignore the obvious when evaluating drug benefits, refusing to consider anecdote, historical usage and psychological common sense. You say that laughing gas cheers you up? What do YOU know about it? The materialists are the ones who will decide for us what works for our depression. We have placed our emotional and mental lives under the control of the passion-scorning Dr. Spock of Star Trek. And we wonder why suicide is a problem?

I am not trying to recommend any specific substances here. Some of the phenethylamines described in Pihkal have side effects that Shulgin himself did not wish to experience more than once. My point is rather that there are a wide variety of drugs that can inspire and elate and that we are ignoring their very existence whenever we gripe about the so-called problem of suicide. The problem of suicide is really a problem with our attitude about drugs. It is a problem about which we are in total denial. If we were not in denial, then all organizations that exist to combat suicide would be calling loudly and clearly for the re-legalization ⁵ of mind and mood medicine. The fact that they are not doing so means that they would prefer suicide to the use of drugs - and that is the mother of all pathologies.

Nor are we only blind to the potential of phenethylamines when it comes to common-sense treatments for the depressed. Our FDA is now trying to regulate laughing gas as a 'drug,' this despite the fact that the substance is already shamefully unavailable to the depressed, as a practical matter. In a humane world, we would be giving laughing gas kits to the severely depressed in the same way that we give epi pens to those who are prone to severe allergic reactions. Everyone knows that laughing gas and similar anesthetics can cheer up the depressed in real-time, but Americans would rather have depressed persons kill themselves than to use drugs. That is why we are deaf to the testimony of past generations when it comes to the so-called 'anaesthetic revelations' reported by William James ⁶. Consider the following description of the use of nitrous oxide by Benjamin Paul Blood, the philosopher who taught William James about the philosophical powers of laughing gas ⁷.

'I look into the future with serene and changeless cheer. This world is no more that alien terror which was taught me.'

Is the experience of such a state not a consummation devoutly to be wished by the suicidal?

In 'Will to Believe,' James quotes a surgery patient as follows regarding her own experience on laughing gas ⁸ :

'My soul became aware of God, who was manifestly dealing with me, handling me, so to speak, in an intense personal present reality. I felt him streaming in like light upon me.... I cannot describe the ecstasy I felt.'

And yet when the suicidal arrive at the emergency room, we dare to let them leave without giving them any such medicine, without giving them any experiential proof that the world can be seen differently, that all need not be gloom and doom? But then the suicidal should not be going to the E.R. in any case. We need to establish a cadre of pharmacologically savvy empaths ⁹ who can treat all mind and mood problems while using any drug in the world that might actually help according to a human being's individual circumstances. Imagine that: using a pharmacopoeia that has not been limited in advance by racist politicians and doing so in a way that removes all stigma by getting rid of the very concept of 'patient.'

Suicide is a big problem today only because the Drug War has completely blinded Americans to common sense.

As Alfred North Whitehead tells us in 'The Concept of Nature':

'The substantial reason for rejecting a philosophical theory is the 'absurdum' to which it reduces us.¹⁰'

We see this absurdum clearly in the callous consequences of the Drug War ideology of substance demonization, according to which it is better to commit suicide than to use 'drugs.'

AFTERWORD:

This is not to deny that there are social factors behind suicide. In the case of the relative mentioned above, contributing factors to severe depression clearly include the fact that, like many Americans, she lives far away from a support network of extended family members, a fact which can be traced in turn to modern capitalism and its dethroning of time-honored social priorities. Many of us would also maintain with physicist David Bohm that America's suicidal tendencies are linked to our materialist beliefs, which refuse to view the world holistically and so leave each individual on their own to reinvent the wheel when it comes to holism and connection. The above essay is not meant to confront such causes of the suicidal impulse, but rather to highlight our ineptitude in dealing with that impulse when it manifests itself in cries for help. Right now we play dumb and say: 'We have nothing to give you except dependence-causing 'meds' that you will have to take for a lifetime -- combined with endless therapy that may perhaps truly work... eventually... someday... at least to some extent.'

Speaking of social problems, the Drug War is all about hiding such things. The
conservative nips all criticism of capitalism ¹¹ in the bud by describing the problems that it creates as drug problems. That is how they made the housing problem in Oregon disappear from the American mind: by insisting that it was a drug problem instead. That is how they made the healthcare problem in Oregon disappear from the American mind: by insisting that it was a drug problem instead. Of course, there is a big drug problem in Oregon but not the one that the Drug Warriors imagine: the real drug problem in Oregon is the fact that we refuse to regulate drugs as to quality and quantity and we refuse to teach safe use and honest facts about all drugs. It is a sign of the times that I have to point out that enforced ignorance is bad social policy, for that is something that 'went without saying' before Americans decided to fear psychoactive drugs rather than to understand them and use them for the benefit of a suffering humanity.

Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths

Notes:

1: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
2: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
3: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
4: Science News Unveils Shock Therapy II DWP (up)
5: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)
6: Will to Believe James, William (up)
7: The anaesthetic revelation and the gist of philosophy Blood, Benjamin (up)
8: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
9: Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism DWP (up)
10: The Concept of Nature Whitehead, Alfred North (up)
11: What the drug war tells us about American capitalism DWP (up)

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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US

Yeah. That's why it's so pretentious and presumptuous of People magazine to "fight for justice" on behalf of Matthew Perry, as if Perry would have wanted that.

America legalizes alcohol and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.

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.

Drugs are not the enemy, ignorance is -- the ignorance that the Drug War encourages by teaching us to fear drugs rather than to understand them.

A generally educated person meets new ideas with curiosity and fascination. An illiberally educated person meets new ideas with fear. --James B. Stockade.

Someday the world will realize that Freud's real achievement was his discovery of the depression-busting power of cocaine.

"Users" can be kept out of the workforce by the extrajudicial process of drug testing; they can have their baby taken from them, their house, their property -- all because they do not share the intoxiphobic attitude of America.

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.

When we place the FDA in charge of deciding whether a psychoactive drug should be re-legalized or not, we are asking them to decide on things like the relative importance of appreciating a sunset, a task for which the FDA has no expertise whatsoever.

There are times when it is clearly WRONG to deny kids drugs (whatever the law may say). If your child is obsessed with school massacres, he or she is an excellent candidate for using empathogenic meds ASAP -- or do we prefer even school shootings to drug use???

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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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