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Why science is a joke in the age of the drug war

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

June 11, 2024



The field of psychology today is a joke insofar as it ignores common sense in order to toe the Drug War party line that "drugs" can have no positive uses whatsoever. Of course, this position is never stated explicitly by modern psychologists, but it is implicit in their lack of interest in demonized drugs, except in papers that focus exclusively on the presumed pathology behind their use1.

This indifference may seem to be changing today, as academia begins to wrap its collective head around the fact that entheogens2 like psilocybin3 and MDMA 4 5 do, indeed, seem to help people cope with life and to see themselves more objectively, etc. Yet there is a basic idiocy in modern psychology that remains thanks to the stubbornness of materialist doctrine, which refuses to recognize psychological common sense in considering the potential use of a wide variety of drugs, and not just the psychedelics that are now stealing the show when it comes to psychological healing on the national stage. For the simple truth is that any drug that makes a person feel good and/or increases brain function can have a positive effect in therapy for the confused and the depressed, for the once-obvious reason that people enjoy both feeling good and looking forward to feeling good. Hence it follows that the wisely scheduled use of mood-elevating drugs can create a virtuous circle in which the user is empowered to successfully pursue their goals in life (as opposed to the goals of society and/or their therapist).

Nor does this "use" need to be addictive, except in the fretful mind of the Drug Warrior, who falsely tells us that any "feel good" drug will be addictive. This is not true, of course, and least of all for the category of drugs known as entheogens, for which "cravings," at least in the pejorative sense of that term, are virtually unknown. Moreover, in a world without the Drug War, the variety of "feel good" drugs available would skyrocket, making it easy to produce a virtuous psychological circle without establishing physical dependency. (See, in particular, the hundreds of inspirational phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin.6) Finally, it used to be common sense that the use of ANY drug is preferable to suicide. If this is so (and it surely is), then it is wrong even to deny opium and cocaine to the suffering, if that is the only thing that "works" for them (again, according to the USER's definition of that term).

I am picking on psychology here, but it is our entire society that is blind to the value of drugs. Science in general is blind. That's why magazines like Science News continue to plump for shock therapy for the depressed7. They refuse to even acknowledge the existence of outlawed drugs and so feel no need to consider how they might work in making shock therapy unnecessary. They are 100% behind technical manipulation of the human brain, but they refuse to even talk about using the plant medicines that grow at our very feet. As mentioned above, this is beginning to change when it comes to entheogens, but the simple fact that coca and opium could be helpful to the suffering is beyond the brainwashed imaginations of scientists at this point and the editors who publish their work. They have all been told since grade school that it is their patriotic duty to be hysterical about drugs rather than to find good uses for them.

This is probably a good place to remind the brainwashed scientists why they are wrong on this topic even on their own scientific terms. For the Drug War is based on the following anti-scientific lie:

That a drug that can be misused by white teenagers at one dose in one situation must not be used by anybody in the world at any dose in any situation.


That attitude is not simply anti-scientific, but it is selfish and inhumane as well.

So while prohibitionists like Bill Clinton are patting themselves on the back for supposedly saving their irresponsible brothers from addiction, they should be apologizing to the hospice kids in India for insisting that they suffer unnecessarily. Speaking of which, it is depressing that a Rhodes Scholar like the former president believes that it is best to lie to Americans about drugs and that the human mind can never learn to use such substances wisely8. It goes a long way toward quelling my IQ envy, when I see folks who should know better espousing such anti-intellectual and obscurantist policies. This is what happens, though, when you ignore common sense: like the fact that it is wrong on so many levels to outlaw the godsends of Mother Nature - and that all perceived "benefits" from doing so are sure to be paid for in blood and suffering, even if it be by strangers in inner cities or overseas.

P.S.



When I write essays like the above, I am always asking myself how a brainwashed reader might react. In this case, I envision them saying: "Yes, that's all well and good, but legalization 9 would lead to anarchy."

My response: Assuming that you are correct, why is this so? I will tell you why. It's because Americans have been taught to scream and holler about drugs. The media believes it is their job to parley any negative drug event into a lurid narrative against drugs. The natural result of this attitude is that we are always being reminded of the lie that drugs are inherently evil. It's as if the media were focusing on the lurid details of car crashes with the goal of getting cars outlawed.

The result: we only see the evil side of drug use, so we crack down some more, creating more bad outcomes for the media and politicians to exploit in lurid detail, and so the beat goes on: the deadly Drug War continues, causing civil wars overseas and leaving inner cities in bullet-riddled shambles10.

Frankly, people need to just plain shut the heck up about drugs. It should be illegal, in fact, to blame drugs for anything, since it is social policy and laws like prohibition that make drugs dangerous, not drugs themselves. No drug is dangerous in and of itself. Not PCP 11, not ICE, not crack cocaine 12 13 , not Fentanyl14. Even cyanide has positive uses15. To blame drugs for negative outcomes is simply a modern superstition. Americans love to arrange their world in such a way that there is one cause, one single "whipping boy," for all their problems. But the world is far more complicated than that and when you think otherwise, you end up with laws that make things far worse.

In 1913, Americans used opium 16 peaceably in their homes; in 1915, they were suddenly turned into addicts. The drug did not change, only the laws.









Notes for essay entitled Why science is a joke in the age of the drug war:

1: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)
2: Entheogen defined Erowid (up)
3: Scribd.com: Psilocybin: a trip into the world of Magic Mushrooms Griffiths, William, William Griffiths, Annapolis, 2021 (up)
4: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
5: Listening to Ecstasy: The Transformative Power of MDMA Wininger, Charles, 2021 (up)
6: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)
7: Science News Unveils Shock Therapy II DWP (up)
8: Recognizing, of course, that Trump has managed the seemingly impossible by being far worse than Clinton (or even Biden, for that matter) when it comes to drug policy. (up)
9: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)
10: Jenkins, Philip. 1999. Synthetic Panics. NYU Press. (up)
11: Kirkpatrick, Jonathan. 2023. “Filter.” Filter. October 10, 2023. https://filtermag.org/pcp-meth-news-media/. (up)
12: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
13: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
14: Drug Use for Grownups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear Hart, Carl (up)
15: Cyanide ingredient could lead to new type 2 diabetes treatment Uncredited, diabetes.co.uk, 2016 (up)
16: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)




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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




Drug Warriors will publicize all sorts of drug use -- but they will never publicize sane and positive drug use. Drug Warrior dogma holds that such use is impossible -- and, indeed, the drug war does all it can to turn that prejudice into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That's how antidepressants came about: the idea that sadness was a simple problem that science could solve. Instead of being caused by a myriad of interrelated issues, we decided it was all brain chemistry that could be treated with precision. Result? Mass chemical dependency.

In the 2015 movie "No Escape," the only place that was safe from anti-American hysteria was an opium den. How ironic that the U.S. forced Iran to outlaw opium.

I never said that getting off SSRIs should be done without supervision. If you're on Twitter for medical advice, you're in the wrong place.

The so-called "herbs" that witches used were drugs, in the same way that "meds" are drugs. If academics made that connection, the study of witchcraft would shed a lot of light on the fearmongering of modern prohibitionists.

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.

The Cabinet of Caligari ('62) ends with a shameless display of psychiatric triumphalism. Happy shock therapy patients waltz freely about a mansion in which the "sick" protagonist has just been "cured" by tranquilizers and psychoanalysis. Did Robert Bloch believe his own script?

Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."

The International Observer says the "core issues" causing Mexican drug violence are: "corruption, inequality, and the demand for narcotics in the U.S." Wrong, wrong, wrong. The core issue is DRUG PROHIBITION.

Endless drugs could help with depression. Any drug that inspires and elates is an antidepressant, partly by the effect itself and partly by the mood-elevation caused by anticipation of use (facts which are far too obvious for materialists and drug warriors to understand -- let alone materialist drug warriors!).


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