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William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas

an open letter to Steve Taylor, author of 'The Genius of William James'

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

January 27, 2023



Dear Mr. Taylor:

I just read your enjoyable and informative article in Psychology Today on "The Genius of William James," and would like to share a few thoughts with you on this topic, should you find the time to read them.

Update: June 21, 2025

1. Regarding your fascinating thoughts on time, I have recently read similar observations in works by Wolfgang Smith, who points out how Cartesian conceptions force us to think of time in ways that do not square with the ways that we actually experience it.

2. I share your views on human consciousness. I like to look at the brain as a radio receiver for consciousness, as one of many ways of interacting with consciousness, so to say. If the brain is damaged, it need not mean that consciousness is "damaged," any more than damaging a single computer will damage the Internet or damaging a TV will damage the national television networks.

3. Regarding warfare, you write: "human societies need to find an equivalent activity that brings the same collective and individual benefits of war—without causing death and devastation." The fact is that ravers have already found such an activity: it is the use of MDMA , or empathogens in general. The use of Ecstasy in the 1990s brought together every race in color in unprecedented harmony on the British dance floors. The problem is that Drug War ideology holds the anti-scientific notion that criminalized substances can have no positive uses, for anyone, anywhere, at any time, for any reason, ever.

Speaking of the Drug War, I would like to end with a sort of call for action, please. As you may know, England is getting ready to outlaw nitrous oxide, as America has already effectively done. Not only does this deny godsend medicine to millions, but it effectively outlaws philosophical investigations about the nature of consciousness and reality itself. For as you know, the use of nitrous oxide strongly influenced William James' ontology. In fact, that ontology would be very different had William James been obliged to refrain from using that substance.

Therefore I would humbly encourage you to join me in protesting the Drug War's ongoing attempts to outlaw all substances (like laughing gas ) that give us hints of a non-materialistic world. This is one reason why materialism 1 has such staying power: because the Drug War has outlawed precisely those substances whose use tends to cast doubt on our materialist premises. This Drug War is surely a war on science and human progress and, in my view, it is our duty to denounce it as such.


Thank you for your time and your consideration of my ideas!


PS If there are problems with the use of N2O or any other substance, we need to educate people, not criminalize use and thereby end our investigations of ultimate reality. The money we spend on law enforcement should be spent on sending healthcare workers into affected communities and spreading the news about safe use practices. The alternative is scientific censorship.


For more about laughing gas and William James:


For more about the outlawing of MDMA 2


Here's why modern psychology is so baffled by drug use:



Nitrous Oxide: Possession of laughing gas to be criminal offence"




Author's Follow-up:

June 21, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




Mr. Taylor has not yet seen fit to respond to my open letter, this despite the fact that the FDA has been working in the meantime to criminalize laughing gas , the substance whose use shaped William James' renegade attitude toward materialism. But then it is rare to find an article about James that even admits that he ever worked with laughing gas 3 . Even James' online bio at Harvard University fails to point out that politically incorrect truth, no doubt because it is so at odds with the reigning view of behaviorism and materialism in academia. James created both the psychology department and the psychology field itself at Harvard and yet his legacy on this topic is ignored even there. Ironically, even Taylor's article on the Psychology Today website is being "sponsored" today by a company that promotes a materialist view of "mental illness 4 ." The ad for Liven, a self-help app, tells us that: "Procrastination is not laziness. It is a depression response." In other words, depression, according to the app makers, is identical in kind to liver disease or a headache. Medical professionals are the supposed experts when it comes to mind and mood.

This is a huge power grab by medical science, if Americans would only recognize it as such -- and for the Big Pharma 5 6 companies, too, given that drug prohibition gives them a monopoly on providing mind and mood medicine. We are talking about a multi-billion-dollar business opportunity for medical science based on the category error of placing materialists in charge of mind medicine. With such money at stake, it is little wonder that the pushback against the jaundiced materialist outlook will be half-hearted, even to the point of rewriting history. I have contacted dozens of philosophers on this subject over the last three years, in the States and in England, and I have yet to find one who acknowledges a problem with the way that academia has rewritten James' history to avoid offending both materialist and Drug War sensibilities. I remain the only philosopher in the world to have officially protested the FDA's plans to treat nitrous oxide as a "drug," thereby making it even less available to philosophers (and to the depressed) than it already is.

In America, we would rather fear drugs than to use them to stop the depressed from killing themselves. In America, we would rather fear drugs than to allow for academic freedom.
















Notes for essay entitled William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas: an open letter to Steve Taylor, author of 'The Genius of William James':

1: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)
2: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
3: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
4: How the Myth of Mental Illness supports the war on drugs DWP (up)
5: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
6: 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)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




I'm told antidepressant withdrawal is fine because it doesn't cause cravings. Why is it better to feel like hell than to have a craving? In any case, cravings are caused by prohibition. A sane world could also end cravings with the help of other drugs.

Some outlawed drugs grow new neurons in the brain. To refuse to use them makes us complicit in the dementia of our loved ones!

Imagine the Vedic people shortly after they have discovered soma. Everyone's ecstatic -- except for one oddball. "I'm not sure about these experiences," says he. "I think we need to start dissecting the brains of our departed adherents to see what's REALLY going on in there."

The DEA should be put on trial for crimes against humanity for withholding godsend medicine from the depressed. Here is just one typical drug-user report that appeared in "Pihkal": "A glimpse of what true heaven is supposed to feel like..."

Here are some political terms that are extremely problematic in the age of the drug war: "clean," "junk," "dope," "recreational"... and most of all the word "drugs" itself, which is as biased and loaded as the word "scab."

SSRIs are created based on the materialist notion that cures should be found under a microscope. That's why science is so slow in acknowledging the benefit of plant medicines. Anyone who chooses SSRIs over drugs like San Pedro cactus is simply uninformed.

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

The drug war is is a multi-billion-dollar campaign to enforce the attitude of the Francisco Pizarro's of the world when it comes to non-western medicine. It is the apotheosis of the colonialism that most Americans claim to hate.

How else will they scare us enough to convince us to give up all our freedoms for the purpose of fighting horrible awful evil DRUGS? DRUGS is the sledgehammer with which they are destroying American democracy.

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.


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






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