Your Brain on Propaganda
Excerpt from Chapter 4 in Mantra, Tantra & Ayahuasca.
(Cont) We need a deeper understanding of the social narratives surrounding these medicines to unspool the cultural narratives about "good drugs" and "bad drugs," and how they intersect with race, class, money, and politics.
If you were a child of the late 70s, you were inundated with anti-drug messaging. From the infamous “this is your brain on drugs” frying egg to Miami Vice, media framed drugs as a dire threat, often personified by brown-skinned people. The prohibition against drugs mirrored a broader cultural prohibition against pleasure, rooted in Calvinist austerity. But what lay behind this demonization? The answer, as it so often does, lies in money, politics, religion, and race.
The U.S.’s first drug laws targeted populations, not drugs. For example, California’s opium laws in the 1910s targeted Chinese immigrants. Marijuana was outlawed in 1937 (against the recommendations of the American Medical Association), a move widely understood to have been a political favor to the cotton industry, and the anti-drug propaganda from that era leaned heavily into the racism of its audience.
It was always theater.
A 2018 NPR interview with John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s domestic policy advisor, starkly revealed the political motives of the War on Drugs. Ehrlichman explained that Nixon’s administration viewed the antiwar left and Black Americans as enemies. “You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black. But by associating the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities,” Ehrlichman admitted. “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Ehrlichman acknowledged that drug use itself isn’t the problem; problematic drug use is. This issue belongs in the realm of mental health, much like alcoholism.
For those of us who have encountered the liberating possibilities of these substances without problematic use, we owe gratitude to what author Erik Davis calls the “subdominant themes” of the last fifty years. Despite the dominant narrative—"drugs are bad," "marijuana is a gateway drug," "just say no"—subdominant themes have persisted. These themes, carried by seekers and thinkers, explored human potential and consciousness even in the face of prohibition. With the advent of the internet (Netcape in 1994, gradual adoption thereafter), these scattered voices found one another, forming communities on platforms like Erowid and The Well.
The U.S. has spent billions perpetuating false narratives about drugs, causing enormous collateral damage. Fortunately, public opinion has shifted. As of 2023, 74% of Americans live in states where marijuana is legal for medical or recreational use, and initiatives like Oregon’s decriminalization of all drugs suggest broader change is on the horizon. As legal scholar Gary Smith discusses in Psychedelics Today, this deregulation isn’t at the behest of the political class. Legislatures have been cowardly in not bringing the question of legalization to the table. In every single state where drugs have been legalized, the deregulation has been initiated by voters. It appears that people in many states have finally said, “Enough! We have the right to ingest what we’d like.”
These changes are driven by voters—not politicians—and reflect a growing recognition of personal sovereignty and the right to choose what to ingest.
Psychedelics work. They have always worked. Scientific research supports this shift. Studies from institutions like Johns Hopkins show that psychedelics have therapeutic potential for conditions like PTSD, depression, and addiction. Unlike traditional medications requiring chronic use, psychedelics often yield lasting benefits after just one or a few sessions, accompanied by preparation and integration. They represent a paradigm shift in psychiatric care, bridging biological effects with profound experiential learning.
Yet, we must remain vigilant against the hypocrisy of corporate and governmental control. The same actions that led to the incarceration of tens of thousands, mostly from marginalized communities, are now generating profits for corporations. This hypocrisy underscores a need for justice and equity.
For seven years, I worked with an organization that served incarcerated individuals in San Quentin, a prison in California, to help address issues like rage, shame, and develop emotional intelligence. Many inmates were serving life sentences under three-strike laws. Most of these third strikes were petty drug infractions, but could take a person away from their family and their productive role in society for 20 years or more. The “war on drugs” has caused enormous trickle down damage—not only the cost of pursuit, arrest, prosecution, and incarceration, but the cost of the removal of a primary caregiver or primary earner for a family. Not to mention the emotional toll on children of not having their father or mother around them during critical, formative years. These human costs rarely figure into government policies.
Today, many people can now legally grow cannabis in their backyards. We can forage psilocybin mushrooms in the fields around cow patties, as has been done for thousands of years. While sterilization, straining, standardization, packaging, and distribution can have benefits (which might be rewarded with an economic premium), legalization or re-regulation shouldn’t be done in a way that takes the power away from individuals to make their own choices and provide for themselves.
To do this is an infantilization of the individual human, and our sovereign right to ingest whatever we like. It’s clear that there’s a centralized hypocrisy in the corporate language around drugs, founded not in what’s good for the individual, but around what’s good for the shareholders, and one which allows the government to arbitrate and control people’s experiences. Otherwise, pharmaceutical companies and legislatures will be hard pressed to justify how patented, synthesized versions of natural and cheap substances that work are necessarily “better.”
We see also a message that these drugs are “too risky” for the general population to enjoy as a matter of course. They are being positioned as therapeutic interventions for situations like end-of-life anxiety, PTSD, or alcoholism—implying that one should only have these experiences when in dire need. Why are psychedelics being framed primarily as treatments for extreme suffering?
While their therapeutic potential is undeniable, they also offer joy, transcendence, and an opportunity to connect with universal love. These experiences should not be reserved for crises but available to everyone as tools for growth and self-discovery. These offer potentially consciousness expanding experiences: such as people perceiving themselves as merged with the One; or understanding the Earth’s foundational vitality, or of feeling what it’s like to be flooded with serotonin, and have a new reference point of living with no judgments—only love.
That information, and that experience, should be available to every person on Earth without punishment or intervention from a government. We now know that the letter of the law on psychedelics was wrong, because the spirit of the law was also wrong. It was motivated by political and religious sanction, and we can move forward with a different understanding.
And as it is already being professionalized, another core question for me is how we can deliver these mind-altering experiences in a highly personal, interconnected way—not alone in a therapist’s office, replicating the isolation at the core of much of western loneliness, but in a close and communal setting, learning from indigenous insights that this amplifes the benefits of the journey. We might imagine a culture of mutuality and care rather than clinical isolation emerge around these medicines.
(Next excerpt, from Chapter 5)
