Mimetics Hostilis: An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical

Artifice
Richard Glen Boire

Configurations, Volume 16, Number 2, Spring 2008, pp. 145-165 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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 Mimetics Hostilis: An Assemblage of

Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical

Artifice

Richard Glen Boire

RGB Law Group

“I need time to finish my world view, which in skeleton form is already based on
one sentence: God is a substance. God is a substance, a drug. An
inebriating substance with affinity for the human brain.”
Gottfried Benn1

Abstract
In 1947, a new drug appeared that was said by its pharmaceutical
creator to temporarily simulate psychosis. According to the creator,
the drug could facilitate psychiatrists who might take it for the pur-
pose of better understanding their “mental patients.” As the drug
gained wider use, some psychiatrists (and others) reported that the
drug elicited “revelation,” “great insights,” and “experiences of tran-
scendence.” But, branded as a “psychotomimetic,” the drug’s unex-
pected and apparent power to grant the grace of transcendent expe-
rience created a crisis of consciousness. If the drug mimicked psycho-
sis, were the claimed transcendent and spiritual experiences mere
simulations of religious experience? How does the First Amendment’s
guarantee of religious freedom navigate the inner domain of mind
and map the gaps between the authentic and the reproduction, the
real and the hallucinated? What is to be said of the fundamental

1. Gottfried Benn, Provoziertes Leben (1941). Thanks to Jonathan Ott for bringing my
attention to this quote and to the rest of Benn’s work; see Ott, Pharmacophilia (Ken-
newick, WA: Natural Products Company, 1997), p. 89.

Configurations, 2008, 16:145–165 © 2009 by The Johns Hopkins

University Press and the Society for Literature and Science.

145
146 Configurations

right of religious freedom in the age of neuroscience and psychop-

harmacology? Have we returned to the age of heresy trials, as judges
dawn the robes of priests and decree true religion from the so-called
artificial?

Introduction2
In 1947, the Swiss pharmaceutical company Sandoz began distrib-
uting, free of charge to psychiatric researchers, a new drug named
Delysid. Preliminary studies by Sandoz indicated two primary uses for
Delysid. As a pharmaceutical adjunct to analytical psychotherapy,
Delysid was said “to elicit release of repressed material and provide
mental relaxation, particularly in anxiety states and obsessional neu-
roses.”3 But it was the second suggested use that really fixed in the
eyes of clinical psychiatrists: Delysid, reported Sandoz, was useful for
“[e]xperimental studies on the nature of psychoses.”4 As further ex-
plained in the product monograph that accompanied Delysid: “By
taking Delysid himself, the psychiatrist is able to gain an insight in
the world of ideas and sensations of mental patients. Delysid can also
be used to induce model psychoses of short duration in normal sub-
jects, thus facilitating studies on the pathogenesis of mental disease.”
Here was a modern pharmaceutical agent capable of temporarily
admitting psychiatrists into the alien irrational world inhabited by
their psychotic patients. A new technology of production—a wet
technology, a pharmaceutical agent that could be admitted into the
body for the purpose of simulating a diseased mind. Delysid, it ap-
peared, was a drug that cleanly and selectively muddied the doors of
perception, reversibly rewiring “normal” thought processes to con-
struct a “model psychoses,” which could safely be inhabited for an
afternoon. This was an eye-opening experience, said to provide the
adventurous psychiatrist with what one early researcher called “that
mysterious yet vital quality—empathy” for his or her psychotic
patients.5

2. “These events are real not because they occurred but because, first, they were remem-
bered and, second, they are capable of finding a place in a chronologically ordered se-
quence” (Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Rep-
resentation [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987], p. 20).
3. Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company, Delysid Product Monograph, reprinted in Albert
Hofmann, LSD: My Problem Child: Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism and Science (New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), pp. 46–48.
4. Ibid., p. 47.
5. Humphry Osmond et al., eds., Psychedelics: The Uses and Implications of Hallucinogenic
Drugs (London: Hogarth Press, 1971), p. 425.
Boire / An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice 147

So-called psychotomimetic6 drugs (drugs that mimic psychosis)

were, of course nothing new, even during the 1940s. Only seven years
after the publication of Jean Etienne Esquirol’s Des maladies mentales
(1838),7 widely considered the first scientific study of psychosis,
Esquirol’s associate Jean-Jacques Moreau de Tours was eating hash-
ish (and giving it to his medical students) in an effort to better un-
derstand the resultant “happy madness.”8 A hundred years of such
hashish and marijuana studies had accumulated by the time Delysid
was released in 1947. Researchers had also amassed nearly fifty years
of psychotomimetic studies using mescaline, a psychotropic com-
pound isolated from the peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii) by
Arthur Heffter in 1897 and first synthesized in 1919 by Ernst Spath.
Kurt Beringer, a colleague of Herman Hesse and Carl Jung, gave mes-
caline to over fifty doctors and medical students and published their
psychonautical reports in his 1927 book, Der Meskalinrausch.9
But Delysid was different: it was artificial.10 Yes, it was derived from
ergot—a fungus common to rye and wheat—but unlike marijuana
and mescaline, Delysid was nowhere to be found in the natural11
world. Its artificial character permitted both quantitative and qualita-
tive assurances that were impossible with the pre-existing psychoto-
mimetics. It was psychoactive in astonishingly small amounts. Dos-
ages were measured in micrograms (millions of a gram), whereas
marijuana and mescaline were measured in grams and milligrams.
But most importantly, unlike all the preexisting psychotomimetic
agents, Delysid was what might be called a “pure product,” not only

6. This term was evidently coined by Ralph Gerard; see Gerard, Neuropharmacology:
Transactions of the Second Conference (New York: Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, 1956).
7. Jean Etienne Esquirol’s, Des maladies mentales (On mental illness) (Paris: J. B. Baillière,
1838). Esquirol is also credited with introducing the term hallucination; see Roland
Fisher, “The Perception-Hallucination Continuum (A Re-examination),” Diseases of the
Nervous System 30:3 (1969): 161–171.
8. Jean-Jacques Moreau de Tours, Du Hachisch et de l’aliénation mentale (On hashish and
mental alienation) (1845), in John Miller and Randall Koral, White Rabbit: A Psychedelic
Reader (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1995), p. 209.
9. Kurt Beringer, Der Meskalinrausch (The mescaline intoxication) (Berlin: Julius
Springer, 1927).
10. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1971), s. v. “artificial”: “Op-
posed to natural. Made by or resulting from art or artifice; contrived, compassed or
brought about by constructive skill, and not spontaneously; not natural.”
11. Ibid., s. v. “natural”: “Constituted by nature; having a basis in the normal constitu-
tion of things. Existing in, or formed by, nature; consisting of objects of this kind; not
artificially made, formed, or constructed.”
148 Configurations

because it was manufactured under sterile laboratory conditions, its

purity tested and verified, but because its very genesis occurred
within white walls and under the imprimatur of a major pharmaceu-
tical company. Unlike marijuana and mescaline, both of which, be-
sides being natural products, entered Western medicine with long
nonmedical histories that included religious and shamanic use,
Delysid was a new product without any cultural history,12 a chemical
blank slate waiting to inscribe and to be inscribed. When a researcher
opened a box of Delysid, he found a sterile glass ampoule of color-
less liquid or shiny coated tablets—inoffensive items perfectly at
place among the other tools of modern medicine.
A paper published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1952
summarized the first four years of Delysid research. Normal subjects,
reported the researchers, who were given “mere traces” of the drug
temporarily entered states of mind that “show similarities to symp-
toms that occur in actual psychoses.”13 Moreover, these symptoms
seemed to mimic schizophrenia, the psychosis extraordinaire:
We noticed, predominantly, changes similar to those seen in schizophrenic
patients. The subjects exhibited . . . difficulties in thinking, which became re-
tarded, blocked, autistic, and disconnected. The affect was shallow or there
was clear-cut blunting. Feelings of indifference and unreality with suspicious-
ness, hostility, and resentment also approximated schizophrenic phenomena.
Hallucinations and delusional disturbances though present were much less
prominent or striking, but together with the manifestation of depersonaliza-
tion were most reminiscent of schizophrenic dissociation.14

Yet at the same time that researchers explored Delysid as a chem-

ical inducer of model psychosis, reports that did not fit the psychot-
omimetic model began to accumulate. Some who took the drug re-
ported having aesthetic, philosophical, and even mystical insights.
For example, W. A. Stoll, the psychiatrist who published the first
scientific paper on Delysid, discussed the drug’s efficacy at mimick-
ing psychosis, but also noted that at one point during his own self-
experiment

12. A number of plants, including seeds of some Morning Glories (Ipomoea violacea)
and Hawaiian Baby Woodrose (Argyreia nervosa) contain lysergic acid amide (LSA), a
drug that has a long history of shamanic use and a molecular structure similar to
Delysid’s; see Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann, The Botany and Chemistry of
Hallucinogens (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1980).
13. Max Rinkel, H. Jackson Deshon, Robert W. Hyde, and Harry C. Solomon, “Experimen-
tal Schizophrenia-Like Symptoms,” American Journal of Psychiatry 108:8 (1952): 576.
14. Ibid., pp. 576–577.
Boire / An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice 149

I felt myself one with all romanticists and dreamers, thought of E. T. A. Hoff-
mann, saw the maelstrom of Poe (even though, at the time I had read Poe, his
description seemed exaggerated). Often I seemed to stand at the pinnacle of
artistic experience; I luxuriated in the colors of the altar of Isenheim,15 and
knew the euphoria and exultation of an artistic vision. I must also have spo-
ken again and again of modern art; I thought of abstract pictures, which all at
once I seemed to understand.16

Dr. Sidney Cohen, one of the early researchers in the field, later
wrote that for the first ten years of research with Delysid, “there was
no question but that its administration inevitably produced a psy-
chosis.”17 But then something strange happened:
reports from isolated groups insisted that something different from madness
was being induced. In these circles the talk was of revelation, of great insights
obtained, of feelings of profound unity and experiences of self-transcendence.
Even the illusions and hallucinations, instead of being terrifying and disorga-
nizing, were described as pleasurable and meaningful.18

Dr. Humphry Osmond was one such researcher who believed that
labeling Delysid a “psychotomimetic” was negatively affecting how
researchers evaluated the drug. The habit of researchers to downplay
Delysid’s power to elicit positive insights in favor of characterizing
the drug as modeling pathology was regrettable, said Osmond, who
argued that the psychotomimetic model was a conceptual straight-
jacket that threatened to restrain other, perhaps far more important
uses of the drug. Speaking to fellow researchers at a New York Acad-
emy of Sciences conference in 1957, Osmond counseled:
The primary interest of these drugs for the psychiatrist lies in their capacity to
mimic more or less closely some aspects of grave mental illnesses, particularly
schizophrenia. The fact that medical men have been preoccupied with tran-
sient states resembling mental illnesses that have been called model psycho-
ses, however, does not mean that the only use for these compounds is in the
study of pathological conditions. This misunderstanding, unless corrected,

15. Interestingly, the Isenheim Alterpiece (ca. 1515) includes a painted portrayal (bot-
tom left of right-most inside wing) of a man suffering from St. Anthony’s Fire, an ex-
cruciating inflammation of the nerves later linked (in the seventeenth century) to the
ingestion of ergot-infested rye.
16. Hofmann, LSD (above, n. 3), pp. 38–39.
17. Sidney Cohen, Drugs of Hallucination (1971), p. 70.
18. Ibid.
150 Configurations

can deprive us of much knowledge and prevent the growth of new and fasci-
nating researches.19

While Osmond did not dispute that Delysid was valuable as a

psychotomimetic, he felt strongly that its potential went far beyond
simply modeling psychosis. Drugs like Delysid, he suggested, opened
up much broader possibilities for study: they “raise more questions
than answers, and to understand those answers we must invent new
languages . . . we must change our thinking to use the potentialities
of our new instruments.”20 A new term, one that escaped the heavy
pathological coloring, was needed:
If mimicking mental illness were the main characteristic of these agents, “psy-
chotomimetics” would indeed be a suitable generic term. It is true that they
do so, but they do much more. Why are we always preoccupied with the
pathological, the negative? Is health only the lack of sickness? Is good merely
the absence of evil? Is pathology the only yardstick? Must we ape Freud’s
gloomier moods that persuaded him that a happy man is a self-deceiver evad-
ing the heartache for which there is no anodyne? Is not a child infinitely po-
tential rather than polymorphously perverse?
I have tried to find an appropriate name for the agents under discussion: a
name that will include the concepts of enriching the mind and enlarging the
vision. Some possibilities are: psychephoric, mind moving; psychehormic,
mind rousing; and psycheplastic, mind molding. Psychezynic, mind ferment-
ing, is indeed appropriate. Psycherhexic, mind bursting forth, though diffi-
cult, is memorable. Psychelytic, mind releasing, is satisfactory. My choice,
because it is clear, euphonious, and uncontaminated by other associations, is
psychedelic, mind manifesting.21

19. Humphry Osmond, “A Review of the Clinical Effects of Psychotomimetic Agents,”

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 66:3 (1957, March 14): 420.
20. Ibid., pp. 428–429.
21. Ibid., p. 429. In a now well-known letter to Osmond on March 30, 1956, the novel-
ist Aldous Huxley proposed the name “phanerothyme” for drugs like mescaline.
Huxley wrote:
To make this trivial world sublime,
Take a half a gramme of phanerothyme.
Osmond replied with his own rhyme:
To fathom Hell or soar angelic,
Just take a pinch of psychedelic.
The letter is reprinted in Michael Horowitz and Cynthia Palmer, eds., Moksha: Aldous
Huxley’s Classic Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience (Rochester, VT:
Park Street Press, 1977), p. 107.
Boire / An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice 151

The term psychedelic caught on22 and Delysid, better known to-
day as LSD (D-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate), became its quint-
shou
essential exemplar.
*** cent
Re-branded to allow for more positive interpretations of the experi- betw
ence, some of which were nothing less than rapturous, word of LSD
began spreading. Especially among artists, philosophers, and mys-
tics, few wanted to be left behind. But just as researchers were begin-
ning to reexamine LSD outside of the psychotomimetic interpretive
straightjacket, a rash of women in Europe gave birth to babies with
serious birth defects. The problem was traced not to LSD, but to an-
other experimental drug, a sleeping pill named Thalidomide.
In response to public concerns that loose regulations in the
United States could lead to a similar fiasco, the U.S. Congress passed
new regulations that tightly limited research with experimental new
drugs.23 Prior to 1963, human experiments with newly created drugs
were largely unregulated; the 1963 regulations radically expanded
the powers of the FDA, requiring companies to prove that a new
drug was reasonably safe and effective in nonhuman animals before
commencing human testing. If animal testing was successful, hu-
man testing could begin, but only in stages, with each new stage
requiring both pre-approval and post-evaluation by the FDA. While
safeguarding against a U.S. tragedy like the European Thalidomide
crisis, the new regulations added substantial costs and delays to the
process of developing potentially safer and more effective new
drugs.24
In 1963, the same year that these new regulations came into effect,
Sandoz’s patent on LSD expired. Without any way of generating a
protected profit from its investment, Sandoz concluded that it could

22. Just a year after Osmond suggested abandoning the label “psychotomimetic,” the
World Health Organization published a report that encouraged ongoing scientific
research with psychedelics and expressed dissatisfaction with the moniker “psychosomi-
metic,” remarking: “The relationship between a model and a real psychosis . . . is far from
clear. The term, therefore, can only be accepted with the greatest reservation, and it is
suggested that, until superseded by a happier one, it should not be used”; see “Ataractic
and Hallucinogenic Drugs in Psychiatry: Report of a Study Group,” WHO Technical
Report Series no. 152 (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1958), pp. 34–35.
23. Pub. L. No. 87-781, 76 Stat. 780 (1962), codified in various sections of 21 U.S.C.
24. Lehman Brothers Healthcare Group has estimated that the costs of bringing a new
drug to market under current FDA regulations can reach as high as $675 million; see
Lehman Brothers, “Drug R&D Costs, Success Rates, and Emerging Technologies: A Look
at Three Future Scenarios” (1997), in Pharmaceutical R&D Statistical Sourcebook (Dublin:
Parexal International, 2000).
152 Configurations

not justify the expenses of moving LSD through FDA approval. As a

result, Sandoz drastically reduced LSD production and distribution.

***
The genie, however, was already out of the bottle. For a fee of fifty
cents payable to the U.S. Patent Office, enterprising chemists could
acquire the recipe for making LSD. These chemists stepped in to
supply a booming legal market just as Sandoz cut back supply and
popular demand for the drug was mushrooming.25 In 1965, respond-
ing to a swarm of media reports that depicted America as a country
ravaged by dangerous drugs of all sorts, federal lawmakers moved to
prohibit the unregistered possession, manufacture, or sale of any
drug having a “depressant,” “stimulant,” or “hallucinogenic effect
on the central nervous system.”26 The following year, the law was
amended to explicitly enumerate six prohibited substances having a
hallucinogenic effect: dimethyltryptamine (DMT), d-Lysergic acid
diethylamide (LSD), mescaline, peyote, psilocybin, and psilocin.27
Sandoz responded by ending all further production and distribution
of LSD, psilocybin, and psilocin.28
Congress followed up on the law in 1970, passing a massive federal
criminal law29 (tenuously based on its power to regulate interstate
commerce), which, among other things, created a category of con-
trolled substances denoted “hallucinogens.” The six compounds al-
ready labeled hallucinogenic by the earlier law were joined by eleven

25. On March 25, 1966, Life magazine published a cover story titled “The Exploding
Threat of the Mind Drug That Got Out of Control,” reporting that “[a]t least one mil-
lion doses of LSD” would be taken in 1966, and concluding that “the genie of LSD,
with all its tantalizing possibilities for good and evil, is out in the open”; see http://
www.psychedelic-library.org/magazines/lifelsd.htm. See also Edward M. Brecher and
the editors of Consumer Reports, “Chapter 50: How LSD was Popularized, 1962–1969,”
in The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972), pp.
366–374.
26. Drug Abuse Control Amendments of 1965, Pub. L. No. 89-74, 79 Stat. 226 (1965).
While the new law outlawed possession of hallucinogenic substances, not all posses-
sion was outlawed. An accompanying provision carved out a large exception, permit-
ting any person to possess hallucinogenic drugs so long as they were for his or her own
personal use or the use of a member of his or her household (sec. 511 [c]). In the fall of
1968, the exception for personal use was eliminated (Pub. L. No. 90-639, 82 Stat. 1361
[1968]).
27. 31 Federal Register 4679 (March 19, 1966).
28. See letter of A. Cerletti, then-director of the pharmaceutical department of Sandoz,
dated August 23, 1965; reprinted in Hofmann, LSD (above, n. 3), pp. 62–64.
29. 21 U.S.C. sec. 801 et seq.
Boire / An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice 153

others30 declared by Congressional fiat to have “a high potential for

abuse,” “no currently accepted medical use” in the United States, and
“a lack of accepted safety,” even under medical supervision.31

***
By adopting the term hallucinogen(ic), the American legal system
forged into federal criminal law the outdated psychotomimetic
characterization of the substances. By a simple selection of a word,
the states of mind elicited by the substances were relegated and re-
duced to the distorted and deranged broodings of the mad. By the
1970s, the term psychedelic was likewise over-saturated with mean-
ing, loaded with visions of swirling kaleidoscopic lettering on 1960s
rock posters and dark images of a wayward hippie counterculture.
Asserting that neither of these labels “deserve greater longevity, if
our language is not to perpetuate the misunderstandings of the
past,” a group of five scholars proposed yet another rhetorical recu-
peration in 1979. Their choice was “entheogen”:
In Greek the word entheos means literally “god (theos) within,” and was used to
describe the condition that follows when one is inspired and possessed by the
god that has entered one’s body. It was applied to prophetic seizures, erotic pas-
sion and artistic creation, as well as to those religious rites in which mystical
states were experienced through the ingestion of substances that were transub-
stantial with the deity. In combination with the Greek root gen-, which denotes
the action of “becoming,” this word results in the term that we are proposing:

30. 21 U.S.C. sec. 812, subd. (c).

31. The substances initially listed in schedule 1 as hallucinogens were: 1) 3,4-methyl-
enedioxy amphetamine; 2) 5-methoxy-3,4-methylenedioxy amphetamine; 3)
3,4,5-trimethoxy amphetamine; 4) Bufotenine; 5) Diethyltryptamine; 6) Dimethyl-
tryptamine; 7) 4-methyl-2,5-dimethoxyamphetamine; 8) Ibogaine; 9) Lysergic acid
diethylamide; 10) Marihuana; 11) Mescaline; 12) Peyote; 13) N-ethyl-3-piperidyl nez-
ilate; 14) N-methyl-3-piperidyl benzilate; 15) Psilocybin; 16) Psilocyn; and 17) Tetrahy-
drocannabinols (21 U.S.C. sec. 812, subd. [b] [1970]). As of January 2004, the number
of federally prohibited hallucinogens had risen from the initial six to a total of thirty-
two (21 C.F.R. 1308.11). But the reaches of the federal law extend even further. Any
“material, compound, mixture, or preparation, which contains any quantity” of a
scheduled hallucinogenic substance is likewise considered a controlled substance
(ibid.). Although this phrase was intended to reach street dealers who sell diluted or
“cut” drugs that contain more of the cutting agent (e.g., cornstarch) than the illegal
drug, federal and state prosecutors have twisted its interpretation to include plants that
naturally produce controlled substances. Additionally, under a federal law passed in
1986, the definition of “controlled substance” was radically expanded to include “con-
trolled substance analogues,” designated in an Alice-in-Wonderland way as all new
substances that are “substantially similar” to those explicitly controlled (“Controlled
Substance Analogue Act,” 21 U.S.C. 813; 21 U.S.C. 802[32][A]).
154 Configurations

entheogen. Our word sits easily on the tongue and seems quite natural in English.
We could speak of entheogens or, in an adjectival form, of entheogenic plants or
substances. In a strict sense, only those vision-producing drugs that can be
shown to have figured in shamanic or religious rites would be designated en-
theogens, but in a looser sense, the term could also be applied to other drugs,
both natural and artificial, that induce alterations of consciousness similar to
those documented for ritual ingestion of traditional entheogens.32

Conclusion33
fade in
A close-up, low-angle shot of a sterile marble floor. The narrow depth
of field reveals what appears to be a long hallway, interrupted by out-of-
focus black movements that resolve into the shoes and slacks and deter-
mined strides of professionals.
It could be the inside of a madhouse, or a courthouse.
Men34 are talking about simulations, about delusions, about various
forms of guilt. Their voices rebound and mix, an auditory montage
supplemented with discontinuous announcements over an intercom
system and overlaid with other sounds and noises of bureaucratic offi-
ciousness. On a table rests an open manila folder, a page reads:
synopsis: a forty year old man35 discovered in a private cabin under the influence of

illegal hallucinogenic drugs. unrepentant. refuses to acknowledge guilt. claims that

these drugs are “entheogenic” sacraments essential for his religious practices.

32. Carl A. Ruck, Jeremy Bigwood, Danny Staples, Jonathan Ott, and R. Gordon Was-
son, “Entheogens,” Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 11:1/2 (1979): 145–146.
33. “The notion that sequences of real events possess the formal attributes of the stories
we tell about imaginary events could only have its origin in wishes, daydreams, and
reveries. Does the world really present itself to perception in the form of well-made
stories, with central subjects, proper beginnings, middles, and ends, and a coherence
that permits us to see ‘the end’ in every beginning?”; see White, Content of the Form
(above, n. 2), p. 24.
34. “You are undoubtedly aware that thanks to zooformalin one can temporarily be-
come—or rather, feel oneself to be—a turtle, ant, ladybug, or even a jasmine blossom,
with the help of a little botanil inflorescine—subjectively of course, it is also possible
to undergo dissociation into two, three, four parts. When the number of personality
splits reaches a two-place figure, you obtain a thronging effect. At which point we are
no longer dealing with an ego, but a wego. A plurality of minds in a single body” (Stan-
islaw Lem, The Futurological Congress (from the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy), trans. Michael
Kandel [New York: Seabury Press, 1974], p. 124). “I shall . . . imagine that I have an
opponent who follows my arguments with mistrust, and here and there shall allow
him to interject some remarks” (Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. James
Strachey [New York: Norton, 1961], p. 21).
35. “[M]an had been a figure occurring between two modes of language; or, rather, he
was constituted only when language, having been situated within representation and,
Boire / An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice 155

The defendant may believe what he will as to peyote and marijuana and he may
conceive that one is necessary and the other is advisable in connection with his reli-
gion. But it is not a violation of his constitutional rights to forbid him, in the guise
of his religion, to possess a drug which will produce hallucinatory symptoms similar
to those produced in cases of schizophrenia, dementia praecox, or paranoia, and his
position cannot be sustained here—in law nor in morals.36

By using an illegal hallucinogenic drug under the guise of reli-

gion, this man has breached the social contract on just about every
level imaginable. The major active ingredient in peyote is mescaline.
Mescaline is a hallucinogen whose effects are similar to those of lysergic
acid diethylamide (LSD). It may produce alteration of consciousness, evi-
denced by confused mental states and dreamlike revivals of past traumatic
events, alteration of sensory perception, evidenced by visual illusions and
distortion of space and perspective, alteration of mood, evidenced by anxi-
ety, euphoria, or ecstasy, alteration of ideation, evidenced by impairment
of concentration and intelligence, and alteration of personality, evidenced
by impairment of conscious and the breakdown of cultural and social in-
hibitions . . .37
But gentlemen, let’s not forget that unlike an actual madman
who’s hopelessly lost inside his mind, this man is able to control his
hallucinations. He’s operationally sane in all but one domain: his
proclivity for chemically inducing hallucinations, which he believes
have some religious import. But, as we know, these hallucinogenic
drugs merely simulate. To characterize their effects as “psychosis” or
as some sort of “religious” beatific vision, is in both cases to mistake
an artificial model for the real. If, on the one hand, religion brings with
it obsessional restrictions, exactly as an individual obsessional neurosis
does, on the other hand it comprises a system of wishful illusions together
with a disavowal of reality, such as we find in an isolated form nowhere
else but in amentia, in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion.38
If you mean to excuse his behavior, I disagree. Even under the
most generous interpretation, I see no reason to distinguish this
man’s actions from those of a malingerer. Remember that character
in M*A*S*H? Colonel Klink? No, Corporal Klinger.

as it were, dissolved in it, freed itself from that situation only at the cost of its own
fragmentation: man composed his own figure in the interstices of that fragmented
language” (Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences,
trans. Alan Sheridan [New York: Vintage, 1970], p. 386).
36. State v. Bullard (1966), 148 S.E.2d 565, 569.
37. Peyote Way Church of God, Inc. v. Smith (1984), 742 F.2d. 193, 197.
38. Freud, Future of an Illusion (above, n. 34), p. 43.
156 Configurations

The malingerer who fakes a particular physical or mental illness

does not, of course, have that illness, but he has another illness, a
mental illness. This man, by taking a drug outside of medical super-
vision that mimics psychosis, is not actually psychotic. Yet, his pen-
chant for inducing simulated psychosis is a form of malingering,
which is itself a mental illness. Usually the simulation of schizophrenia
is simply the prodromal phase of genuine illness. . . . The majority of such
patients will be suffering from the early stages of a genuine psychosis and
should be managed accordingly.39
Psychosis a common condition in schizophrenia, is a state of mental
impairment marked by hallucinations, which are disturbances of sensory
perception, and/or delusions, which are false yet strongly held personal be-
liefs that result from an inability to separate real from unreal experiences.40
What’s most troubling to me is his claim that his drug-induced
hallucinations have some sort of religious significance. This is tanta-
mount to asserting that his hallucinations are more significant than
reality itself. He is worshipping an illusion, a chemical idol. Thou
shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing
that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the
water under the earth.41 In effect, he is displacing reality in favor of
unreal and distorted thinking. This reality displacement is a hall-
mark of psychosis.
Clearly, his claims of religious significance cannot be true, and
cannot even be entertained as such, because doing so would entail
the erasure of the reality principle, and with it the erasure of any
objective standards whatsoever. We can give him the benefit of the
doubt on many things, but there can be no debate about the reality
principle. Using hallucinogens to simulate God is of greatest con-
cern. By His very nature, God cannot be simulated, and anyone who
truly believes (1) that a drug is capable of simulating God, and (2)
then mistakes such a faux “god” for God Himself, is, by any reason-
able definition, truly insane. Imagine if this were to catch on.
I steered clear of the theoapothetrias, with their faith-giving, grace-
bestowing, sin-absolving compounds, where with a gram of sancrosancti-
monium you can be canonized on the spot. And while you’re at it, why not
a little dietary deitine, lo-cal allah-all, polyunsaturated brahmanox? Our

39. G. G. Hay, “Feigned Psychosis: A Review of the Simulation of Mental Illness,” British
Journal of Psychiatry 143 (1983): 8–10.
40. Grace Tsai, “Schizophrenia,” DiscoveryHealth.com, http://health.discovery.com/
centers/mental/schizophrenia/schizophrenia.html.
41. The Bible, King James Version, Exodus 20:4.
Boire / An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice 157

nazarine anointium, with Jehoshaphat, and a drop of sugar-free decaffein-

ated kingdom-come doues the rest. Glory hallelucinujah! Paradisiacs for
the pious, mephistol and ereban for the masochists, Valhalla and valhell
. . . it was all I could do to keep from storming into a pharmacopium on
the corner, where the congregation was kneeling devoutly, popping paster-
nostrums and taking orisol like snuff.42
cut to medium shot of dark hallway, the flicker of cathode rays from
an open doorway illuminate a portion of the hallway
Next on NOVA. Scientists are continuing to uncover what some
are calling a “marvelous uroboric quality of the cosmos.” By study-
ing correspondences where particular processes and forms are reme-
diated across time and space, scientists, philosophers, and even
theologians are glimpsing what some are suggesting may be a fun-
damental divine code. “We’re very interested in exploring how cer-
tain things appear to cast echoes of themselves across other medi-
ums, both natural and artificial,” explained one researcher at a ma-
jor university. Evolutionary biologists have long known that simula-
tion, which often takes the form of natural camouflage, provides
evolutionary advantages. These new studies, however, examine sim-
ulation and mimicry as remediation—the phenomenon of certain
processes or forms to extend themselves by manifesting across and
within different mediums: “These remediated echoes suggest a type
of communication modality—an echolocution system—in which
the medium becomes the message, the form becomes the content.”43
cut back to table with open folder
Gentlemen, I suggest that we refrain from devolving into a discus-
sion about metaphysics. I’m offended by the implicit suggestion that
the practice of religion can be equated to the practice of philosophy.
Smoking marijuana or taking LSD may provide philosophical fodder,
but this must not be confused with a true religious experience.
Last time I read the First Amendment, it protected religion, not
philosophy.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof.44

42. Lem, Futurological Congress (above, n. 34), p. 121.

43. “Rupert Sheldrake’s central notion is the idea of morphic resonance, the transmis-
sion of forms and behaviors through repetition in time. . . . Spanning the scale of cre-
ation from protein molecules to galaxies, and from the most primitive organisms to
human societies, this ground-breaking work suggests that nature operates less by fixed
laws than by its own kind of memory” (from the back cover of Rupert Sheldrake’s The
Presence of the Past [New York: Random House, 1988]).
44. U.S. Constitution, Amendment I.
158 Configurations

Marijuana . . . appears merely to have served as the means by which

appellant ascertained particular states of mind characterized by him as
religious. Such conduct, even if performed to attain what is considered a
sincere religious experience, is not protected by the First Amendment.45
There is no constitutional protection for theorizing. You can’t just
label your pet theories a “religion” and think that you’re thereby
entitled to use illegal drugs. For God’s sake we can’t permit this
man’s drug-induced flights of fancy to rewrite something as funda-
mental as the First Amendment.
There is no evidence that defendant’s belief was espoused by any orga-
nization or was a principle, tenet, or dogma of any organization of which
he was a member. There is no evidence that defendant’s belief encom-
passes marijuana as an object of worship or that the use and distribution
of marijuana except in limited ways would be sacrilegious. There is no
evidence that defendant uses marijuana to communicate with any Su-
preme Being; no evidence that defendant’s use or distribution in any way
involves any religious ceremony; no evidence that the use or distribution
involves any principle, tenet or dogma pertaining to the spiritual or eternal
and, thus, nonsecular.46
The fact that the use of drugs is found in some ancient and some modern
recognized religions is an obvious point that misses the mark.47 Moreover,
the fact that he’s not alone in his beliefs about hallucinogens, and
that he gathers together with others to take them, does not make
them a “church.” It is the opinion of the Hearing Officer after review and
study of the record that the Church of the Awakening is not a religion in the
true sense of the word, but a loose confederation of kindred souls whose
purpose is to explore the mystical boundaries of humanity through the use
of hallucinogenic drugs and other means.48 The Free Exercise Clause is
not a get-out-of-jail-free card for drug-using philosophers. . . . defen-
dant has offered no evidence that his use of marijuana is a religious practice
in any sense of that term. In defendant’s discourse to the jury he did refer to
the Bible and to the practices of some Hindus, but in essence he was express-
ing only his own personal philosophy and way of life.49
I might add, just for the purposes of argument, that even if we
were to grant that his drug use is producing an authentic religious expe-
rience, the law does not provide any protection for such artificial

45. People v. Werber (1971), 19 Cal. App. 3d, 598, 608.

46. State v. Brashear (Ct. App. NM 1979), 593 P.2d, 63, 68.
47. Ibid., p. 68.
48. 35 Federal Register 2874 (February 12, 1970).
49. People v. Mitchell (1966), 244 Cal. App. 2d, 176, 182.
Boire / An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice 159

aids. The point is that the law does not bar the defendant from practices
indispensable to the pursuit of his faith. Rather, it compels him to aban-
don reliance upon an artificial aid and to utilize other, perhaps self-in-
duced means to attain the desired intensification of apperception.50 It’s
quite clear that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment
doesn’t guarantee a person the right to use the most effective reli-
gious practices. Exercise entails natural effort, it cannot be reduced
to efficiency or effectiveness, or to the ease of popping a pill. Granted,
arguendo, that drugs can facilitate or precipitate a religious or mystical
experience, the record shows that the experience can be reached through
less convenient means such as fasting, prayer, meditation, hypnosis, etc.
Therefore, denial of the exemption would not infringe on the rights of the
petitioners to exercise their religion.51
So far, we’ve been assuming that he is operating in good faith;
that he sincerely, but mistakenly, believes that his drug-induced hal-
lucinations are of a religious nature. But, there is another possibility
that we must consider. It is possible that all this talk about religion is
a ruse. After all is not simulation inherently misleading, fraudulent,
and deceptive? I do not want to impute dishonesty, but I think it is
our duty to consider that this man may be misrepresenting his hal-
lucinogen use as “religious” in a desperate effort to find a legal safe
harbor for what is, in actuality, pure and simple illegal drug use. The
law [may] exert its force in situations where, under guise of religion, indul-
gence is sought in acts offensive to law and morality alike, in the disin-
genuous belief that they are constitutionally protected. There is no immu-
nity, of course, to devotees of such ancient observances as a dionysian
symposium or a bacchanalian orgy, even though conducted under a pro-
fane pretext of divine worship.52
There is a decided facility for drug abusers to enter into the membership
of the Church of the Awakening. This would provide a ready means to
acquire immunity from the law if the petition were granted. “Bad faith” of
future members and monitors is a real problem under the proposed re-
quirements enumerated by the Church. Granting of the exemption would
create serious breaches in drug abuse legislation and open the door to
pseudoreligions conceived for the purpose of circumventing drug laws in-
tended to control the misuse of drugs.53
I am tempted to suggest that there may be multiple layers of deceit
here. Simulation upon simulation. Addiction upon addiction. We
50. People v. Collins (1969), 273 Cal. App. 2d, 486, 488.
51. Federal Register (above, n. 48).
52. State v. Hughes (1965), 209 App. 2d, 872, 881.
53. Federal Register (above, n. 48).
160 Configurations

may be venturing along the edge of a catalytic collective addiction of

sorts, a reality-obliterating contagion, if you will. Indeed, I believe
this is of the utmost concern, and the reason why we simply cannot
compromise, even an inch, on this question of conflating hallucino-
genic drug experiences with religious experiences.
Let me try and explain.
The evidence suggests that hallucinogenic drugs have relatively
little physical addiction potential. We can’t equate them to drugs
like alcohol, nicotine, or crack cocaine. In a sense, however, they
pose an enantiomorphic danger. One might say that a person who is
addicted to a classically addicting drug such as crack cocaine or her-
oin lives in an amplified super-reality. Everything becomes more real,
not less.
To be a confirmed drug addict is to be one of the walking dead. . . . The
teeth have rotted out, the appetite is lost, and the stomach and intestines
don’t function properly. The gall bladder becomes inflamed; eyes and skin
turn a bilious yellow; in some cases membranes of the nose turn a flaming
red; the partition separating the nostrils is eaten away—breathing is dif-
ficult. Oxygen in the blood decreases; bronchitis and tuberculosis develop.
Good traits of character disappear and bad ones emerge. Sex organs be-
come affected. Veins collapse and livid purplish scars remain. Boils and
abscesses plague the skin; gnawing pain racks the body. Nerves snap; vi-
cious twitching develops. Imaginary and fantastic fears blight the mind
and sometimes complete insanity results. Often times, too, death comes—
much too early in life. . . . Such is the torment of being a drug addict; such
is the plague of being one of the walking dead . . .54
To be sure, such a drug addiction makes the objective physicality
of every moment excruciatingly intense. Hunger, money, desire, de-
spair, the moments leading up to the fix and the period during
which the drug’s effects are waning, all are experienced with height-
ened intensity. The realness of the world is amplified. The organism
squirms and screams for attention. Embodiment is inescapable. Even
during his high, the drug addict does not seek to escape his or her
body, but rather seeks to become immersed in it, to melt into the
warmth of his organs.
In short, the ratio of the unreal to the real is, in the case of a clas-
sic drug addiction, tipped decidedly in favor of the real. But, pre-
cisely the opposite occurs in the case of hallucinogen use. The hal-
lucinogen user alters the ratio between the unreal and the real, but
in the direction of the unreal. Dr. Fisher in his studies noted that the
“most important characteristics of the drug-induced waking-dream

54. Robinson v. California, 370 U.S., 660, 672 (1962), J. Douglas, concurring.
Boire / An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice 161

state is its high sensory to motor ratio.”55 The hallucinogen taker is

inactive physically, lost in his mind.
In the midst of his hallucinogenic experience he escapes his or-
gans, losing himself in artificial dreams. He invests his hallucination
with an ontological status that is supreme. Spirit alone is Reality. It is
the inner being of the world, that which essentially is, and is per se; it as-
sumes objective, determinate form, and enters into relations with itself—it
is externality (otherness), and exists for itself; yet, in this determination,
and in its otherness, it is still one with itself—it is self-contained and self-
complete, in itself and for itself at once.56 The religious hallucinogen
user believes he has cut directly to the ground of objective reality—
to God Himself—which he substitutes for a figment of his chemi-
cally contorted imagination.
[I]f God himself can be simulated . . . then the whole system becomes
weightless, it is no longer anything but a gigantic simulacrum—not un-
real, but a simulacrum, never again exchanging for what is real, but ex-
changing in itself, in an uninterrupted circuit without reference or circum-
ference.57
This is precisely why hallucinogenic drugs are so damnably dan-
gerous. They encourage subjectivity to such a degree that they make
it impossible to distinguish religion from madness, God from hallu-
cination.
In the end, it is always, I think, under this charge that the prohibition
is declared. We do not object to the drug users pleasure per se, but we can-
not abide the fact that his or hers is a pleasure taken in an experience
without truth. Pleasure and pain (now still as with Plato) are not in them-
selves condemned unless they are inauthentic and void of truth.58
Because God is the touchstone for an ultimate objective reality,
widespread use of hallucinogenic drugs—which threaten to render
God indistinguishable from a simulation—poses the ultimate threat:
that of annihilating reality itself. You have to defend the religious illu-
sion with all your might. If it becomes discredited—and indeed the threat
to it is great enough—then your world collapses.59
There is . . . among some in the land today a view that the individual is
free to do anything he wishes. A nihilistic, agnostic and anti-establishment
55. Fisher, “Perception-Hallucination Continuum” (above, n. 7), p. 164.
56. Georg Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit/Mind (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 86.
57. Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulations,” in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings,
ed. Mark Poster (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), p. 170.
58. Jacque Derrida, “The Rhetoric of Drugs,” in High Culture: Reflections on Addiction and
Modernity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), pp. 25–26.
59. Freud, Future of an Illusion (above, n. 34), p. 54.
162 Configurations

attitude exists. These beliefs may be held. They may be expressed but
where they are antithetical to the interests of others who are not of the
same persuasion and contravene criminal statutes legitimately designed to
protect society as a whole, such conduct should not find any constitutional
sanctuary in the name of religion or otherwise.60 The hallucinogens
threaten to dissolve the very possibility of community, by turning
people inside and away from rationally shared perceptions. In a
seeming paradox, however, they have a lure that draws others into
this interior nowhere. Were this potential contagion—the desire to
use hallucinogens—to reproduce itself and spread, the inevitable re-
sult in the aggregate would be an externalized social obsession with
interiority. Society would fracture and fissure as large segments of
the population “desocialize”61 or “drop out.”62 It would be difficult to
imagine the harm which would result if the criminal statutes against
marihuana were nullified as to those who claim the right to possess and
traffic in this drug for religious purposes. For all practical purposes the
anti-marihuana laws would be meaningless, and enforcement impossible.
The danger is too great, especially to the youth of the nation, at a time
when psychedelic experience, “turn on,” is the “in” thing to so many, for
this court to yield to the argument that the use of marihuana for so-called
religious purposes should be permitted under the Free Exercise Clause. We
will not, therefore, subscribe to the dangerous doctrine that the free exer-
cise of religion accords an unlimited freedom to violate the laws of the
land relative to marihuana.63
We have seen something which in a way is most alarming, more alarm-
ing than death in a way. And that is the loss of all cultural values . . .
these people . . . are deculturated, lost to society, lost to themselves.64
This is why, even today, we can permit Indians to ingest peyote in
their primitive ceremonies. Indians who practice the “old ways” are
inconsequential; they have chosen not to participate in our society
to any substantial degree. In effect they are lost in their mythical
world, their radical subjectivity tolerated because they are of zero
import to organizing our wider society.65 They are separate and apart
60. United States v. Kuch (1968), 288 F. Supp., 439, 445–446.
61. Derrida, “Rhetoric of Drugs” (above, n. 58), p. 37.
62. Timothy Leary, The Politics of Ecstasy (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1968), p.
223.
63. Leary v. United States (1967), 383 F. 2d, 851, 860.
64. Sidney Cohen in testimony before the U.S. Congress, as quoted in Jay Stevens,
Storming Heaven: LSD and the American Dream (New York: Grove Press, 1987), p. 279.
65. It bears noting that even this marginalized subpopulation’s use of peyote is only
grudgingly permitted pursuant to a few federal laws and regulations; see “American
Boire / An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice 163

from us; effectively quarantined. Hell, the Amish too could use a
hallucinogen if they wanted.
But this man is one of us. Give him smallpox in a blanket and we
will perish.66
. . . and so it was that the lotus eaters devised not death for our fellows,
but gave them of the lotus to taste. Now whosoever of them did eat the
honey-sweet fruit of the lotus, had no more wish to bring tidings nor to
come back, but there he chose to abide with the lotus-eating men, ever
feeding on the lotus and forgetful of his homeward way.67
Revelations aside, we have entered the historical period of God in
the Age of Chemical Reproduction. As Kempis stressed,68 the imita-
tion of Christ is to be applauded; but God’s simulation must be
strictly prohibited.
And so it was.
Case closed.
fade out

Editor’s Note to Author:

Indians who practice the old ways are inconsequential; they have chosen
not to participate in our society to any substantial degree. In effect they are
lost in their mythical world, their radical subjectivity tolerated because
they are of zero import to organizing our wider society. They are separate
and apart from us; effectively quarantined. Hell, the Amish too could use
a hallucinogen if they wanted
Item 23. Please consider modifying the above sentences of your
article to include along with “Indians” and the “Amish,” the 130
members of the O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, in

Indian Religious Freedom Act,” 42 USC 1996; 21 CFR 1307.31. In 1990, the U.S. Su-
preme Court ruled that while statutes may protect religious use of peyote by Native
Americans, the Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause does not; see Employment Div., Ore.
Dept. of Human Res. v. Smith (1990), 494 U.S. 872. Three years later, Congress passed the
Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which prohibits the federal government
from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion, unless the government
“demonstrates that application of the burden to the person” represents the least restric-
tive means of advancing a compelling interest (41 USC 2000bb-1[b]).
66. Many Native American’s believe that their ancestors were given smallpox-infected
blankets by representatives of the U.S. government, and there is evidence that this may
have occurred; see E. Wagner Stearn and Allen E. Stearn, The Effect of Smallpox on the
Destiny of the Amerindian (Boston: B. Humphries, 1945), pp. 73–74.
67. Homer, The Iliad and the Odyssey, rendered into English prose by Samuel Butler
(Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1952), bk. 9.
68. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (1425; reprint, Middlesex, UK: Penguin,
1975).
164 Configurations

light of the decision by the United States Supreme Court on February

21, 2006.69 As explained by the Court in that opinion:
O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal (UDV) is a Christian Spiritist
sect based in Brazil, with an American branch of approximately 130 individuals.
Central to the UDV’s faith is receiving communion through hoasca (pronounced
“wass-ca”), a sacramental tea made from two plants unique to the Amazon re-
gion. One of the plants, psychotria viridis, contains dimethyltryptamine (DMT),
a hallucinogen whose effects are enhanced by alkaloids from the other plant,
banisteriopsis caapi. DMT, as well as “any material, compound, mixture, or prep-
aration, which contains any quantity of [DMT],” is listed in Schedule I of the
Controlled Substances Act. § 812(c), Schedule I(c).70

Applying the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993,71 the Su-

preme Court unanimously affirmed the grant of a preliminary in-
junction for the UDV members after the federal government seized
a shipment of the sect’s hoasca, which was sent to U.S. members
from the Amazon.
In the lower court, the government conceded that prohibiting
the UDV members from using hoasca “would substantially burden a
sincere exercise of religion by the UDV,”72 and proceeded instead on
the theory that the Controlled Substances Act’s “description of
Schedule I substances as having a ‘high potential for abuse,’ ‘no cur-
rently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States,’ and
‘a lack of accepted safety for use . . . under medical supervision,’ 21
U.S.C. § 812(b)(1), by itself precludes any consideration of individu-
alized exceptions such as that sought by the UDV.”73 “According to
the Government, there would be no way to cabin religious excep-
tions once recognized, and ‘the public will misread’ such exceptions
as signaling that the substance at issue is not harmful after all. . . .
Under the Government’s view, there is no need to assess the particu-
lars of the UDV’s use or weigh the impact of an exemption for that
specific use, because the Controlled Substances Act serves a compel-
ling purpose and simply admits of no exceptions.”74

69. Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal (2006), 546 U.S. 418 126 S.
Ct. 1211; 163 L. Ed. 2d 1017; 2006 U.S. LEXIS 1815; 74 U.S.L.W. 4119.
70. Ibid., 126 S. Ct. 1211, p. 1217.
71. See note 65 above.
72. Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal (above, n. 69), 126 S. Ct.
1211, p. 1217.
73. Ibid., p. 1220.
74. Ibid.
Boire / An Assemblage of Law, Psychiatry, and Chemical Artifice 165

But, the government’s actions proved otherwise. Congress had

made a legislative exception for Native Americans who use peyote in
religious ceremonies. This exception, pointed out Justice Scalia,
“shows that it’s not all that important that nobody be able to use a
substance banned by category 1. I mean . . . it’s a demonstration
that you can make an exception without the sky falling.”75 “The
peyote exception . . . has been in place since the outset of the Con-
trolled Substances Act, and there is no evidence that it has ‘under-
cut’ the Government’s ability to enforce the ban on peyote use by
non-Indians.”76
Rebuffing the government’s argument, the Supreme Court com-
mented: “The Government’s argument echoes the classic rejoinder
of bureaucrats throughout history: If I make an exception for you,
I’ll have to make one for everybody, so no exceptions.”77
Having relied entirely on its “no exceptions” argument, the gov-
ernment had not addressed the particular reasons why an exception
for the UDV’s use of hoasca would actually hinder the broader en-
forcement of the Controlled Substances Act or otherwise bring down
the sky. As a result, the Supreme Court affirmed the preliminary in-
junction in favor of the UDV, baring the government from interfer-
ing with the church’s importation and religious use of hoasca, and
remanded the case for further proceedings in the lower court.

75. Ibid., transcript of oral arguments (November 1, 2005), p. 8.

76. Ibid., 126 S. Ct. 1211, p. 1223.
77. Ibid.