Tut-tut! This is philosophy, not medical advice. It discusses the ideal world, not the world in which we actually live. Of course, anyone who does not already recognize this fact is definitely reading the wrong website, but today we are so censorious about 'drugs,' that I feel like it's my positive duty to talk down to you folks! Speaking of which, some of you are looking a little peak-ed to me. Remember, your mother told you to eat vegetables for a reason! Humph!
Note: This morning our author had an informative chat with Austin of The Huachuma Project in Portugal1. They discussed Brian's desire to get off of antidepressants 2 with the motivating help of entheogens3. Brian followed up on the 20-minute call by forwarding Austin the following document via WhatsApp, informing him that reading it was optional but that he (Brian) wanted to explain his (Brian's) views about drug-withdrawal protocol in a little more detail, especially since the duo's video chat had been subject to occasional frame freezes and signal loss. And so here now is his (Brian's) forwarded essay.
I keep hearing from materialist doctors and researchers that one has to 'get off' of one drug before getting 'on' another.
'So, you want to get off of Effexor 4 ? Fine,' says the doctor. 'You get off of Effexor, and then we'll talk.'
Of course that protocol makes drug withdrawal a Catch-22 situation for the user. It provides literally zero hope for the would-be 'patient.' Moreover, its implementation is designed to benefit the materialist doctor, not the patient. Legally and technically speaking, it decreases doctor/researcher liability and overall workload by providing less variables to monitor and adjust. The patient suffers but the doctor/researcher is 'covered.' And yet it is psychological common sense that it would help to increase the dose of an entheogen WHILE decreasing the dose of an antidepressant. The 'user' is motivated, not just by the entheogen as currently used, but by the knowledge that those entheogen-sparked improvements will continue growing in intensity as his or her use of antidepressants decreases. This, I believe, is precisely the sort of motivation that one needs to 'stay the course' in such situations. I have some experience in this area. I spent 10 years getting 'off' of Valium, but I am sure I could have done it in a few months had I been given the motivation to do so, and that motivation could have been sparked by 'teacher plants' and other drugs.
To put this another way: I don't believe that 'getting off' something first (prior to using other meds) is in the interest of the patient, but rather of the researcher or doctor, at least when it comes to the use of psychoactive medicines. I think, moreover, that one of the biggest problems we westerners have with 'drugs' is that we refuse to even contemplate the idea of 'fighting drugs with drugs.' The unspoken goal of most rehab is not so much the improvement of the patient as it is turning that patient into a drug-free individual, and those two goals are not the same.
But we westerners are so convinced that 'drugs are not the answer' that we recoil at the idea of using a drug(s) to get off a drug. We consider it a copout. But the shamanic approach would say otherwise, especially when informed by a little western common sense. Drugs are never bad in and of themselves in such an approach but rather substances to be used for human benefit and not to be withheld based on some abstract principles, like those formulated by Mary Baker Eddy.
i say that materialist doctors are biased against fighting drugs with drugs because they are biased against common sense, i. e. , any conclusion that cannot be drawn from observations made with a microscope.
This is why a materialist like Dr. Robert Glatter could write a 2021 piece in Forbes magazine entitled 'Can laughing gas 5 help those with treatment-resistant depression?'6 Surely this is a laughable title. Everyone knows that laughing can help the depressed - and not just the laughing itself but the anticipation of laughing7. The Readers Digest has known for a hundred years that 'laughter is the best medicine.' It relaxes the mind AND body. But Glatter is a materialist and materialists totally ignore that psychological truth, just as they ignore all the historic and anecdotal evidence of the benefits of time-honored plant medicines. They are like Dr. Spock or Sergeant Friday: they want 'just the facts, ma'am,' and to them, the facts can only be seen under a microscope. For them, the testimony of the spiritually elevated user is a subjective opinion, not a fact.
With these ideas in mind, I maintain that the ideal withdrawal therapy for antidepressants would work something like this:
Have a pharmacist create a year's worth of antidepressants, compounded in such a way that the first pill contains the full dosage that the patient is currently taking (in my case 225 mg. of Venlafaxine) and that the last pill would contain a miniscule fraction of that dosage, with all interim doses decreasing proportionally. In my case, that would mean that each successive pill to be taken daily would contain roughly .6 mgs less Venlafaxine than the previous pill. Thus the pill taken at the midpoint of therapy (on the 182nd day or so) would contain roughly 112 mg. of Venlafaxine.
As one follows the above regimen with Venlafaxine, the potency and frequency of entheogen use would increase correspondingly. Of course, one cannot decide in advance what the correct potency and frequency of use would be on a daily basis, but the dose should be adjusted upward as necessary to prevent and/or counteract any backsliding in the withdrawal regimen stated above. How? By inspiring the user psychologically with plant medicine, thus helping them see their situation creatively and in a new light.
In this way, one leverages the power of anticipation to get the user off of the anti-depressant.
Of course, I am not a doctor (least of all a materialist doctor), but there is what philosophers would call 'prima facie' evidence that such a protocol would work, based on what we know about the psychology of motivation and the lengthy lists of psychological benefits that are known to accrue to many, if not most, who work with entheogens like psilocybin and huachuma8.
The protocol's chances of success will only increase as more plant medicines become relegalized, since then the 'therapist' can do more than simply adjust the dosage and frequency of entheogens (as in step 2 above), but they can use different entheogens (and/or combinations of entheogens) in their quest to find the most adequate biochemical inspiration for a specific client. Shamans have always had this freedom. It is only in the west that we have determined a priori that psychoactive drugs have no positive uses whatsoever - a position that can only be maintained by the complete abandonment of common sense, not to mention the scientific principle that substances are only good or bad with respect to the context of use. It is also, of course, a lie, historically speaking.
Of course, the dependence-causing nature of SNRIs like Venlafaxine should not be underestimated. Julie Holland says that such meds can be harder to kick than heroin
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."
Daily opium use is no more outrageous than daily antidepressant use. In fact, it's less outrageous. It's a time-honored practice and can be stopped with a little effort and ingenuity, whereas it is almost impossible to get off some antidepressants because they alter brain chemistry.
It's because of such reductive pseudoscience that America will allow us to shock the brains of the depressed but won't allow us to let them use the plant medicines that grow at their feet.
I have nothing against science, BTW (altho' I might feel differently after a nuclear war!) I just want scientists to "stay in their lane" and stop pretending to be experts on my own personal mood and consciousness.
In a free future, newspapers will have philosophers on their staffs to ensure that said papers are not inciting consequence-riddled hysteria through a biased coverage of drug-related mishaps.
The Drug War is the legally enforced triumph of human idiocy. We have rigged the deck so that our dunces can be right. The Drug War is a superstition. Indeed, it is THE modern superstition.
Ketamine is like any other drug. It has good uses for certain people in certain situations. Nowadays, people insist that a drug be okay in every situation for everybody (especially American teens) before they will say that it's okay. That's crazy and anti-scientific.
When we outlaw drugs, we are outlawing far more than drugs. We are suppressing freedom of religion and academic research.
When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.
What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.
"My faith votes and strives to outlaw religions that use substances of which politicians disapprove."