How Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient
and what we should do about that
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
February 24, 2021
Tomorrow morning, I have to meet yet again with a 'doctor' who is half my age and explain to him or her for the thousandth time why I deserve to receive yet another expensive refill on an SNRI antidepressant that the NIH has found to be as hard to kick as heroin. As a 62-year-old, I find such appointments to be the most disempowering and humiliating form of healthcare imaginable. It has made me a ward of the healthcare state and an eternal patient. Even if the Effexor1 that I've been taking now for 25 years had cured my depression (which it did not), I would be depressed by the fact that I had to visit Healthcare Harbor every three months of my life as a sort of Ancient Mariner, to tell my life story over and over again to a series of complete strangers. How am I supposed to feel 'normal' and 'well' when the psychiatric profession keeps reminding me that I am a 'patient' by forcing me to jump through all the time-consuming and expensive hoops that come with that label?
Despite my dissatisfaction with the psychiatric pill mill, however, it is the Drug War which I really blame for my eternal patient status, since Drug Warriors long ago outlawed all the far-less-addictive medicines that were facilitating fantastic psychological breakthroughs in the early '60s, including psychedelic meds which, when administered by a pharmacologically savvy empath, could have helped me re-imagine my life and lift my mind out of the mental ruts that it was carving for itself. But I guess I was destined to go without psychoactive godsends, having been born in the late '50s, at the very time when racist politicians were just beginning to demonize and outlaw the non-addictive medicines that were already racking up victories in treating the 'mentally ill,' including many hardcore alcoholics. Indeed Bill Wilson of AA was successfully treating alcoholics with psychedelic therapy when I was born, a treatment that would soon be shut down, however, by politicians who associated psychedelics with their political enemies of the time (you know, those dreadful hippies).
My goal now in life is to show the world how the psychiatric pill mill is the natural result of a Drug War in a capitalist society. For, from a strictly capitalist perspective, there is no money in curing 'mental illness 2 .' The money lies in establishing a therapy that will go on for ever, till death do we patients part. And what better way to accomplish that goal than to outlaw Mother Nature's far less addictive meds and then hook patients on synthetic drugs that simply cannot be stopped (and which, according to Robert Whitaker3, actually cause and reinforce the very chemical imbalances that they claim to 'fix')?
The answer to this unjust set-up may not come in my lifetime, unfortunately, but I believe that I know what the answer would look like, at least in broad strokes: The answer is for America to end the Drug War and for the psychiatric profession to morph into a kind of 'pharmacologically savvy shamanism,' an holistic approach to mental health that combines the best of western, eastern and mesoAmerican therapies, using ANY PLANT IN THE WORLD that is found to help a person think and act productively in their life. Such a therapy would get rid of the idea of 'mental patient' altogether, since anyone could visit such a shaman: from the severely depressed to a relatively happy soul who simply wants to get beyond the mental blocks that stand in the way of his or her self-actualization in life.
The answer, to repeat, is to exchange psychiatry for PSS: 'pharmacologically savvy shamanism,' a new non-addictive paradigm in which deeply caring medical professionals could guide their 'clients' to self-knowledge through the historically informed use of natural entheogenic substances, plant medicines that conduce to self-insight and compassionate love of one fellows. Imagine that: America could stop demonizing plant medicine and actually learn how to use it safely and wisely for the benefit of humankind, just like all societies were prepared to do until corrupt stateside politicians began demonizing substances in order to remove the minorities who used them from the voting rolls. Then Ancient Mariners like myself could finally renounce Big Pharma 45 and the demoralizing label of 'patient,' sailing into their home port at long last as just another human being seeking to achieve self-fulfillment in life.
Author's Follow-up: January 16, 2025
I am still struggling to wrest myself free from the tenacious grasp of psychiatry and the pill mill. It is not easy because the pharmaceutical companies do not make low doses of Effexor available. This means that tapering can never be properly performed, except if the 'patient' counts pill beads, which is an extremely difficult, time-consuming and inexact undertaking. Moreover, it is extremely disempowering to require this of 'patients.' I have finally, however, found a compounding pharmacist who will create the doses (2.5 mg and 1 mg.) necessary for me to withdraw in the slow and cautious manner necessary for such drugs. The tapering procedure will begin shortly and last roughly 41 weeks according to the schedule that I myself have created6, with the largest reductions beginning immediately to be followed by very slow and steady reductions.
Amazingly, I seem to be the only one who has thought to use compounding pharmacies in this way in order to withdraw from an antidepressant. That's apparently because everyone who looks for advice on this topic is told to see their doctor, and the doctor will only work with the doses that are commercially available. They seem to see nothing anti-patient in telling their clients to 'count pill beads.' This in turn may stem from the fact that they believe that it's wrong to stop taking these meds in the first place. And I can see why they might want to believe that, since the recidivism rate of those who attempt to withdraw is so high. The doctor draws an erroneous conclusion from this problem, however, by claiming that: 'See? All these people needed this drug after all!' But that is absurd, unless we truly believe that every case of depression is so deep and pathological that the depressed individual requires medicine for life.
The fact is that these pills do not simply combat depression but they CAUSE dependence while doing so.
It must be noted, too, that the recidivism rates for those attempting to withdraw from antidepressants 7 are high for two reasons. It is not just that the pills in question cause chemical dependence, but also that the Drug War has outlawed all the substances that could keep the tapering individual from backsliding. This is just psychological common sense, the kind of thing that materialist medicine today completely ignores.
The tapering individual generally can 'hold it together' for 20 or more hours per day. The bane of the recidivist consists of those few hours of the day, generally very early in the morning, when they wake up alone and miserable and feel like climbing the walls. They cast about for a way to feel better, and they realize that there is no help: the Drug Warriors have seen to that. They have outlawed everything that could boost mood and attitude 'on demand' and so keep the taperer from backsliding. Frustrated and depressed, the taperer returns to using the full dose of the medicine that he or she had been planning to renounce for life.
It's no wonder that materialists and Drug Warriors ignore common sense, though. Otherwise they would be forced to admit the obvious: that all 'drugs' are antidepressants: that opium 8 can elate, that MDMA 9 can inspire, that phenethylamines of all sorts can help one screw one's head on straight -- always presupposing, of course, the proper set and setting for use and a correct alignment of the plenitude of specific details relevant to the given case: you know, all those details that the Drug Warrior completely ignores.
We are told that the creativity of the human spirit can never come up with safe ways to use these drugs for the benefit of individuals and so we must learn to fear these drugs rather than to understand them. That attitude, of course, is anti-patient, anti-scientific and insincere to the hilt, given that those who maintain it do not worry about the misuse of alcohol, or of guns, and would never think of arresting individuals or denying them employment simply because they smoked cigarettes.
Author's Follow-up: January 29, 2025
I have just received my three-month supply of compounded 2.5 mg Effexor pills. This means I will begin my tapering process tomorrow morning. I will be following an hyperbolic schedule, with large up-front weekly decreases in dosage, to be followed by ever-smaller decreases in the latter half of the roughly year-long withdrawal period. This tapering scheme of mine thus takes into account the latest science -- PLUS the psychological common sense that materialists ignore. Meanwhile, I will not bother to explain my process elsewhere on the Web, for I am sure to be told that I know nothing about these things -- that doctor knows best, whereas materialist doctors (besides being the ones who made me drug-dependent in the first place) are the ones who have no common sense in the age of the Drug War. They do not realize that all drugs are potential anti-depressants either singly, or when used as part of a common sense humanitarian and holistic protocol.
Author's Follow-up:
September 12, 2025
For the latest on my withdrawal schemes, I invite you to read . I have not abandoned the goal. Whenever I get discouraged and relapse, I just think of the doc sitting there praising this drug. These guys are so philosophically challenged that they think the withdrawal signs from Effexor show that the drug works! If that argument is correct, then heroin works just as well! It is just that heroin is infinitely easier to renounce! My own psychiatrist told me three years ago that Effexor has a 95% recidivism rate for long-term users who attempt to give up the drug. 95% of those who attempt to kick the drug are back on it within three years! Compare that to heroin. 34% of America's Nam vets used heroin and 20% of them became dependent on the drug while overseas. When they returned to the States, only 5% of those soldiers had problems "kicking" the drug10.
LA Police Chief Daryl Gates said drug users should be summarily executed. William Bennett said drug dealers should be beheaded. These are the Nazi attitudes that the drug war inculcates. This racist and brutal ideology must be wiped out.
Americans love to blame drugs for all their problems. Young people were not dying in the streets when opiates were legal. The prohibition mindset is the problem, not drugs.
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."
Materialist puritans do not want to create any drug that elates. So they go on a fool's errand to find reductionist cures for "depression itself," as if the vast array of human sadness could (or should) be treated with a one-size-fits-all readjustment of brain chemicals.
This is why "rock stars" use drugs: not just for performance anxiety (which, BTW, is a completely UNDERSTANDABLE reason for drug use), but because they want to fully experience the music, even tho' they may be currently short on money and being hassled by creditors, etc.
Psychiatrists keep flipping the script. When it became clear that SSRIs caused dependence, instead of apologizing, they told us we need to keep taking our meds. Now they even claim that criticizing SSRIs is wrong. This is anti-intellectual madness.
"Abuse" is a funny term because it implies that there's a right way to use "drugs," which is something that the drug warriors deny. To the contrary, they make the anti-scientific claim that "drugs" are not good for anybody for any reason at any dose.
Most substance withdrawal would be EASY if drugs were re-legalized and we could use any substance we wanted to mitigate negative psychological effects.
Laughing gas inspired the philosophy of William James. Outlawing N20 is outlawing academic freedom. Laughing gas should be available for the suicidal. Drug prohibition is not a victimless crime.
One merely has to look at any issue of Psychology Today to see articles in which the author reckons without the Drug War, in which they pretend that banned substances do not exist and so fail to incorporate any topic-related insights that might otherwise come from user reports.
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