Withdrawing from antidepressants in the age of the Drug War
how drug prohibition makes it virtually impossible
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 29, 2025
Drug prohibition has destroyed all pretense of healthcare freedom for the depressed and anxious. To appreciate this fact, we have only to consider my current attempts to get off of Effexor. I see the drug as hellacious because it has turned me into a ward of the healthcare state, with all of the expense of time and money that such a transformation entails. My psychiatrist, on the other hand, views the drug as a godsend. What exactly is going on here?
I am looking at the drug from the standpoint of a would-be autonomous individual who has been turned into a child by drug laws. I am looking at the drug in light of the fact that drug prohibition has outlawed all viable alternatives. I am looking at the drug in light of its hideous withdrawal profile.
The psychiatrist, on the other hand, has a patient for life thanks to Effexor. He ignores all alternative medicines and never thinks to advocate their use. My psychiatrist pretends, for ultimately self-interested reasons, that the niggardly pharmacopoeia of the Drug War is somehow good in and of itself and that drug prohibition has no downsides, this despite the fact that it deprives me of the kinds of drugs that have inspired entire religions. As for the hideous withdrawal process, my psychiatrist sidesteps that issue entirely by telling me it is my medical duty to never get off the drug in the first place! What hypocrisy! By this same logic, we should stop requiring opiate habitues to give up on opiates but rather ensure a safe supply -- but this is a corollary of our current drug policy that logic-challenged Drug Warriors will never notice.
I have yet to find a psychiatrist who considers it problematic that the psychiatric pill mill has turned me into a patient for life. They seem to find nothing demoralizing about that dependency. But then why should they? The situation is the opposite of demoralizing for them personally; indeed, the situation is highly remunerative for them.
I would never be a patient for life in a free world, because in that case, I would have access to medicines like coca and opium with which I could wisely transcend the downsides of antidepressant withdrawal through the common-sense tactic of "fighting drugs with drugs." This is surely one of the many reasons why time-honored natural medicines remain outlawed today, because the corporations know that the wise use of such substances would render dependence-causing Big Pharma meds irrelevant -- and even contraindicated insofar as they create dependency as a feature and not, like opiates and coca, as a bug or as a potential outcome of misuse.
These pharmaceutical companies have no interest in allowing the use of medicines wherewith their customers could easily get off of their dependence-causing drugs -- medicines like laughing gas and the inspiring phenethylamines synthesized by chemist Alexander Shulgin.
These are the same companies that sponsor "depression awareness" advertisements on prime-time television, with the goal of making as many Americans as possible dependent on Big Pharma meds for life. Thus they take advantage of their prohibition-created monopoly on mind and mood medicine to turn their customers into wards of the healthcare state, shamelessly medicalizing and pathologizing human behavior as they go.
This is why we need a new philosophy of healthcare in the West, one in which we re-grant the individual their time-honored right to take care of their own mental health concerns as they see fit. But this is a right that Americans will have to claw back from a self-interested medical establishment. And the first step in doing that is for Americans to grow up. They need to understand the simple truth that all dangerous activities have risks -- whether we are talking about mountain climbing, drag-racing, or drinking alcohol -- and that the answer is education, regulation, and choice, not arrest. We need to learn the lesson from Turn of the Screw by Henry James: namely, that we place young people in harm's way whenever we go overboard in our attempts to protect them from life.
Meanwhile, we need to start holding prohibitionists responsible for the death and suffering that they cause: the 60,000 disappeared in Mexico's War on Drugs since 20061, the 67,000 killed yearly in America's inner cities by gunfire2. Indeed, the death toll attributed to the War on Drugs since 1971 in America alone has been estimated at half a million fatalities3 -- and this number does not include the countless people who go without godsend medicine for depression, anxiety and spiritual enlightenment, all because Americans wish to protect the white young people whom we refuse to educate about safe use. The death toll is no doubt much higher however. How many of the 49,000 American suicides each year4 are a result of the fact that drug prohibition has outlawed all drugs that inspire and elate?! We encourage suicide when we outlaw all substances that could help the depressed feel comfortable inside their own skin -- especially when they're going through the hell of Effexor withdrawal.
PS As I write, I am in a critical stage of my attempts to renounce the drug. But the odds are against me -- for the simple reason that America has outlawed all the drugs which I might have used wisely to make withdrawal actually work and become sustainable. Say, for instance, I have a panic attack at 2 in the morning. Laughing gas, opium, coca, or phenethylamines when judiciously chosen and applied, could OBVIOUSLY get me over such rough patches -- but the hateful DEA tells me, "You're on your own" when it comes to withdrawal.
This is what amazes me when I look at online resources on this topic: everybody talks about the difficulties of getting off of antidepressants like Effexor (Venlafaxine) but no one -- literally no one -- points out the fact that getting off Effexor NEED NOT BE A NIGHTMARE -- that drug prohibition has made it so by outlawing all the substances that could help us withdraw in a psychologically sustainable manner! I have said it many times in my essays and must say it again: we will never drive a stake through the heart of prohibition ideology until we begin holding prohibition responsible for the endless problems that it causes!
The real headline here is not so much that drug prohibition makes withdrawal difficult - - the real headline is the fact that I seem to be the only one in cyberspace who has realized this obvious fact! This is yet another sign of how thoroughly Americans have been bamboozled by the antiscientific Drug War ideology of substance demonization.
NOTE: I do not say that Effexor has no mood-elevating effect. It does for some of us. But so do hundreds of other drugs, including opium and coca. Effexor is a uniquely bad choice for fighting depression since dependency is a FEATURE of the drug, not a bug. A user can avoid becoming dependent on opium, a user can avoid becoming dependent on coca, a user can avoid becoming dependent on laughing gas -- but a user cannot avoid becoming dependent on Effexor. That latter drug is meant to be taken daily -- FOR A LIFETIME! In a sane world, we would use a variety of drugs on a strategic basis, thus avoiding dependency all down the line.
Effexor, by the way, is harder to kick than heroin. Meanwhile, the heavily demonized opium can be smoked responsibly by the majority of users, notwithstanding our attempts to demonize the substance in the name of Drug War orthodoxy. Even should dependence develop, we can use drugs to fight drugs in a free world. We also have to distinguish between wanted dependency and unwanted dependency. Finally, dependency is not the worst thing in the world: the worst thing in the world is being unable to get things done and wishing one were dead. It is a mere Christian Science prejudice to pursue sobriety for sobriety sake.
Someday those books about weird state laws will be full of factoids like: "In Alabama, you could be jailed for 20 years for conspiring to eat a mushroom."
I passed a sign that says "Trust Trump." What does that mean? Trust him to crack down on his opposition using the U.S. Army? Or trust him not to do all the anti-American things that he's saying he's going to do.
Americans love to hate heroin. But there is no rational reason why folks should not use heroin daily in a world in which we consider it their medical duty to use antidepressants daily.
UNESCO celebrates the healing practices of the Kallawaya people of South America. What hypocrisy! UNESCO supports a drug war that makes some of those practices illegal!
Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which limits drug choice and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.
Prohibition is wrong root and branch. It seeks to justify the colonial disdain for indigenous healing practices through fearmongering.
I could tell my psychiatrist EXACTLY what would "cure" my depression, even without getting addicted, but everything involved is illegal. It has to be. Otherwise I would have no need of the psychiatrist.
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.
All drugs have positive uses at some dose, for some reason, at some time -- but prohibitionists have the absurd idea that drugs can be voted up or down. This anti-scientific notion deprives the modern world of countless godsends.
If NIDA covered all drugs (not just politically ostracized drugs), they'd produce articles like this: "Aspirin continues to kill hundreds." "Penicillin misuse approaching crisis levels." "More bad news about Tylenol and liver damage." "Study revives cancer fears from caffeine."
Someday those books about weird state laws will be full of factoids like: "In Alabama, you could be jailed for 20 years for conspiring to eat a mushroom."