he Drug War is based on a web of lies, misunderstandings, and false assumptions. One of those false assumptions is that drugs can never - BUT NEVER - be used to fight drugs, that quitting drugs must be done by the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments - combined with weekly meetings in 12-step groups wherein participants are encouraged to describe the particular gnashing and rending that has taken place in their life over the last seven days1. For the default expectation of every rehab group is that the participants are going to strive to "get clean," which means basically that they are going to forswear all drugs, with the possible hypocritical exception of Big Pharma "meds." The goal is not really to help the participants to achieve their dreams in life, but rather to help them achieve the group's goal of turning them into drug-hating Christian Scientists a la Mary Baker Eddy2.
Have you ever stopped to think why withdrawal programs in general have such a high recidivism rate? Look no further. It is our refusal to fight drugs with drugs that turns each case of so-called addiction into a nightmare and guarantees us a moral story that can be served up to Americans on shows like 48 Hours3 in order to remind the viewer that drugs are a dead end. Well, of course they're a dead end when we have closed all the byways with which tragedy can be avoided. I write from experience. I spent a decade attempting to get off of Valium, something that I now see would have been easy had I been allowed to use alternative medicines that could both elate me while helping me reconsider my priorities in life. Sure, I have no medical proof that such freedom would have gotten me off of Valium quickly, but I do not need medical proof, for it is, frankly, common psychological sense that such therapies would work. Unfortunately, common sense is not something that materialist science is known for, since it cannot be properly charted and graphed and so communicated intelligibly to one's potential funders.
The physical side of addiction can be overcome with pharmacologically enhanced sleep cures, treatments that were already in place in 1999 when Jim Hogshire published Opium for the Masses4. I assume that such treatments have proliferated and improved over time insofar as all technology seems to be advancing, although it's worth noting that Drug Warriors are not exactly crying out for such improvements: for the fact is that addiction is the boogieman with which racist politicians seek to frighten Americans into renouncing their Constitutional freedoms. Solve the addiction problem and the Drug Warrior is out of business. This is why we never hear talk of a Manhattan Project to end addiction, which would be their cause célèbre if politicians were as worried about the topic as their fatalistic chatter would seem to suggest. But they don't want to end addiction: they want to keep using it as an excuse to crack the heads of minorities, especially those who would never vote for them in a million years5.
As for psychological cures, the world is our oyster when we start strategically using plant medicine like shamans to combat a specific problem in a specific individual - in contrast to the materialist desire to treat human beings as identical biochemical widgets, each amenable to the same pill. The work of drug researchers like Ross Heaven6, James Fadiman7 and Stanislav Grof8 are full of anecdotal evidence of positive life changes wrought by psychoactive medicine. Alexander Shulgin9 created hundreds of drugs that work like MDMA10 to inspire positive thinking and a realignment of misplaced values. The book Plants of the Gods11 introduced the west to hundreds of natural psychoactive substances which could change a user's attitudes when employed in shamanic fashion, both their attitude toward drugs and their attitude in general. By using such drugs in empathic protocols, the withdrawal process could be tailored to the user's desires and not required to jibe with the tenets of Christian Science12 (no drugs allowed) or Reductive Materialism13 (no psychologically obvious cures allowed).
Yet the reigning prejudice is that it is absurd to fight drugs with drugs (as if "drugs" were an objective category in the first place and not a catchall term for substances of which pharmacologically clueless politicians disapprove14).
Take me, for instance. I'm told that to get off SNRIs, I must... wait for it, folks... get off SNRIs. No naughty plant medicine can be used! That's the withdrawal protocol of modern science in the 21st century! In other words, I'm told that I must get off those drugs entirely before the doctor can even think of prescribing another drug.
This reminds me of Steve Martin's prescription for becoming a millionaire in the movie "The Jerk":
"First, get yourself a million dollars."
The fact is that the use of psychoactive medicine to change behavior for the better is a no-brainer, or it would be in a world that valued psychological common sense. But materialist science has no faith in common sense, just as it scorns both anecdote and history. Today's materialist even denies that laughing gas can help the depressed15. Why? Because they do not have microscopic evidence of such efficacy. True, the user may be laughing right in their face, but that means nothing. The materialist refuses to see what used to be obvious to everyone, namely that feeling good is therapeutic, and that looking forward to feeling good is therapeutic as well. It's a virtuous circle powered by happiness and anticipation16, but materialists refuse to recognize such power since they cannot properly quantify it and add it to a PowerPoint presentation for their next funding appeal. This willful myopia in turn gives cover to the DEA when they make the outrageous claim, in the teeth of thousands of years of evidence, that psychoactive plant medicine has no positive uses whatsoever.
But then modern scientists are forced to feign ignorance about the glaringly obvious, because once they admit that feeling good is helpful, it immediately follows that any uplifting drug is a potentially valid antidepressant in some circumstance, at some dose, for some person, at some time. If a suicidal patient perks up because they are allowed to use cocaine or opium every weekend - or psilocybin if you prefer, since the modern American has been taught to be as censorious as a schoolmarm on this topic -- so be it.
Here's where another Drug War lie comes to the rescue of the Drug Warrior, however: the idea that drugs can be judged "up" or "down," and so if a drug can be misused by one demographic at some dose, in some circumstances, then the Drug Warrior insists that it must not be used for any demographic, at any dose, in any circumstances. This, of course, is the antithesis of a scientific understanding of drugs, which has always held that the context of drug use matters and that no substance is bad in and of itself, no, not even cyanide or botox, both of which "deadly" toxins have positive uses at some dose, in some circumstances. Yet the scientist must accept the Drug Warrior prejudices without comment lest they offend their wealthy benefactors. It's called the censorship of science, in fact, though one waits in vain for most scientists to acknowledge it as such17.
The standard objections to this human-centered protocol that I am describing are based on yet more Drug War lies, like the idea that regular daily use of "drugs" is wrong and constitutes addiction by itself. And yet drug law does all it can to give users problems and hence turn their daily use into addiction as defined by Webster's dictionary18. Moreover, modern science has no leg to stand on when it scorns daily use, since we live in a time when the depressed are encouraged by the mainstream media to "keep taking their meds" every day of their life, until death do they part. The idea that this is justified while "drug" use is not is mere hypocrisy and scientism, the idea that a materialist treatment is science and therefore HAS to be right and (lacking a better word in an officially Godless universe) moral. In reality, using opium daily makes just as much sense as taking an antidepressant daily: in fact, it makes more sense insofar as opium has been recognized as the closest thing to a panacea by the great doctors of the past (Avicenna, Paracelsus, Galen) while no regular user of Big Pharma meds would ever make that claim about antidepressants.
Yet we arrest folks for using opium while we praise them for using Big Pharma meds, a state of affairs that says all one needs to know about Drug War hypocrisy.
It will be argued that such an approach as mine has never been tried before, and yet this is not so. It is a way of life in all tribal societies, including the ones in Latin America that the west decimated in the 16th century and which we are still decimating today with our insistence that the plant medicines that they use are evil. (This attitude toward life has a name, by the way: it is called Cosmovision19.) That's why I am personally headed to the Andes in my attempts to get off of SNRIs, since at least a handful of shamanic medicines are still legal down there despite America's attempts to strong-arm the world into having them criminalized. My goal is to use San Pedro cactus20 in particular to help me to psychologically withdraw from SNRIs. This will take some nuanced research to avoid complications with a rare phenomenon called "serotonin syndrome," especially since the variety of "helper plants" to which I will have access are strictly limited, even in Mesoamerica. But since no one seems to be doing clinical research for my demographic - namely, those who want to get off Big Pharma meds with the help of plant medicine - I am forced to be something of a pioneer in this area.
I conclude with this biographical reference to demonstrate that I am doing more than writing about this thesis, that we should fight drugs with drugs; I am practicing what I preach, to the limited extent that international drug law will allow me to do so, of course.
Finally, I have said that the goal of withdrawal therapies should not be to render the user drug free, since that is to enforce the precepts of the drug-hating religion called Christian Science. That said, however, there is nothing wrong with an individual choosing a drug-free life as their goal, even in the drug-aided therapy that I advocate. For psychedelic meds in particular demonstrate the power to help us clarify and achieve goals, even if the goal is pharmacological abstinence.
Personally, of course, I cannot understand a life of total abstinence, since there are drugs out there which can exalt our sense of smell, of sight, of sound, of touch, and greatly heighten our appreciation of Mother Nature, etc. Why would one NOT want to partake, at least in certain circumstances, at certain times, especially given the fact that we are only just beginning to study the vast pharmacopoeia of psychoactive medicine with an eye toward using it for the benefit of humanity? To say no to such meds a priori at this point seems to me to be a very poor choice, indeed. In fact, it's a choice that I find inexplicable unless I suppose it to have been influenced by unacknowledged Drug War prejudices.
Author's Follow-up: November 27, 2024
Recidivism is usually caused by specific instances in time. I might go 22 hours a day without wanting the hated substance, but those 2 other hours may face me with extreme psychological angst. Now, it is just plain common sense that substances like coca, laughing gas, opium, etc. (and hundreds of non-addictive phenetyhlamines) could get me over those rough patches -- and that's all I need. But modern doctors entirely lack common sense when it comes to human psychology. This myopia can be traced to their acceptance of scientific materialism, combined with their acceptance of Drug War lies, according to which we are told that psychoactive substances can have no positive uses. See How materialists turned me into a patient for life:
Getting Off Drugs
NOVEMBER 2024
I have written dozens of essays about antidepressants and the Drug War, but it is important to read this one first, for it contains the most up-to-date info on my battle to get off such drugs. This reading order is important because I declared premature victory against the SNRI called Effexor in recent essays, only to discover that the drug is far more insidious than I gave it credit for. It turns out withdrawing, at least for me, eventually led to deep feelings of abject despair, far greater than the depression for which I started taking the "med" in the first place.
The frustrating thing is, these feelings could be combatted by a host of drugs that we have outlawed in the name of our anti-scientific and anti-patient war on drugs. That much is just psychological common sense. But we have been taught to believe that there are no positive uses for opium, nor for cocaine, nor for coca, nor for MDMA, nor for laughing gas, nor for peyote, nor for the hundreds of inspiring phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin, etc. etc. etc.
The truth is, rather, that Drug Warriors (and the millions whom they have brainwashed) do not WANT there to be positive uses for such drugs. No, they want me to "keep taking my meds" instead and so to enrich their investment portfolios in the pharmaceutical sector. Meanwhile, those without a vested financial interest have been taught that antidepressants are "scientific" and so they cannot understand my desire to get off them. They cannot understand the hell of being turned into a patient for life and having to make regular expensive and humiliating pilgrimages to psychiatrists (who are half one's own age) to bare one's soul for the purpose of obtaining an expensive prescription for a drug that numbs one's brain rather than inspiring it - and a drug which seems to counteract, dampen and/or repress most of the positive effects that I might have otherwise obtained by the few semi-legal alternatives to antidepressants, such as psilocybin and ayahuasca.
But it is just psychological common sense that I could withdraw successfully from Effexor with the advised use of a comprehensive pharmacy, including but not limited to the demonized substances listed above. But materialist science is not interested in common sense. And so they tell me that such drug use has not been proven to "work." But materialist doctors are not experts in what motivates me as a living, breathing, unique individual. The heart has its own reasons that reductionist science cannot understand. If I could look forward, at this moment, to relaxing with an opium pipe tonight, my mood would improve NOW, not just tonight. I would have something to look forward to. I would not feel the need to reach for that bottle full of Effexor pills that I was hoping to foreswear. Likewise, if I could use a drug to laugh and "touch the hand of God" (as with laughing gas and phenethylamines respectively), I could laugh at the pangs of despair that Effexor tries to throw my way.
Science's eternal response to such ideas is: "There is no proof that such things work!"
No, nor will there ever be in the age of the Drug War, in which such common sense use is punished by long jail terms and would never be favorably publicized, even if successful, since America's prime imperative in the age of the Drug War is to demonize psychoactive medicines, under the absurd assumption-laden idea that to talk honestly about drugs is to encourage their use.
Well, we SHOULD be encouraging their use in cases where they actually work, in cases, for instance, when they prevent guys like myself from killing themselves thanks to the knowledge that they are a bounden slave to the combined forces of the Drug War and Big Pharma's pill mill.
Besides, there is no proof that hugging works, but we do not need Dr. Spock of Star Trek to launch a study into that issue: we all know that hugging works by bringing two souls together both physically and spiritually. We do not need a map of brain chemistry to figure this out: the proof is extant, the proof is in the pudding.
But I haven't given up yet despite the setback in my most recent plan. I'm going to search the world for a place where I can get off antidepressants in a way that makes some psychological common sense.
Right now, all I see in terms of resources are a bunch of companies who, for large fees, will help me go cold turkey on antidepressants., or companies that claim to have found the right combination of legal herbal formulas that should make withdrawal easier. But to me, these are all what Percy Shelley would call "frail spells," concocted under the watchful eye of the Drug Warrior to make sure that nothing potent and obviously effective will get added to the mix. In fact, if a space alien came to earth and asked what sort of psychoactive drugs were outlawed, one could honestly answer: "Anything that obviously works."
Meanwhile, drug laws make it impossible for me to visit psychiatrists remotely online, requiring me instead to physically visit my doctors, thereby limiting rural residents like myself to accessing hayseed psychiatrists whose one area of expertise seems to be the writing of prescriptions for antidepressants. Talk to them about anything else, and their eyes glaze over. "That's all unproven," they'll say, "Or, no, we have yet to fully study such things." As if we have to study in order to realize that feeling good helps and can have positive psychological effects.
I'm sure that part of the problem with my withdrawal scheme is that I tried to get off the drug too quickly. But I only tried that because I can find no doctor who will compound the drug for me in a way that makes psychological common sense, namely, with daily miniscule reductions in dosage. My current psychiatrist told me that such compounding was unheard of and that I should drop doses by 37.5 mg at a time, since that is the lowest dose that the pharmaceutical companies create. He said I could start "counting pill beads" once I am down to a 37.5 mg daily dose if I wanted to taper still further.
I did find a compounding company that said it could compound Effexor in the way that I desire. But there's a big catch: they have to receive a prescription for that purpose. And I can find no doctor in the world who is willing to write me one. Even those who sympathize with my plight want me to become their full-time patient before they will even consider writing such a prescription.
So those who warned me against trying to get off Effexor were right in a way: it is extraordinarily difficult. But they feel to realize WHY this is so. It is not just because Effexor is a toxic drug, but also because the drug war has outlawed everything that could help me get off it.
This is why those pundits who sign off on the psychiatric pill mill are clueless about the huge problem with the war on drugs: the way it humiliates and disempowers millions. For it turns out that the phrase "No hope in dope" is true after all, but only when the dope in question is modern antidepressants.
OCTOBER 2024
Here are some of the many articles I have written about the philosophy of getting off drugs. Bear in mind that I am in the process of getting off Effexor myself and am exploring the power of "drugs to fight drugs" in so doing. And this is not a straightforward path given the sweeping limits that are imposed by drug law. So the question of exactly what might work (and how and when, etc.) is still wide open and I am advocating nothing, except the common sense notion that we can benefit from euphoria and mood boosts, yes, and that "drugs can be used to fight drugs," and in a safe way too -- a way that will prove far safer than prohibition, which continues to bring about daily deaths from drive-by shootings and unregulated product while causing civil wars overseas.
I guess what I am saying here is, this site is not purporting to offer medical advice. I avoid using such wording, however, because so many authors refuse to talk honestly about drugs, especially about positive drug use, for fear of being seen as giving medical advice, and this, of course, is just how drug warriors want matters to remain. It lets them shut down free speech about drugs.
Besides, I reject the idea that materialist doctors are the experts when it comes to how we think and feel about life. The best they can do as materialist is to tell us the potential physical risks of using holistically-operating drugs, but individuals are the experts on what motivates them in life, on their own particular hopes and dreams and on what risks they deem necessary to obtain them, to pursue happiness, that is, which objective our legislators outlawed when they outlawed all substances that can help facilitate happiness in the properly motivated and educated individual.
The real answer is not for authors to give groveling apologies for being honest, however: the real answer is for kids to be educated about the basics of wise substance use -- and for America to come to grips with the fact that we will always be surrounded by "drugs" -- and that the goal should be to ensure safe use, not to keep endlessly arresting minorities and removing them from the voting rolls on behalf of the clinically insane idea that we should outlaw mother nature to protect our kids -- and this in a purportedly Christian country whose very deity told us that his creation was good.
I don't have a problem with CBD. But I find that many people like it for the wrong reasons: they assume there is something slightly "dirty" about getting high and that all "cures" should be effected via direct materialist causes, not holistically a la time-honored tribal use.
Someone tweeted that fears about a Christian Science theocracy are "baseless." Tell that to my uncle who was lobotomized because they outlawed meds that could cheer him up -- tell that to myself, a chronic depressive who could be cheered up in an instant with outlawed meds.
If media were truly free in America, you'd see documentaries about people who use drugs safely, something that's completely unimaginable in the age of the drug war.
What attracts me about "drug dealers" is that they are NOT interested in prying into my private life. What a relief! With psychiatry, you are probed for pathological behavior on every office visit. You are a child. To the "drug dealer," I am an adult at least.
"Arrest made in Matthew Perry death." Oh, yeah? Did they arrest the drug warriors who prioritized propaganda over education?
The drug war bans human progress by deciding that hundreds of drugs are trash without even trying to find positive uses for them. Yet scientists continue to research and write as if prohibition does not exist, that's how cowed they are by drug laws.
We need to start thinking of drug-related deaths like we do about car accidents: They're terrible, and yet they should move us to make driving safer, not to outlaw driving. To think otherwise is to swallow the drug war lie that "drugs" can have no positive uses.
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.
We need to push back against the very idea that the FDA is qualified to tell us what works when it comes to psychoactive medicines. Users know these things work. That's what counts. The rest is academic foot dragging.
SSRIs are created based on the materialist notion that cures should be found under a microscope. That's why science is so slow in acknowledging the benefit of plant medicines. Anyone who chooses SSRIs over drugs like San Pedro cactus is simply uninformed.
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Fighting Drugs with Drugs published on May 1, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
he Drug War is based on a web of lies, misunderstandings, and false assumptions. One of those false assumptions is that drugs can never - BUT NEVER - be used to fight drugs, that quitting drugs must be done by the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments - combined with weekly meetings in 12-step groups wherein participants are encouraged to describe the particular gnashing and rending that has taken place in their life over the last seven days1. For the default expectation of every rehab group is that the participants are going to strive to "get clean," which means basically that they are going to forswear all drugs, with the possible hypocritical exception of Big Pharma "meds." The goal is not really to help the participants to achieve their dreams in life, but rather to help them achieve the group's goal of turning them into drug-hating Christian Scientists a la Mary Baker Eddy2.
You have been reading an article entitled, Fighting Drugs with Drugs published on May 1, 2024 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)