Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war by the Drug War Philospher at AbolishTheDEA.com

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

July 21, 2024

The following was inspired in equal parts by Charley Wininger's book, "Listening to Ecstasy,"1 and by my so-far frustrating attempts to get off of the SNRI antidepressant called Effexor.

Hey, Charles.

As an amateur philosopher, I have written extensively on the subject of outlawed medicines and the role that they can play in combatting my dependence on antidepressants. This topic is foremost in my mind at this time of my life because I have just retired at age 65 and am now determined to get off Effexor, not just because I do not like the drug but because I am tired of being a ward of the healthcare state. I have been on these expensive and under-performing meds for 40 years now and I finally have time to do something about it. I am finding this transition to be extremely difficult, however, because of drug law restrictions, combined with the fact that psychiatrists are generally materialists (at least the ones that I know) and so they believe that efficacy of drugs must be determined under a microscope and not by the laughter of a depressed patient (let alone by the millennia's worth of unabashed and joyful usage documented via Mesoamerican statuary). I think in this regard of the article by Dr. Robert Glatter in Forbes Magazine (June 9, 2021) entitled "Can Laughing Gas Help People with Treatment-Resistant Depression?"2 The fact that a doctor has to even ask this question shows how modern science has lost track of common sense. Scientists today seem to be making a virtue of the necessity of modern prohibition: instead of protesting drug laws, they are pretending that those laws only ban substances that would be useless to human beings in any case.

I also take issue with the term "treatment-resistant depression": it implies that we have drugs that treat depression just fine, thanks, but that some few patients cannot benefit from them because of their own quirky biochemistry. My cousin has been on these wonder meds for years and even swears by them (she even has an alarm to signal her daily "pill time"), and yet she spends most of her free time in her gloomy bedroom moping and seldom attends family get-togethers or responds to requests for weekend outings. Yet she herself is convinced that she just has to find the right combination of "meds" in order to be cured. Surely, no kinds of drugs have received more "Mulligans" for poor performance than have SSRIs and SNRIs.

One of the main problems that I've encountered in attempting to get off Effexor creatively is the fact that everybody wants to bar me from cutting-edge treatment for safety sake - as if it's safe to be chronically depressed, as if I myself place safety above every other goal in my life. In reality, however, safety has never been my main goal in life. The only people I know who place safety first in practice are hypochondriacs, who counterproductively seek to stave off every single potential threat to life and limb. The emphasis America places on safety when it comes to the use of psychoactive drugs is way out of line with the way we evaluate risk for any other activity. Free climbing would not exist if we demanded the kind of statistical safety that we demand of psychoactive medicines.

In specific, the fear of so-called serotonin-syndrome seems to be way overblown 3. I have tried to follow up on the few cases highlighted in research and had little luck getting details. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would think that Big Pharma was sponsoring scare studies about "drug mixing" in order to keep their captive audience from using alternatives to SSRIs and SNRIs. (Thousands die from aspirin every year, and yet no one's telling me there's a huge danger in taking aspirin, even though I am approaching the age at which I might be prone to such fears.4) Paranoia aside, I have used both peyote and psilocybin while taking Effexor, and there were no health problems at all. The only problem for me was that the Effexor clearly dampened the vividness of the visual impressions when using those natural substances. This, in turn, increased my resolve to get off Effexor, since I felt almost like that drug was "polluting" my body, biochemically speaking, by making me irresponsive to natural godsends that have been used for millennia for the benefit of human beings. It's as if a Big Pharma drug had made me incapable of appreciating a sunset.

Here's another area in which modern scientists have lost track of common sense: they refuse to acknowledge the role of anticipation and happiness in making withdrawal palatable. When I say that MDMA and psilocybin would help me, it means little to my psychiatrists, mainly because the efficacy of MDMA and shrooms has not yet been proven to the satisfaction of reductive science. And yet to some extent, I HAVE TO BE RIGHT about this: it IS what I feel and believe about those substances! I can't be wrong about that. And my belief matters. For when it comes to psychoactive drugs, expectations count, as they are a big part of the "set and setting" for use. Even most materialists today agree that attitude matters.

Here's an example.

Let's say I was feeling "down" on a week during which I was getting off of Effexor. I would feel horrible if I had nothing to look forward to: i.e., nothing except more of the same old "down" days. I may finally decide that I am going to admit defeat, give up on the withdrawal process and go back to using Effexor at the regular old daily doses. But if I knew that I was going to be using MDMA or shrooms on the upcoming weekend, much of that negativity on my part would be counteracted. There would be light at the end of the tunnel. This is all mere psychological common sense, but it is a benefit of drug use that modern science completely ignores. They have to: because once they admit the power of anticipation and expectation, they would be forced to acknowledge that almost any psychoactive substance could be used as an antidepressant (in some dose, in some dosing schedule, for some person, in some situation, etc.). This is why and how De Quincey originally used opium: not just to enjoy the weekend at the opera, but to enjoy LOOKING FORWARD to that weekend at the opera! The whole drug-use SITUATION improved his mood, not just the opium use per se. Again, this is a benefit of drug use that materialist science ignores, thereby helping them to toe the line with the Drug War orthodoxy that tells us that "drugs" can have no positive uses for anybody, anywhere, ever.

Granted, a given drug may not work as I personally expect. In that case a reasonably educated person will say, "I stand corrected, let's try a new dose, or a new dosing schedule." Or, "Let's try some other potential helpful substances instead." But I do not like the idea of rejecting any specific psychoactive medicine a priori merely because of risk, especially when that risk is statistically miniscule compared to the risk that we freely allow for other activities in life. To put it another way: Yes, science has a role in telling us the known risks, but science itself cannot do a cost/benefit analysis for a given psychoactive substance because all they know are the costs of use - and even this is only a partial knowledge since they do not know the costs to the user of NOT using the drug. Nor do they know the benefits that the user expects to receive from the drug, nor how much the user values those benefits -- or even demands them in his or her life, feeling, perhaps, that life is not even worth living without them.

After reading accounts of user experiences on drugs like huachuma cactus, MDMA and psilocybin, it is clear to me that they all have what philosophers call a "prima facie" potential for helping one cope psychologically (perhaps even spiritually) with the doubtful and fearful emotions of antidepressant withdrawal, thereby helping to make withdrawal succeed. I cannot help but feel, therefore, that much of the pushback against using them in conjunction with antidepressants (at least in some doses and in some situations, etc.) comes from the prescriber's desire to be in control, both thanks to materialist ideology which wants to literally "chart" all progress with times and numbers, and to an all-too-justified fear of litigation in this intoxiphobic age of ours 5. Because let's be honest: any drug dealer would immediately recognize the simple psychological truth that drugs can be used to fight drugs, especially if said drugs make one feel good and look forward to their use. The scientists strain credulity when they tell us otherwise, but when we complain, we are given the metaphysical retort that the drugs we're talking about do not "really" help us, which, frankly, sounds more to me like a religious complaint than a scientifically derived conclusion. Does coffee really help us? Does alcohol?6

Personally, I think it's no surprise that drugs like Effexor have such high recidivism rates. What can we expect in a country that has outlawed all drugs that could help with the withdrawal process, psychologically speaking?

If psychiatrists would ever ask me as a user what I thought would help me get off Effexor 7, I would answer as follows: give me access to all psychoactive meds and let me decide, based on user accounts, which are most likely to buoy my mood such that I can, indeed, endure (or even transcend) the side effects of antidepressant withdrawal. Of course, here is where our childhood indoctrination about drugs comes into play, causing us to feel in our bones that such protocols must lead to addiction and that human beings will never be able to use psychoactive medicines wisely. And indeed they are right, there will be victims of freedom: but they will be far less in number than the victims that are dying thanks to Drug War prohibitions: in inner cities 8, in civil wars overseas 9 - not to mention the millions who go without godsend medicines worldwide because of our disproportionate and selfish fear for the safety of white youngsters in suburban America. Only by rejecting this prohibition mentality can we re-establish the fourth amendment to the US Constitution, end the militarization of local police forces, and stop Drug Warriors from stacking the courts in their favor by throwing minorities in jail with drug laws written specifically for that purpose.

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.

Count pill beads? Surely that's why compounding pharmacists exist: to count pill beads.

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.

America's biggest drug pusher: The American Psychiatric Association:

Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs

Christian Science Rehab

Common Sense Drug Withdrawal

Drug Use as Self-Medication

Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war

Getting Off Effexor in 80 Days

Getting off Effexor MY WAY

How Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient

How the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient

How the Drug War Turns the Withdrawal Process into a Morality Tale

I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus

In the Realm of Hungry Drug Warriors

My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement

Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate

Open Letter to Erica Zelfand

Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants

Replacing 12-Step Programs with Shamanic Healing

Replacing antidepressants with entheogens

Sending Out an SOS

Speaking Truth to Big Pharma

Surviving the Surviving Antidepressants website

Taper Talk

Tapering for Jesus

THE ANTI DRUG WAR BLOG

The common sense way to get off of antidepressants

The Crucial Connection Between Antidepressants and the War on Drugs

The Depressing Truth About SSRIs

The Mental Health Survey that psychiatrists don't want you to take

The real reason for depression in America

The War on Drugs and the Psychiatric Pill Mill

This is your brain on Effexor

Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants

What the psychiatrist said when I told him I wanted to get off Effexor

Why SSRIs are Crap

Open Letters

Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.

I used to be surprised at this reticence on the part of modern drug-war pundits, until I realized that most of them are materialists. That is, most of them believe in (or claim to believe in) the psychiatric pill mill. If they happen to praise psychedelic drugs as a godsend for the depressed, they will yet tell us that such substances are only for those whose finicky body chemistries fail to respond appropriately to SSRIs and SNRIs. The fact is, however, there are thousands of medicines out there that can help with psychological issues -- and this is based on simple psychological common sense. But materialist scientists ignore common sense. That's why Dr. Robert Glatter wrote an article in Forbes magazine wondering if laughing gas could help the depressed.

As a lifelong depressive, I am embarrassed for Robert, that he has to even ask such a question. Of course laughing gas could help. Not only is laughter "the best medicine," as Readers Digest has told us for years, but looking forward to laughing is beneficial too. But materialist scientists ignore anecdote and history and tell us that THEY will be the judge of psychoactive medicines, thank you very much. And they will NOT judge such medicines by asking folks like myself if they work but rather by looking under a microscope to see if they work in the biochemical way that materialists expect.

America's Blind Spot

Another Cry in the Wilderness

Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away

Common Sense Drug Withdrawal

Critique of the Philosophy of Happiness

Depressed? Here's why you can't get the medicines that you need

Drug War Murderers

End the Drug War Now

Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon

Finally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxes

Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs

Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war