Just to update you: Now that I have retired at age 65, I am planning to "get off" SNRIs in the course of one year. It is my hope that during that time, I will be able to incrementally replace SNRIs with the occasional use of the Huachuma cactus23, in order to inspire me to stay the course. Unfortunately, I cannot expect help from retreat centers because of the rare side effect called "serotonin syndrome,4" but my understanding is that the condition is usually mild and can be easily treated. But since I can't expect retreat centers to assume the liability and PR concerns, it looks like I'll be on my own in this trial of mine.
I have, I should add, also written to psychedelic researchers in the States and in Canada5, trying to encourage them to perform trials to see how psychedelics, properly monitored, can help antidepressant "addicts" get off their "meds." No one seems interested, so it looks like I'm going to have to be a pioneer in this area. That said, I wish I could get help from some Peruvian shamans, because I just cannot believe that a dependence on Big Pharma meds is the one problem in the world that plant medicine cannot treat. Sure, there are risks, but no one seems to be balancing these risks against the potential benefits, nor looking at the downsides of doing nothing, starting with the utterly demoralizing knowledge that antidepressants 6 make the user a ward of the healthcare state and an eternal patient.
Besides, the key ingredient to a good huachuma experience seems to be motivation, and I cannot imagine someone more motivated to change than myself, or the millions like me who have been demoralized by their dependence on Big Pharma meds7.
For now, I'm working on my Spanish, in preparation for another trip to Cusco8 in a month or two. While there, I will seek out long-term housing, practice my Spanish, and make preparations of huachuma cactus (starting with smaller doses) to see if and how they might help me cope with the psychological downsides of antidepressant withdrawal. Thanks for your interest in my situation, and I wish you luck in your adventures as a western shaman. Your journeys look very interesting to me. Hopefully I can take advantage of them in a year or so when I've gotten off of Big Pharma 910 meds entirely.
Now the US is bashing the Honduran president for working with "drug cartels." Why don't we just be honest and say why we're REALLY upset with the guy? Drugs is just the excuse, as always, now what's the real reason? Stop using the drug war to disguise American foreign policy.
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
Governor Kotek is "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.
The reasons that people use drugs are psychologically obvious. Academics gaslight us on this topic and invent new diseases to explain away our desire to live large.
Americans were always free to take care of their own health -- until drug warriors handed doctors a monopoly on providing mind and mood medicine.
Imagine if there were drugs for which dependency was a feature, not a bug. People would stop peddling that junk, right? Wrong. Just ask your psychiatrist.
The press once again hauls out the easy answer. Reiner's son was using drugs! Aha! Of course, that explains EVERYTHING! [sigh]
Materialists are always trying to outdo each other in describing the insignificance of humankind. Crick at least said we were "a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules." Musk downsizes us further to one single microbe. He wins!
Proof that materialism is wrong is "in the pudding." It is why scientists are not calling for the use of laughing gas and MDMA by the suicidal. Because they refuse to recognize anything that's obvious. They want their cures to be demonstrated under a microscope.
The line drawn between recreational and medical use is wishful thinking on the part of drug warriors. Recreation, according to Webster's, is "refreshment or diversion," and both have positive knock-on effects in the lives of real people.
(up)