My New Clinical Trial in the Sacred Valley of Peru
on replacing antidepressants with plant medicines
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 4, 2024
will be traveling to Peru next Monday for a weeklong stay in the Sacred Valley1. My goal is to use plant medicines there for personal healing and for philosophical exploration. That's right: philosophical exploration, bearing in mind that William James himself told us that we must explore altered states in order to fully understand the nature of consciousness and ultimate reality2. I also want to try out a sort of "dieta" of my own designed to free me from my dependence on Big Pharma meds: not by becoming a drug-free Christian Scientist (which is the stealth goal of western therapy), but with a view toward replacing said pharmaceuticals with the strategic use of various plant medicines, including San Pedro cactus, ayahuasca, and a variety of lesser known plant guides3. This will be my own clinical trial, since I have yet to hear of either shaman or doctor who specializes in working with SSRI and SNRI addicts. Such "addicts," in my view, are the most deserving of psychedelic therapy insofar as they were shunted off onto dependence-causing drugs thanks to America's disgraceful Drug War. And yet they are precisely the ones who are ineligible for psychedelic clinical trials in the west due to liability concerns over a poorly understood, rare but typically mild side effect known as "serotonin syndrome"4.
That's why I have decided to take matters into my own laboratory, so to speak, and do the clinical trials on my own, using myself as "guinea pig," while methodically documenting my attempts at slowly-but-surely replacing Big Pharma drugs with the help of plant guides. This may seem highly risky behavior from the point of view of a westerner, who values safety above all things, but I have always agreed with Socrates, that the unexamined life is not worth living. Besides, I'm 65 years old, and if I'm not going to take risks now, I'm never going to take them. Of course, this first trip to Peru is just my trial run, to verify that I will be able to follow through on this plan, both from a psychological and practical point of view. I certainly have the money for it, seeing that life in Peru is dirt cheap compared to the US. But I am so used to modern comforts that the westerner in me might rebel at the last moment and beat an ignominious retreat to all things holy in the west: such as Netflix and Starbucks - which, I fear, however, are all too eager to follow me to the Sacred Valley, assuming that they are not there already.
Stay tuned to this page for more on my psycho-philosophical quest in Peru and the outcome of my experiments with plant medicine. I have much to learn from actual pedigreed plant healers, of course, but my research so far indicates that the San Pedro cactus should serve as my introduction to this new world5. I also believe that the regular chewing of coca leaves might provide the boost that an introspective procrastinator like myself needs in order to get things done in life, and on a timely basis at that6! One finally realizes at age 65 that they do not have time to dally. So stay tuned for all the details on this new clinical trial, one that you will never see on the NIH website, but one which, if successful, should give new hope to the drug-dependent depressed around the world - whom the psychedelic researchers of today are shamelessly ignoring, at least when they're not telling them to "keep taking your meds!"
Author's Follow-up: April 6, 2024
When I first dreamed of traveling to Peru, I envisioned working with all sorts of plant medicine to get my head straight. I thought the shaman would have access to all sorts of psychoactive medicines, and not just the top three trending substances in the world today. This was quite naive of me, as it turns out. Peru is not some haven from idiotic and counterproductive drug law. They have simply made exceptions for Peruvian drugs that have a well-documented history of use in Peru. Yes, coca leaves (as opposed to cocaine) are legal in Peru, as are ayahuasca and San Pedro cactus, but MDMA can get you thrown in jail, as can LSD and psilocybin. I even read somewhere that it is criminal to have more than one of the legal substances on hand at a time -- but do not quote me on that. These anti-nature laws disgust me so much that I don't yet have the stomach to research this fully. Fortunately, however, San Pedro cactus sounds like it has a great potential benefit for me. As for coca leaves, I still have the theory that the continuous chewing of the same will give me just the motivation that I need to prevent the evaporation of initiative that too often afflicts a depressive of my stamp, one who so often ALMOST does things that are necessary and productive in life, but who often procrastinates and/or stops halfway.
I am very happy that Peru was so magnanimous as to permit the use of the cactus known to the locals as huachuma7 -- especially since I understand that there may be liver-related concerns with excessive use of certain formulations of ayahuasca, about which I hope to learn more during my upcoming trip. But if the accounts of the huachuma experience are true and I find that I can duplicate them for myself in a meaningful way, then I believe that my goal can be achieved, which, to repeat, is to "get off" of antidepressants with the moral and biochemical help of plant medicines: the approved list of which, for the nonce, consists of only coca and huachuma, for the reasons noted above.
I will be departing the United States of Fearmongering on Monday, which means that my clinical trials will begin in the latter half of the coming week, with results to be published on this page. Of course, I'm no doubt flattering myself to think that anybody cares about such deets (or this entire website, for that matter), but if the protocol that I envision works for me, there seems no reason that it could not work for the millions who find themselves dependent on antidepressants that are not doing the job. True, many think they're doing the job, but I maintain that no one would think that if they had experienced the transcendence provided by the godsend medicines that governments have outlawed following the hateful example of the Christian Science Republic known as the United States of America. Then they will be like myself as a young man, when I had my first psychedelic experience: amazed by the world of possibility that they suddenly see thanks to the lifting of a veil of gloom of which they were hitherto consciously unaware and realizing how hateful it is that a government should declare such experiences to be illegal.
If there were no other problem with antidepressants, they would be wrong for the simple reason that they make a user dependent for life -- not as a bug (as in drugs like opium) but rather as a feature: that's how they "work," by being administered daily for a lifetime.
"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.
In "The Book of the Damned," Charles Fort writes about the data that science has damned, by which he means "excluded." The fact that drugs can inspire and elate is one such fact, although when Fort wrote his anti-materialist broadside, drug prohibition was in its infancy.
There are a potentially vast number of non-addictive drugs that could be used strategically in therapy. They elate and "free the tongue" to help talk therapy really work. Even "addictive" drugs can be used non-addictively, prohibitionist propaganda notwithstanding.
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."
Both physical and psychological addiction can be successfully fought when we relegalize the pharmacopoeia and start to fight drugs with drugs. But prohibitionists do not want to end addiction, they want to scare us with it.
Had we really wanted to "help" users, we would have used the endless godsends of Mother Nature and related synthetics to provide spirit-lifting alternatives to problem use. But no one wanted to treat users as normal humans. They wanted to pathologize and moralize their use.
If any master's candidates are looking for a thesis topic, consider the following: "The Drug War versus Religion: how the policy of substance prohibition outlaws the attainment of spiritual states described by William James in 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.'"
Alcohol is a drug in liquid form. If drug warriors want to punish people who use drugs, they should start punishing themselves.
And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.
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, My New Clinical Trial in the Sacred Valley of Peru: on replacing antidepressants with plant medicines, published on April 4, 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)
will be traveling to Peru next Monday for a weeklong stay in the Sacred Valley1. My goal is to use plant medicines there for personal healing and for philosophical exploration. That's right: philosophical exploration, bearing in mind that William James himself told us that we must explore altered states in order to fully understand the nature of consciousness and ultimate reality2. I also want to try out a sort of "dieta" of my own designed to free me from my dependence on Big Pharma meds: not by becoming a drug-free Christian Scientist (which is the stealth goal of western therapy), but with a view toward replacing said pharmaceuticals with the strategic use of various plant medicines, including San Pedro cactus, ayahuasca, and a variety of lesser known plant guides3. This will be my own clinical trial, since I have yet to hear of either shaman or doctor who specializes in working with SSRI and SNRI addicts. Such "addicts," in my view, are the most deserving of psychedelic therapy insofar as they were shunted off onto dependence-causing drugs thanks to America's disgraceful Drug War. And yet they are precisely the ones who are ineligible for psychedelic clinical trials in the west due to liability concerns over a poorly understood, rare but typically mild side effect known as "serotonin syndrome"4.
You have been reading an article entitled, My New Clinical Trial in the Sacred Valley of Peru: on replacing antidepressants with plant medicines, published on April 4, 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)