incent is probably right: my responses did not directly address the Tweet that he had posted about Time magazine flaunting the wonders of psychedelics in fighting depression. Had I been a little less headstrong, I might have fashioned a more diplomatic response. But the Tweet in question suggested that the power of psychedelics to overcome depression was "BS," and I think it's far too early to draw such conclusions -- just as it may be far too early for Time to announce a psychedelic victory over depression.
But my support for the power of psychedelics in this regard must be seen in light of the new paradigm that I am calling for in treating mental conditions, one wherein a pharmacologically savvy empath combines talk therapy with the use of any and all substance or substances, at various doses, to elicit change according to 1) what is likely to work best for a given client and 2) what the client's goals are in undergoing shamanic treatment, again using any substance or substances available on God's green earth or in Humanity's white laboratories.
In other words, I picture a world full of Alexander Shulgins, the famous pharmacologist who tested over 200 psychoactive medicines in order to determine efficacy in improving the mental status of the user. There's a man who knew what the problem was with "drugs" -- it wasn't "drugs" themselves but "the overpowering of curiosity with greed," in other words the instinct to turn a buck off of such medicines.
He also knew how to test such substances wisely. He would start with miniscule doses and ratchet up while the experience continued to be enjoyable and/or potentially therapeutic. As for drugs frying the brain, he apparently never received that memo, since he lived a long life and died in the full possession of his faculties.
Because of Shulgin's pharmacological genius, the DEA let him be for the most part, but when folks began sending him drugs to test for purity, the DEA performed one of those highly orchestrated raids for which they're infamous and fined him $25,000, as if the last thing the DEA wants is for someone to use such drugs safely.
While I may come out of this virtual scrape looking like a loose cannon, I should say in my defense that I'm a chronic depressive who's gone 40 years without the ability to use the shrooms and other godsends that grow at my feet. The result: I've been hooked on mind-deadening Big Pharma meds for life. That's why I'm not in the mood to read what sounds to me like a categorical dismissal of the powers of psychedelics to help the depressed. There are plenty of case reports that say otherwise, from the detailed study of hundreds of psychedelic therapy cases by Stanislav Grof and James Fadiman, to the more recent research and treatment reports published by William Griffiths and William Richards.
Of course, I do not expect psychedelics to do the job by themselves. My openness to change will play a role, as will the advice and insights of my shaman. The chewing of the coca leaf and occasional relaxation with opium and laughing gas will also play their parts -- or rather they would play their parts in a sane world, a world wherein psychology hasn't been coopted by materialism and thereby rendered blind to the common sense therapeutic power of elation and anticipation.
For more on this, see my essays on the naive psychology of the Drug War, an aspect of the war on drugs which (credit where credit's due) literally no one else seems to have noticed thus far. I guess it takes 40 years of suffering the downsides of this close-minded scientistic outlook on life for one to realize that this anti-patient ideology even exists.
The best legal antidepressant I have ever used is coca wine, which amazingly is legal in America despite the fact that the hateful DEA has outlawed the coca leaf itself in violation of natural law. I wish I had known about this wine years ago. But even though this form of coca is legal in the States, do not wait for your psychiatrist to recommend it for you. Such substances are "thrice damned" in the language of Charles Fort, author of "The Book of the Damned," and so the powers-that-be in the healthcare industry pretend that it does not exist.
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.
Today's war against drug users is like Elizabeth I's war against Catholics. Both are religious crackdowns. For today's oppressors, the true faith (i.e., the moral way to live) is according to the drug-hating religion of Christian Science.
I hated the show "The Apprentice," because it taught a cynical and hate-filled lesson about the proper way to "get ahead" in the world. I saw Trump as a menace back then, long before he started declaring that American elections were corrupt before the very first vote was cast!
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
I don't believe in the materialist paradigm upon which SSRIs were created, according to which humans are interchangeable chemical robots amenable to the same treatment for human sadness. Let me use laughing gas and MDMA and coca and let the materialists use SSRIs.
Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which outlaws drug alternatives and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.
"Users" can be kept out of the workforce by the extrajudicial process of drug testing; they can have their baby taken from them, their house, their property -- all because they do not share the intoxiphobic attitude of America.
Oregon has decided to go back to the braindead plan of treating substance use as a police matter. Might as well arrest people at home since America has already spread their drug-hating Christian Science religion all over the world.
This is the "Oprah fallacy," which has led to so much suffering. She told women they were fools if they accepted a drink from a man. That's crazy. If we are terrified by such a statistically improbable event, we should be absolutely horrified by horses and skateboards.
I have nothing against science, BTW (altho' I might feel differently after a nuclear war!) I just want scientists to "stay in their lane" and stop pretending to be experts on my own personal mood and consciousness.
I know. I'm on SNRIs. But SSRIs and SNRIs are both made with materialist presumptions in mind: that the best way to change people is with a surgical strike at one-size-fits-all chemistry. That's the opposite of the shamanic holism that I favor.
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
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, Psychedelics and Depression: another open letter to Vincent, published on November 27, 2022 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)