Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants
Here's why that's nonsense
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
December 7, 2023
Author's Follow-up: February 22, 2024
I keep getting slammed on Twitter by folks who want to read my essays as medical advice rather than philosophy. Yes, I understand that SSRIs cannot be stopped at will -- indeed, it's not clear if they can be stopped at all for some people, at least in a world in which we have outlawed all the effective alternatives -- and nothing I write should be interpreted as promoting such an attempt. Nor do I mean to criticize psychiatrists for prescribing SSRIs to those who are already dependent upon them. That would be like saying: "In an ideal world, SSRIs would not exist, therefore in THIS world, depressed patients A, B & C must suddenly go cold turkey." I have never said such a thing and anyone who has concluded otherwise, with due respect, needs to improve their reading skills. That said, I refuse to be bullied into silence by psychiatrists who claim that any criticism of such drugs causes some people to stop using them and hence should be stifled in the name of patient safety.
This criticism (which is nothing less than the self-interested militarizing of ignorance) is based on the logical fallacy that a human being makes decisions about important matters like healthcare based on one single input: in this case, my own personal criticisms of SSRIs. The truth, however, is that people are influenced by a wide variety of inputs, genetic, biochemical, and environmental. Indeed, the very fact that they have decided to read my criticisms suggests that they already have been given a reason to believe that I might be onto something. And if they do not seek an adequate number and variety of inputs on a given topic or fail to understand the nuances of my arguments, this itself is due to previous factors, such as an inadequate education and/or an impulsive nature, etc., and not the supposed evil nature of the free and open debate of which I am apparently "guilty." We might just as well go back and blame a parent or a teacher for the faulty decisions that such people might make in the here and now. But if we start holding free and open debate responsible for specific negative outcomes, it will be the end of freedom of speech in America. And who will benefit in such a case? Big Pharma and the Drug Warriors. And as the Church Lady used to say on Saturday Night Live: "How convenient!"
While we're on the subject of poorly educated readers and their inability to discern nuance, let me add another caveat: viz. that when I refer to "psychiatrists" below in a disapproving tone, I mean specifically those doctors who hold the belief that SSRIs and SNRIs are somehow good in and of themselves, and not just thanks to the all-too-convenient fact that we have outlawed almost every other depression-busting drug in the entire world. Psychiatrists as such can be great people -- but only to the extent that they are empathic. The problem is that their job is nearly impossible in the age of the Drug War, which has outlawed all the psychoactive tools that could make interpersonal communication both pertinent and free-flowing. Indeed, a list of the positive effects of many outlawed drugs reads just like a psychiatrist's wish list for therapeutic outcomes!
Finally, I claim that psychiatrists are hypocritical when they insist that SSRIs help and yet do not (by their very silence) maintain that outlawed drugs help. An angry guy tweeted back in upper case that psychiatrists are NOT hypocritical, that SSRIs cause dependence and cannot be stopped without supervision! He apparently read something that I never wrote. Of course SSRIs cannot be stopped easily: that's the whole problem. Psychiatrists become hypocritical when they promote the daily use of SSRIs while claiming (if only by their ongoing silence about prohibition and hence their complicity in that program) that it's wrong -- indeed criminal -- to use most other drugs on a daily basis. That's where the hypocrisy arises. It has nothing to do with the ideal withdrawal process for those on SSRIs. In fact, there can be no satisfactory withdrawal process from such drugs until we learn to use drugs to fight drugs.
But that's a topic for which I'll wait to be misunderstood on another occasion ;) So now back to the "essay proper"...
I keep encountering psychiatrists who tell me that it is wrong to denounce antidepressants because it causes folks to give them up prematurely, presumably leading to potential suicides.
This argument is rich coming from psychiatrists. It is precisely their failure to promote the therapeutic use of substances like MDMA and laughing gas that makes suicide likely.
Moreover, this bizarre logical fallacy - that a subject is too "fraught" to even be discussed - is just another product of Drug War ideology, which tells us that ANY talk about the positive effects of "drugs" is wrong. We need more talk, not less, and we need to discuss all drugs freely and without favoritism - and not be told that SSRIs are exempt from criticism because it's just too dangerous to speak truthfully about them.
In fact, I have never counseled anyone to give up SSRIs, period, full stop. My argument has always been that SSRIs should be replaced with far more inspiring medicines that do not turn the user into an eternal patient. Speaking as an SSRI junkie myself, I find them very dispiriting because they have turned me into a ward of the healthcare state. But I have yet to hear any psychiatrist in the world denounce this aspect of use - and yet all of them, by their silence, continue to support the outlawing of drugs like coca and opium. And why? Because they might render the user dependent.
What? For the latter drugs, dependency is a "bug" and can, if desired, be avoided with careful use. But for SSRIs, dependency is an actual feature. That is how they work. They are drugs that are meant to be taken for life.
This was not originally the case, of course. When they were introduced, they were intended for moderate-term use at most. We only started hearing the mantra "keep taking your meds" after it became apparent to psychiatrists that these antidepressants were damn hard to quit. Rather than apologizing for this pharmacological dystopia that they had foisted on one out of four American women, however, psychiatrists made a virtue of necessity and announced that - "Oh, by the way, the drug you're taking may very well have to be taken for a lifetime in order to keep depression at bay."
As Richard Whitaker points out, these drugs seem to cause the chemical imbalances that they purport to fix. The body comes to accept this new chemical soup as "normal" biochemistry, hence the user discomfort when the drugs are withdrawn. But I will not go into detail here about my many issues with antidepressants. My views on this topic may be found in the depression-related essays listed below. My argument here is against the absurd modern practice on the part of psychiatrists of basically charging the critics of the pill mill with murder.
The idea that we should not even discuss these topics is outrageous and yet par for the course in a drug-war society in which all talk about drugs is full of hypocritical assumptions and biases. If we're going to argue nastily like that, then I hereby charge psychiatrists with murder for their failure to provide laughing gas to their suicidal patients. We provide EPI pens for the allergic, but no "feel-good" drugs for the depressed. This is puritanism with a vengeance. This is Mary Baker Eddy on steroids. "Let them die: as long as they remain spiritually pure by foreswearing drug use!"
I mention laughing gas in particular here, because psychiatrists cannot tell me that the drug was illegal during their "watch." But I would add here that if psychiatrists were really interested in their patient's welfare (rather than in white-washing their use of SSRIs), they would be clamoring for the repeal of laws that keep their suicidal clients from using drugs like MDMA and coca as needed to cheer themselves whenever a suicidal fit comes upon them.
I can appreciate that veteran psychiatrists in particular are touchy on this topic. After all, who wants to admit that they have spent their career contributing to the creation of the biggest pharmacological dystopia in human history, the fact that 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma meds for life (source: Julie Holland). But my goal is not to blame anyone for the past but to guide them to a brighter future. Psychiatrists are not responsible for the milieu in which they live, in which purblind materialism was the very air that they breathed (the materialism that leads prominent drug researchers like Robert Glatter to ask amazingly naive questions like, "Can laughing gas help those with treatment resistant depression" - answer: of course it can help!) . Besides, it is the empathy of the psychiatrist that makes them a real professional, not their ability to wield a politically correct prescribing pen.
All I'm doing is trying to "call out" the philosophical problems connected with their current prescribing method and to remind them that the antidepressant pill mill only makes sense in a world in which mother nature's godsends have been rendered invisible by the drug-war orthodoxy of substance demonization. If psychiatrists refuse to listen to that message, the least they can do is to refrain from shooting the messenger.
Author's Follow-up: December 7, 2023
The whole problem with the Drug War is that it is leading to suicide and needless suffering. It outlaws medicines that would definitely stop a suicidal individual from killing themselves, provided we taught safe use and gave them access to such drugs. So it's pretty damn disconcerting when a psychiatrist tries to flip the script and claim that critics of the status quo are encouraging suicide. The whole drug-hating system is set up to encourage suicide and suffering, under the puritanical notion that it is better to die and/or suffer than to use "drugs." It is only thanks to this "philosophy" that the pill mill even exists. No one in their right mind would choose to become a ward of the healthcare state if America had not criminalized godsend medicines and taught us to fear rather than to understand them.
Author's Follow-up: December 29, 2023
It's a strange criticism, one that can only be imagined in the Janus-faced age of the Drug War, to be told that you're a murderer for being honest about drugs. But then that's the whole problem with America: our leaders, from Clinton, to Obama, TO Biden, all believe that it is wrong to talk honestly about drugs. Let's say that again so that the absurdity can sink in: they all believe that it is WRONG to talk honestly about drugs. In that statement we see what a sorry pass we've come to as a nation by following the warped fearmongering logic of the Drug War to its natural absurd conclusion: namely that we should pretend that ignorance is the best policy for a free and supposedly scientific country. It certainly dampens my esteem for Rhodes Scholars when I reflect that Bill Clinton holds such a view. As far as antidepressants, it's a little convenient that we should be told to refrain from criticizing the very drugs involved in the great psychiatric pill mill -- drugs which have created nothing less than the greatest mass dependency of all time, not to mention the fact that it's the most demoralizing treatment protocol imaginable to turn one's client into a patient for life. I wonder how many psychiatric patients have killed themselves for that reason alone, the fact that they have to show up every three months at a clinic to be treated like a sick child by a clinician who might be half or even one-third their age.
By the way, those who start blaming deaths on free and open debate are creating a new form of argumentum ad hominem that deserves its own name as a brand-new logical fallacy -- argumentum ad homicida, perhaps?
Strange. Not only can such psychiatrists IGNORE the mass chemical dependency that they themselves have created, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women take a Big Pharma med every day of their life, but now these same doctors are telling us that we're committing the moral equivalent of murder if we suggest that this wholesale doping has been a mistake.
Mind you, I'm not saying that SSRIs don't have a place. What I'm saying is that if they DO have a place, it is only because prohibition has outlawed all the common sense approaches to improving mood and mentation. Otherwise there would never have been any call to create drugs inspired by reductive science to try to fight the supposed "real" cause of human sadness -- for the last thing we need is a cure for human sadness -- especially since the definition of happiness -- of the proper default mindset for the human being -- should not be decided by a drug manufacturer! We NEED to treat the symptoms -- because its the height of hubris to say that we know how folks SHOULD feel and that we can make a drug to ensure that everyone feels that way. That's Stepford Wives. That's the doping of America to make us consumer friendly -- or the type of personality that Wall Street can live with. Certainly I've never heard a long-term SSRI or SNRI user complain of the mental freedom and inspiration that they derive from their constant pill taking.
And it does make one mildly nauseous to see the contempt that Americans hold for drug users -- knowing that most of these same Americans think that it's actually the duty of chronic depressives like myself to "keep taking my meds." It reminds one that science is a religion in America and it can do no wrong. That's why even otherwise sane individuals like Carl Hart tell me that folks like myself should keep taking their meds and that his book is not for the depressed or anxious.
He's got this interesting idea that science has got depression well in hand -- which I find surprising, having spent the last 40 years of my life on one mind-numbing Big Pharma med after another, always depressed, and wondering for the life of me why I'm not allowed to reach down and use the uplifting medicine that grows at my very feet. It's bad enough when demagogue politicians tell me to refrain, but when Carl Hart himself tells me that they're right, that I should indeed shut up and take my meds, I can't help feeling just the slightest bit teed off. It puts me in mind of a curious line from "The Castle" by Franz Kafka, in the Mark Harman translation:
"Calls for a slight attack of despair."
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.
In fact, we throw people out of jobs for using "drugs," we praise them for using "meds." The words as used today are extremely judgmental. The categories are imaginary, made up by politicians who want to demonize certain substances, but not cigs or beer.
Was looking for natural sleeping aids online. Everyone ignores the fact that all the stuff that REALLY works has been outlawed! We live in a pretend world wherein the outlawed stuff no longer even exists in our minds! We are blind to our lost legacy regarding plant medicines!
Our tolerance for freedom wanes in proportion as we consider "drugs" to be demonic. This is the dark side behind the new ostensibly comic genre about Cocaine Bears and such. It shows that Americans are superstitious about drugs in a way that Neanderthals would have understood.
The search for SSRIs has always been based on a flawed materialist premise that human consciousness is nothing but a mix of brain chemicals and so depression can be treated medically like any other physical condition.
Many psychedelic fans are still drug warriors at heart. They just think that a nice big exception should be carved out for the drugs that they're suddenly finding useful. Wrong. Substance demonization is wrong, root and branch. It always causes more suffering than freedom.
In an article about Mazatec mushroom use, the author says: "Mushrooms should not be considered a drug." He misses the point: NOTHING should be considered a drug: every substance has potential good uses.
Two weeks ago, a guy told me that most psychiatrists believe ECT is great. I thought he was joking! I've since come to realize that he was telling the truth: that is just how screwed up the healthcare system is today thanks to drug war ideology and purblind materialism.
There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.
Besides, why should I listen to the views of a microbe?
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.
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, Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants: Here's why that's nonsense, published on December 7, 2023 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants: Here's why that's nonsense, published on December 7, 2023 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)