The Barbaric State of Mental Health Care in the age of drug prohibition
Why electroshock therapy remains the go-to treatment for ending severe depression in America
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 22, 2026
The following comments are written in response to an article on the Mad in America website entitled "Which Would You Prefer: Electroshock or a Safe Taper?" by Jennifer Giordano. 1
My answer to your question is neither.
The FDA won't approve the medicine that grows at your feet, but they highly recommend brain damage for the severely depressed!
I believe that shock therapy is a crime in an age when we do not let people use the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet. Why should we be forced to potentially damage our brain by a government that denies us our access to Mother Nature? I would rather suffer while protesting the drug prohibition that outlaws my right to heal than to undergo ECT.
My tapering to get off Venlafaxine failed miserably after a year, when my depression suddenly returned far worse than ever. But my answer is not shock therapy. I have decided to live the remainder of my life “on Venlafaxine” just so that I can think straight, that’s just how thoroughly my brain chemistry seems to have been changed by this drug. I think it shows how low the healthcare field has sunk thanks to drug prohibition that their go-to fix for people in my situation is damaging the brain. The FDA won’t approve of drugs that grow at our feet, yet they champion shock therapy2. This is absolutely bizarre, and it can only be drug-propaganda that keeps people from seeing it as such.
I think that healthcare officials have a moral duty to speak up against the drug prohibition that has turned depressed people like myself into a patient for life, without yet “curing” my depression — as if depression should be cured in the first place, but rather just symptomatically treated. My idea of a “cure” for depression would not be the same as what a Big Pharma chemist considers to be a cure, in any case.
There are plenty of drugs that could end my depression in a trice. Anyone who denies this is unfamiliar with pharmacology, ethnobotany, drug literature, drug history, and psychological common sense, for that matter.
The government lied and told us that “drugs” fry the brain. How ironic that it is drug prohibition itself that actually forces us to fry brains. Like so many other social evils in America, ECT only makes sense to those who reckon without drug prohibition and how it has outlawed our right to heal.
The drug war is a scare campaign to teach us to distrust mother nature and to rely on pharmaceuticals instead.
"The depression lifted from my mind like the sun coming out of the clouds." -- Arthur Crowley after using cocaine
In America, they save the depressed from cocaine and opium by turning them into patients for life with dependence-causing "meds." Now 30-year-old doctors get to treat 67-year-olds like children, with new visits every damn three months.
The drug war normalizes the disdainful and self-righteous attitude that Columbus and Pizarro had about drug use in the New World.
The DEA is gaslighting Americans, telling them that drugs with obvious benefits have no benefits whatsoever. Scientists collude in this lie thanks to their adherence to the emotion-scorning principles of behaviorism.
If you're looking for an anti-Christ, just look for an American presidential politician who has taught us to hate our enemies. Gee, now, who could that be, huh? According to Trump, Jesus was just a chump. Winning comes before anything at all in his sick view of life.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?
"When two men who have been in an aggressive mood toward each other take part in the ritual, one is able to say to the other, 'Come, let us drink, for there is something between us.' " re: the Mayan use of the balche drink in Encyc of Psych Plants, by Ratsch & Hofmann
I, for one, am actually TRYING to recommend drugs like MDMA and psilocybin as substitutes for shock therapy. In fact, I would recommend almost ANY pick-me-up drug as an alternative to knowingly damaging the human brain. That's more than the hateful DEA can say.
(up)