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.
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.
Key Takeaways:
Shock therapy is a crime in a world that refuses to allow the depressed to use Mother Nature's medicines.
The FDA will not approve medicines that grow at our feet, but will approve of damaging the brain with ECT.
Drug prohibition fries the brain by outlawing all effective medicines, leaving the seriously depressed no choice but to undergo brain-damaging shock therapy.
I'm told that science is completely unbiased today. I guess I'll have to go back and reassess my doubts about Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
Brits have a right to die, but they do not have the right to use drugs that might make them want to live. Bad policy is indicated by absurd outcomes, and this is but one of the many absurd outcomes that the policy of prohibition foists upon the world.
Anyone who has read Pihkal by Alexander Shulgin knows that the drug warriors have it exactly backwards. Drugs are our friends. We need to find safe ways to use them to improve ourselves psychologically, spiritually and mentally.
If drug warriors were serious about saving lives, they'd outlaw guns, cars, and all pleasure trips to Mars.
The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.
I've always wondered why we don't just let heroin users be -- or better yet, re-legalize drugs and give them choices. Why are they punished for using heroin daily while we praise 1 in 4 women for taking an even more dependence-causing drug every day of their life?
Drug Warriors should be legally banned from watching or reading Sherlock Holmes stories, since in their world, it is a crime for such people as Sherlock Holmes to exist, i.e., people who use medicines to improve their mind and mood.
Big Pharma drugs have wrought disaster when used in psychotherapy, but it does not follow that the depressed should become Christian Scientists. The use of outlawed drugs can obviate the need for shock therapy.
There are definitely good scientists out there. Unfortunately, they are either limited by their materialist orthodoxy into showing only specific microscopic evidence or they abandon materialism for the nonce and talk the common psychological sense that we all understand.
The best step we could take in harm reduction is re-legalizing everything and starting to teach safe use. Spend the DEA's billions on "go" teams that would descend on locations where drugs are being used stupidly -- not to arrest, but to educate.
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