America's biggest drug pusher: The American Psychiatric Association:
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 16, 2019
How the disastrous materialist paradigm ruined psychiatry and addicted entire generations of Americans
I am an expert on the down side of the anti-depressant craze, having been over 40 years on the receiving end of materialist nostrums that I was told would correct my brain chemistry. Now I find that they have hopelessly screwed up that chemistry and have debarred me from profiting from the new psychedelic renaissance in depression therapy, thanks to the fact that SSRI + psychedelics causes Serotonin Toxicity Syndrome -- or, in any case, dampens the effects of psychedelics. Nor am I alone. It is a tragic irony that those of us who have dutifully followed the antidepressant bandwagon are now ineligible for the new non-addictive psychedelic therapy that is meant to replace it.
I decided to get off Effexor to try psychedelic therapy, either in South America or in clinical trials in America. When I mentioned this to my psychiatrist, however, he told me that it was literally IMPOSSIBLE to get off of Effexor. He cited a new NIH study that shows a 95% recidivism rate after three years for those who quit the drug. Bizarrely, my shrink seems to think that this proves that Effexor works. I don't know where to begin in correcting his problematic logic in reaching that conclusion.
If I had been told I was going to be addicted to a drug for life, I would have certainly chosen opium -- like Benjamin Franklin -- and not the drug Effexor. Despite our moral bluster, opium would be drastically better for me, since I could use it on weekends only (which would make the intervening weekdays far more bearable, as it did for De Quincey before an injury led him to take the drug on an addictive daily basis) - and even if I did become addicted, so what? That addiction becomes a problem only if supply is interrupted - and in this sense SSRIs are just as bad as opium. In fact, Effexor is far worse than opium, which an addict can at least theoretically get off of after some major short-term suffering - whereas I'm told that I can NEVER get off of Effexor: ever.
The article that you posted points out some of the problems with relying on self-reporting about SSRI effects. But you failed to mention one problem. Those who find SSRIs to be valuable (at least initially) have nothing to compare their feelings to. Had they had an entheogenic encounter in their life, wherein they were overawed with beauty and meaning, then they would not necessarily consider the SSRI effects to be wonderful. In other words, while entheogens may help them "be all they can be," SSRIs may simply help them become satisfied with an unnecessarily humble status quo, never giving them a therapeutic taste of the heights of self-fulfillment that they might have otherwise reached in their lives.
Long-term Effexor use has not goaded me on to ever new heights: to the contrary, I feel a kind of numbing that I'm told is described by the word "anhedonia." At best, Effexor has made life bearable - but it has never inspired me and I have felt my creative spirit actually diminishing year by year. Moreover, Effexor has depressed me by turning me into an eternal patient and a ward of the healthcare state and a lifetime subscriber to Big Pharma. I used to think that the APA recognized addiction as a bad thing, but they seem to have no problem with it as long as they can call it "chemical dependence" instead - though from a user's point of view, there is really no difference: getting off the drug is hell.
If one is going to pay the high price of addiction, they might at least be on a drug that provides actual emotional highs, if not insights and a sharpened mind. (But materialist APA considers that so much "woo-woo": they're claiming to fix a chemical imbalance after all, not make me merely feel good! )
Yet another reason to end the Drug War: Psychiatry hasn't a leg to stand on when it tells folks like myself to "just say no," since they have become the very epitome of the drug pusher, only with complete civil sanction. The corruption of psychiatry is evident in the fact that 1) they don't acknowledge the fact that they have turned folks like myself (for all practical purposes) into addicts and 2) they won't even try to help us get off of their SSRI poison - insisting instead that we make our peace with SSRIs and "take our meds" like the good little interchangeable humanoids that they seem to take us for.
This is why I've started the website ABOLISHtheDEA.com.
Still waiting for an Effexor withdrawal program that will wean me off of Effexor WHILE weaning me ON to the occasional use of therapeutic psychedelics. Most addiction counselors insist on making the addict feel horrible first - partly because they're legally unable to use meds that would ease the pain and partly because of an unexamined Puritan assumption that addiction cures must be painful.
I don't agree - not if the plants of Mother Nature were actually legal again and resourceful and knowledgeable shamans were given carte blanche to use them.
In any case, I don't have time to feel horrible. I have to make a living while dealing with my Effexor addiction.
June 8, 2022
You know that shrink that Brian mentioned? He was soon fired for having given Brian that heads-up about the poor prospects for "kicking" Effexor. That sad fact reminds me of Thomas Szasz's observations that while psychiatrists profit from the Drug War ideology, they are as likely as anyone else to become a victim of that war, especially if they make the faux pas of being completely honest about the downsides of that intolerant substance-hating religion.
The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.
Drug warriors do not seem to see any irony in the fact that their outlawing of opium eventually resulted in an "opioid crisis." The message is clear: people want transcendence. If we don't let them find it safely, they will find it dangerously.
I can't believe that no one at UVA is bothered by the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello. It was, after all, a sort of coup against the Natural Law upon which Jefferson had founded America, asserting as it did the government's right to outlaw Mother Nature.
Talking about being in denial: drug warriors blame all of the problems that they cause on "drugs" and then insist that the entire WORLD accept their jaundiced view of the natural bounty that God himself told us was good.
By reading "Drug Warriors and Their Prey," I begin to understand why I encounter a wall of silence when I write to authors and professors on the subject of "drugs." The mere fact that the drug war inspires such self-censorship should be grounds for its immediate termination.
It's always wrong to demonize drugs in the abstract. That's anti-scientific. It begs so many questions and leaves suffering pain patients (and others) high and dry. No substance is bad in and of itself.
As such, "we" are important. The sun is just a chaos of particles that "we" have selected out of the rest of the raw data and declared "This we shall call the sun!" "We" make this universe. Consciousness is fundamental.
We drastically limit drug choices, we refuse to teach safe use, and then we discover there's a gene to explain why some people have trouble with drugs. Science loves to find simple solutions to complex problems.
That's my real problem with SSRIs: If daily drug use and dependency are okay, then there's no logical or truly scientific reason why I can't smoke a nightly opium pipe.
To understand why the western world is blind to the benefits of "drugs," read "The Concept of Nature" by Whitehead. He unveils the scientific schizophrenia of the west, according to which the "real" world is invisible to us while our perceptions are mere "secondary" qualities.
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, America's biggest drug pusher: The American Psychiatric Association: published on July 16, 2019 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, America's biggest drug pusher: The American Psychiatric Association: published on July 16, 2019 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)