Essay date: July 16, 2019



America's biggest drug pusher: The American Psychiatric Association:

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.

We don't need people to get "clean." We need people to start living a fulfilling life. The two things are different.
"I can take this drug that inspires me and makes me compassionate and teaches me to love nature in its byzantine complexity, or I can take Prozac which makes me unable to cry at my parents' funeral. Hmm. Which shall it be?" Only a mad person in a mad world would choose SSRIs.
Next essay: This is your brain on Neuralink
Previous essay: This is your brain on Drug War propaganda

More Essays Here


essays about
PSYCHIATRY AND THE DRUG WAR

America's Puritan Obsession with Sobriety
Christian Science Rehab
Depressed? Here's why.
Electroshock Therapy and the Drug War
How Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient
In Praise of Doctor Feelgood
In praise of doctor hopping
MDMA for Psychotherapy
Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism
The Drug War and Electroshock Therapy
The Myth of the Addictive Personality
The Prozac Code
Time to Replace Psychiatrists with Shamans
Doctor Feel Bad
Psychedelics and Depression
Drug Use as Self-Medication
This is your brain on Effexor
Depression is real, says the APA, and they should know: they cause it!
The Mental Health Survey that psychiatrists don't want you to take
The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
Don't Worry, Be Satisfied
America's Great Anti-Depressant Scam
The Origins of Modern Psychiatry
Modern Addiction Treatment as Puritan Indoctrination
Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
Lord Save us from 'Real' Cures
Disease Mongering in the age of the drug war



...end the war on drugs. Shop today. And tomorrow.


Monticello Betrayed Thomas Jefferson


In 1987, the Monticello Foundation invited the DEA onto the property to confiscate Thomas Jeffersons poppy plants, in violation of the Natural Law upon which the gardening fan had founded America

The Drug War Censors Science - Bumper Sticker


Drive the point home that the Drug War censors scientists -- by outlawing and otherwise discouraging research into the kinds of drugs that have inspired entire religions.

Protest The Dea Bumper Sticker


Millions have needlessly suffered over the last 50 years because the DEA has lied about psychedelics, claiming that they are addictive and have no therapeutic value. Stop the lies, start the research.

Reincarnation is for Has-Beens


In a former life, I bought this bumper sticker myself. My friends got quite a kick out of it, as I recall!
5% of proceeds from the sale of the above product will go toward getting Brian a decent haircut for once. Honestly. 9% will go toward shoes. 50% will go toward miscellaneous. 9% of the remainder will go toward relaxation, which could encompass anything from a spin around town to an outdoor barbecue at Brian's brother's house in Stanardsville (both gas and the ice-cream cake that Brian usually supplies).

Nature Abhors a Vacuum - drink tile


Actually, Nature likes several of the latest Dyson models, but those are really the exception to the rule.

I Brake for Honeybees


Do your part to fight Colony Collapse Disorder: Show the honey bees your true feelings with this unBEElievable bumper sticker

Thinking of You


Face it, even your friends sometimes tick you off: Show them your true feelings with this novelty gift card -- and don't worry, the inside text reads: PSYCH! Just kidding.

What Would Socrates Do - bumper sticker


What would Socrates do if he drove a BMW? He'd sell it at once to show he wasn't tempted by luxury -- but he'd keep the kewl bumper sticker designed by Quass.com that came with it.



href="https://www.abolishthedea.com/">AbolishTheDEA.com

old time radio playing Drug War comedy sketches





You have been reading essays by the Drug War Philosopher, Brian Quass, at abolishthedea.com. Brian is the founder of The Drug War Gift Shop, where artists can feature and sell their protest artwork online. He has also written for Sociodelic and is the author of The Drug War Comic Book, which contains 150 political cartoons illustrating some of the seemingly endless problems with the war on drugs -- many of which only Brian seems to have noticed, by the way, judging by the recycled pieties that pass for analysis these days when it comes to "drugs." That's not surprising, considering the fact that the category of "drugs" is a political category, not a medical or scientific one.

A "drug," as the world defines the term today, is "a substance that has no good uses for anyone, ever, at any time, under any circumstances" -- and, of course, there are no substances of that kind: even cyanide and the deadly botox toxin have positive uses: a war on drugs is therefore unscientific at heart, to the point that it truly qualifies as a superstition, one in which we turn inanimate substances into boogie-men and scapegoats for all our social problems.

The Drug War is, in fact, the philosophical problem par excellence of our time, premised as it is on a raft of faulty assumptions (notwithstanding the fact that most philosophers today pretend as if the drug war does not exist). It is a war against the poor, against minorities, against religion, against science, against the elderly, against the depressed, against those in pain, against children in hospice care, and against philosophy itself. It outlaws substances that have inspired entire religions, Nazifies the English language and militarizes police forces nationwide.

It bans the substances that inspired William James' ideas about human consciousness and the nature of ultimate reality. In short, it causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, meanwhile violating the Natural Law upon which Thomas Jefferson founded America. (Surely, Jefferson was rolling over in his grave when Ronald Reagan's DEA stomped onto Monticello in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants.)

If you believe in freedom and democracy, in America and around the world, please stay tuned for more philosophically oriented broadsides against the outrageous war on godsend medicines, AKA the war on drugs.

Brian Quass
The Drug War Philosopher
abolishthedea.com

PS The drug war has not failed: to the contrary, it has succeeded, insofar as its ultimate goal was to militarize police forces around the world and help authorities to ruthlessly eliminate those who stand in the way of global capitalism. For more, see Drug War Capitalism by Dawn Paley. Oh, and did I mention that most Drug Warriors these days would never get elected were it not for the Drug War itself, which threw hundreds of thousands of their political opposition in jail? Trump was right for the wrong reasons: elections are being stolen in America, but the number-one example of that fact is his own narrow victory in 2016, which could never have happened without the existence of laws that were specifically written to keep Blacks and minorities from voting. The Drug War, in short, is a cancer on the body politic.

Rather than apologetically decriminalizing selected plants, we should be demanding the immediate restoration of Natural Law, according to which "The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." (John Locke)

Selected Bibliography

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  • Boullosa , Carmen "A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the 'Mexican Drug War'"2016 OR Books
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    • Sewell, Kenneth Clint Richmond "Red Star Rogue: The Untold Story of a Soviet Submarine's Nuclear Strike Attempt on the U.S. " 2006 Pocket Star
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  • Shulgin, Alexander "PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story"1991 Transform Press
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    • Slater, Lauren "Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds" 2019 Boston
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  • Smith, Wolfgang "Physics: A Science in Quest of an Ontology"2022
  • St John, Graham "Mystery School in Hyperspace: A Cultural History of DMT"2021
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  • Szasz, Thomas "Interview With Thomas Szasz: by Randall C. Wyatt"0
    • Szasz, Thomas "Our Right to Drugs: The case for a free market" 1992 Praeger
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    Site and its contents copyright 2023, by Brian B. Quass, the drug war philosopher at abolishthedea.com. For more information, contact Brian at quass@quass.com.