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Depressed? Here's why!

Exposing the anti-patient drug-war lobby in Washington

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

December 29, 2019



The DEA is the enemy of depressed individuals worldwide because it has blocked the research (let alone the use) of godsend antidepressant medications now for over four decades. Technically, it has only done this in America, but Drug War colonialism has spread this anti-scientific policy worldwide, as America financially blackmails its trading partners into touting the anti-patient party line about so-called drugs.

MDMA 1 was legal in 1984 and ready to treat soldiers with PTSD. However, in 1985, the DEA acted against the advice of its own regulatory judge and criminalized the substance. The result: American soldiers have been without a godsend medication for PTSD during the last three and a half decades, during their fight with al-Qaida and the Taliban. While our forces were living through hell overseas, the DEA was hunkering down in its comfy Washington offices, determined to keep its jobs at any cost, even at the expense of soldiers' lives and well-being. Meanwhile, psychedelics (such as ayahuasca, psilocybin, and ibogaine) which showed profound potential for virtually curing alcoholism in the '50s, have been listed by the DEA as schedule I drugs since the DEA's inception (based purely on politics, not on science) ensuring that the depressed must continue to rely on Big Pharma meds that create chemical dependence.


But the DEA is not the only group that's determined to keep valuable medications from those who need them. To figure out who else is anti-patient in this way, just ask yourself: who stands to lose money if the Drug War is finally terminated? A partial list of such groups follows. Those who oppose America's anti-patient Drug War would do well to monitor the political advocacy of these groups who have a vested interest in the ongoing arrest of minorities for mere possession of Mother Nature's plants and fungi:

WHO'S KEEPING THE DRUG WAR GOING?

FOLLOW THE MONEY.

GROUPS THAT PROSPER FINANCIALLY FROM THE DRUG WAR:


It's not enough to abolish the DEA and hold it responsible for its decades of patient-harming lies: those who advocate a patient-friendly drug policy must identify these sorts of natural enemies of a free market and call them to account any time they are caught attempting to buy politicians.

AFTERTHOUGHT:

Of course, the whole idea of "drugs" is absurd, insofar as that word connotes a substance that is thought to be evil in and of itself. Any sane person knows that substances are only good or bad in relation to the way that they are used. When Neil Patrick Harris snorts cocaine 5 6 off of the eagerly proffered tush of a naked pole dancer in "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle," we might want to call it evil (especially if we're busybody prudes of the protestant old school), but when smart cookies use a similar substance to sharpen their analytic minds (think Sherlock Holmes in fiction or Robin Williams in reality) it is by no means clear that the substances that they thus employ are evil - unless 1) we who make that judgment are jealous psychiatrists, who would have preferred that these famous clarity-seekers fog their minds with modern antidepressants 7 -- or 2) we are Christian Scientists, who hold the metaphysical notion that there is something wrong with improving mental states with the help of Mother Nature's pharmacy, in which case we should state our metaphysical presuppositions forthrightly and thus admit that the Drug War is religiously motivated. This would accord with the facts, too, since the first Drug Warrior in the west was Emperor Theodosius, the founder of Catholicism, who shut down the psychedelic Eleusinian mysteries in 392 BC because he considered that ritual to be a threat to Christianity8.



Notes:

1: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
2: How Drug Company Money Is Undermining Science Seife, Charles, Scientific American, 2012 (up)
3: Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of The FDA’s Drug Division Budget? LaMartinna, John, Forbes, 2022 (up)
4: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
5: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
6: On Cocaine Freud, Sigmund (up)
7: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
8: The Eleusinian Mysteries: A Gateway to the Afterlife in Greek Beliefs (up)


Antidepressants




WARNING: Don't bother trying to get off antidepressants unless you are truly committed to the idea in the name of healthcare liberty. You have to be committed to such a goal heart and soul, merely to have a chance at success. For long-term users, it can be a real challenge. It is interesting how psychiatrists flip the script on this subject, by the way: they claim that the hideous withdrawal symptoms somehow prove that the user needed the drug all along. But this is obvious nonsense. This can be seen in the fact that these same psychiatrists would never say such a thing about heroin users: that their angst upon quitting the drug is a sign that the drug was actually working for them.

Note that I am not saying that antidepressants are drugs from hell -- but rather that they BECOME drugs from hell thanks to drug prohibition. Drug prohibition outlaws all drugs that could help you get off of antidepressants and so live a fulfilled life without becoming a ward of the healthcare state. We need merely to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Why do we fail to do so? Because we judge drugs based on the following silly and inhumane algorithm: namely, that a substance that can be misused, even in theory, by a white American young person at one dose when used for one reason in one circumstance must not be used by anybody at any dose in any circumstances...

Suppose you lived in the Punjab in 1500 BCE and were told that Soma was illegal but that the mental health establishment had medicines which you could take every day of your life for your depression. Would it not be an enormous violation of your liberty to be told that you could not worship Soma and its attendant gods and incarnations? Would it not be an enormous violation of your liberty to be told that you cannot partake of the drink of the Gods themselves, the Soma juice?

Well, guess what? Your liberty is suppressed in that very fashion by modern drug prohibition: you are denied access to all medicines that inspire and elate. Seen in this light, antidepressants are a slap in the face to a freedom-loving people. They are a prohibitionist replacement for a host of obvious treatments, none of which need turn the user into a patient for life, and some of which could even inspire new religions.

The Hindu religion would not exist today had the DEA been active in the Punjab in 1500 BCE.

So do antidepressants make sense?

This question has two very different answers, depending on whether you recognize that prohibition exists or not. Of course, most Americans pretend that drug war prohibition does not exist, or at least that it has no effect on their lives -- and so they happily become Big Pharma patients for life. They flatter themselves that they are thereby treating their problems "scientifically." What they fail to realize, of course, is that it is a category error for materialist scientists to treat mind and mood conditions in the first place.

Why? Because scientists are behaviorists when it comes to drugs, which means that they ignore all obvious positive effects of drugs: all anecdote, all history and all psychological common sense -- and instead try to cure you biochemically. And what has been the result of this purblind approach to mind and moods, this search for the Holy Grail of materialist cures for depression? The result has been the greatest mass pharmacological dystopia of all time, thanks to which 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma pills for life.



  • And don't get me started on antidepressants!
  • Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant
  • Depressed? Here's why!
  • Depression is real, says the APA, and they should know: they cause it!
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
  • How the Drug War Screws the Depressed
  • How the Drug War Tramples on the Rights of the Depressed
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Crucial Connection Between Antidepressants and the War on Drugs
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Philosophical Significance of the Use of Antidepressants in the Age of Drug Prohibition
  • Using Opium to Fight Depression
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • What Malcolm X got right about drugs
  • Why SSRIs are Crap





    • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    Think you can handle a horse? So did Christopher Reeves. The fact is, NOBODY can handle a horse. This message brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.

    The healthcare industry turns all the emotional downsides of drug prohibition into "illnesses."

    I thought mycology clubs across the US would be protesting drug laws that make mushroom collecting illegal for psychoactive species. But in reality, almost no club even mentions such species. No wonder prohibition is going strong.

    Immanuel Kant wrote that scientists are scornful about metaphysics yet they rely on it themselves without realizing it. This is a case in point, for the idea that euphoria and visions are unhelpful in life is a metaphysical viewpoint, not a scientific one.

    Governor Kotek is "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.

    At best, antidepressants make depression bearable. We need not settle for such drugs, especially when they are notorious for causing dependence. There are many drugs that elate and inspire. It is both cruel and criminal to outlaw them.

    I can't believe people. Somebody's telling me that "drugs" is not used problematically. It is CONSTANTLY used with a sneer in the voice when politicians want to diss somebody, as in, "Oh, they're in favor of DRUGS!!!" It's a political term as used today!

    There are no recreational drugs. Even laughing gas has rational uses because it gives us a break from morbid introspection. There are recreational USES of drugs, but the term "recreational" is often used to express our disdain for users who go outside the healthcare system.

    Most prohibitionists think that they merely have to use the word "drugs" to win an argument. Like: "Oh, so you're in favor of DRUGS then, are you?" You can just see them sneering as they type. That's because the word "drugs" is like the word "scab": it's a loaded political term.

    Even fans of sacred medicine have been brainwashed to believe that we do not know if such drugs "really" work: they want microscopic proof. But that's a western bias, used strategically by drug warriors to make the psychotropic drug approval process as glacial as possible.


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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    Copyright 2025, Brian Ballard Quass Contact: quass@quass.com

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