Depression is real, says the APA, and they should know: they cause it!
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
July 14, 2022
he American Psychiatric Association has been trying for decades to convince us that "Depression is Real." Unfortunately, what they fail to realize is that the "Drug War" is real as well and it is the Drug War that is responsible for the depression that folks like myself experience. Why? Because it criminalizes virtually all the medicine that could make me feel better and inspire me with new ways of thinking about the world.
Then why doesn't the APA spend its money on ending the war on godsend mind medicine, aka the Drug War, instead of telling everybody the obvious, that people really do get very depressed indeed in this life of ours?
Answer: When the APA tells us that "depression is real," what they really mean is that depression is a real physical disease and that only the APA and its dependence-causing pharmaceuticals can successfully combat it.
Bollocks, as the Brits say. Thanks to the Drug War, I've spent 40+ years on these "scientific" medicines that have done absolutely nothing to make my life joyful or to give me insight into my life. To the contrary, these dependence-causing "meds" turned me into an eternal patient, with all the demoralizing baggage that implies - like the fact that a 60-year-old has to travel 45 miles every three months to meet with a white-coated woman half his age to get permission to purchase yet another expensive batch of addictive Big Pharma pills, under the apparent theory that one never grows old enough to be trusted to use even legal drugs wisely in America.
Does the DEA get a kick out of turning Americans into little children like this when it comes to psychoactive medicine? Where is the modern Moliere who will hold this politico-pharmacological posturing up to the ridicule that it deserves?
Meanwhile, all the substances that are well known to provide joy and inspiration - shrooms, coca, opium -- have been outlawed, all based on the Drug War lie that certain politically disliked substances are bad in and of themselves without regard for why they are used, or where they are used, or when, or by whom.
In reality, there are no such drugs in the world. All medicines can have beneficial results for someone, at some dosage, for some reason, in some circumstance. But the Drug Warriors want us to fear godsend medicines, not understand them. And so they insist that the use of proscribed drugs must end in tragedy and addiction.
Of course to the extent that this is true, it is a self-fulfilling prophecy brought about by the Drug Warrior's promotion of fear over facts. (And of course the Drug Warrior will do everything in their power to make sure that the "drug user's" life ends in tragedy, if only by arresting them and sentencing them to longer prison terms than that meted out to most murderers.) The Drug Warrior wants us to be ignorant about the hypocritically defined category of "drugs" so that we won't question their childish demonization campaign against them - a propaganda campaign waged chiefly by the almost complete lack of positive mentions of demonized substances in both the popular media and in academic journals, where all the talk is about misuse and abuse, not the ability of such drugs to inspire whole new religions.
And so the APA is right, Depression is real. But guess what? The APA helped CAUSE this depression.
How? By putting its financial interests ahead of its patients' interests and accepting the fantastically lucrative monopoly on mood medicine that the Drug War hands them on a silver platter -- justifying their collaboration with that war by promoting the philosophically flawed conscience sop that the mental world is the natural domain of the materialist medical community, a self-interested tribe whose reductive impulses can never sign off on natural drugs that have the effrontery to "merely" make one feel better according to the user themselves. ("What does the user know about happiness after all?" asks the modern drug researcher. "Scientists will look at the relevant brain chemistry and tell the 'patient' when he or she is actually happy, thank you very much!")
So yes, APA, Depression is real all right, and you should know: you help cause it!
Author's Follow-up: July 15, 2022
The Drug War has such diabolical staying power because psychiatry has convinced us that conditions like depression are medical illnesses and therefore require the intervention of the healthcare establishment. If that were true, then our own role as the depressed is to sit back and see what nostrums that medical science can come up with on our behalf. In other words, psychiatry tells us, in essence, "Never mind the countless plant medicines that are now off-limits to you: those are just 'crutches,' don't you know? Only WE have the REAL cures to mental conditions like depression."
The problem here is not science, but philosophy. The fact is that all manner of reductionist symptoms can be associated with conditions like depression, but it is always a leap of faith to claim that those symptoms therefore CAUSE depression. A knotted eyebrow will commonly appear on the head of a worried person, but that does not mean that the knotted eyebrows cause us to worry. Even if a chemical intervention seems to "cure" depression in the mind of a drug researcher who has performed extensive trials, that still leaves us with the question, what does the researcher mean by "cured." Psychiatric practices like lobotomy have been considered successful cures for hyperactive patients, but who considered them successful? Certainly not the patients. No, they were successful in the eyes of tired nurses and administrators who thought to themselves, "Now, I'll finally get some peace of mind thanks to my overactive patients receiving lobotomies!" Likewise with these "cures" for depression: the question always is, "What do you mean by cure?" Based on my use of dependence-causing antidepressants for a lifetime now, I know that the word "cure" has a very different meaning for me than it did for the materialist researchers who came up with the "cure" that they created which I am now obliged to take every morning of my life.
The "cure" that I am looking for is one that will allow me to "live large," emotionally speaking, to experience earth's wonders like a child, with wide-open eyes, to truly hear music and to sense my place in the universe while gaining a feeling of brotherhood with the world at large and all who live therein. In short, I desire the advantages that have a history of being obtained by the wise use of the time-honored meds that the Drug War has outlawed. Believe me when I say that the makers of the SSRIs had no such ambitions as these when they crafted my "cure." In fact, judging by my experience on Big Pharma antidepressants, the researchers' goal was to cure me of such excessive ambitions altogether and to render me a reliable consumer instead, one who is so chemically dependent on their meds that I will be their employer's unwilling customer for life.
Author's Follow-up:
April 20, 2025
When I wrote the above essay almost three years ago, I had yet to specifically name the fallacious theory whereby modern drug researchers are encouraged to ignore common sense: that theory is the behaviorism of JB Watson. It is the hateful doctrine which holds that the only thing that counts in the realm of psychology is quantifiable data. The mere reported laughter and happiness of the patient: not so much. The evil nature of this doctrine is clear when we consider the simple common-sense truths that it prompts us to ignore:
1) the fact that drugs that grow new neurons in the brain and otherwise increase mental function have obvious therapeutic uses for dementia and Alzheimer's patients.
2) the fact that drugs that inspire compassion in users (so-called empathogens) have obvious therapeutic uses for the autistic.
3) the fact that drugs that elate and inspire have obvious uses for the depressed -- and for everyone else, for that matter.
And yet Drug Warriors today -- and even their many accomplices and enablers among neo-liberals and progressives -- have been brainwashed into associating drug use only with adolescent hedonism.
What an abomination.
The Drug War proves that propaganda really works -- especially the propaganda of media censorship (the censorship of all positive reports of drugs use). If democracy and freedom are to survive, the species Homo sapiens has got to come to terms with this fact and so take steps to prevent future mass brainwashing of populations based on premises like that of the Drug War, which are so hateful and so antithetical to human happiness and to human spiritual, medical, psychological and philosophical progress.
Antidepressants
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.
Someone should stand outside Jefferson's estate and hand out leaflets describing the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello to confiscate poppy plants. That raid was against everything Jefferson stood for. The TJ Foundation DISHONORED JEFFERSON and their visitors should know that!
Drug testing labs should give high marks for those who manage to use drugs responsibly, notwithstanding the efforts of law enforcement to ruin their lives. The lab guy would be like: "Wow, you are using opium wisely, my friend! Congratulations! Your boss is lucky to have you!"
When it comes to "drugs," the government plays Polonius to our Ophelia:
OPHELIA: I do not know, my lord, what I should think.
POLONIUS: Marry, I'll teach you; think yourself a baby!
Until prohibition ends, rehab is all about enforcing a Christian Science attitude toward psychoactive medicines (with the occasional hypocritical exception of Big Pharma meds).
The FDA uses reductive materialism to justify and normalize the views of Cortes and Pizarro with respect to entheogenic medicine.
Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.
Drugs like opium and psychedelics should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."
Both physical and psychological addiction can be successfully fought when we relegalize the pharmacopoeia and start to fight drugs with drugs. But prohibitionists do not want to end addiction, they want to scare us with it.
The Partnership for a Drug Free America should be put on trial for having blatantly lied to Americans in the 1980s about drugs, using our taxpayer money to do it!
DEA Stormtroopers should be held responsible for destroying American Democracy. Abolish the American Gestapo.
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, Depression is real, says the APA, and they should know: they cause it! published on July 14, 2022 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)
he American Psychiatric Association has been trying for decades to convince us that "Depression is Real." Unfortunately, what they fail to realize is that the "Drug War" is real as well and it is the Drug War that is responsible for the depression that folks like myself experience. Why? Because it criminalizes virtually all the medicine that could make me feel better and inspire me with new ways of thinking about the world. 
You have been reading an article entitled, Depression is real, says the APA, and they should know: they cause it! published on July 14, 2022 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)
