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Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war

an open letter to Charley Wininger, author of 'Listening to Ecstasy'

by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher




July 21, 2024

The following was inspired in equal parts by Charley Wininger's book, "Listening to Ecstasy,"1 and by my so-far frustrating attempts to get off of the SNRI antidepressant called Effexor.

Hey, Charles.

As an amateur philosopher, I have written extensively on the subject of outlawed medicines and the role that they can play in combatting my dependence on antidepressants. This topic is foremost in my mind at this time of my life because I have just retired at age 65 and am now determined to get off Effexor, not just because I do not like the drug but because I am tired of being a ward of the healthcare state. I have been on these expensive and under-performing meds for 40 years now and I finally have time to do something about it. I am finding this transition to be extremely difficult, however, because of drug law restrictions, combined with the fact that psychiatrists are generally materialists (at least the ones that I know) and so they believe that efficacy of drugs must be determined under a microscope and not by the laughter of a depressed patient (let alone by the millennia's worth of unabashed and joyful usage documented via Mesoamerican statuary). I think in this regard of the article by Dr. Robert Glatter in Forbes Magazine (June 9, 2021) entitled "Can Laughing Gas Help People with Treatment-Resistant Depression?"2 The fact that a doctor has to even ask this question shows how modern science has lost track of common sense. Scientists today seem to be making a virtue of the necessity of modern prohibition: instead of protesting drug laws, they are pretending that those laws only ban substances that would be useless to human beings in any case.

I also take issue with the term "treatment-resistant depression": it implies that we have drugs that treat depression just fine, thanks, but that some few patients cannot benefit from them because of their own quirky biochemistry. My cousin has been on these wonder meds for years and even swears by them (she even has an alarm to signal her daily "pill time"), and yet she spends most of her free time in her gloomy bedroom moping and seldom attends family get-togethers or responds to requests for weekend outings. Yet she herself is convinced that she just has to find the right combination of "meds" in order to be cured. Surely, no kinds of drugs have received more "Mulligans" for poor performance than have SSRIs and SNRIs.

One of the main problems that I've encountered in attempting to get off Effexor creatively is the fact that everybody wants to bar me from cutting-edge treatment for safety sake - as if it's safe to be chronically depressed, as if I myself place safety above every other goal in my life. In reality, however, safety has never been my main goal in life. The only people I know who place safety first in practice are hypochondriacs, who counterproductively seek to stave off every single potential threat to life and limb. The emphasis America places on safety when it comes to the use of psychoactive drugs is way out of line with the way we evaluate risk for any other activity. Free climbing would not exist if we demanded the kind of statistical safety that we demand of psychoactive medicines.

In specific, the fear of so-called serotonin-syndrome seems to be way overblown3. I have tried to follow up on the few cases highlighted in research and had little luck getting details. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would think that Big Pharma was sponsoring scare studies about "drug mixing" in order to keep their captive audience from using alternatives to SSRIs and SNRIs. (Thousands die from aspirin every year, and yet no one's telling me there's a huge danger in taking aspirin, even though I am approaching the age at which I might be prone to such fears.4) Paranoia aside, I have used both peyote and psilocybin while taking Effexor, and there were no health problems at all. The only problem for me was that the Effexor clearly dampened the vividness of the visual impressions when using those natural substances. This, in turn, increased my resolve to get off Effexor, since I felt almost like that drug was "polluting" my body, biochemically speaking, by making me irresponsive to natural godsends that have been used for millennia for the benefit of human beings. It's as if a Big Pharma drug had made me incapable of appreciating a sunset.

Here's another area in which modern scientists have lost track of common sense: they refuse to acknowledge the role of anticipation and happiness in making withdrawal palatable. When I say that MDMA and psilocybin would help me, it means little to my psychiatrists, mainly because the efficacy of MDMA and shrooms has not yet been proven to the satisfaction of reductive science. And yet to some extent, I HAVE TO BE RIGHT about this: it IS what I feel and believe about those substances! I can't be wrong about that. And my belief matters. For when it comes to psychoactive drugs, expectations count, as they are a big part of the "set and setting" for use. Even most materialists today agree that attitude matters.

Here's an example.

Let's say I was feeling "down" on a week during which I was getting off of Effexor. I would feel horrible if I had nothing to look forward to: i.e., nothing except more of the same old "down" days. I may finally decide that I am going to admit defeat, give up on the withdrawal process and go back to using Effexor at the regular old daily doses. But if I knew that I was going to be using MDMA or shrooms on the upcoming weekend, much of that negativity on my part would be counteracted. There would be light at the end of the tunnel. This is all mere psychological common sense, but it is a benefit of drug use that modern science completely ignores. They have to: because once they admit the power of anticipation and expectation, they would be forced to acknowledge that almost any psychoactive substance could be used as an antidepressant (in some dose, in some dosing schedule, for some person, in some situation, etc.). This is why and how De Quincey originally used opium: not just to enjoy the weekend at the opera, but to enjoy LOOKING FORWARD to that weekend at the opera! The whole drug-use SITUATION improved his mood, not just the opium use per se. Again, this is a benefit of drug use that materialist science ignores, thereby helping them to toe the line with the Drug War orthodoxy that tells us that "drugs" can have no positive uses for anybody, anywhere, ever.

Granted, a given drug may not work as I personally expect. In that case a reasonably educated person will say, "I stand corrected, let's try a new dose, or a new dosing schedule." Or, "Let's try some other potential helpful substances instead." But I do not like the idea of rejecting any specific psychoactive medicine a priori merely because of risk, especially when that risk is statistically miniscule compared to the risk that we freely allow for other activities in life. To put it another way: Yes, science has a role in telling us the known risks, but science itself cannot do a cost/benefit analysis for a given psychoactive substance because all they know are the costs of use - and even this is only a partial knowledge since they do not know the costs to the user of NOT using the drug. Nor do they know the benefits that the user expects to receive from the drug, nor how much the user values those benefits -- or even demands them in his or her life, feeling, perhaps, that life is not even worth living without them.

After reading accounts of user experiences on drugs like huachuma cactus, MDMA and psilocybin, it is clear to me that they all have what philosophers call a "prima facie" potential for helping one cope psychologically (perhaps even spiritually) with the doubtful and fearful emotions of antidepressant withdrawal, thereby helping to make withdrawal succeed. I cannot help but feel, therefore, that much of the pushback against using them in conjunction with antidepressants (at least in some doses and in some situations, etc.) comes from the prescriber's desire to be in control, both thanks to materialist ideology which wants to literally "chart" all progress with times and numbers, and to an all-too-justified fear of litigation in this intoxiphobic age of ours5. Because let's be honest: any drug dealer would immediately recognize the simple psychological truth that drugs can be used to fight drugs, especially if said drugs make one feel good and look forward to their use. The scientists strain credulity when they tell us otherwise, but when we complain, we are given the metaphysical retort that the drugs we're talking about do not "really" help us, which, frankly, sounds more to me like a religious complaint than a scientifically derived conclusion. Does coffee really help us? Does alcohol?6

Personally, I think it's no surprise that drugs like Effexor have such high recidivism rates. What can we expect in a country that has outlawed all drugs that could help with the withdrawal process, psychologically speaking?

If psychiatrists would ever ask me as a user what I thought would help me get off Effexor7, I would answer as follows: give me access to all psychoactive meds and let me decide, based on user accounts, which are most likely to buoy my mood such that I can, indeed, endure (or even transcend) the side effects of antidepressant withdrawal. Of course, here is where our childhood indoctrination about drugs comes into play, causing us to feel in our bones that such protocols must lead to addiction and that human beings will never be able to use psychoactive medicines wisely. And indeed they are right, there will be victims of freedom: but they will be far less in number than the victims that are dying thanks to Drug War prohibitions: in inner cities8, in civil wars overseas9 - not to mention the millions who go without godsend medicines worldwide because of our disproportionate and selfish fear for the safety of white youngsters in suburban America. Only by rejecting this prohibition mentality can we re-establish the fourth amendment to the US Constitution, end the militarization of local police forces, and stop Drug Warriors from stacking the courts in their favor by throwing minorities in jail with drug laws written specifically for that purpose.

Getting Off Drugs







Antidepressants cause severe dependence, and yet in 2024, I got off a large dose of the SNRI Effexor in just a couple of months, a mind-numbing med that I had been taking for 25 years! 25 years!

What's my secret? I used drugs to fight drugs.

Sleeplessness was the number-one downside and I fought that easily with strategic use of marijuana. I then fought the psychological desire to return to Effexor by using psilocybin mushrooms. And they worked "a treat" as the Brits would say. They boosted my mood, they "upped" my game, they made me optimistic -- and in a subtle way, as if one's eternally foggy glasses had suddenly been wiped clean.

For all these years (indeed, for all these decades) I had thought that withdrawal from antidepressants was almost impossible -- and it is for most people -- but it turned out to be relatively easy for me... and why? I repeat:

Simply because I used drugs to fight drugs, something that is unthinkable, not just for drug warriors but for seeming progressives who have been brainwashed by materialist ideology: brainwashed into believing that materialist scientists are the experts when it comes to our mood and mentation -- which is something that we philosophers call a "category error." The expert on my moods and emotions is yours truly: I know what would inspire me.

To my shock, all the big websites that talk about antidepressant dependence (especially Mad in America and Surviving Antidepressants) were AGAINST ME even TRYING to get off Effexor in this way, by using drugs to fight drugs. No, they wanted me to contact my board-certified materialist doctor to have him help me to get off Effexor -- the same doctor who got me hooked on Effexor in the first place and who openly confesses to knowing very little about such medicines as psilocybin.

He is no expert on my moods and psycho-spiritual aspirations -- I am the expert. The most he can do is tell me potential physical dangers from withdrawing -- and then only by referring to studies that measure such dangers out of context, without even acknowledging the ability of other drugs to help one "keep the course" and stay off of the medicine whose use they are trying to renounce.

What my critics don't understand is that my method of getting off Effexor made PERFECT PSYCHOLOGICAL SENSE. These critics believe in materialist science, you see, and materialist science completely ignores any obvious psychological effects of drug use. That's how the FDA can get away with outlawing MDMA, a substance that brought unprecedented peace, love and understanding to British dance floors in the 1990s. They do not care that the widespread use of such a compassion-causing drug could cut down on school shootings and help steer the world away from Armageddon. They only care about what they see under a microscope.

In other words, materialist scientists are blind to the benefits of drug use, and so it should be no surprise that modern Americans who believe in science should have an aversion to fighting drugs with drugs. After all, that merely makes psychological common sense, and Americans have been brainwashed by the materialist drug war into ignoring psychological common sense.

That's why materialist Dr. Robert Glatter wrote an article in Forbes magazine in 2021 asking whether laughing gas could help the depressed. That question should be answered by a common-sense "YES!" -- and even Readers Digest would tell you that "laughter is the best medicine." But materialist scientists do not care how much I laugh "under the influence" nor how much my anticipation of use improves my mood -- since they ignore not just anecdote and historical use, but also the otherwise long-acknowledged power of anticipation to improve health.

The Mad in America website actively solicits sob-stories from antidepressant users about their difficult attempts to "get off" of antidepressants, and yet they refused to print my story, under the bizarre notion that it represented the advocacy of "drugs." This is how the drug war works to suppress free speech in the name of dogmatic matierialist science. If certain drugs work to end depression and to help one quit antidepressants, we SHOULD be advocating them. Not that I was actually "advocating" in the negative sense of that word. I am telling no one to follow my lead: I am simply saying what worked for me. But publishers do not want my story to get out there because it violates drug war orthodoxy, according to which materialist doctors are supposed to be the experts on my own personal mood and mentation.

This is why Mr. Whitaker (founder of Mad in America and author of a popular book by that name) needs to write a sequel denouncing the materialist war on drugs. It is the materialist war on drugs that has taken advantage of prohibition to make 1 in 4 American women dependent on Big Pharma meds for life. It is the materialist mindset about drugs that is still working to demonize and outlaw indigenous medicines, that is, medicines that work holistically. These drugs, instead, are being held to materialist standards -- placed under a microscope, that is, to search for "efficacy" -- and this is nothing less than pharmacological colonialism.

  • Christian Science Rehab
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Drug Use as Self-Medication
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
  • How the Drug War Turns the Withdrawal Process into a Morality Tale
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
  • Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants
  • Replacing 12-Step Programs with Shamanic Healing
  • Taper Talk
  • Tapering for Jesus
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Mental Health Survey that psychiatrists don't want you to take
  • The real reason for depression in America
  • The War on Drugs and the Psychiatric Pill Mill
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants

  • Open Letters







    Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.

    I used to be surprised at this reticence on the part of modern drug-war pundits, until I realized that most of them are materialists. That is, most of them believe in (or claim to believe in) the psychiatric pill mill. If they happen to praise psychedelic drugs as a godsend for the depressed, they will yet tell us that such substances are only for those whose finicky body chemistries fail to respond appropriately to SSRIs and SNRIs. The fact is, however, there are thousands of medicines out there that can help with psychological issues -- and this is based on simple psychological common sense. But materialist scientists ignore common sense. That's why Dr. Robert Glatter wrote an article in Forbes magazine wondering if laughing gas could help the depressed.

    As a lifelong depressive, I am embarrassed for Robert, that he has to even ask such a question. Of course laughing gas could help. Not only is laughter "the best medicine," as Readers Digest has told us for years, but looking forward to laughing is beneficial too. But materialist scientists ignore anecdote and history and tell us that THEY will be the judge of psychoactive medicines, thank you very much. And they will NOT judge such medicines by asking folks like myself if they work but rather by looking under a microscope to see if they work in the biochemical way that materialists expect.

  • America's Blind Spot
  • Another Cry in the Wilderness
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Critique of the Philosophy of Happiness
  • Depressed? Here's why you can't get the medicines that you need
  • Drug War Murderers
  • End the Drug War Now
  • Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
  • Finally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxes
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
  • God and Drugs
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!
  • Heroin versus Alcohol
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the drug war
  • How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England
  • How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
  • How the Drug War Screws the Depressed
  • How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
  • How to Unite Drug War Opponents of all Ethnicities
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl
  • Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro
  • In Defense of Religious Drug Use
  • Keep Laughing Gas Legal
  • Majoring in Drug War Philosophy
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
  • No drugs are bad in and of themselves
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open Letter to Diane O'Leary
  • Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand
  • Open Letter to Erowid
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
  • Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser
  • Open letter to Kenneth Sewell
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open Letter to Margo Margaritoff
  • Open Letter to Nathan at TheDEA.org
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley
  • Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths
  • Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
  • Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  • Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer
  • Open Letter to Vincent Rado
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War
  • Prohibition Spectrum Disorder
  • Prohibitionists Never Learn
  • Regulate and Educate
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Science is not free in the age of the drug war
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs
  • Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma
  • Teenagers and Cannabis
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Drug War and Armageddon
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings
  • The Menace of the Drug War
  • The Mother of all Western Biases
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts
  • The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment
  • The Right to LIVE FULLY is more important than the Right to DIE
  • There is nothing to debate: the drug war is wrong, root and branch
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War
  • Unscientific American
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • Vancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe Use
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
  • Whitehead and Psychedelics
  • Why CBS 19 should stop supporting the Drug War
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
  • Why Philosophers Need to Stop Dogmatically Ignoring Drugs
  • Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
  • Why Science is the Handmaiden of the Drug War
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
  • Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine
  • Why the Holocaust Museum must denounce the Drug War
  • William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas




  • Notes:

    1 Wininger, Charles, Listening to Ecstasy, 2021 (up)
    2 Glatter, Dr. Robert, Can Laughing Gas Help People with Treatment Resistant Depression?, Forbes Magazine, 2021 (up)
    3 Simon, Leslie V., Serotonin Syndrome, NIH National Library of Medicine: National Center for Biotechnology Information, 2023 (up)
    4 Daily Aspirin Linked To More Than 3,000 Deaths Per Year, Scientists Warn, Huffington Post, (up)
    5 Newcombe, Russell, Intoxiphobia: discrimination toward people who use drugs, academia.edu, London, 2014 (up)
    6 Quass, Brian, The Naive Psychology of the Drug War, 2022 (up)
    7 And trust me, there's no fear of THAT. As Professor Lilloman said to Mel Brooks in "High Anxiety": "Don't tell me what's nece-- I tell YOU what's nece!" (up)
    8 Quass, Brian, The Runner: Racist Drug War Agitprop, 2022 (up)
    9 Paley, Dawn, Drug War Capitalism, AK Press, Chico, California, 2014 (up)



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    Next essay: My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
    Previous essay: My First Journey on Psilocybin

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    Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

    I wish someone would tell Getty Images to start earning an honest living. I bought AI credits only to find that words like "mushrooms" and "drugs" could not be used. Nor "blood," nor "violence." And they refuse to refund my $14,99. Who is their service for, Ozzie Harriet?
    The first step in harm reduction is to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Then hundreds of millions of people will no longer suffer in silence for want of godsend medicines... for depression, for pain, for anxiety, for religious doubts... you name it.
    Someday those books about weird state laws will be full of factoids like: "In Alabama, you could be jailed for 20 years for conspiring to eat a mushroom."
    We might as well fight for justice for Christopher Reeves: he was killed because someone was peddling that junk that we call horses. The question is: who sold Christopher that horse?! Who encouraged him to ride it?!
    This is the mentality for today's materialist researcher when it comes to "laughing gas." He does not care that it merely cheers folks up. He wants to see what is REALLY going on with the substance, using electrodes and brain scans.
    We need a scheduling system for psychoactive drugs as much as we need a scheduling system for sports activities: i.e. NOT AT ALL. Some sports are VERY dangerous, but we do not outlaw them because we know that there are benefits both to sports and to freedom in general.
    So he writes about the mindset of the deeply depressed, reifying the condition as if it were some great "type" inevitably to be encountered in humanity. No. It's the "type" to be found in a post-Christian society that has turned up its scientific nose at psychoactive medicine.
    Amphetamines are "meds" when they help kids think more clearly but they are "drugs" when they help adults think more clearly. That shows you just how bewildered Americans are when it comes to drugs.
    We've got to take the fight TO the drug warriors by starting to hold them legally responsible for having spread "Big Lies" about "drugs." Anyone involved in producing the "brain frying" PSA of the 1980s should be put on trial for willfully spreading a toxic lie.
    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.
    More Tweets

    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!)







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    You have been reading an article entitled, Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war: an open letter to Charley Wininger, author of 'Listening to Ecstasy', published on July 21, 2024 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)