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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 Brian 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.

Update: May 30, 2025

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.



Author's Follow-up:

May 30, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up





Here is where I am supposed to insert the groveling disclaimer that I am not giving medical advice. I do so, however, under protest. Jim Beam whisky gives "medical advice" every day of the year in its prime-time television ads targeted at young people10. They tell the kids that sociability and relaxation can be obtained by drinking whisky. Meanwhile, Red Bull tells kids what to do if they wish to be accepted by their fellows: namely, to drink Red Bull. As for Starbucks Coffee... well, you get the idea. Besides, the idea that we should leave the discussion of "drugs" to medical doctors is wrong. Medical doctors are behaviorists11 when it comes to human psychology and so are dogmatically obliged to ignore the obvious benefits of psychoactive medicines -- as well as the obvious downsides of outlawing them: the violence that we thereby create out of whole cloth, the deaths that we create by refusing to teach safe use, the gangs and cartels that we create by drug prohibition in the exact same way as liquor prohibition created the American Mafia and first brought machine-gun fire to American streets.

Moreover, since drug use has inspired new musical genres and new religions, doctors are clearly unqualified to perform a risk/benefit analysis of drug use. To do so, they would have to be experts not simply on the purely physical risks of drug use, but also on the relative value of music and religion in an ostensibly free world. For the question is not simply, does drug use have risks? All activities have risks. The question is rather: are those risks worth it given the enormous potential benefits of things like musical and religious freedom? That is not a question that our doctors have been trained to answer. If there are any experts on such topics, they are philosophers and theologians, not medical doctors. Fortunately for those doctors, however, our government is interested only in the potential downsides of drug use (as is clear from the fact that we have a National Institute on Drug Abuse rather than a National Institute on Drug Use). And so physicians feel free to judge drug use in a way that we judge no other risky activity on the planet: that is, by looking at only the downsides of the activity and never looking at the benefits (and never looking at the endless downsides of outlawing drug use).

So rather than apologize for writing honestly about drugs, I would prefer to remind the reader of what they ideally would have learned in school: namely, that they have to do their own research on the probable utility of any particular substance when it comes to obtaining various desired results. It is all about details, folks -- your goals in life, your general disposition, your biochemistry, your risk tolerance, your education level, your choice of specific substances, your choice of dosage, etc.: you know, all the details that Drug Warriors ignore. Why? Because they have childishly decided to judge drugs "up" or "down," as "good" or "bad," without regard for the vast array of variables that affect the outcome of use. And so they say things like, "Crack kills!" and "Fentanyl steals loved ones!"12, failing to realize that such statements are philosophically equivalent to the paleolithic cry of "Fire bad!" Such statements serve to make us fear and demonize substances rather than to learn how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity. The braindead take-home message is that one victim of misuse is one too many when it comes to drug use, a standard that we hold for no other activity in the world, not for mountain climbing, not for parachuting, and certainly not for car driving or alcohol consumption.

This prohibitionist mindset makes drug research problematic for those seeking honest information. This is because the conglomerate-owned media censors all reports of beneficial drug use, thereby consigning most honest talk about drugs to the Dark Web, where the honest bits are buried amidst hype and spam and sales pitches disguised as educational content. It is interesting to note how this censorship forces honest articles about drugs into bad online neighborhoods, thereby causing most Americans to ignore them. In my non-digital youth, all merely honest talk about drug effects was shunted off onto fringe publications from seemingly shady companies like Loompanics. This had the no-doubt desired effect for the government of discouraging drug research by suggesting that the pursuit of honesty about drugs was a seedy business associated with call girls and pornography and the other dubious services that are advertised on such fringe outlets. As one scoured the profit-driven fringe mags looking for the truth about individual drugs, you could almost hear Uncle Sam in the background saying: "Come home, sinner, come home." After all, our drug-demonizing censorship had cast truth seekers as perverts and heretics, and all free thinkers were invited by the government to feel guilt by association.

To summarize then, I make no claims as to the power of any particular drug to help get any particular person off of any particular dependence-causing meds like Effexor. Nevertheless, there are plenty of drugs whose usage reports make it absolutely clear that they have a huge potential to help one "steer the course" in withdrawing from an unwanted substance. What is recidivism after all? It is merely the result of a couple of hours of extreme angst, generally experienced in the wee hours of the morning, in which bad psychological vibes persuade the withdrawing individual to relapse. Now, I maintain that it is mere psychological common sense that the effects of these relatively short periods of angst on the part of withdrawing individuals could be obfuscated and defanged with the help of a wide variety of drugs, used alone or in combination, especially when that use is inspired by actual experiences of others in similar situations, with similar goals, and similar risk tolerances, and similar biochemistry, etc. The Drug Warrior keeps us from thinking this way by insisting that human beings will always be irresponsible children when it comes to psychoactive drugs. And yet in the absence of such anti-scientific fearmongering, folks like myself could survive recidivist angst by using cocaine for the first instance, laughing gas second, a mood-boosting phenethylamine after that, and so forth. The idea that drug use has to be drug abuse is a warped idea of modern times, one that promotes a dark ages when it comes to mind and mood medicine.

To put this another way, I am the expert, to the extent that there is one, in deciding what makes sense for ME given a true risk/benefit analysis of drugs, one that considers ALL the benefits of drug use AND all of the downsides of NOT using a particular drug. Would I commit suicide without it? Would I require brain-damaging shock therapy without it? I alone am in a position to know what drug use makes sense for me in light of my own circumstances: including my own psychological, vocational, philosophical, musical, and religious proclivities and goals in life. Materialist doctors can tell me about physical risks, but that is all. They cannot tell me whether that risk makes sense for me since they cannot see the world through my eyes -- despite their mendacious claims to be able to judge drug use "up" or "down" without regard to context.

For those who see no benefits in drug use, let me end with a list of drug user reports from "Pihkal.13" Just read the following reports of the effects of various phenethylamines and then try to tell me that such substances could have no positive uses for anybody, anywhere, ever.

"More than tranquil, I was completely at peace, in a beautiful, benign, and placid place."

"A glimpse of what true heaven is supposed to feel like... The entire experience
was exquisite. Next day, same sense of serene, quiet joy/beauty persisted for most of the day. A true healing potential."

"It had the most profound impact on me. It was at the time of the death of my wife's mother, and I found that I could look directly towards death and its ramifications."

"Somehow my personality was divided and exposed, and this allowed me to understand my psychic structure more clearly."

"A wonderful feeling of converting energy into action."

"This is total energy, and I am aware of my every membrane. This has been a marvelous experience, very beautiful, joyous, and sensuous."


Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths






In an ideal world, we would replace psychiatrists with what I call pharmacologically savvy empaths, compassionate healers with a vast knowledge of psychoactive substances from around the world and the creativity to suggest a wide variety of protocols for their safe use as based on psychological common sense. By so doing, we would get rid of the whole concept of 'patients' and 'treat' everybody for the same thing: namely, a desire to improve one's mind and mood. But the first step toward this change will be to renounce the idea that materialist scientists are the experts when it comes to mind and mood medicine in the first place. This is a category error. The experts on mind and mood are real people with real emotion, not physical doctors whose materialist bona fides dogmatically require them to ignore all the benefits of drugs under the belief that efficacy is to be determined by looking under a microscope.

This materialism blinds such doctors to common sense, so much so that it leads them to prefer the suicide of their patient to the use of feel-good medicines that could cheer that patient up in a trice. For the fact that a patient is happy means nothing to the materialist doctor: they want the patient to 'really' be happy -- which is just there way of saying that they want a "cure" that will work according to the behaviorist principles to which they are dedicated as modern-day materialists. Anybody could prescribe a drug that works, after all: only a big important doctor can prescribe something that works according to theory. Sure, the prescription has a worse track record then the real thing, but the doctor's primary job is to vindicate materialism, not to worry about the welfare of their patient. And so they place their hands to their ears as the voice of common sense cries out loudly and clearly: "You could cheer that patient up in a jiffy with a wide variety of medicines that you have chosen to demonize rather than to use in creative and safe ways for the benefit of humankind!" I am not saying that doctors are consciously aware of this evil --merely that they are complicit in it thanks to their blind allegiance to the inhumane doctrine of behaviorism.

This is the sick reality of our current approach. And yet everybody holds this mad belief, this idea that medical doctors should treat mind and mood conditions.

How do I know this?

Consider the many organizations that are out to prevent suicide. If they understood the evil consequences of having medical doctors handle our mind and mood problems, they would immediately call for the re-legalization of drugs and for psychiatrists to morph into empathizing, drug-savvy shamans. Why? Because the existing paradigm causes totally unnecessary suicides: it makes doctors evil by dogmatically requiring them to withhold substances that would obviously cheer one up and even inspire one (see the uplifting and non-addictive meds created by Alexander Shulgin, for instance). The anti-suicide movement should be all about the sane use of drugs that elate. The fact that it is not speaks volumes about America's addiction to the hateful materialist mindset of behaviorism.

More proof? What about the many groups that protest brain-damaging shock therapy? Good for them, right? but... why is shock therapy even necessary? Because we have outlawed all godsend medicines that could cheer up almost anybody "in a trice." And why do we do so? Because we actually prefer to damage the brain of the depressed rather than to have them use drugs. We prefer it! Is this not the most hateful of all possible fanaticisms: a belief about drugs that causes us to prefer suicide and brain damage to drug use? Is it really only myself who sees the madness here? Is there not one other philosopher on the planet who sees through the fog of drug war propaganda to the true evil that it causes?

This is totally unrecognized madness -- and it cries out for a complete change in America's attitude, not just toward drugs but toward our whole approach to mind and mood. We need to start learning from the compassionate holism of the shamanic world as manifested today in the cosmovision of the Andes. We need to start considering the human being as an unique individual and not as an interchangeable widget amenable to the one-size-fits-all cures of reductionism. The best way to fast-track such change is to implement the life-saving protocol of placing the above-mentioned pharmacologically savvy empaths in charge of mind and mood and putting the materialist scientists back where they belong: in jobs related to rocket chemistry and hadron colliders. We need to tell the Dr. Spocks of psychology that: "Thanks, but no thanks. We don't need your help when it comes to subjective matters, thank you very much indeed. Take your all-too-logical mind back to the physics lab where it belongs."

  • Addicted to Addiction: in Drug War USA
  • Addicted to Ignorance: problems with the 'no pain, no gain' school of de-tox therapy
  • Addiction
  • After the Drug War: what a free world would look like
  • After the Drug War part 2
  • Another Cry in the Wilderness: open letter to US Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine
  • Assisted Suicide and the War on Drugs
  • Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs
  • Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant: A critique of The Emperor’s New Drugs
  • Case Studies in Wise Drug Use
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal: an open letter to Austin of the Huachuma Project
  • Declaration of Independence from the War on Drugs
  • Drug Use as Self-Medication
  • Drugs are not the enemy, hatred is the enemy: an open letter to Joshua Falcon, author of Designing Consciousness: Psychedelics as Ontological Design Tools for Decolonizing Consciousness
  • Ego Transcendence Made Easy: or how Schopenhauer was reckoning without drugs before it was cool to do so
  • Elderly Victims of Drug War Ideology
  • Four reasons why Addiction is a political term
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war: an open letter to Charley Wininger, author of 'Listening to Ecstasy'
  • Goodbye Patient, Hello Client: a new shamanic approach to drug use and mental healing
  • Harold & Kumar Support the Drug War
  • Heroin versus Alcohol: an open letter to Professor Steven Gimbel of Gettysburg College
  • How Cocaine could have helped me
  • How Drug Prohibition Leads to Excessive Drinking and Smoking
  • How Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient: and what we should do about that
  • How the Drug War Blinds us to Godsend Medicine
  • How the Drug War is a War on Creativity
  • How the Drug War Killed Amy Winehouse
  • How The Drug War Killed Andy Gibb
  • How the Drug War Punishes the Elderly
  • How the Myth of Mental Illness supports the war on drugs: and leads to the preventable suicides of our loved ones
  • How to Unite Drug War Opponents of all Ethnicities: Open letter to Sean McAllister, drug policy reform lawyer
  • Hypocritical America Embraces Drug War Fascism: a warning to any remaining friends of freedom
  • In Praise of Doctor Feelgood: Why psychiatry must become pharmacologically informed shamanism
  • In Praise of Drug Dealers: replacing the modern barbaric treatment of so-called addicts with pharmacologically informed shamanism
  • In Praise of Thomas Szasz
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Let's Hear It For Psychoactive Therapy: as opposed to just Psychedelic Therapy
  • Medications for so-called 'opioid-use disorder' are legion: it's just that we have outlawed them all
  • Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart: author of 'Drug Use for Grown-Ups: Chasing Liberty in the Land of Fear'
  • Open Letter to Erowid: about a misleading 2018 article by Karolina Zieba
  • Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser: author of 'The Irrationality of Alcoholics Anonymous'
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling: whose documentary about Chicago violence does not even mention the Drug War!!!
  • Pihkal 2.0: Finding drugs that work for users rather than for pharmaceutical companies
  • Replacing 12-Step Programs with Shamanic Healing
  • Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism: The post that got me banned for life from the Reddit Psychiatry group
  • Science is not free in the age of the drug war: an open letter to The American Council on Science and Health
  • Shannon Information and Magic Mushrooms
  • Someone you love is suffering unnecessarily because of the war on drugs
  • Thank God for Erowid: in response to a 2015 Vice article by Adam Rothstein
  • Thank God for Soul Quest: It's time to stop blaming others for the problems caused by drug prohibition
  • THE ANTI DRUG WAR BLOG: combatting drug war propaganda and lies, one post at a time
  • The Drug War and Armageddon: An open letter to Bryan Walsh, author of End Times
  • The Great Philosophical Problem of Our Time
  • The Mother of all Western Biases: an open letter to Science News
  • The Muddled Metaphysics of the Drug War: How modern science helps normalize prohibition
  • The Myth of the Addictive Personality
  • The Origins of Modern Psychiatry: How to create a billion-dollar industry in three easy steps
  • The Philosophical Idiocy of the Drug War
  • The real reason for depression in America
  • Using Opium to Fight Depression: on replacing psychiatry with pharmacologically savvy shamanism
  • What Jim Hogshire Got Wrong about Drugs: a philosophical review of Pills-a-Go-Go
  • Why America's Mental Healthcare System is Insane: and how the work of Alexander Shulgin can inspire us to fix it
  • Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use: how the drug war blinds us to lifesaving medicine
  • Why Louis Theroux is Clueless about Addiction and Alcoholism: like almost every other would-be Drug War reformer on the planet
  • Why Scientists Should Not Judge Drugs: an open letter to a reader

    • Fentanyl






    Saying "Fentanyl kills!" makes just as much sense as saying "Fire bad!" Both are attempts to make us fear dangerous substances rather than to learn how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity.

  • Drug Dealers as Modern Witches: an open letter to Ronald Hutton, author of 'The Witch: A History of Fear from Ancient Times to the Present'
  • Drug Warriors are the Problem, not Drug Dealers
  • Fentanyl does not kill! Prohibition does!
  • Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws Do: in response to the misguided billboard campaign of Cindy DeMaio and Rachel's Angels
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war: an open letter to Charley Wininger, author of 'Listening to Ecstasy'
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl: open letter to Lynn Walker of the Wichita Falls Times Record News
  • My review of Fentanyl Inc.
  • Prohibition is the Problem: an open letter to Caroline Chatwin & Richard G. Alexander, authors of 'Virtuous drug use in the neoliberal age'
  • Thank God for Soul Quest: It's time to stop blaming others for the problems caused by drug prohibition
  • The Philosophical Idiocy of the Drug War
  • The Problem is Prohibition, not Fentanyl: a response to Maia Szalavitz' op-ed piece in the New York Times
  • Whitehead and Witches: What do you do when the entire world has gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick?

    • Antidepressants






    "Depression Is Not Caused by Chemical Imbalance in the Brain" --Noam Shpancer Ph.D.


    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.



  • America's Great Anti-Depressant Scam
  • Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant: A critique of The Emperor’s New Drugs
  • Depressed? Here's why you can't get the medicines that you need: how the FDA's drug approval process is based on big-money politics and the drug war ideology of substance demonization
  • Depressed? Here's why.: Exposing the anti-patient drug-war lobby in Washington
  • Depression is real, says the APA, and they should know: they cause it!
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war: an open letter to Charley Wininger, author of 'Listening to Ecstasy'
  • How the Drug War Screws the Depressed: an open letter to Dr. Alan I. Leshner
  • How to end the war in Mexico, stop inner-city killings and cure depression in one easy step
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus: an open letter to Austin from the Huachuma Project
  • Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants: Here's why that's nonsense
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens: new hope for the millions who are dependent on SSRIs and SNRIs
  • Surviving the Surviving Antidepressants website
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to Frederick S. Barrett, Ph.D., cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University
  • The Crucial Connection Between Antidepressants and the War on Drugs: notes on getting off of Effexor
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs: why psychedelic therapy must REPLACE modern psychiatry rather than simply complement it
  • The Philosophical Significance of the Use of Antidepressants in the Age of Drug Prohibition
  • The real reason for depression in America
  • Using Opium to Fight Depression: on replacing psychiatry with pharmacologically savvy shamanism
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines
  • Why doctors should prescribe opium for depression: how materialists collude with drug warriors to keep us from using godsend medicine
  • Why SSRIs are Crap: testimony from an expert

    • Getting Off Drugs






    NOVEMBER 2024

    I have written dozens of essays about antidepressants and the Drug War, but it is important to read this one first, for it contains the most up-to-date info on my battle to get off such drugs. This reading order is important because I declared premature victory against the SNRI called Effexor in recent essays, only to discover that the drug is far more insidious than I gave it credit for. It turns out withdrawing, at least for me, eventually led to deep feelings of abject despair, far greater than the depression for which I started taking the "med" in the first place.

    The frustrating thing is, these feelings could be combatted by a host of drugs that we have outlawed in the name of our anti-scientific and anti-patient war on drugs. That much is just psychological common sense. But we have been taught to believe that there are no positive uses for opium, nor for cocaine, nor for coca, nor for MDMA, nor for laughing gas, nor for peyote, nor for the hundreds of inspiring phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin, etc. etc. etc.

    The truth is, rather, that Drug Warriors (and the millions whom they have brainwashed) do not WANT there to be positive uses for such drugs. No, they want me to "keep taking my meds" instead and so to enrich their investment portfolios in the pharmaceutical sector. Meanwhile, those without a vested financial interest have been taught that antidepressants are "scientific" and so they cannot understand my desire to get off them. They cannot understand the hell of being turned into a patient for life and having to make regular expensive and humiliating pilgrimages to psychiatrists (who are half one's own age) to bare one's soul for the purpose of obtaining an expensive prescription for a drug that numbs one's brain rather than inspiring it - and a drug which seems to counteract, dampen and/or repress most of the positive effects that I might have otherwise obtained by the few semi-legal alternatives to antidepressants, such as psilocybin and ayahuasca.

    But it is just psychological common sense that I could withdraw successfully from Effexor with the advised use of a comprehensive pharmacy, including but not limited to the demonized substances listed above. But materialist science is not interested in common sense. And so they tell me that such drug use has not been proven to "work." But materialist doctors are not experts in what motivates me as a living, breathing, unique individual. The heart has its own reasons that reductionist science cannot understand. If I could look forward, at this moment, to relaxing with an opium pipe tonight, my mood would improve NOW, not just tonight. I would have something to look forward to. I would not feel the need to reach for that bottle full of Effexor pills that I was hoping to foreswear. Likewise, if I could use a drug to laugh and "touch the hand of God" (as with laughing gas and phenethylamines respectively), I could laugh at the pangs of despair that Effexor tries to throw my way.

    Science's eternal response to such ideas is: "There is no proof that such things work!"

    No, nor will there ever be in the age of the Drug War, in which such common sense use is punished by long jail terms and would never be favorably publicized, even if successful, since America's prime imperative in the age of the Drug War is to demonize psychoactive medicines, under the absurd assumption-laden idea that to talk honestly about drugs is to encourage their use.

    Well, we SHOULD be encouraging their use in cases where they actually work, in cases, for instance, when they prevent guys like myself from killing themselves thanks to the knowledge that they are a bounden slave to the combined forces of the Drug War and Big Pharma's pill mill.

    Besides, there is no proof that hugging works, but we do not need Dr. Spock of Star Trek to launch a study into that issue: we all know that hugging works by bringing two souls together both physically and spiritually. We do not need a map of brain chemistry to figure this out: the proof is extant, the proof is in the pudding.

    But I haven't given up yet despite the setback in my most recent plan. I'm going to search the world for a place where I can get off antidepressants in a way that makes some psychological common sense.

    Right now, all I see in terms of resources are a bunch of companies who, for large fees, will help me go cold turkey on antidepressants., or companies that claim to have found the right combination of legal herbal formulas that should make withdrawal easier. But to me, these are all what Percy Shelley would call "frail spells," concocted under the watchful eye of the Drug Warrior to make sure that nothing potent and obviously effective will get added to the mix. In fact, if a space alien came to earth and asked what sort of psychoactive drugs were outlawed, one could honestly answer: "Anything that obviously works."

    Meanwhile, drug laws make it impossible for me to visit psychiatrists remotely online, requiring me instead to physically visit my doctors, thereby limiting rural residents like myself to accessing hayseed psychiatrists whose one area of expertise seems to be the writing of prescriptions for antidepressants. Talk to them about anything else, and their eyes glaze over. "That's all unproven," they'll say, "Or, no, we have yet to fully study such things." As if we have to study in order to realize that feeling good helps and can have positive psychological effects.

    I'm sure that part of the problem with my withdrawal scheme is that I tried to get off the drug too quickly. But I only tried that because I can find no doctor who will compound the drug for me in a way that makes psychological common sense, namely, with daily miniscule reductions in dosage. My current psychiatrist told me that such compounding was unheard of and that I should drop doses by 37.5 mg at a time, since that is the lowest dose that the pharmaceutical companies create. He said I could start "counting pill beads" once I am down to a 37.5 mg daily dose if I wanted to taper still further.

    Count pill beads? Surely that's why compounding pharmacists exist: to count pill beads. (UPDATE: I was wrong about this. See my article on "Tapering for Jesus.")

    I did find a compounding company that said it could compound Effexor in the way that I desire. But there's a big catch: they have to receive a prescription for that purpose. And I can find no doctor in the world who is willing to write me one. Even those who sympathize with my plight want me to become their full-time patient before they will even consider writing such a prescription.

    So those who warned me against trying to get off Effexor were right in a way: it is extraordinarily difficult. But they feel to realize WHY this is so. It is not just because Effexor is a toxic drug, but also because the drug war has outlawed everything that could help me get off it.

    This is why those pundits who sign off on the psychiatric pill mill are clueless about the huge problem with the war on drugs: the way it humiliates and disempowers millions. For it turns out that the phrase "No hope in dope" is true after all, but only when the dope in question is modern antidepressants.



    OCTOBER 2024

    Here are some of the many articles I have written about the philosophy of getting off drugs. Bear in mind that I am in the process of getting off Effexor myself and am exploring the power of "drugs to fight drugs" in so doing. And this is not a straightforward path given the sweeping limits that are imposed by drug law. So the question of exactly what might work (and how and when, etc.) is still wide open and I am advocating nothing, except the common sense notion that we can benefit from euphoria and mood boosts, yes, and that "drugs can be used to fight drugs," and in a safe way too -- a way that will prove far safer than prohibition, which continues to bring about daily deaths from drive-by shootings and unregulated product while causing civil wars overseas.

    I guess what I am saying here is, this site is not purporting to offer medical advice. I avoid using such wording, however, because so many authors refuse to talk honestly about drugs, especially about positive drug use, for fear of being seen as giving medical advice, and this, of course, is just how drug warriors want matters to remain. It lets them shut down free speech about drugs.

    Besides, I reject the idea that materialist doctors are the experts when it comes to how we think and feel about life. The best they can do as materialist is to tell us the potential physical risks of using holistically-operating drugs, but individuals are the experts on what motivates them in life, on their own particular hopes and dreams and on what risks they deem necessary to obtain them, to pursue happiness, that is, which objective our legislators outlawed when they outlawed all substances that can help facilitate happiness in the properly motivated and educated individual.

    The real answer is not for authors to give groveling apologies for being honest, however: the real answer is for kids to be educated about the basics of wise substance use -- and for America to come to grips with the fact that we will always be surrounded by "drugs" -- and that the goal should be to ensure safe use, not to keep endlessly arresting minorities and removing them from the voting rolls on behalf of the clinically insane idea that we should outlaw mother nature to protect our kids -- and this in a purportedly Christian country whose very deity told us that his creation was good.

  • America's biggest drug pusher: The American Psychiatric Association:
  • Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs
  • Christian Science Rehab: aka the Twelve Step Group
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal: an open letter to Austin of the Huachuma Project
  • Fighting Drugs with Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war: an open letter to Charley Wininger, author of 'Listening to Ecstasy'
  • Getting off Effexor MY WAY: response to pushback from the Surviving Antidepressants website
  • How materialists turned me into a patient for life
  • How Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient: and what we should do about that
  • How the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient
  • How the Drug War Turns the Withdrawal Process into a Morality Tale
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus: an open letter to Austin from the Huachuma Project
  • In the Realm of Hungry Drug Warriors: How the Drug War has blinded Gabor Maté to the great addiction crisis of our time
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Mad at Mad in America: how Robert Whitaker's organization shuts down free speech in the name of drug war ideology
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement: an open letter to Mad in America
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate: ending the torture-friendly 12-step programs
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand: or at least to her gatekeeper
  • Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants: Here's why that's nonsense
  • Replacing 12-Step Programs with Shamanic Healing
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens: new hope for the millions who are dependent on SSRIs and SNRIs
  • Sending Out an SOS: For Sentara to stop disempowering the victims of the psychiatric pill mill
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma: an open letter to the Heffter Research Institute
  • Surviving the Surviving Antidepressants website
  • Taper Talk: a philosophical review of the antidepressant tapering guide from Psychedelic Passage
  • Tapering for Jesus: how drug warriors moralize the withdrawal process
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to Frederick S. Barrett, Ph.D., cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University
  • The Crucial Connection Between Antidepressants and the War on Drugs: notes on getting off of Effexor
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs: why psychedelic therapy must REPLACE modern psychiatry rather than simply complement it
  • 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: Why you can’t understand one without understanding the other
  • This is your brain on Effexor
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines
  • What the psychiatrist said when I told him I wanted to get off Effexor
  • Why SSRIs are Crap: testimony from an expert

    • MDMA/Ecstasy






    The FDA approves of brain-damaging shock therapy but will not approve MDMA for soldiers with PTSD. This is the same FDA that signs off on the psychiatric pill mill upon which 1 in 4 American women are dependent for life. This is the same FDA that approves Big Pharma drugs whose advertised side effects include death itself! (Can somebody say "follow the money"?)

  • Another Academic Toes the Drug Warrior Line: in response to the paper entitled LSD, Ecstasy and the Music of Politics by AV Satish Chandra
  • Constructive criticism of the MAPS strategy for re-legalizing MDMA
  • Even Terence McKenna Was Wrong About MDMA
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war: an open letter to Charley Wininger, author of 'Listening to Ecstasy'
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!: An open letter to Dr. Jessica Maples-Keller, principal investigator for the 'MDMA Plus Exposure Therapy for PTSD' at Emory University
  • How Ecstasy could end mass shootings
  • How Logic-Challenged Journalists Support the Drug War
  • How the Drug War killed Leah Betts: and ended the peaceful rave scene
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • MDMA and Depression: another open letter to Charley Wininger
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy: open letter to researcher Michael Mithoefer, MD
  • Using Ecstasy in Church: Reviving church attendance with the use of entheogens

    • 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 don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.

    Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.



  • America's Blind Spot: Open Letter to Jospeh Koterski
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away: an open letter to Cory Morgan, columnist for the Western Standard
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal: an open letter to Austin of the Huachuma Project
  • Drug War Murderers: an open letter to People magazine
  • Drugs are not the problem: no, not even in nursing homes
  • End the Drug War Now: an open letter to American Senators in Washington, D.C.
  • Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon: an open letter to the Psilocybin Advisory Board of the Oregon Health Authority
  • Finally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxes: an open letter to Julian Buchanan
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs: an open letter to Ligare, a Christian Psychedelic Society
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war: an open letter to Charley Wininger, author of 'Listening to Ecstasy'
  • God and Drugs: why I am not (entirely) a Christian
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!: An open letter to Dr. Jessica Maples-Keller, principal investigator for the 'MDMA Plus Exposure Therapy for PTSD' at Emory University
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War: an open letter to Professor Thad Polk
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca: an open letter to the National Geographic Society
  • How Scientific American reckons without the drug war: in response to 'A Talking Cure for Psychosis' by Matthew M. Kurtz
  • How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England: an open letter to British Philosophers
  • How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant: an open letter to Professor Daniel A. Bonevac of the University of Pittsburgh
  • How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987: open letter to the 'Sites of Conscience' website
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma: an open letter to Task Force member David Chelmow MD
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus: an open letter to Austin from the Huachuma Project
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl: open letter to Lynn Walker of the Wichita Falls Times Record News
  • Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro: a philosophical discussion of the fascinating series on Curiosity Stream
  • In Defense of Religious Drug Use: an open letter to Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Keep Laughing Gas Legal: Open letter to Niamh Eastwood (Executive Director of Release) and Dr. David Nicholl (NHS neurologist), in response to their recent interview about laughing gas on Channel 5, UK
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy: open letter to researcher Michael Mithoefer, MD
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement: an open letter to Mad in America
  • No drugs are bad in and of themselves: an open letter to Steven Urquhart, founder of the Divine Assembly
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate: ending the torture-friendly 12-step programs
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb: author of The Dream of Enlightenment
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open Letter to Diane O'Leary: author of 'Medicine's Bad Philosophy Threatens Your Health'
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand: or at least to her gatekeeper
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama: author of Liberalism and its Discontents
  • Open letter to Kenneth Sewell: author of Red Star Rogue
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling: whose documentary about Chicago violence does not even mention the Drug War!!!
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University: in response to his paper at Academia.edu entitled 'Regulating the Rave Scene'
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley: about addiction
  • Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths: the downsides of 'working within the system'
  • Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
  • Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  • Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature: on behalf of my 92-year-old mother
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman: regarding his Drug War-biased review of the movie 'Four Good Days'
  • Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer: at Maquarie University, Department of Security Studies and Criminology
  • Open Letter to Vincent Rado: agreeing to disagree?
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith: author of 'The Quantum Enigma'
  • Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War: open letter to computer scientist George Mohler
  • Prohibitionists Never Learn: an open letter to San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins
  • Regulate and Educate: an open letter to Oregon Governor Tina Kotek
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens: new hope for the millions who are dependent on SSRIs and SNRIs
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War: open letter to Laura Sanders
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs: an open letter to freelance writer Cassandra Willyard, author of 'A next-gen pain drug shows promise, but chronic sufferers need more options'
  • Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited: an open letter to the Psychedelic Society of Vermont
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma: an open letter to the Heffter Research Institute
  • Teenagers and Cannabis: an open letter to Clinical Professor Bobby Smyth at the School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to Frederick S. Barrett, Ph.D., cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter: an open letter to the Drug Policy Alliance
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs: why psychedelic therapy must REPLACE modern psychiatry rather than simply complement it
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings: open letter to Criminologist James Alan Fox
  • The Menace of the Drug War: open letter to Arab Naz, author of The Menace of Opiate
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts: an open letter to Professors Peter Reuter and Alex Stevens
  • The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment: an open letter to Dr. Jonathan Stea
  • The Right to LIVE FULLY is more important than the Right to DIE: open letter to Gino Kenny, People Before Profit
  • There is nothing to debate: the drug war is wrong, root and branch: an open letter to Nathan of TheDEA.org
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies: an open letter to WTOP News
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War: and how we respond to it -- an open letter to Professor Nathan Nobis
  • Unscientific American: How the authors at Scientific American self-censor their articles in deference to America's Drug War
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines
  • Vancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe Use: open letter to the Vancouver Police Department
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM: an open letter to station manager Joel Oxley
  • Whitehead and Psychedelics: an open letter to Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes at the University of Exeter
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no: open letter to the Christian Science propaganda organization called DARE
  • Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me: An open letter to apologists for the psychiatric pill mill
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine: an open letter to Damon Barrett
  • Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine
  • Why the Holocaust Museum must denounce the Drug War: an open letter to the UHMM in Washington, DC




    • 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)
    10 Quass, Brian, Jim Beam and Drugs, 2024 (up)
    11 Quass, Brian, Behaviorism and the War on Drugs, 2024 (up)
    12 Quass, Brian, Fentanyl does not kill! Prohibition does!, 2024 (up)
    13 Shulgin, Alexander, PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story, Transform Press, New York, 1991 (up)



    People

    about whom and to whom I've written over the years...

    Alexander, Lamar
    Letter to Lamar Alexander
    Barrett, Frederick S.
    The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
    Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
    Benaroch MD, Roy
    Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
    Bloom, Josh
    Science is not free in the age of the drug war
    Buchanan, Julian
    Finally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxes
    Chalmers, David
    David Chalmers and the Drug War
    Chelmow MD, David
    How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
    Chomsky, Noam
    Chomsky is Right
    Chomsky's Revenge
    Noam Chomsky on Drugs
    Cline, Ben
    Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
    Close, Glenn
    Glenn Close but no cigar
    Cossin, Daniel
    How AI turned William James into a Drug Warrior
    De Quincey, Thomas
    The Therapeutic Value of Anticipation
    Dick, Philip K.
    Drug Laws as the Punishment of 'Pre-Crime'
    Doblin, Rick
    Constructive criticism of the MAPS strategy for re-legalizing MDMA
    Is Rick Doblin Running with the Devil?
    Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
    Ellsberg, Daniel
    Drug Warriors Fiddle while Rome Gets Nuked
    Falcon, Joshua
    Drugs are not the enemy, hatred is the enemy
    Floyd, George
    The Racist Drug War killed George Floyd
    Fort, Charles
    The Book of the Damned
    Fox, James Alan
    The Invisible Mass Shootings
    Friedman, Milton
    How Milton Friedman Completely Misunderstood the War on Drugs
    Fukuyama, Francis
    Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
    Gibb, Andy
    How The Drug War Killed Andy Gibb
    Gimbel, Steven
    Heroin versus Alcohol
    Glaser, Gabrielle
    Open Letter to Gabrielle Glaser
    Glieberman, Owen
    Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
    Glover, Troy
    Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
    Goswami, Amit
    Alternative Medicine as a Drug War Creation
    Gottlieb, Anthony
    Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb
    Grandmaster Flash, musician
    Grandmaster Flash: Drug War Collaborator
    Griffiths, Roland
    Depressed? Here's why you can't get the medicines that you need
    Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths
    Gupta, Sujata
    The Mother of all Western Biases
    Hammersley, Richard
    Open Letter to Richard Hammersley
    Handwerk, Brian
    How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
    Harris, Kamala
    Why I Support Kamala Harris
    Harrison, Francis Burton
    Screw You, Francis Burton Harrison
    Hart, Carl
    Open Letter to Dr. Carl L. Hart
    What Carl Hart Missed
    Harvey, Dennis
    How Variety and its film critics support drug war fascism
    Heidegger, Martin
    Heidegger on Drugs
    Hogshire, Jim
    I've got a bone to pick with Jim Hogshire
    Opium for the Masses by Jim Hogshire
    What Jim Hogshire Got Wrong about Drugs
    Hurley, Vincent
    Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer
    Hutton, Ronald
    Drug Dealers as Modern Witches
    James, William
    How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England
    Keep Laughing Gas Legal
    The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
    William James rolls over in his grave as England bans Laughing Gas
    Jefferson, Thomas
    A Misguided Tour of Monticello
    How the Jefferson Foundation Betrayed Thomas Jefferson
    How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987
    Jefferson
    The Dark Side of the Monticello Foundation
    Jenkins, Philip
    'Synthetic Panics' by Philip Jenkins
    Jenkins DA, Brooke
    Prohibitionists Never Learn
    Kant, Immanuel
    How the Drug War limits our understanding of Immanuel Kant
    How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
    Kastrup, Bernardo
    How Bernardo Kastrup reckons without the drug war
    Kenny, Gino
    The Right to LIVE FULLY is more important than the Right to DIE
    Kirsch, Irving
    Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant
    Klang, Jessica
    All these Sons
    Kotek, Tina
    Regulate and Educate
    Koterski, Jospeh
    America's Blind Spot
    Kurtz, Matthew M.
    How Scientific American reckons without the drug war
    Langlitz, Nicolas
    Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine
    Lee, Spike
    Spike Lee is Bamboozled by the Drug War
    Leshner, Alan I.
    How the Drug War Screws the Depressed
    Lewis, Edward
    Psilocybin Mushrooms by Edward Lewis
    Ling, Lisa
    Open Letter to Lisa Ling
    Locke, John
    John Locke on Drugs
    Maples-Keller, Jessica
    Hello? MDMA works, already!
    Margaritoff, Marco
    In Defense of Opium
    Open Letter to Margo Margaritoff
    Marinacci, Mike
    Psychedelic Cults and Outlaw Churches: LSD, Cannabis, and Spiritual Sacraments in Underground America
    Martinez, Liz
    Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
    Mate, Gabor
    In the Realm of Hungry Drug Warriors
    Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate
    Sherlock Holmes versus Gabor Maté
    McAllister, Sean
    How to Unite Drug War Opponents of all Ethnicities
    Mithoefer, MD, Michael
    MDMA for Psychotherapy
    Mohler, George
    Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War
    Morgan, Cory
    Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away
    Naz, Arab
    The Menace of the Drug War
    Newcombe, Russell
    Intoxiphobia
    Nietzsche, Friedrich
    Nietzsche and the Drug War
    Nixon, Richard
    Why Hollywood Owes Richard Nixon an Oscar
    Noakes, Jesse
    Americans have the right to pursue happiness but not to attain it
    Nobis, Nathan
    Top 10 Problems with the Drug War
    Nock, Matthew K.
    How Harvard University Censored the Biography of William James
    Nutt, David
    Majoring in Drug War Philosophy
    O'Leary, Diane
    Open Letter to Diane O'Leary
    Obama, Barack
    What Obama got wrong about drugs
    Offenhartz, Jake
    Libertarians as Closet Christian Scientists
    Pearson, Snoop
    Snoop Pearson's muddle-headed take on drugs
    Perry, Matthew
    Drug War Murderers
    Matthew Perry and the Drug War Ghouls
    Pinchbeck, Daniel
    Review of When Plants Dream
    Polk, Thad
    How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War
    Pollan, Michael
    Michael Pollan on Drugs
    My Conversation with Michael Pollan
    The Michael Pollan Fallacy
    Rado, Vincent
    Open Letter to Vincent Rado
    Reuter, Peter
    The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts
    Rovelli, Carlo
    Why Science is the Handmaiden of the Drug War
    Rudgeley, Richard
    Richard Rudgley condemns 'drugs' with faint praise
    Sabet, Kevin
    Why Kevin Sabet's approach to drugs is racist, anti-scientific and counterproductive
    Sanders, Laura
    Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
    Santayana, George
    If this be reason, let us make the least of it!
    Schopenhauer, Arthur
    Ego Transcendence Made Easy
    What if Arthur Schopenhauer Had Used DMT?
    Schultes, Richard Evans
    The Drug War Imperialism of Richard Evans Schultes
    Segall PhD, Matthew D.
    Why Philosophers Need to Stop Dogmatically Ignoring Drugs
    Sewell, Kenneth
    Open letter to Kenneth Sewell
    Shapiro, Arthur
    Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro
    Smith, Wolfgang
    Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
    Unscientific American
    Smyth, Bobby
    Teenagers and Cannabis
    Sotillos, Samuel Bendeck
    In Defense of Religious Drug Use
    Stea, Jonathan
    The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment
    Strassman, Rick
    Five problems with The Psychedelic Handbook by Rick Strassman
    What Rick Strassman Got Wrong
    Szasz, Thomas
    In Praise of Thomas Szasz
    Tulfo, Ramon T.
    Why the Drug War is far worse than a failure
    Urquhart, Steven
    No drugs are bad in and of themselves
    Vance, Laurence
    In Response to Laurence Vance
    Walker, Lynn
    Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl
    Walsh, Bryan
    The Drug War and Armageddon
    The End Times by Bryan Walsh
    Warner, Mark
    Another Cry in the Wilderness
    Watson, JB
    Behaviorism and the War on Drugs
    Weil, Andrew
    What Andrew Weil Got Wrong
    Wells, HG
    HG Wells and Drugs
    Whitaker, Robert
    Mad at Mad in America
    Whitehead, Alfred North
    Whitehead and Psychedelics
    Willyard, Cassandra
    Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs
    Winehouse, Amy
    How the Drug War Killed Amy Winehouse
    Wininger, Charley
    Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
    Wuthnow, Robert
    Clodhoppers on Drugs
    Zelfand, Erica
    Open Letter to Erica Zelfand
    Zinn, Howard
    Even Howard Zinn Reckons without the Drug War
    Zuboff, Shoshana
    Tune In, Turn On, Opt Out



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    Previous essay: My First Journey on Psilocybin

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    Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

    It's no wonder that folks blame drugs. Carl Hart is the first American scientist to openly say in a published book that even the so-called "hard" drugs can be used wisely. That's info that the drug warriors have always tried to keep from us.
    The front page of every mycology club page should feature a protest of drug laws that make the study of mycology illegal in the case of certain shrooms. But no one protests. Their silence makes them drug war collaborators because it serves to normalize prohibition.
    Suppose that America had outlawed all foods but gruel -- and then the government doctors began publishing articles telling us the dangers of eating foods like steaks and potatoes.
    We don't need people to get "clean." We need people to start living a fulfilling life. The two things are different.
    I think we should start taking names. All politicians and government officials who work to keep godsends like psilocybin from the public should be held to account for crimes against humanity when the drug war finally ends.
    Prohibitionists are willful murderers. They know that liquor prohibition created the Mafia as we know it today, and yet they still champion drug prohibition, which has destroyed inner-city neighborhoods and rendered them no-go zones.
    "Drugs" is imperialist terminology. In the smug self-righteousness of those who use it, I hear Columbus's disdain for the shroom use of the Taino people and the Spanish disdain for the coca use of the Peruvian Indians.
    The DEA should be tried for crimes against humanity. They have been lying about drugs for 50 years and running interference between human beings and Mother Nature in violation of natural law, depriving us of countless potential and known godsends in order to create more DEA jobs.
    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.
    Want to see drug war censorship? Just search for opium or cocaine or Benzedrine. You will see thousands of reports of misuse and abuse -- and no reports about the godsend benefits of those drugs when used wisely.
    More Tweets



    The latest hits from Drug War Records, featuring Freddie and the Fearmongers!


    1. Requiem for the Fourth Amendment



    2. There's No Place Like Home (until the DEA gets through with it)



    3. O Say Can You See (what the Drug War's done to you and me)






    front cover of Drug War Comic Book

    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, 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)