response to pushback from the Surviving Antidepressants website
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 8, 2024
On August 7, 2024, I went to the Surviving Antidepressants website and posted my plan to get off Effexor while microdosing on psilocybin. I was (naively) surprised by the pushback in the initial response, to which I responded as follows.
I have to disagree with you about psilocybin. It is a time-honored medicine going back millennia. I invite you to watch the video with Paul Stamets on this topic. The problem is that materialist science is extremely conservative and almost completely ignores anecdote and history, the history of positive drug use for positive reasons. The effects of psilocybin read like a "wish list" for the feelings that you would want a person to have who's withdrawing from a drug. And yet the Drug War has taught us to think of psilocybin as just another "drug," and so it's thought to be a mistake to use another "drug" while attempting to get off Effexor.
I already have experience with the drug and its motivational power. It works for me. It motivated me to start a diary for the first time in my life, which I am now keeping daily.
Besides, "the heart has its own reasons," as Pascal once said. I can tell you with 100% certainty that I will never get off Effexor unaided, no matter how many plans I try for yoga, or supplements, or jogging, or breathwork. Been there, done that FOR 65 YEARS!!! Yoga and breathwork are great -- and they are something I would be likely to do more of with the help of psilocybin -- but my whole life testifies against the idea that such "non-drug" activities will help me accomplish my goals by themselves.
I was surprised also to read that 1/365th decreases would possibly be going too fast! But if pauses are needed in the process, I can adjust the schedule so that there are a series of days in which the dose does not decrease. You say that these small increments may be hard to work with, but isn't that what compounding chemists are paid to do?
I have written hundreds of essays on this topic. I forget sometimes that the mainstream is still far behind the curve on this. But mainstream science is part of the problem these days. Mainstream scientists are letting progress proceed at a snail's pace by demanding that holistic drugs like psilocybin pass all sorts of safety standards while completely ignoring the fact that they have been used successfully for millennia. Mainstream science is great at coming up with reasons why we cannot use such drugs, but they are horrible when it comes to acknowledging drug benefits. That's why MDMA is still illegal. The FDA keeps finding tiny potential problems while completely ignoring the fact that MDMA brought peace, love and understanding to the British dance floors in the 1990s. For the FDA, that is no "benefit" -- and yet we let them do a cost/benefit analysis about MDMA drug approval?
The assumption of westerners seems to be that psilocybin is just another drug and should be scorned -- or at least put on hold indefinitely while science picks it apart. I believe with Paul Stamets, however, that psilocybin is a game changer. It makes perfect sense to use its demonstrated micro-dosing power to vaccinate oneself psychologically for the process of withdrawal from Effexor. I'm going to try this, though if I'm going to get support, I think I will have to find a site where there is a greater appreciation of the transformative power of holistic medicines, and a refusal to consider them as "drugs" in the evil sense of that word.
Thanks for your ideas, though. The microdosing advice looks helpful, but we'll have to agree to disagree on much of the rest.
If drug war logic made sense, we would outlaw endless things in addition to drugs. Because the drug war says that it's all worth it if we can save just one life -- which is generally the life of a white suburban young person, btw.
The Drug War is a religion. The "addict" is a sinner who has to come home to the true faith of Christian Science. In reality, neither physical nor psychological addiction need be a problem if all drugs were legal and we used them creatively to counter problematic use.
We won't know how hard it is to get off drugs until we legalize all drugs that could help with the change. With knowledge and safety, there will be less unwanted use. And unwanted use can be combatted creatively with a wide variety of drugs.
Addiction thrives BECAUSE of prohibition, which outlaws drug alternatives and discourages education about psychoactive substances and how to use them wisely.
Properly speaking, MDMA has killed no one at all. Prohibitionists were delighted when Leah Betts died because they were sure it was BECAUSE of MDMA/Ecstasy. Whereas it was because of the fact that prohibitionists refuse to teach safe use.
When the FDA tells us in effect that MDMA is too dangerous to be used to prevent school shootings and to help bring about world peace, they are making political judgments, not scientific ones.
The most addictive drugs have a bunch of great uses, like treating pain and inspiring great literature. Prohibition causes addiction by making their use as problematic as possible and denying knowledge and choices. It's always wrong to blame drugs.
The 1932 movie "Scarface" starts with on-screen text calling for a crackdown on armed gangs in America. There is no mention of the fact that a decade's worth of Prohibition had created those gangs in the first place.
And where did politicians get the idea that irresponsible white American young people are the only stakeholders when it comes to the question of re-legalizing drugs??? There are hundreds of millions of other stakeholders: philosophers, pain patients, the depressed.
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You have been reading an article entitled, Getting off Effexor MY WAY: response to pushback from the Surviving Antidepressants website, published on August 8, 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, Getting off Effexor MY WAY: response to pushback from the Surviving Antidepressants website, published on August 8, 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)