How materialists turned me into a patient for life
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
November 27, 2024
aterialists have conspired with the Drug Warrior to turn me into an eternal patient. They have done this by dogmatically ignoring a glaringly obvious fact: namely, the fact that drugs that elate and inspire a person have obvious uses in fighting depression. Materialists ignore common-sense psychology and prefer instead to find their answers to problems under a microscope. They are deaf to drug-inspired laughter. They want to "really" cure the depressed person, whatever that might mean, metaphysically speaking. In other words, they have a dogmatic materialist agenda in mind, they could care less if I merely laugh and smile.
Here is just one case in point that hits home hard with me:
I had been trying to get off Effexor (an SNRI antidepressant) and I had temporarily succeeded. I felt triumphant and empowered because I was no longer reliant on the medical industry and the psychiatrists who have always treated me like a child. (My vinyl chairs at the sessions were always closer to the ground than the mahogany chairs of my doctors.) I no longer had to suffer the humiliation of traveling to a mental health clinic every three months of the year and receiving an unwanted prescription from a doctor who was one-half my age.
After doing without the drug successfully for several months, I had a particularly bad day in which depression came back with a vengeance. I went through several hours of tears and groaning. Finally, seeing no options, I went back to the prescription, and my feelings of self-agency disappeared. I was once again a ward of the healthcare state.
Here is where the story stops for almost all so-called "experts" in the fields of psychology and psychiatry. They say: "See? Depression is very hard to beat. Getting off antidepressants requires the help of doctors!"
"Yes," I reply, "the same doctors who got me hooked on Effexor in the first place." These doctors never told me that Effexor would make me a patient for life. To the contrary, when it became clear that this was the case, they "flipped the script" and told me that it was my medical duty to take Effexor every day for the rest of my life.
What is amazing, however, is that literally no one recognizes the obvious: the fact that I could have avoided going back to Effexor by using other drugs. The strategic use of drugs like laughing gas, coca, opium, and a wide variety of phenethylamines would have obfuscated the downsides of withdrawal and allowed me to get through a bad day without returning to the unwanted substance. That much is just psychological common sense. But as mentioned above, doctors today do not "do" common sense. They are instead obsessed with "really" curing me - an obsession that has turned 1 in 4 American women into patients for life.
The critic will say: "Yes, but all the drugs that you are talking about are illegal."
To which I respond: Exactly! And it is therefore the duty of any doctor with common sense to protest this anti-patient status quo. They should remind the government that all drugs that elate and inspire have potential positive uses: that this is just plain common sense and requires no additional proof. Instead, doctors normalize prohibition by pretending that the outlawed substances really have failed to show proof of efficacy. If that is so, it is only because the proof that doctors require ignores common sense: they have no interest in helping the patient to thrive according to the patient's own definition of that term, they want the patient to be "really" cured via neurochemical intervention.
And so I am back on Effexor. Why? Because materialists have ignored the obvious power of laughter and happiness in their disastrous search for the holy grail of psychiatric pharmacology, one that will not run afoul of the Christian Science metaphysic of the war on drugs.
Why don't psychiatrists protest the war on drugs? That's easy. I would never have needed their antidepressants in the first place had drugs remained legal. We would then live in a world where common sense and empathy guided drug use, not a blind hatred of psychoactive substances. In such a world, the enemy would be unwanted dependency, not drugs. And that enemy would be combatted using psychological common sense.
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.
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.
Materialist scientists collaborate with the drug war by refusing to see glaringly obvious drug benefits. They acknowledge only those benefits that they believe are visible under a microscope. The Hindu religion would not exist today had materialist scientists held soma to such a standard. But that's the absurd pass to which prohibition eventually brings us: scientists are put in charge of deciding whether we are allowed to imagine new religions or not.
If America cannot exist without outlawing drugs, then there is something wrong with America, not with drugs.
The FDA approves of shock therapy and the psychiatric pill mill, but they cannot see the benefits in MDMA, a drug that brought peace, love and understanding to the dance floor in 1990s Britain.
Prohibitionists have blood on their hands. People do not naturally die in the tens of thousands from opioid use, notwithstanding the lies of 19th-century missionaries in China. It takes bad drug policy to accomplish that.
Many in the psychedelic renaissance fail to recognize that prohibition is the problem. They praise psychedelics but want to demonize others substances. That's ignorant however. No substance is bad in itself. All substances have some use at some dose for some reason.
Of course, prohibitionists will immediately remind me that we're all children when it comes to drugs, and can never -- but never -- use them wisely. That's like saying that we could never ride horses wisely. Or mountain climb. Or skateboard.
An Englishman's home is his castle.
An American's home is a bouncy castle for the DEA.
So much harm could be reduced by shunting people off onto safer alternative drugs -- but they're all outlawed! Reducing harm should ultimately mean ending this prohibition that denies us endless godsends, like the phenethylamines of Alexander Shulgin.
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."
Ketamine is like any other drug. It has good uses for certain people in certain situations. Nowadays, people insist that a drug be okay in every situation for everybody (especially American teens) before they will say that it's okay. That's crazy and anti-scientific.
When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.
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, How materialists turned me into a patient for life published on November 27, 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)
aterialists have conspired with the Drug Warrior to turn me into an eternal patient. They have done this by dogmatically ignoring a glaringly obvious fact: namely, the fact that drugs that elate and inspire a person have obvious uses in fighting depression. Materialists ignore common-sense psychology and prefer instead to find their answers to problems under a microscope. They are deaf to drug-inspired laughter. They want to "really" cure the depressed person, whatever that might mean, metaphysically speaking. In other words, they have a dogmatic materialist agenda in mind, they could care less if I merely laugh and smile.
You have been reading an article entitled, How materialists turned me into a patient for life published on November 27, 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)