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MDMA and Depression

another open letter to Charley Wininger

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

November 21, 2024



I am somewhat surprised that you would not recommend MDMA for depression.

April 2025 Update

The reported effects of MDMA read like a wish list for the emotions that I would want to experience as a chronic depressive. Personally, I would cheer up right now if I knew that I was going to be using MDMA this coming weekend, for instance, thanks just to the therapeutic power of anticipation. I also fear that modern materialist science pays short shrift to common-sense psychology, as for instance when Dr. Robert Glatter doubted in Forbes magazine that laughing gas could help the depressed. Again, as a chronic depressive, I ask, "How could it NOT help?" I would cheer up immediately merely looking forward to occasional use of laughing gas . "Laughter is the best medicine," after all. And yet materialist science ignores the very laughter of the depressed based on their reductionist understanding of how efficacy is to be determined.

If there is a risk of serotonin syndrome when using MDMA with antidepressants 1, this can be controlled and would be well worth it for folks like myself.

Perhaps the benefits of MDMA are muddled or negated by those using antidepressants? If so, this, for me, would count as a strike against antidepressants (one of many, the chief of which being that they have turned me into a patient for life).

Any clarification would be appreciated.

I appreciate you taking the time and your suggestions are appreciated, as well. Unfortunately, though, both ketamine and psilocybin are extremely expensive on a legal basis and the requirement of using them in a clinical setting offsets much of their value, in my mind -- again, for basic psychological reasons, the ones that I fear materialist medicine tends to ignore.

Love to hear your thoughts,
Brian

Author's Follow-up: January 15, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




No word back from Charlie, yet. I hope this merely means that the guy is busy, for these are topics that no one seems to want to discuss, and I'd hate to think that he is one of the many who shut down when they hear criticism of the materialist approach to mind and mood.

I seem to be on the "ignore for life" lists of drug-law reformers like Carl Hart, DJ Nutt, and Rick Doblin, all of whom believe -- or claim to believe -- in the all-sufficiency of materialist science to deal with mind and mood successfully. This is implicit in their use of phrases like "treatment resistant depression," which imply that reductive materialist approaches have "cinched" depression, and that there are just some finicky body chemistries out there that do not know a cure when they see one.

The fact is, however, that the materialist approach to mind and mood has been a disaster. It has turned one in four Americans into patients for life, while forcing us to ignore hundreds of time-honored medicines. Why? Because they only work for depression in an OBVIOUS way. That means nothing to purblind materialist science. Prudent strategic use of laughing gas , opium , cocaine 2 3 , and all sorts of empathogens and phenethylamines can keep depression at bay -- and without turning users into patients for life. But materialists cannot see this.

And so Carl Hart opens his otherwise great book entitled "Drug Use for Grown-ups" by advising all depressed and anxious readers that drugs are not for them: drugs, Carl tells us, are only for recreational purposes4. Notice how Carl here is treating the word "drugs" as if it actually has an identifiable meaning. "Drugs" is a HUGE politically created category, and so it is absurd to dismiss all the substances that fall under that manmade rubric as recreational. It's certainly an anti-indigenous mindset that would do so. It is materialism 5 riding rough-shod over those of us with holistic mindsets, telling us basically to just "shut up and take our meds."

Indeed, Carl Hart makes it clear in his book that he is an unapologetic materialist, that he feels there are no spiritual messages in altered states and that drug use is all about simple kicks. He believes that the efficacy of psychoactive drugs should be determined by looking under a microscope.

He has thus been blinded to psychological common sense! Someone who is about to commit suicide 6 should have access to laughing gas 7 , coca, opium -- anything, g---damnit, that would keep him or her from killing themselves. But the materialist FDA tells us that these drugs do not "REALLY" work for depression.

That latter claim is a metaphysical statement, however, not a logical one. It presupposes the efficacy standards of myopic reductive materialism, of positivism, of naturalism, and of behaviorism -- of all the ism's that tell us that the mere laughter and happiness of a patient means nothing -- that only SCIENTISTS can tell us when we are "REALLY" happy!

What a hateful doctrine, one that has kept me a patient for life by denying me the kind of inspiring medicines that all ancient physicians have recognized as panaceas. And yet materialists collaborate with the DEA to deny me these medicines on the fictional grounds that they actually have no positive uses whatsoever. These guys clearly take the American public for fools.

Between the defeatist doctrine of the Drug Warrior -- that drugs cannot be used wisely -- and the materialism of folks like Hart et al., we, the depressed and anxious, must rely on dependence-causing Big Pharma 8 9 meds.

But it's no wonder that these guys ghost me. Their whole livelihood depends on them toeing the imaginary line that tells us that materialist premises should underlie a search for mind and mood medicine.

It is just pharmacological colonialism and it is the point of view that has turned me into a patient for life.

Let me remind the reader that my complaints are not with materialism -- but with materialism misapplied. It is a category error to put materialists in charge of deciding what drugs work for a human being, psychologically speaking. The drug user is the expert on what drugs work for them. Only they know what states of mind and mood are useful to them given their philosophy of life, their hopes and dreams, and their beliefs about ultimate meaning.

Materialist scientists need to end their disastrous hubris of telling us what would work for us. They have gotten it so wrong that they have turned 25% of American women into patients for life, while giving a veneer of plausibility to the HUGE Drug War lie that drugs which have inspired entire religions have no positive uses whatsoever. That's a lie, by the way, for which the DEA should be put on trial for crimes against humanity10, in light of how much unnecessary silent suffering that doctrine has caused in the world. Unfortunately, the sufferers are not stakeholders in the drug approval process of the FDA -- or should I say the drug DISAPPROVAL process?



Author's Follow-up:

April 28, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




I have yet to find anyone who can give me a valid reason why we should not use holistically functioning drugs like MDMA and coca and opium 11 for depression. All so-called experts on this subject turn out to be materialists who believe that common-sense psychology does not apply to the depressed. It is clear what is going on here: the scientists have reified depression by defining it as a discrete condition in the DSM, as a thing apart for which we need a specific biochemical intervention. As a result, they treat the depressed like aliens from Mars who are not amenable to common-sense psychological benefits of drug use.

But what can one expect? Once we take for granted that drug prohibition makes sense -- once we assume that it is a natural baseline from which to study and treat so-called mood disorders -- then the only game in town is biochemical intervention that ignores common sense treatment, for the simple reason that all common-sense treatment has been outlawed.

It could be that there is some valid reason why MDMA is not ideal for depression -- although if that were so, it is amazing that no materialist bothers to mention the specifics. But MDMA is just one of hundreds of extant phenethylamines, each with its own fortes when it comes to affecting mind and mood. So even if MDMA 12 is not the ideal phenethylamine for treating depression, we have no reason to assume that phenethylamines themselves cannot do the job. Just look at this list of drug-user reports from Pihkal13 and then try to tell me that these drugs could not be of benefit to the depressed:

"I experienced the desire to laugh hysterically at what I could only describe as the completely ridiculous state of the entire world."

"It was a glorious feeling, and beauty was everywhere enhanced. With eyes closed it felt marvelous, and it was appealing to pursue the inner experience."

"I acknowledged a rapture in the very act of breathing."


We depressed folks ARE NOT MARTIANS! If vocational materialists like Alexander Shulgin truly believe what they say, that such experiences as rapture itself could not help the depressed, then they are blinded to common sense by their allegiance to the passion-scorning materialist ideology of behaviorism.

















Notes for essay entitled MDMA and Depression: another open letter to Charley Wininger:

1: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
2: Sigmund Freud's real breakthrough was not psychoanalysis DWP (up)
3: “Freud on Cocaine : Freud, Sigmund, 1856-1939 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive.” 2023. Internet Archive. 2023. https://archive.org/details/freudoncocaine0000freu/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater. (up)
4: “Drug Use for Grown-Ups by Dr. Carl L. Hart: 9781101981665 | PenguinRandomHouse.Com: Books.” n.d. PenguinRandomhouse.Com. Accessed August 29, 2026. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/534657/drug-use-for-grown-ups-by-dr-carl-l-hart/. (up)
5: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)
6: Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use DWP (up)
7: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
8: Seife, Charles. 2012. “Is Drug Research Trustworthy?” Scientific American 307 (6): 56–63. https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1212-56. (up)
9: LaMattina, John. n.d. “Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of the FDA’s Drug Division Budget?” Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnlamattina/2022/09/22/why-is-biopharma-paying-75-of-the-fdas-drug-division-budget/. (up)
10: Drug Prohibition is a crime against humantiy DWP (up)
11: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
12: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
13: Shulgin, Alexander T, and Ann Shulgin. 2019. Pihkal : A Chemical Love Story. Berkeley, Ca: Transform Press. (up)




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Ten Tweets

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"The depression lifted from my mind like the sun coming out of the clouds." -- Arthur Crowley after using cocaine

The fact that drugs have positive uses for human beings is a psychological corollary of Husserl's phenomenology and Whitehead's philosophy of organism.

Addiction was not a big thing until the drug war. It's now the boogie-man with which drug warriors scare us into giving up our freedoms. But getting obsessed on one single drug is natural in the age of choice-limiting prohibition.

The UN of today is in an odd position regarding drugs: they want to praise indigenous societies while yet outlawing the drugs that helped create them.

Almost every mainstream article about psychology and consciousness is nonsense these days because it ignores the way that drug prohibition has stymied our investigation of such subjects.

All drugs have potential positive uses for somebody, at some dose, in some circumstance, alone or in combination. To decide in advance that a drug is completely useless is an offense to reason and to human liberty.

After a long life, I have come to the conclusion that when all the establishment is united, it is always wrong. (Harold MacMillan)

Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.

We give kids drugs to improve their concentration -- but if adults use drugs to concentrate, we call them names and throw them in jail.

The Drug War is a crime against humanity.


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