am somewhat surprised that you would not recommend MDMA for depression.
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, 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
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, 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 purposes1. 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 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 should have access to laughing gas, 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 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 humanity, 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?
Antidepressants
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.
In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," William James demonstrated how materialists are blind to the depth and meaning of psychological states of ecstasy and transcendence -- or in other words the states that are peculiar to mystics like St. Teresa... and to those who use psychoactive substances like laughing gas. The medical materialist is dogmatically dismissive of such states, which explains why they can pretend that godsend medicines that elate and inspire have no positive uses whatsoever:
To the medical mind these ecstasies signify nothing but suggested and imitated hypnoid states, on an intellectual basis of superstition, and a corporeal one of degeneration and hysteria. Undoubtedly these pathological conditions have existed in many and possibly in all the cases, but that fact tells us nothing about the value for knowledge of the consciousness which they induce.
And so 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 in a society wherein materialist science is the new god: scientists are put in charge of deciding whether we are allowed to imagine new religions or not.
This materialist bias is inspired in turn by behaviorism, the anti-indigenous doctrine of JB Watson that makes the following inhumane claim:
"Concepts such as belief and desire are heritages of a timid savage past akin to concepts referring to magic."
According to this view, the hopes and the dreams of a "patient" are to be ignored. Instead, we are to chart their physiology and brain chemistry.
JB Watson's Behaviorism is a sort of Dr. Spock with a vengeance. It is the perfect ideology for a curmudgeon, because it would seem to justify all their inability to deal with human emotions. Unfortunately, the attitude has knock-on effects because it teaches drug researchers to ignore common sense and to downplay or ignore all positive usage reports or historic lessons about positive drug use. The "patient" needs to just shut up and let the doctors decide how they are doing. It is a doctrine that dovetails nicely with drug war ideology, because it empowers the researcher to ignore the obvious: that all drugs that elate have potential uses as antidepressants.
That statement can only be denied when one assumes that "real" proof of efficacy of a psychoactive medicine must be determined by a doctor, and that the patient's only job is to shut up because their hopes and dreams and feelings cannot be accurately displayed and quantified on a graph or a bar chart.
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"?)
Just think how much money bar owners in the Old West would have saved on restoration expenses if they had served MDMA instead of whiskey.
Two weeks ago, a guy told me that most psychiatrists believe ECT is great. I thought he was joking! I've since come to realize that he was telling the truth: that is just how screwed up the healthcare system is today thanks to drug war ideology and purblind materialism.
Here are some political terms that are extremely problematic in the age of the drug war:
"clean," "junk," "dope," "recreational"... and most of all the word "drugs" itself, which is as biased and loaded as the word "scab."
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.
That's how antidepressants came about: the idea that sadness was a simple problem that science could solve. Instead of being caused by a myriad of interrelated issues, we decided it was all brain chemistry that could be treated with precision. Result? Mass chemical dependency.
"Is cocaine use good or bad?" The question does not even make sense. Cocaine use is a blessing for some, just a little fun for most, and a curse for a few. Just like any other risky activity.
Alcohol makes me sleepy. But NOT coca wine. The wine gives you an upbeat feeling of controlled energy, without the jitters of coffee and without the fury of steroids. It increases rather than dulls mental focus.
It's interesting that Jamaicans call the police 'Babylon,' given that Babylon denotes a society seeking materialist pleasures. Drug use is about transcending the material world and seeking spiritual states: states that the materialist derides as meaningless.
Unfortunately, the prohibitionist motto is: "Billions for arrest, not one cent for education." To the contrary, drug warriors are ideologically committed to withholding the truth about drugs from users.
M. Pollan says "not so fast" when it comes to drug re-legalization. I say FAST? I've gone a whole lifetime w/o access to Mother Nature's plants. How can a botanist approve of that? Answer: By ignoring all legalization stakeholders except for the kids whom we refuse to educate.
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, MDMA and Depression: another open letter to Charley Wininger, published on November 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)
am somewhat surprised that you would not recommend MDMA for depression.
You have been reading an article entitled, MDMA and Depression: another open letter to Charley Wininger, published on November 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)
