I am a 65-year-old chronic depressive who has been on SNRIs and SSRIs for a lifetime now. Not only have the drugs failed to end my depression, but they have made me a ward of the healthcare state. I have to visit a mental health clinic every three months of my life in order to receive a prescription from someone who is half my age, for a drug that I do not even want to be taking anymore. That is time-consuming, expensive, and humiliating for me. But I have continued in this slavery because I know that getting off these drugs is extremely difficult. Indeed, my previous psychiatrist told me that the Effexor that I am taking has a 95% recidivism rate for long-term users who try to quit the drug. (That was during my final visit with the man, whom I fear may have been fired for his frankness on this subject.) So as long as I was working full-time, I did not feel that I could afford to ride the emotional roller coaster that drug withdrawal seemed likely to put me on.
But it recently occurred to me that antidepressant drug withdrawal need not be a nightmare. There is a withdrawal protocol that has a strong chance of actually working (at least for folks like myself) for the simple reason that it makes perfect psychological sense from a user's point of view. It is a theory that I hope to test out "on myself" in my retirement years, although I have yet to find a psychiatrist who will take my suggestion seriously. No one seems to see any value in asking the user what would work for them, even though their answer to that question, in some sense, has to be right, for the simple reason that it is based on how they feel, and the success of any withdrawal process ultimately depends on how the user feels about that process, however scientifically valid it may seem in the eyes of its creators.
What follows is a description of the withdrawal protocol that I propose for getting off of dependence-causing Big Pharma drugs. It has two major steps: compounding (of the Big Pharma drug) and microdosing (with psilocybin). Keep in mind that these suggestions are theoretical in nature and are not meant to constitute medical advice.
For illustration purposes, let's suppose that you are currently taking 225 mg. of Effexor daily, and you wish to get off the drug entirely in 225 days. (I know: that's a peculiar number, but it will make the math work out easily for demonstration purposes below.)
The first step is to have Effexor compounded in such a way that the daily dosage is incrementally tapered to zero during the withdrawal period. In our case, that would result in the following dosage breakdown per pill: DAY 1: 225 mg. of Effexor. DAY 2: 224/225 mg. of Effexor. DAY 3: 223/225 mg. of Effexor. And so forth, until the final pill of the series, which would contain just 1/225 mg. of Effexor.
During this withdrawal process, the user will be dosing and microdosing on psilocybin in a way that seems effective to them, based on their own emotions and attitudes at the time (as opposed to having a psychiatrist second-guess what the user needs under the circumstances). Importantly, the psilocybin use would continue after the withdrawal period on an as-needed basis in order to counteract the backsliding which is currently so prevalent for those seeking to stop drugs like Effexor.
Why psilocybin? Because user experiences show the drug to have a motivational power that seems custom-made for helping people "keep the faith" during tough emotional experiences such as drug withdrawal. Recent studies at Johns Hopkins show a huge potential for psilocybin when it comes to engendering such psychological empowerment. Mycologist Paul Stamets also believes strongly in psilocybin microdosing for conditions like depression and anxiety. But I also write from personal experience.
I had a week of psilocybin therapy this month at the Psilocybin Center in Salem, Oregon, and the experience opened my eyes to the goals I needed to be achieving in life. And it gave me a sense of urgency for achieving them. In fact, when I got back to my AirBnB after my first-day's session (on a dose so low that it qualified as a microdose) my head was full of ideas about how I could change my life. I actually began writing a diary that night, the first diary of my life, in which I sought to record all the plans that were now coming to mind so that I could be sure to follow through on them. The psilocybin had transformed me, at least for the time being, into someone who insisted on making the most out of life. Materialist scientists will demur, of course, and grumble about statistically miniscule risks of combining drugs, but as Pascal said, "The heart has its own reasons." Don't ask me how, but I simply know that psilocybin use would help me get off of Effexor. There is, at very least, what philosophers call a "prima facie" case that psilocybin would help me in the withdrawal process. It's simply psychological common sense.
The idea that I can "kick" Effexor in this way is still a theory, of course, but it is one that I believe in and am prepared to devote the remainder of my life to proving. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done. I could potentially get legal access to psilocybin mushrooms by moving to certain parts of Mexico, but I have yet to find any doctors who would prescribe the sort of compounding that I have proposed (and, of course, patients have no right to bypass the doctor and take their drugs directly to a compounding pharmacy). When I outlined this plan to my psychiatrist, he told me that he had never heard of such a thing. He then suggested that I stay on Effexor, which he could not seem to praise highly enough, notwithstanding the fact that I was sitting there right in front of him, depressed, and a little bit angry. He then proposed that I drop my dosage all at once by 37.5 mg. and that I see him again in two months so he could see how I was doing. It was as if he had not heard a word that I had said. Apparently, when doctors talk about "the best way to get off of Effexor," they mean the best way for THEM as a doctor, not for you as a patient.
These roadblocks to personal healing have taught me something important about drug withdrawal, that it is not just difficult because of the drugs themselves, but because of our attitudes and beliefs as a society. First drug prohibition outlaws all motivational godsends that could help with the withdrawal process; then materialist doctors create cookie-cutter withdrawal protocols that ignore common sense psychology.
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.
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.
When people tell us there's nothing to be gained from using mind-improving drugs, they are embarrassing themselves. Users benefit from such drugs precisely to the extent that they are educated and open-minded. Loudmouth abstainers are telling us that they lack these traits.
It's always wrong to demonize drugs in the abstract. That's anti-scientific. It begs so many questions and leaves suffering pain patients (and others) high and dry. No substance is bad in and of itself.
Drugs that sharpen the mind should be thoroughly investigated for their potential to help dementia victims. Instead, we prefer to demonize these drugs as useless. That's anti-scientific and anti-patient.
When we outlaw drugs, we are outlawing far more than drugs. We are suppressing freedom of religion and academic research.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
We should no more arrest drug users than we arrest people for climbing sheer rock faces or for driving a car.
Drug warriors have taught us that honest tweets like that are "encouraging drug use." Nonsense! That's just their way of suppressing free speech about drugs. Americans are not babies, they can handle the truth -- or if they cannot, they need education, not prohibition.
Hollywood presents cocaine as a drug of killers. In reality, strategic cocaine use by an educated person can lead to great mental power, especially as just one part of a pharmacologically balanced diet. That's why drug warriors want to outlaw free speech, to hide such facts.
The American Philosophy Association should make itself useful and release a statement saying that the drug war is based on fallacious reasoning, namely, the idea that substances can be bad in themselves, without regard for why, when, where and/or how they are used.
Q: Where can you find almost-verbatim copies of the descriptions of religious experiences described by William James? A: In descriptions of user reports of "trips" on drugs ranging from coca to opium, from MDMA to laughing gas.
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, 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, published on July 23, 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)
AD IN AMERICA:1
You have been reading an article entitled, 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, published on July 23, 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)