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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

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher



July 23, 2024



AD IN AMERICA:1

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.

  • America's biggest drug pusher: The American Psychiatric Association:
  • Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs
  • Christian Science Rehab: aka the Twelve Step Group
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal: an open letter to Austin of the Huachuma Project
  • Fighting Drugs with Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war: an open letter to Charley Wininger, author of 'Listening to Ecstasy'
  • Getting off Effexor MY WAY: response to pushback from the Surviving Antidepressants website
  • How materialists turned me into a patient for life
  • How Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient: and what we should do about that
  • How the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient
  • How the Drug War Turns the Withdrawal Process into a Morality Tale
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus: an open letter to Austin from the Huachuma Project
  • In the Realm of Hungry Drug Warriors: How the Drug War has blinded Gabor Maté to the great addiction crisis of our time
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Mad at Mad in America: how Robert Whitaker's organization shuts down free speech in the name of drug war ideology
  • 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
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate: ending the torture-friendly 12-step programs
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand: or at least to her gatekeeper
  • Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants: Here's why that's nonsense
  • Replacing 12-Step Programs with Shamanic Healing
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens: new hope for the millions who are dependent on SSRIs and SNRIs
  • Sending Out an SOS: For Sentara to stop disempowering the victims of the psychiatric pill mill
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma: an open letter to the Heffter Research Institute
  • Surviving the Surviving Antidepressants website
  • Taper Talk: a philosophical review of the antidepressant tapering guide from Psychedelic Passage
  • Tapering for Jesus: how drug warriors moralize the withdrawal process
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to Frederick S. Barrett, Ph.D., cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University
  • The Crucial Connection Between Antidepressants and the War on Drugs: notes on getting off of Effexor
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs: why psychedelic therapy must REPLACE modern psychiatry rather than simply complement it
  • The Mental Health Survey that psychiatrists don't want you to take
  • The real reason for depression in America
  • The War on Drugs and the Psychiatric Pill Mill: Why you can’t understand one without understanding the other
  • This is your brain on Effexor
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines
  • What the psychiatrist said when I told him I wanted to get off Effexor
  • Why SSRIs are Crap: testimony from an expert

    • Open Letters






    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.



  • America's Blind Spot: Open Letter to Jospeh Koterski
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away: an open letter to Cory Morgan, columnist for the Western Standard
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal: an open letter to Austin of the Huachuma Project
  • Drug War Murderers: an open letter to People magazine
  • Drugs are not the problem: no, not even in nursing homes
  • End the Drug War Now: an open letter to American Senators in Washington, D.C.
  • Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon: an open letter to the Psilocybin Advisory Board of the Oregon Health Authority
  • Finally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxes: an open letter to Julian Buchanan
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs: an open letter to Ligare, a Christian Psychedelic Society
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war: an open letter to Charley Wininger, author of 'Listening to Ecstasy'
  • God and Drugs: why I am not (entirely) a Christian
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!: An open letter to Dr. Jessica Maples-Keller, principal investigator for the 'MDMA Plus Exposure Therapy for PTSD' at Emory University
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War: an open letter to Professor Thad Polk
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca: an open letter to the National Geographic Society
  • How Scientific American reckons without the drug war: in response to 'A Talking Cure for Psychosis' by Matthew M. Kurtz
  • How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England: an open letter to British Philosophers
  • How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant: an open letter to Professor Daniel A. Bonevac of the University of Pittsburgh
  • How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987: open letter to the 'Sites of Conscience' website
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma: an open letter to Task Force member David Chelmow MD
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus: an open letter to Austin from the Huachuma Project
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl: open letter to Lynn Walker of the Wichita Falls Times Record News
  • Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro: a philosophical discussion of the fascinating series on Curiosity Stream
  • In Defense of Religious Drug Use: an open letter to Samuel Bendeck Sotillos
  • Introduction to the Drug War Philosopher Website at AbolishTheDEA.com
  • Keep Laughing Gas Legal: Open letter to Niamh Eastwood (Executive Director of Release) and Dr. David Nicholl (NHS neurologist), in response to their recent interview about laughing gas on Channel 5, UK
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy: open letter to researcher Michael Mithoefer, MD
  • 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
  • No drugs are bad in and of themselves: an open letter to Steven Urquhart, founder of the Divine Assembly
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate: ending the torture-friendly 12-step programs
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb: author of The Dream of Enlightenment
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open Letter to Diane O'Leary: author of 'Medicine's Bad Philosophy Threatens Your Health'
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand: or at least to her gatekeeper
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama: author of Liberalism and its Discontents
  • Open letter to Kenneth Sewell: author of Red Star Rogue
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling: whose documentary about Chicago violence does not even mention the Drug War!!!
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University: in response to his paper at Academia.edu entitled 'Regulating the Rave Scene'
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley: about addiction
  • Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths: the downsides of 'working within the system'
  • Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
  • Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  • Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature: on behalf of my 92-year-old mother
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman: regarding his Drug War-biased review of the movie 'Four Good Days'
  • Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer: at Maquarie University, Department of Security Studies and Criminology
  • Open Letter to Vincent Rado: agreeing to disagree?
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith: author of 'The Quantum Enigma'
  • Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War: open letter to computer scientist George Mohler
  • Prohibitionists Never Learn: an open letter to San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins
  • Regulate and Educate: an open letter to Oregon Governor Tina Kotek
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens: new hope for the millions who are dependent on SSRIs and SNRIs
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War: open letter to Laura Sanders
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs: an open letter to freelance writer Cassandra Willyard, author of 'A next-gen pain drug shows promise, but chronic sufferers need more options'
  • Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited: an open letter to the Psychedelic Society of Vermont
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma: an open letter to the Heffter Research Institute
  • Teenagers and Cannabis: an open letter to Clinical Professor Bobby Smyth at the School of Medicine, Trinity College Dublin
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to Frederick S. Barrett, Ph.D., cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter: an open letter to the Drug Policy Alliance
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs: why psychedelic therapy must REPLACE modern psychiatry rather than simply complement it
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings: open letter to Criminologist James Alan Fox
  • The Menace of the Drug War: open letter to Arab Naz, author of The Menace of Opiate
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts: an open letter to Professors Peter Reuter and Alex Stevens
  • The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment: an open letter to Dr. Jonathan Stea
  • The Right to LIVE FULLY is more important than the Right to DIE: open letter to Gino Kenny, People Before Profit
  • There is nothing to debate: the drug war is wrong, root and branch: an open letter to Nathan of TheDEA.org
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies: an open letter to WTOP News
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War: and how we respond to it -- an open letter to Professor Nathan Nobis
  • Unscientific American: How the authors at Scientific American self-censor their articles in deference to America's Drug War
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines
  • Vancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe Use: open letter to the Vancouver Police Department
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM: an open letter to station manager Joel Oxley
  • Whitehead and Psychedelics: an open letter to Dr. Peter Sjöstedt-Hughes at the University of Exeter
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no: open letter to the Christian Science propaganda organization called DARE
  • Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me: An open letter to apologists for the psychiatric pill mill
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine: an open letter to Damon Barrett
  • Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine
  • Why the Holocaust Museum must denounce the Drug War: an open letter to the UHMM in Washington, DC




    • Notes:

    1 Mad in America, (up)



    computer screen with words DRUG WAR BLOG


    Next essay: Psilocybin Mushrooms by Edward Lewis
    Previous essay: Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war

    More Essays Here




    Some Tweets against the hateful war on drugs

    We westerners have "just said no" to pain relief, mood elevation and religious insight.
    Prohibitionists are also responsible for the 100,000-plus killed in the US-inspired Mexican drug war
    Over 45% of traumatic brain injuries are caused by horseback riding (ABC News). Tell your representatives to outlaw horseback riding and make it a federal offence to teach a child how to ride! Brought to you by the Partnership for a Death Free America.
    Clearly a millennia's worth of positive use of coca by the Peruvian Indians means nothing to the FDA. Proof must show up under a microscope.
    Americans think that fighting drugs is more important than freedom. We have already given up on the fourth amendment. Nor is the right to religion honored for those who believe in indigenous medicines. Pols are now trying to end free speech about drugs as well.
    People say shrooms should not be used by those with a history of "mental illness." But that's one of the greatest potential benefits of shrooms! (They cured Stamets' teenage stuttering.) Some folks place safety first, but if I did that, I'd die long before using mother nature.
    But that's the whole problem with Robert Whitaker's otherwise wonderful critique of Big Pharma. Like almost all non-fiction authors today, he reckons without the drug war, which gave Big Pharma a monopoly in the first place.
    This is the problem with trusting science to tell us about drugs. Science means reductive materialism, whereas psychoactive drug use is all about mind and the human being as a whole. We need pharmacologically savvy shaman to guide us, not scientists.
    Critics tell me that drugs have nothing to offer us. What? Not only are they being psychologically naive and completely ahistorical, but they are forgetting that the term "drugs" is no more objective than the term "scabs." Both are meant to defame the things that they connote.
    I will gladly respect the police once we remove them from Gestapo duty by ending the war on drugs. Police should also learn to live on a budget, without deriving income from confiscating houses and dormitories, etc.
    More Tweets



    The latest hits from Drug War Records, featuring Freddie and the Fearmongers!


    1. Requiem for the Fourth Amendment



    2. There's No Place Like Home (until the DEA gets through with it)



    3. O Say Can You See (what the Drug War's done to you and me)






    front cover of Drug War Comic Book

    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)