bird icon for twitter bird icon for twitter


Replacing antidepressants with entheogens

new hope for the millions who are dependent on SSRIs and SNRIs

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

April 21, 2024



Letter to Liz Martinez, Research Participant Advocate at Johns Hopkins University.

Good afternoon, Liz.

I am writing to volunteer for participation in a clinical trial that no one has yet undertaken: a trial to see if the use of entheogenic drugs can help the SNRI-dependent individual get off of Big Pharma meds like Effexor 1 . I am a 65-year-old chronic depressive who has been on Effexor for several decades now and I would like to finish my life by renouncing my status as an eternal patient. To that end, I have sought out clinical trials and overseas retreats through which I might use entheogenic medicine, but in all cases I have been rebuffed, due, in my view, to overblown liability concerns (always disingenuously presented as concerns for my health) regarding a poorly studied, rare and generally mild contraindication known as Serotonin Syndrome.

In other words, I have discovered that the psychedelic renaissance is not available for precisely those who need and deserve it most: namely, the millions (including 1 in 4 American women!) who have been turned into wards of the healthcare state by myopic materialism 2 and the Drug War, which has outlawed all obvious antidepressant godsends, including the San Pedro cactus, which the Conquistadors outlawed before them, meanwhile telling me that they're not even sure that laughing gas or MDMA 3 could help the depressed (see Dr. Robert Glatter's article in Forbes magazine 2021)! To the contrary, the FDA is now busy trying to make laughing gas 4 (William James' go-to substance for philosophical investigation) a "drug," thus making it less available to the suicidal than ever, not to mention philosophers.

The point is: I am your guinea pig for a study to see if the use of entheogenic drugs can help one wean themselves off of drugs like Effexor. Although I am not a doctor, I have read many accounts of the spiritually boosting effects of drugs like San Pedro cactus, from which I conclude that there is what philosophers call a PRIMA FACIE case to be made for prescribing entheogens to the chronically depressed, to inspire and give them fortitude in their quest to end Big Pharma use. The latest NIH results indicate that Serotonin Syndrome is usually mild and can be easily monitored and corrected should it occur. Besides, in the real world, many folks -- certainly myself -- do not place safety at the top of their priorities in life. I am willing to take reasonable -- indeed mild -- risks to achieve my goal of experiencing the perennial wisdom that comes from certain psychedelic medicine-- from which outrageous drug law has debarred me until now.

I consider myself an expert on this topic -- or at least on a certain aspect of this topic -- given my 30+ years of experience "on" Effexor and the hundreds of articles that I have written about how the Drug Warriors have turned me into an eternal patient by denying me access (like the Conquistadors before them) to the plants and fungi that grow at my very feet. Please give me an opportunity to fight back, meanwhile giving hope to the millions of chronically depressed who are currently considered ineligible for psychedelic healing. In my view, materialist medicine owes these people something, since our society and its materialist presuppositions essentially signed off on this unacknowledged yet unprecedented mass pharmacological dystopia thanks to which 1 in 4 American women take a Big Pharma med every day of their life. It's really unfair that the psychedelic renaissance is leaving this demographic behind, leaving them to their fate as wards of the healthcare state, as they-- still -- keep complaining of the depression for which they yet religiously still keep "taking their meds."

I'm your guinea pig.

I would be glad to write a detailed proposal for how a study of this kind would proceed. To summarize and recap: I propose a study whereby various entheogens are given to someone (myself) as they withdraw from a Big Pharma med (Effexor), based on the PRIMA FACIE argument that a drug that inspires wholeness, meaning and focus (like San Pedro cactus) could help create the mindset wherein the psychological downsides of antidepressant withdrawal could be overcome. For withdrawal by itself (without entheogens) has been shown to have a recidivism rate of 95%. Clearly, the mindset of the user has to adapt to the withdrawal of a drug like Effexor (one that mucks about with brain chemistry), and if any class of drugs on earth has the potential to improve mindset and attitude, it is the entheogen. It can inspire change.

But I hope that science won't take its usual glacial course and wait like Dr. Spock until this "inspiration" can be documented on a PowerPoint chart, since I don't think any of us will live so long! (We all know how long it took science to grudgingly accept that pets might have "real" emotions -- and it is only within the last few weeks that scientists grudgingly acknowledged that lowly life forms may have some kind of consciousness and/or intelligence after all, something that the Mesoamerican natives have known for millennia) We know that entheogens can inspire change: let me help establish that the use of such drugs can help me get off Effexor. A successful trial of this kind would give hope to millions of the chronically depressed who are completely disempowered by the knowledge (conscious or not) that they are eternal patients thanks to their use of Big Pharma 5 6 antidepressants 7.

Let's stop telling the chronically depressed to "keep taking your meds!" as rich yuppies keep flying to Peru to try ayahuasca. Please, let's provide the victims of the Drug War with a blessed alternative, the help of entheogens in their quest to get off of big pharma antidepressants, a feat that is far more difficult than most Americans (not to mention the pharmaceutical companies) are willing to acknowledge, let alone do something about.

best wishes.

hope to hear from you soon.



Author's Follow-up:

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up


Hope to hear from her soon, Brian? Dream on!





Notes:

1: How Drug Prohibition makes it impossible to get off of Effexor and other Big Pharma drugs (up)
2: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors (up)
3: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts (up)
4: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide (up)
5: How Drug Company Money Is Undermining Science (up)
6: Why Is Biopharma Paying 75% of The FDA’s Drug Division Budget? (up)
7: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs (up)


Antidepressants




WARNING: Don't bother trying to get off antidepressants unless you are truly committed to the idea in the name of healthcare liberty. You have to be committed to such a goal heart and soul, merely to have a chance at success. For long-term users, it can be a real challenge. It is interesting how psychiatrists flip the script on this subject, by the way: they claim that the hideous withdrawal symptoms somehow prove that the user needed the drug all along. But this is obvious nonsense. This can be seen in the fact that these same psychiatrists would never say such a thing about heroin users: that their angst upon quitting the drug is a sign that the drug was actually working for them.

Note that I am not saying that antidepressants are drugs from hell -- but rather that they BECOME drugs from hell thanks to drug prohibition. Drug prohibition outlaws all drugs that could help you get off of antidepressants and so live a fulfilled life without becoming a ward of the healthcare state. We need merely to re-legalize mother nature's medicines. Why do we fail to do so? Because we judge drugs based on the following silly and inhumane algorithm: namely, that a substance that can be misused, even in theory, by a white American young person at one dose when used for one reason in one circumstance must not be used by anybody at any dose in any circumstances...

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.



  • America's Blind Spot
  • Canadian Drug Warrior, I said Get Away
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Drug War Murderers
  • Drugs are not the problem
  • End the Drug War Now
  • Feedback on my first legal psilocybin session in Oregon
  • Finally, a drug war opponent who checks all my boxes
  • Freedom of Religion and the War on Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
  • God and Drugs
  • Hello? MDMA works, already!
  • How Addiction Scientists Reckon without the Drug War
  • How National Geographic slanders the Inca people and their use of coca
  • How Scientific American reckons without the drug war
  • How the Drug War is Threatening Intellectual Freedom in England
  • How the Drug War Outlaws Criticism of Immanuel Kant
  • How the Monticello Foundation betrayed Jefferson's Legacy in 1987
  • How the US Preventive Services Task Force Drums Up Business for Big Pharma
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Ignorance is the enemy, not Fentanyl
  • Illusions with Professor Arthur Shapiro
  • In Defense of Religious Drug Use
  • Keep Laughing Gas Legal
  • MDMA for Psychotherapy
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
  • No drugs are bad in and of themselves
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate
  • Open Letter to Anthony Gottlieb
  • Open Letter to Congressman Ben Cline, asking him to abolish the criminal DEA
  • Open Letter to Diane O'Leary
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand
  • Open Letter to Francis Fukuyama
  • Open letter to Kenneth Sewell
  • Open Letter to Lisa Ling
  • Open letter to Professor Troy Glover at Waterloo University
  • Open Letter to Richard Hammersley
  • Open Letter to Rick Doblin and Roland Griffiths
  • Open Letter to Roy Benaroch MD
  • Open Letter to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
  • Open Letter to the Virginia Legislature
  • Open Letter to Variety Critic Owen Glieberman
  • Open Letter to Vincent Hurley, Lecturer
  • Open Letter to Vincent Rado
  • Open letter to Wolfgang Smith
  • Predictive Policing in the Age of the Drug War
  • Prohibitionists Never Learn
  • Regulate and Educate
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
  • Review of When Plants Dream
  • Science News Continues to Ignore the Drug War
  • Science News magazine continues to pretend that there is no war on drugs
  • Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma
  • Teenagers and Cannabis
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Criminalization of Nitrous Oxide is No Laughing Matter
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Invisible Mass Shootings
  • The Menace of the Drug War
  • The problem with Modern Drug Reform Efforts
  • The Pseudoscience of Mental Health Treatment
  • There is nothing to debate: the drug war is wrong, root and branch
  • Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
  • Top 10 Problems with the Drug War
  • Unscientific American
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • Vancouver Police Seek to Eradicate Safe Use
  • Weed Bashing at WTOP.COM
  • Whitehead and Psychedelics
  • Why DARE should stop telling kids to say no
  • Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me
  • Why the Drug War is Worse than you can Imagine
  • Why the FDA is not qualified to judge psychoactive medicine
  • America's biggest drug pusher: The American Psychiatric Association:
  • Beta Blockers and the Materialist Tyranny of the War on Drugs
  • Christian Science Rehab
  • Common Sense Drug Withdrawal
  • Fighting Drugs with Drugs
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
  • Getting off Effexor MY WAY
  • How materialists turned me into a patient for life
  • How Psychiatry and the Drug War turned me into an eternal patient
  • 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
  • In the Realm of Hungry Drug Warriors
  • Mad at Mad in America
  • My Realistic Plan for Getting off of Big Pharma Drugs and why it's so hard to implement
  • Open Letter to Addiction Specialist Gabor Mate
  • Open Letter to Erica Zelfand
  • Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants
  • Replacing 12-Step Programs with Shamanic Healing
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
  • Sending Out an SOS
  • Speaking Truth to Big Pharma
  • Surviving the Surviving Antidepressants website
  • Taper Talk
  • Tapering for Jesus
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Crucial Connection Between Antidepressants and the War on Drugs
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • 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
  • This is your brain on Effexor
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • What the psychiatrist said when I told him I wanted to get off Effexor
  • Why SSRIs are Crap
  • And don't get me started on antidepressants!
  • Brahms is NOT the best antidepressant
  • Depressed? Here's why!
  • Depression is real, says the APA, and they should know: they cause it!
  • Getting off antidepressants in the age of the drug war
  • How the Drug War Screws the Depressed
  • How the Drug War Tramples on the Rights of the Depressed
  • I'll See Your Antidepressants and Raise You One Huachuma Cactus
  • Psychiatrists Tell Me That It's Wrong to Criticize Antidepressants
  • Replacing antidepressants with entheogens
  • The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
  • The Crucial Connection Between Antidepressants and the War on Drugs
  • The Depressing Truth About SSRIs
  • The Philosophical Significance of the Use of Antidepressants in the Age of Drug Prohibition
  • Using Opium to Fight Depression
  • Using plants and fungi to get off of antidepressants
  • What Malcolm X got right about drugs
  • Why SSRIs are Crap





  • Ten Tweets

    against the hateful war on US




    When the FDA tells us in effect that MDMA is too dangerous to be used to prevent school shootings and to help bring about world peace, they are making political judgments, not scientific ones.

    Mad in America solicits personal stories about people trying to get off of antidepressants, but they will not publish your story if you want to use entheogenic medicines to help you. They're afraid their readers can't handle the truth.

    "Now, now, Sherlock, that coca preparation is not helping you a jot. Why can't you get 'high on sunshine,' like good old Watson here?" To which Sherlock replies: "But my good fellow, then I would no longer BE Sherlock Holmes."

    I'm interested in CBD myself, because I want to gain benefits at times without experiencing intoxication. So I think it's great. But I like it as part of an overall strategy toward mental health. I do not think of CBD, as some do, as a way to avoid using naughty drugs.

    So he writes about the mindset of the deeply depressed, reifying the condition as if it were some great "type" inevitably to be encountered in humanity. No. It's the "type" to be found in a post-Christian society that has turned up its scientific nose at psychoactive medicine.

    We've all been taught since grade school that human beings cannot use psychoactive medicines wisely. That is just a big fat lie. It's criminal to keep substances illegal that can awaken the mind and remind us of our full potential in life.

    DEA Stormtroopers should be held responsible for destroying American Democracy. Abolish the American Gestapo.

    And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.

    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.

    Someone should stand outside Jefferson's estate and hand out leaflets describing the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello to confiscate poppy plants. That raid was against everything Jefferson stood for. The TJ Foundation DISHONORED JEFFERSON and their visitors should know that!


    Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






    Too Honest to Be Popular?
    Searching Peru for Sacred Plant Medicine


    Copyright 2025 abolishthedea.com, Brian Quass

    (up)