Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism

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Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism

The post that got me banned for life from the Reddit Psychiatry group

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

May 28, 2020

This essay got me banned for life in the Reddit Psychiatry group.

Author's follow-up for September 10, 2025

The decriminalization of drugs (or what I prefer to call the re-legalization of plants) must coincide with the de-medicalization of mood disorders. The current psychiatric system behaves under the patently absurd and scientistic illusion that every human being in the world is precisely the same when it comes to so-called illnesses like depression and anxiety, that there exists a sort of philosopher's stone in the realm of psychiatry, namely a psychiatric drug (or handful of drugs) that can cure every depressed person in the world, from a morose nonagenarian who is afraid of death to a home-coming queen who is upset about not 'getting into Harvard.'

And so our highly paid psychiatrists of today don three-piece suits and sit down pompously in front of elaborately hand-carved desks, only to perform a job that could be easily performed by any nurse intern. Their job today is simply to write prescription refills, after making a pro-forma check, using an insulting and outdated 10-question personality test, to 'ensure' that the would-be recipient of the prescription is not contemplating suicide -- which is important to check, no doubt, since the refill procedure is so disempowering to the patient that they might well consider suicide as a way of protesting the infantilization to which they are being subjected every three to six months of their lives ¹.

This robotic paradigm for treating 'patients' has resulted in a catastrophe so great that Big Pharma and their pill-peddling psychiatrists refuse to even acknowledge it: the fact that 1 in 8 American males and 1 in 4 American females are now addicted to modern antidepressants ², many of which are harder to quit than heroin ³. This drugged-up dystopia might be at least partially excused if these medicines were found to truly end depression, but this is not the case. In fact, America is now the most depressed nation in the world in spite of this full-court press by Big Pharma to place the entire nation on their limited pharmacopoeia of highly addictive 'meds.'

All this in an age that claims to value 'empowerment' above every other social goal. Yet what could be more disempowering than turning a depressed person into a patient for life, one who thus becomes a ward of the healthcare state and has to share his or her intimate feelings with a psychiatrist every three to six months of their life, all while paying dearly for doing so, both in time and money?

The alternative is clear: end the Drug War and replace psychiatrists with pharmacologically savvy shamans, physicians who thus profit from the best medical practices in both the west and the east. Of course, this idea will seem radical to so-called 'free' Americans, who have gotten used over the last 100 years to having politicians and bureaucrats decide which plant medicines can be used by whom, and when.

The Drug Warrior lie is that he or she is merely interested in protecting Drug Warrior Junior from evil drugs. But the effect of their legislation is to turn the average American into an addict while blocking the therapeutic use of thousands of natural godsend medicines. ^{We all look back in shock at the way the Church impeded scientific activity in Galileo's day; but we have yet to be shocked by the way that the Drug War impedes scientific activity in ours.}{

Why then do we not even THINK about replacing psychiatry with pharmacologically informed shamanism? It's obvious: The pill-peddling paradigm ensures that psychiatrists have high-paying jobs for a lifetime. Why? Because their patients MUST visit them every three to six months in order to get their socially approved 'fixes' of Big Pharma medicine.

The frustrating thing from a philosopher's point of view is that America is closing its ears to these obvious truths, and shouting in effect: 'I'm not LISTENING!!!' whenever someone raises these concerns (which, to be fair, however, happens rarely enough). American opinion on these subjects has been bought and paid for (like any other commodity) by Big Pharma through the psychiatric talking heads that they have financially suborned to spread cozy-sounding antidepressant mythology on Oprah et al.

And so we continue to treat psychiatric patients AS patients, second-rate and infantilized citizens who are forced to demonstrate their worthiness, every three to six months of their life, to receive yet another expensive prescription from an already expensive doctor.

This won't change for the better until materialists renounce their scientistic project to find a one-size-fits-all cure for depression, a project that would seem absurd on its face to any society not so infatuated with science that they have developed a Spock-like ineptness at recognizing the human side of such an enormously variegated topic. Of course, this change will also require that Drug Warrior Americans stop behaving like the Church of Galileo's time and begin allowing full scientific access to and therapeutic use of the plants and fungi that grow at our very feet, the flora to which we were all once granted access by dint of merely being human, until 1914 that is, when racist Drug Warriors first violated natural law by claiming that the government had the right to tell us which plants we could access and which we must ignore and shun on pain of arrest -- and even death, should we dare to share the plant medicines that our politicians have decided to withhold from us.

The change I'm talking about is the transformation of modern pill-pushing psychiatry into pharmacologically savvy shamanism. This is the way forward in behavioral therapy, at least for a free country that is determined to take the best from both eastern and western medical traditions. Such a transformation would be in the true interest of patients, and would even free them from being called patients in the first place, which is a disempowering designation after all. The therapy in view here would identify its votaries merely as human beings: human beings, who, like all of us, are looking to find their place in the world and gain a better understanding of the strange miraculous thing called life, and how not simply to cope with it but to thrive in it as well.

Author's Follow-up: February 9, 2023

follow-up on essay by the Drug War Philosopher

It's always nice to re-read one of my old posts like this one and find that I agree with everything I said back in the day, now that I've grown old and grizzled. I would, however, modify this post slightly to avoid the impression that I am 'psychiatrist bashing.' I know there are some great psychiatrists out there, but they are great because of their empathy, not because of their ability to constantly write prescriptions.

I must recognize also that there are some professionals of good will (including, alas, Rick Doblin and DJ Nutt) who really believe that Big Pharma meds do have a role to play in the modern treatment of depression. I can only say that if this is so, it is only because of the Drug War, for otherwise nothing would justify psychiatrists in prescribing pills that tranquilize the depressed. The job of the psychiatrist should be to help their clients live large, not to dull their minds so that they can better accept mediocrity,, especially when the pills in question have been shown to change personalities, making folk less spontaneous and creative (which I can vouch for, after 40 years of legal pill popping).

We've also got to realize that tranquilization can 'solve' any problem, provided only that we use a large enough dose. Remember Henny Penny, the obsessive-compulsive chicken who was always telling us that the sky was caving in? We could have 'solved' her problem easily by simply shutting her down. How? By tranquilizing her so thoroughly that she couldn't even open her beak, much less prophesy doomsday at the top of her voice. But that would not be solving Henny's problems, only hiding them.

The irony here is that psychiatry is always telling us that illegal drugs are not treating the 'real' problem, when it is actually psychiatry itself which is hiding the problems, covering them up by tranquilizing the 'patient' to the point that they do not -- or cannot -- complain. We might rack this up as a victory for the psychiatrist, but it is actually a loss for the depressed: a loss of spontaneity and creativity, among other things.

The best thing I can say about antidepressants based on my 40 years of use is that they are probably better than nothing for the severely depressed -- like, say, those who really are considering suicide or are so 'down' that they can't get out of bed in the morning. But they should be avoided whenever possible, since they come with the price of turning the user into a ward of the healthcare state while subtly changing their personalities in unpredictable ways. They also hide issues rather than providing the user with insights about them.

But antidepressants make sense for no one at all the moment that we have re-legalized psychoactive medicines and left it up to shamans and users to choose among them freely. At that point, no one in their right mind -- or even in their wrong mind, for that matter -- would knowingly choose a drug that's going to tranquilize them rather than bring them euphoria and help them live large and feel close to people and the world around them, especially when the use of the drug in question will make them a ward of the health care state and turn them into the Wedding Guest of the Coleridge poem, sailing into a psychiatrists office ever three months to tell their life story to strangers.

That's why psychiatrists fear drug re-legalization ⁴ -- or at least they should fear it if they know what is good for them financially speaking.

Author's Follow-up: April 18, 2023

I just read a Tweet in which a moderately popular clinician compared marijuana to the Soma used for mind control in Huxley's Brave New World. This is ironic, since the psychiatric pill mill is the mother of all mind control -- the more so in that nobody notices it: it is stealth zombification. 1 in 4 American women take a tranquilizing Big Pharma med every day of their life -- that's a real life Stepford Wives, the greatest pharmacological dystopia in human history -- and yet no one sees it because Big Pharma meds flatter us that we're being 'scientific.' And so, far from asking women to desist, we urge them to 'take their meds.'

And yet this is pseudoscience. These pills seem to cause a chemical imbalance, not fix one. (Richard Whitaker, Irving Kirsch and Julie Holland).

In any case, the whole concept of SSRIs is philosophically flawed. In order to cure MY depression, you have to first decide what depression is. Is it an inability to live large -- as Avicenna would have maintained (albeit in slightly different language) or is it the inability to get out of bed?

Moreover, SSRIs would be horrible if they DID work: It is absurdity to 'cure sadness.' It is the goal of a madman. And yet thanks to materialism ⁵, physics envy and reductionism, we're told that we can and should do just that.

Marijuana inspired the Jazz Age. SSRIs inspire nothing at all -- indeed, they are anecdotally associated with a lack of creativity. I say 'anecdotally' because no one's going to spend money proving this allegation in a capitalist society, least of all one in which government drug trials are paid for by Big Pharma itself.

And I'm an expert in the field -- having been on the receiving end of Big Pharma 's tranquilizing and dependency causing meds for 40 years.

Where are the conspiracy theorists when you need them? The psychiatric pill mill has every sign of being society's way of keeping folks happy with the spiritually dead world of unbridled capitalism ⁶ . What a coup for conservatives. Medicate all the dissenters and keep them obsessed about which pill they should try next -- lest they should otherwise write tracts against the absurdly lopsided distribution of wealth in America and the government's failure to provide top-quality schooling for all kids.

Author's Follow-up: May 18, 2023

I thought it would be easy to find like minds in the fight to end prohibition. Unfortunately, I'm finding some of the big-name advocates of pushback are also firm believers in the power of antidepressants to treat depression. I personally do not think that anyone completely understands the Drug War if they do not realize that the psychiatric pill mill is a creation of that war, for prohibition gives psychiatry a monopoly on mind medicine. The supporters will tell you that some users say the meds are useful -- but if I've learned anything after 40 years of poorly treated depression, it's that a depressed person is the last person qualified to report on their own condition. I used to think I was not depressed -- until I stopped and looked at all the goals I had not accomplished in the past in spite of what I had considered to be my firm commitment to that end. Moreover, when I took a psychedelic in my early 20s, I was exposed to a world of such potential that I suddenly considered the ambition of psychiatry to be shabby. Their pills did not motivate by comparison, they tranquilized.

But the real problem is this: 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma for life. That's a scandal! And a profitable one, apparently, because I'm one of the few who even mentions that it exists. (See Julie Holland for some more honesty on this score.)

Now, you're not going to tell me that 25% of American females are depressed enough to warrant turning them into wards of the healthcare state? Well, if they really ARE that depressed, then something is wrong with America, not with its female population.

Finally, there are two ways to view psychiatry today: one is the typical way, in which we ignore the Drug War, in which we might say that pill-popping is the only game in town. The other way to look at psychiatry today is realistically, by taking into account the War on Drugs by which we outlaw almost all psychoactive medicines. If psychiatrists saw their field in this true light -- as the expensive and demoralizing default option only because of tyrannical law that outlaws Mother Nature -- then they would (or at least they should) be the first to protest on behalf of patients and say to government: 'We demand the right to prescribe anything that will work for our patients!'

Instead, psychiatrists have gone along with this game, pretending that antidepressants are good in and of themselves, telling patients to 'take their meds,' when the best one can say about those meds is that they're the only medicine the government will let people have for depression. That's a poor endorsement, indeed, especially since lifelong users like myself have been infantilized by these drugs, turned into a ward of the healthcare state and denied the meds that truly work, many of which grow at my very feet, the drugs that inspire rather than tranquilize.

So if they wish to ignore me, fine: But I'm not going to behave like Polonius and switch my opinions to suit the self-interested zeitgeist, even if it might encourage folks like Rick Doblin and DJ Nutt to respond to my letters.

Who are these apologists for antidepressants? They're easy to identify. Just look for folks who use the term 'treatment-resistant depression,' for the use of that term implies that there is a legal treatment for depression that works -- namely, SSRIs and SNRIs -- and that those who do not profit from them are the oddballs with the quirky body chemistry that does not know a cure when it sees one.

The irony is that, even if SSRIs worked for me, their positive effect would be negated by the fact that psychiatry has turned me into a patient for life, with the demoralizing trips to the doctor every three months to see an RN that is half my age (at best), to answer questions about my predilection for suicide and how much sleep I'm getting.

LPN: Have you considered suicide in the last three months?
ME: Only when I think about the fact that psychiatry has turned me into an eternal patient.

Author's Follow-up: February 25, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up

For the latest on my ideas about pharmacologically savvy empaths, please see my new essay entitled The New Common Sense Way to Improve Mind and Mood.

Author's Follow-up: March 20, 2025

I noticed today that the original recording of this essay contains psychiatric criticism that I must have deleted at some point from the text, no doubt in a mood of hypersensitivity about "the way that I might be coming across." Yet I stand by the prerecorded criticism. I have no desire to backpedal on principles.

That said, I do not mind clarifying. And so I will remind any potential eventual reader of mine that psychiatrists are great to the extent that they evince empathy and so elicit trust and communication. That much is obvious to me. It is the psychiatric pill mill paradigm about which I protest for a wide variety of philosophical and common sense reasons -- and the fact that the APA refuses to abjure the approach and to stand up for their right to use any medicine in the world on behalf of the psychological improvement of their clients. The Drug War must end before psychiatry as it exists today can even make sense to me. We need to start using glaringly obvious godsends to treat the seriously depressed. We need to stop this materialist madness by which we dogmatically ignore all obvious benefits of "drugs."

MDMA ⁷ has obvious beneficial uses. Coca has obvious beneficial uses. Even opium has obvious beneficial uses -- for certain people, in certain doses, at certain times, in certain situations. Of course, this is why the Drug Warrior hates specifics, because they want to advance the anti-scientific claim that the substances that we call (or rather disparage as) "drugs" have no positive uses for anyone, anywhere, provided only that they can be misused by a white suburban American young person. It is hard to imagine a world view more certain to result in such a vast amount of unnecessary but silent suffering around the globe.

For those who are blind to the obvious benefits of opium , I ask the following question:

"Why is it wrong for me to smoke an opium pipe nightly at home while it is my medical duty to take a Big Pharma med every day of my life? Why should I let a Big Pharma ⁸ ⁹ chemist decide how and how much I should think and feel in this life?"

Laughing gas works to cheer us up -- even if materialist scientists cannot figure out why. That much is common sense. Even a child recognizes that fact. Psychiatrists and drug "scientists" need to stop gaslighting ¹⁰ ¹¹ us by insisting otherwise. I say nothing here of the fact that America outlaws philosophical research whenever they outlaw laughing gas and/or stand in the way of its safe and easy use. The use of laughing gas inspired the philosophy of William James, after all, even though you would not know that fact from looking at his online biography on his alma mater's website at Harvard University, where James's life and philosophy have been rewritten to conform to Drug War sensibilities ¹². All talk of laughing gas , or of altered states of any kind, has been removed from that DEA-friendly synopsis of his life.

In a sane world, laughing gas ¹³ kits would be provided free of charge to the suicidal. But the sad and incredible thing is that modern "health experts" would prefer that young people kill themselves than to have them using substances that could elate them in a trice. Yes, they wring their hands about suicide, but in reality they would not have it any other way. The materialists justify this callousness in the name of the behaviorist idea that "real" cures have to be based on quantifiable data -- from which it follows (in their minds at least) that mere happiness and contentment on the part of a former depressed person means nothing at all: they have to be cured scientifically or else go on suffering.

To paraphrase Whitehead, a crazy paradigm is revealed by the crazy results to which it leads ¹⁴: and what could be crazier than to prefer suicide ¹⁵ to drug use? That is why I say that the Drug War represents the inversion of normal values.

Author's Follow-up:

September 10, 2025

Most depressed folk would need no doctors if medicines were re-legalized and we had the time-honored right to take care of our own health. Of course, I am presupposing the kind of world in which we purposefully learn how to use psychoactive substances as wisely as possible for the benefit of humanity and then promote informed use based on actual best practices of real people. Anyone who dares read the rare honest books about drug benefits knows that we are only now becoming aware of the existence of a vast psychoactive pharmacopoeia about which the west has been in denial for centuries. There are drugs called entheogens that can inspire compassion, drugs called oneirogens that promote lucid dreaming, drugs called beta-carbolines that promote creative thinking. Alexander Shulgin has synthesized phenethylamines that inspire and elate and which cry out for use by the depressed to prevent suicides -- and yet Americans prefer that young people kill themselves than to use substances that racist and xenophobic politicians have demonized with the pejorative epithet of drugs. I say nothing of the time-honored panacea called opium ¹⁶ -- which our DEA laughingly tells us has no benefits whatsoever -- no, not for anybody, anywhere, ever! And coca is a godsend for the depressed as Sigmund Freud well knew -- although Westerners decided early on to judge that drug based only on its worst possible use, which is exactly as if we were to judge alcohol by looking only at alcoholics and ignoring all the responsible drinkers.

Someday Americans will finally learn that prohibition is evil and that to say things like "Fentanyl ¹⁷ kills" and crack kills" is philosophically equivalent to saying "Fire bad!" like our prehistoric ancestors. In both cases, we are attempting to demonize dangerous substances instead of learning how to use them as wisely as possible for the benefit of human beings.

Someday we will learn that it is evil, racist and xenophobic to withhold godsend medicines from the world merely because they can be misused by the white American young people whom we refuse to educate about safe use and for whom we refuse to regulate the drug supply and provide true drug choice, thus preventing users from obsessing on any one drug. Someday we will learn that white American young people are not the only stakeholders when it comes to drugs: that there are millions suffering in silence behind closed doors because we ignore their fate as our politicians mindlessly judge drugs "up" or "down" without regard to context of use.

For the Drug War is based on the following patently anti-scientific algorithm: that a drug that can be misused by a white young person at one dose when used for one reason must not be used by anyone in the world at any dose for any reason.

This mindset has destroyed inner cities and, indeed, has now destroyed American democracy itself, by turning America into a penal colony for minorities, thereby handing otherwise close elections to racist Drug Warriors.

But I've saved the best for last. For most people, cocaine is a veritable cure for depression. Sigmund Freud knew this ¹⁸. But doctors demonized the drug based only on rare misuse -- because their livelihoods would be jeopardized if just any old depressed person could successfully treat their condition in real-time. The outlawing of cocaine, in fact, is a crime against humanity, as was the outlawing of opium. And this is how the medical industry took over the lives of Americans -- by treating all the illnesses and indispositions that were created by the outlawing of the godsends of Mother Nature.

Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths

Notes:

1: How Drug Prohibition has turned academics into children DWP (up)
2: Antidepressants and the War on Drugs DWP (up)
3: Hall, Wayne, and Megan Weier. 2016. “Lee Robins’ Studies of Heroin Use among US Vietnam Veterans.” Addiction 112 (1): 176–80. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.13584. (up)
4: “National Coalition for Drug Legalization.” n.d. National Coalition for Drug Legalization. https://www.nationalcoalitionfordruglegalization.org/. (up)
5: How materialists lend a veneer of science to the lies of the drug warriors DWP (up)
6: What the drug war tells us about American capitalism DWP (up)
7: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts 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: The Semmelweis Effect in the War on Drugs DWP (up)
11: How psychologists gaslight us about beneficial drug use DWP (up)
12: How Harvard University Censored the Biography of William James DWP (up)
13: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
14: Alfred North, Whitehead. 1920. Review of The Concept of Nature. Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg. 1920. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18835. (up)
15: Why Americans Prefer Suicide to Drug Use DWP (up)
16: The Truth About Opium by William H. Brereton DWP (up)
17: Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws Do DWP (up)
18: “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)

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If psychoactive drugs had never been criminalized, science would never have had any reason or excuse for creating SSRIs that muck about unpredictably with brain chemistry. Chewing the coca leaf daily would be one of many readily available "miracle treatments" for depression.

Being a lifetime patient is not the issue: that could make perfect sense in certain cases. But if I am to be "using" for life, I demand the drug of MY CHOICE, not that of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry, who are dogmatically deaf to the benefits of hated substances.

Uruguay wants to re-legalize psilocybin mushrooms -- but only for use in a psychiatrist's office. So let me get this straight: psychiatrists are the new privileged shaman? It's a mushroom, for God's sake. Just re-legalize the damn thing and stop treating us like children.

What is the end game of the drug warrior? A world in which no one wants drugs? That's not science. It's the drug-hating religion of Christian Science. You know, the American religion that outsources its Inquisition to drug-testing labs.

The scheduling system is a huge lie designed to give an aura of "science" to America's colonialist disdain for indigenous medicines, from opium, to coca, to shrooms.

Why don't those politicians understand what hateful colonialism they are practicing? Psychedelics have been used for millennia by the tribes that the west has conquered -- now we won't even let folks talk honestly about such indigenous medicines.

Drugs like opium and cocaine should come with the following warning: "Outlawing of this product may result in inner-city gunfire, civil wars overseas, and rigged elections in which drug warriors win office by throwing minorities in jail."

You can get a master's degree in healthcare today and not learn a thing about the power of hundreds of outlawed drugs to inspire and elate.

What attracts me about "drug dealers" is that they are NOT interested in prying into my private life. What a relief! With psychiatry, you are probed for pathological behavior on every office visit. You are a child. To the "drug dealer," I am an adult at least.

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

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Replacing Psychiatry with Pharmacologically Savvy Shamanism

The post that got me banned for life from the Reddit Psychiatry group

Author's Follow-up: February 9, 2023

Author's Follow-up: April 18, 2023

Author's Follow-up: May 18, 2023

Author's Follow-up: February 25, 2025

Author's Follow-up: March 20, 2025

Author's Follow-up:

September 10, 2025

Pharmacologically Savvy Empaths

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