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Solquinox sounded great, until I found out I wasn't invited

an open letter to the Psychedelic Society of Vermont

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 9, 2025



A few days ago, I saw a Tweet by Dr. Rick Barnett inviting his followers to check out an upcoming annual event that he is hosting in Vermont in September of this year. The profered link took me to a page entitled "Soulquinox: Psychedelic Science and Spirituality Summit," sponsored apparently by the Psychedelic Society of Vermont. The site intro was enticing to me as someone who "has skin in this game," given my intention of using psychedelics to get off of Effexor in the coming year. It was written by Rick himself and begins as follows:

"Each year our community gathers in the Green Mountains of Vermont to "cerebrate" (think deeply about something; ponder) and celebrate the role psychedelics may have in personal growth, healing, and health."


"Great," I thought to myself, "Those topics are right up my alley. I'm going through my own decisions right now about healing with psychedelics." So I clicked on the link that said "register now"... and got a rude awakening. It turns out that mere patients are not welcome at this event, it's only for "health professionals." To be exact, the pop-up notice admonished me as follows:

"This event is for health professionals only. This applies to you and any/all of your +1 attendees."


Well, let me tell you, my "+1 attendees" were not too happy to read THAT!

Okay, I can kind of understand the restriction: the guys want to talk shop. But it seems to me that they are "reckoning without their host" if they do not at least hear from one person who speaks for the millions (including the 1 in 4 American women) who are dependent on Big Pharma meds for life. What is the psychedelic renaissance doing for them -- and more importantly, what do THEY have to say about protocols that THEY believe will work? When it comes to using psychedelics for drug withdrawal, the patients are the experts because they can tell you what would work for them from a psychological point of view, rather than you telling them what should work for them. Perhaps I'm touchy having been ignored for years now, but I get this message all the time from psychiatrists: I should be taking my meds, not speculating on protocols. That's THEIR job, thank me very much. As Professor Lilloman said after interrupting a doubtful Mel Brooks in "High Anxiety":

It IS "nece"! I know what is "nece." Don't tell ME what is "nece." I tell YOU what is "nece."


So thinking, I sent the following message to the Soulquinox sponsor, the Psychedelic Society of Vermont..

I appreciate that you want to have a meeting with service providers only, but shouldn't you be open to the ideas of long-term recipients of mental health services in the USA, so that you can get an idea of what THEY think might work for THEM?

I'm a 65-year-old trying to get off of Effexor and I have a plan that I'd like your folks to discuss: namely, the compounding of Effexor such that I get off it in a year while the dose drops 364/365th every day -- during which time I microdose on psilocybin and any other godsend that makes sense and is (or becomes) legal (for a wonder), such as huachuma cactus.

When I presented this idea to my psychiatrist, he said he had never heard of such a thing and thought I should drop my Effexor dose by 35 mgs every month instead, and then start "counting pilules," though he himself said this would cause brain zaps and the possible return of my depression.

Now, I am not a doctor, but my plan makes perfect psychological sense and does not try to turn me into a compounding pharmacist. Psychological misgivings are minimized, first by the low almost imperceptible changes in dose and second by the fact that one knows they are getting help from natural medicine. For we all know how high recidivism rates are for getting off such drugs without the help of plant teachers. Yet no one wants to hear from me because I'm just a patient.

I have written hundreds of essays on this topic as the Drug War Philosopher at abolishthedea.com and I am still looking for someone in the healing business who thinks a patient is worth listening to on such topics. Too many of them think we should just shut up and take our meds -- that we should have no role in deciding what would work for us.

The healthcare business needs to do better by the millions that it has turned into eternal patients, and one start would be for counselors to actively solicit ideas from those who have been disempowered for decades now by the pill mill of materialist science.











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Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




If fearmongering drug warriors were right about the weakness of humankind, there would be no social drinkers, only drunkards.

Thomas Szasz was not an extremist when it comes to drugs. The extremists are those who feel that psychiatrists know more about our mind and mood than we do.

Many psychedelic fans are still drug warriors at heart. They just think that a nice big exception should be carved out for the drugs that they're suddenly finding useful.

The government causes problems for those who are habituated to certain drugs. Then they claim that these problems are symptoms of an illness. Then folks like Gabriel Mate come forth to find the "hidden pain" in "addicts." It's one big morality play created by drug laws.

The drug war is a slow-motion coup against democracy.

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 Drug War treats doctors like potential criminals and it treats the rest of us like children. Prohibition does not end drug risks: it just outsources them to minorities and other vulnerable populations.

Scientists are censored as to what they can study thanks to drug law. Instead of protesting that outrage, they lend a false scientific veneer to those laws via their materialist obsession with reductionism, which blinds them to the obvious godsend effects of outlawed substances.

When we place the FDA in charge of deciding whether a psychoactive drug should be re-legalized or not, we are asking them to decide on things like the relative importance of appreciating a sunset, a task for which the FDA has no expertise whatsoever.

"Dope Sick"? "Prohibition Sick" is more like it. The very term "dope" connotes imperialism, racism and xenophobia, given that all tribal cultures have used "drugs" for various purposes. "Dope? Junk?" It's hard to imagine a more intolerant, dismissive and judgmental terminology.


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Unless otherwise indicated, no AI is used in the creation of site content. These essays represent the original ideas of their author and not the ideas that the author SHOULD have based on an algorithmic parsing of existing data. For more on this subject, consider the AI-related viewpoints to which the author subscribes as delineated in the New York Times opinion piece entitled "What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity" by Rebecca Winthrop of the Brookings Institution.

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