I made the mistake of sharing my common sense Effexor withdrawal scheme with the Surviving Antidepressants website. Here is my final email, after one respondee plucked my last and final nerve. The common sense view is that psilocybin has great promise -- but all that they could see in the plan was risk. That's what the Drug War is all about: highlighting the risk of drug use and ignoring the benefits. The attitude should be: Hey, let's see if this works! It makes obvious psychological sense! Instead the attitude is: Let's look for scientific reasons why this might not work.
Science is blind to the obvious -- and seeks to shoot down all positive effects by saying they have not been proven. Nonsense. They've been proven by the wide eyes of those inspired by psilocybin from 10,000 BC Mesoamerica to Johns Hopkins in 2024.
Thanks for the feedback. But the whole problem is that science focuses on these downsides to the exclusion of all else. I do not believe that psilocybin effects are unproven. That is the materialist point of view. They are proven by the laughter and achievement and even the religiosity of folks who have used the substance. I know atheists who are believers after using the substance.
You imply that psilocybin is just another drug. That is just unfair. Drug warriors want us to think suspiciously of this big man-made category of dangerous "drugs."
The fact that some drugs cause issues is totally irrelevant.
It's not that what you say is wrong, it's just that it's all based on science's jaundiced view of "drugs," science's determination to ignore common psychological sense.
Dr. Robert Glatter is a typical materialist: he wrote an article in Forbes magazine in 2021 asking if laughing gas could help the depressed. WHAT? That's idiotic.
Science makes drug approval extremely slow.
Materialists refuse to believe the evidence right before their eyes! that societies have used these drugs positively for ages... and that these substances even tell us something about human consciousness and the meaning of life. See "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James.
Scientists are NOT experts when it comes to psychoactive drugs. HUMANISTS and PHILOSOPHERS and MUSICIANS and RELIGIOUS LEADERS are the experts.
All science can do is tell us of potential physical problems.
Drug use is like mountain climbing or driving a car. OF COURSE it has risks. The Drug War is determined to make us think of drugs as uniquely risky, and that's rot.
I believe in the Mazatec conception of life as best viewed holistically, and I am not going to be held back by scientists who spend their time trying to find reasons why they can ignore the obvious benefits of godsend medicines.
This is not some fluke on my part: I'd rather die than stay on this crap and no one's going to convince me that I can't do it the way that makes plain psychological sense.
I'd much rather fail at this cause than adopt the materialist view that these drugs are best understood by looking at them through a microscope.
Author's Follow-up: August 8, 2024
Science studies all the bits and pieces out of context and then tells us "this causes that" and "that causes this." But the results of real drug use, good or bad, are produced by a wide variety of beliefs and practices and substance combined in unique and unpredictable ways. "This may cause that" in the laboratory out of all context, but "this does not necessarily cause that" as part of the big picture -- or it MAY cause that but it turns out that that's not a problem given OTHER elements of the big holistic picture.
Science simplifies the world as much as possible so that it can claim to give us absolute truth. But it is absolute truth about a hypothetical world that does not actually exist.
So much harm could be reduced by shunting people off onto safer alternative drugs -- but they're all outlawed! Reducing harm should ultimately mean ending this prohibition that denies us endless godsends, like the phenethylamines of Alexander Shulgin.
There are endless drugs that could help with depression. Any drug that inspires and elates is an antidepressant, partly by the effect itself and partly by the mood-elevation caused by anticipation of use (facts which are far too obvious for drug warriors to understand).
The addiction gene should be called the prohibition gene: it renders one vulnerable to prohibition lies and limitations: like the lack of safe supply, the lack of choices, and the lack of information. We should pathologize the prohibitionists, not their victims.
This hysterical reaction to rare negative events actually creates more rare negative events. This is why the DEA publicizes "drug problems," because by making them well known, they make the problems more prevalent and can thereby justify their huge budget.
"Chemical means of peering into the contents of the inner mind have been universally prized as divine exordia in man’s quest for the beyond... before the coarseness of utilitarian minds reduced them to the status of 'dope'." -- Eric Hendrickson
The formula is easy: pick a substance that folks are predisposed to hate anyway, then keep hounding the public with stories about tragedies somehow related to that substance. Show it ruining lives in movies and on TV. Don't lie. Just keep showing all the negatives.
The government makes psychoactive drug approval as slow as possible by insisting that drugs be studied in relation to one single board-certified "illness." But the main benefits of such drugs are holistic in nature. Science should butt out if it can't recognize that fact.
They drive to their drug tests in pickup trucks with license plates that read "Don't tread on me." Yeah, right. "Don't tread on me: Just tell me how and how much I'm allowed to think and feel in this life. And please let me know what plants I can access."
MDMA legalization has suffered a setback by the FDA. The FDA: these are the people that think Electro Shock Therapy cannot be used often enough! What sick priorities.
My approach to withdrawal: incrementally reduce daily doses over 6 months, or even a year, meanwhile using all the legal entheogens and psychedelics that you can find in a way likely to boost your endurance and "sense of purpose" to make withdrawal successful.
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, Surviving the Surviving Antidepressants website published on August 8, 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, Surviving the Surviving Antidepressants website published on August 8, 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)