The Barbaric State of Mental Health Care in the age of drug prohibition
Why electroshock therapy remains the go-to treatment for ending severe depression in America
by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 22, 2026
The following comments are written in response to an article on the Mad in America website entitled "Which Would You Prefer: Electroshock or a Safe Taper?" by Jennifer Giordano. 1
My answer to your question is neither.
I believe that shock therapy is a crime in an age when we do not let people use the plants and fungi that grow at their very feet. Why should we be forced to potentially damage our brain by a government that denies us our access to Mother Nature? I would rather suffer while protesting the drug prohibition that outlaws my right to heal than to undergo ECT.
My tapering to get off Venlafaxine failed miserably after a year, when my depression suddenly returned far worse than ever. But my answer is not shock therapy. I have decided to live the remainder of my life “on Venlafaxine” just so that I can think straight, that’s just how thoroughly my brain chemistry seems to have been changed by this drug. I think it shows how low the healthcare field has sunk thanks to drug prohibition that their go-to fix for people in my situation is damaging the brain. The FDA won’t approve of drugs that grow at our feet, yet they champion shock therapy2. This is absolutely bizarre, and it can only be drug-propaganda that keeps people from seeing it as such.
I think that healthcare officials have a moral duty to speak up against the drug prohibition that has turned depressed people like myself into a patient for life, without yet “curing” my depression — as if depression should be cured in the first place, but rather just symptomatically treated. My idea of a “cure” for depression would not be the same as what a Big Pharma chemist considers to be a cure, in any case.
There are plenty of drugs that could end my depression in a trice. Anyone who denies this is unfamiliar with pharmacology, ethnobotany, drug literature, drug history, and psychological common sense, for that matter.
The government lied and told us that “drugs” fry the brain. How ironic that it is drug prohibition itself that actually forces us to fry brains. Like so many other social evils in America, ECT only makes sense to those who reckon without drug prohibition and how it has outlawed our right to heal.
Key Takeaways:
Shock therapy is a crime in a world that refuses to allow the depressed to use Mother Nature's medicines.
The FDA will not approve medicines that grow at our feet, but will approve of damaging the brain with ECT.
Drug prohibition fries the brain by outlawing all effective medicines, leaving the seriously depressed no choice but to undergo brain-damaging shock therapy.
The DEA outlawed MDMA in 1985, thereby depriving soldiers of a godsend treatment for PTSD. Apparently, the DEA staff slept well at night in the early 2000s as American soldiers were having their lives destroyed by IEDs.
The so-called opiate crisis is really a drug prohibition crisis.
There are no merely recreational drugs. All drugs that elate have obvious potential uses for the depressed.
We drastically limit drug choices, we refuse to teach safe use, and then we discover there's a gene to explain why some people have trouble with drugs. Science loves to find simple solutions to complex problems.
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.
It's always wrong to demonize drugs in the abstract. That's anti-scientific. It begs so many questions and leaves suffering pain patients (and others) high and dry. No substance is bad in and of itself.
This just in on the drug scene: A new New York Times report shows that America has been flooding the world with antidepressants, alcohol and cigarettes!
In a compassionate world, we would give laughing gas kits to the suicidal just as we now give epi pens to those with severe allergies.
Drug prohibition is superstitious idiocy.
It is based on the following crazy idea:
that a substance that can be misused by a white young person at one dose for one reason must not be used by anybody at any dose for any reason.
All of our problems with opioids and opiates could have been avoided had the busybody Chicken Littles in America left well enough alone and let folks continue to smoke regulated opium peaceably in their own homes.
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.
The following comments are written in response to an article on the Mad in America website entitled "Which Would You Prefer: Electroshock or a Safe Taper?" by Jennifer Giordano. 1
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