The common sense way to get off of antidepressants
an open letter to Frederick S. Barrett, Ph.D., cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
April 23, 2024
ear Dr. Barrett:
My name is Brian... and I am a 65-year-old chronic depressive who has been on Effexor for the last 30 years. I was initially excited by the psychedelic renaissance when I read about it over a decade ago now, but I soon found out that it had nothing to offer me. It turned out that, due to liability issues surrounding a rare side effect known as Serotonin Syndrome, antidepressant users like myself were ineligible for all the benefits of psychedelic medicine, whether from stateside clinical trials or from overseas retreats.
I personally feel that psychiatric science has a debt to folks like myself, for I would contend that we have been turned into eternal patients thanks to the War on Drugs, which outlawed for us all obvious mood-improving substances, shunting us off instead onto SSRIs and SNRIs, which turn out to cause strong chemical dependence and some of which can be harder to quit than heroin (Julie Holland). Thus 1 in 4 American women, in my view, have been turned into wards of the healthcare state.
But I am not writing to slam materialist medicine but rather to suggest a way that it can undo some of the harm that it has caused by turning folks like myself into eternal patients.
Could we please meet for an hour -- or at least a half-hour -- so that I can outline a suggested clinical trial to test a withdrawal process for SNRIs & SSRIs, one which is designed to take advantage of the mind-focusing and incentivizing qualities of psychedelic use in order to strengthen the withdrawing person's resolve to "stay the course" and get off of the antidepressants in question -- and to stay off them thanks to the follow-up use of entheogens and psychedelics?
I fear that such a protocol will not be looked kindly upon by Big Pharma, but perhaps we could at least discuss it. It also depends on common sense psychology like anticipation, something that I fear that materialist science tends to pooh-pooh, in the same way that Dr. Robert Glatter maintained in Forbes magazine in 2021 that he was not sure if laughing gas could help the depressed! In my opinion, this distrust of "merely" subjective results, such as laughter of all things, makes scientists think and reason like Dr. Spock of Star Trek, completely ignoring the truths of common sense psychology.
I am available to meet with you on the day, time and location of your choice. I am also ready to be your first guinea pig in such a clinical trial as I propose, should it become finalized and approved. I am even ready to relocate if necessary to become part of such a study.
I am not writing out of an abstract interest in psychedelic science, but rather because I have "skin in this game." That is, I wish to enjoy and study the effects of psychedelics before I die, for reasons of a psychological, spiritual and philosophical nature (bearing in mind that William James himself urged us to study altered states). I also want to finally become free of antidepressants so that I no longer have to experience those humiliating and expensive tri-monthly visits to a mental health clinic in which I am urged to divulge the details of my psychological life to someone who is one-third my age.
Given that 1 in 4 American women are also dependent on the daily use of antidepressants, I would suggest that someone in the psychedelic renaissance has a duty to help this demographic of eternal patients. Otherwise, the benefits of the psychedelic renaissance will remain unavailable to precisely those who need and deserve them the most.
Please let me know if we can meet so that I can present the outlines of a clinical trial, one that will help veteran antidepressant users like myself to get off of these dependence-causing drugs with the psychological and spiritual support of psychedelic and entheogenic medicine, medicine to be monitored such that Serotonin Syndrome can be avoided and/or quickly treated should its symptoms present.
Thanks for your time and I look forward to your response!
Author's Follow-up: October 27, 2024
And I am still looking forward to that response! Any second now, right? Ooh, I can't wait!
Common Nonsense
In the age of the Drug War, psychiatrists, psychologists and doctors lack all common sense. They are dogmatically blind to the power of drugs that elate and inspire, based on their adherence to reductive materialism, which tells them that such things are not "real" cures. The human being is a biochemical machine, after all, and the scientist's job is to fix the biochemistry, not to make people merely feel good. There are hundreds of millions of victims of this mindset, but the doctors never notice them because they are silent: they are the ones who waste their days holed up behind locked doors, contemplating suicide.
Such a materialist mindset completely ignores the power of virtuous circles that a wide variety of pick-me-up drugs could create when properly chosen and scheduled -- on a calendar, I mean, and not by the DEA. Such a mindset completely ignores the power of anticipation. Such a mindset completely ignores the motivating power provided to these individuals of just plain being able to get things done in their lives.
The doctors have no scruples in this regard because, like all Americans, they have been taught since grade-school that drugs must be a dead end, that the creativity of humankind will never find a way to use them wisely.
The cruelty of this modern reductive paradigm is seen in the way that psychiatrists "adjust meds." They insist that the severely depressed patient get off one drug entirely before starting another. Imagine if a drug dealer insisted the same thing. You would think that he was crazy. But the doctor knows best. He or she needs to be in total control of the variables, if only for insurance and regulatory purposes, and so it is for his or her convenience that the patient must go without anything during drug changes, thereby rendering them absolutely miserable.
Doctors praise antidepressants because they do not cause cravings, but for whom is that a benefit? For the prescribing doctor, of course, because the people whom they force to go without medicine merely suffer in a silent hell and do not pester the doctor to help them out.
This is the mindset that teaches doctors to damage the brains of the depressed with shock therapy rather than to give them the kinds of drugs that have inspired entire religions, as soma inspired the Vedic. This is the mindset that causes whole nations to vote in favor of letting people use drugs to die but will not let those same people use drugs that could make them want to live.
It is a complete perversion of values, all wrought by the anti-scientific, superstitious substance demonization of politically scheming politicians, populist pols who come to power by fearmongering.
This is one of the many reasons why the re-election of Trump is an existential disaster, and not just for drug policy but for democracy itself: Trump is the ultimate fearmonger.
I have written dozens of essays about antidepressants and the Drug War, but it is important to read this one first, for it contains the most up-to-date info on my battle to get off such drugs. This reading order is important because I declared premature victory against the SNRI called Effexor in recent essays, only to discover that the drug is far more insidious than I gave it credit for. It turns out withdrawing, at least for me, eventually led to deep feelings of abject despair, far greater than the depression for which I started taking the "med" in the first place.
The frustrating thing is, these feelings could be combatted by a host of drugs that we have outlawed in the name of our anti-scientific and anti-patient War on Drugs. That much is just psychological common sense. But we have been taught to believe that there are no positive uses for opium, nor for cocaine, nor for coca, nor for MDMA, nor for laughing gas, nor for peyote, nor for the hundreds of inspiring phenethylamines synthesized by Alexander Shulgin, etc. etc. etc.
The truth is, rather, that Drug Warriors (and the millions whom they have brainwashed) do not WANT there to be positive uses for such drugs. No, they want me to "keep taking my meds" instead and so to enrich their investment portfolios in the pharmaceutical sector. Meanwhile, those without a vested financial interest have been taught that antidepressants are "scientific" and so they cannot understand my desire to get off them. They cannot understand the hell of being turned into a patient for life and having to make regular expensive and humiliating pilgrimages to psychiatrists (who are half one's own age) to bare one's soul for the purpose of obtaining an expensive prescription for a drug that numbs one's brain rather than inspiring it - and a drug which seems to counteract, dampen and/or repress most of the positive effects that I might have otherwise obtained by the few semi-legal alternatives to antidepressants, such as psilocybin and ayahuasca.
But it is just psychological common sense that I could withdraw successfully from Effexor with the advised use of a comprehensive pharmacy, including but not limited to the demonized substances listed above. But materialist science is not interested in common sense. And so they tell me that such drug use has not been proven to "work." But materialist doctors are not experts in what motivates me as a living, breathing, unique individual. The heart has its own reasons that reductionist science cannot understand. If I could look forward, at this moment, to relaxing with an opium pipe tonight, my mood would improve NOW, not just tonight. I would have something to look forward to. I would not feel the need to reach for that bottle full of Effexor pills that I was hoping to foreswear. Likewise, if I could use a drug to laugh and "touch the hand of God" (as with laughing gas and phenethylamines respectively), I could laugh at the pangs of despair that Effexor tries to throw my way.
Science's eternal response to such ideas is: "There is no proof that such things work!"
No, nor will there ever be in the age of the Drug War, in which such common sense use is punished by long jail terms and would never be favorably publicized, even if successful, since America's prime imperative in the age of the Drug War is to demonize psychoactive medicines, under the absurd assumption-laden idea that to talk honestly about drugs is to encourage their use.
Well, we SHOULD be encouraging their use in cases where they actually work, in cases, for instance, when they prevent guys like myself from killing themselves thanks to the knowledge that they are a bounden slave to the combined forces of the Drug War and Big Pharma's pill mill.
Besides, there is no proof that hugging works, but we do not need Dr. Spock of Star Trek to launch a study into that issue: we all know that hugging works by bringing two souls together both physically and spiritually. We do not need a map of brain chemistry to figure this out: the proof is extant, the proof is in the pudding.
But I haven't given up yet despite the setback in my most recent plan. I'm going to search the world for a place where I can get off antidepressants in a way that makes some psychological common sense.
Right now, all I see in terms of resources are a bunch of companies who, for large fees, will help me go cold turkey on antidepressants., or companies that claim to have found the right combination of legal herbal formulas that should make withdrawal easier. But to me, these are all what Percy Shelley would call "frail spells," concocted under the watchful eye of the Drug Warrior to make sure that nothing potent and obviously effective will get added to the mix. In fact, if a space alien came to earth and asked what sort of psychoactive drugs were outlawed, one could honestly answer: "Anything that obviously works."
Meanwhile, drug laws make it impossible for me to visit psychiatrists remotely online, requiring me instead to physically visit my doctors, thereby limiting rural residents like myself to accessing hayseed psychiatrists whose one area of expertise seems to be the writing of prescriptions for antidepressants. Talk to them about anything else, and their eyes glaze over. "That's all unproven," they'll say, "Or, no, we have yet to fully study such things." As if we have to study in order to realize that feeling good helps and can have positive psychological effects.
I'm sure that part of the problem with my withdrawal scheme is that I tried to get off the drug too quickly. But I only tried that because I can find no doctor who will compound the drug for me in a way that makes psychological common sense, namely, with daily miniscule reductions in dosage. My current psychiatrist told me that such compounding was unheard of and that I should drop doses by 37.5 mg at a time, since that is the lowest dose that the pharmaceutical companies create. He said I could start "counting pill beads" once I am down to a 37.5 mg daily dose if I wanted to taper still further.
Count pill beads? Surely that's why compounding pharmacists exist: to count pill beads. (UPDATE: I was wrong about this. See my article on "Tapering for Jesus.")
I did find a compounding company that said it could compound Effexor in the way that I desire. But there's a big catch: they have to receive a prescription for that purpose. And I can find no doctor in the world who is willing to write me one. Even those who sympathize with my plight want me to become their full-time patient before they will even consider writing such a prescription.
So those who warned me against trying to get off Effexor were right in a way: it is extraordinarily difficult. But they feel to realize WHY this is so. It is not just because Effexor is a toxic drug, but also because the drug war has outlawed everything that could help me get off it.
This is why those pundits who sign off on the psychiatric pill mill are clueless about the huge problem with the War on Drugs: the way it humiliates and disempowers millions. For it turns out that the phrase "No hope in dope" is true after all, but only when the dope in question is modern antidepressants.
OCTOBER 2024
Here are some of the many articles I have written about the philosophy of getting off drugs. Bear in mind that I am in the process of getting off Effexor myself and am exploring the power of "drugs to fight drugs" in so doing. And this is not a straightforward path given the sweeping limits that are imposed by drug law. So the question of exactly what might work (and how and when, etc.) is still wide open and I am advocating nothing, except the common sense notion that we can benefit from euphoria and mood boosts, yes, and that "drugs can be used to fight drugs," and in a safe way too -- a way that will prove far safer than prohibition, which continues to bring about daily deaths from drive-by shootings and unregulated product while causing civil wars overseas.
I guess what I am saying here is, this site is not purporting to offer medical advice. I avoid using such wording, however, because so many authors refuse to talk honestly about drugs, especially about positive drug use, for fear of being seen as giving medical advice, and this, of course, is just how drug warriors want matters to remain. It lets them shut down free speech about drugs.
Besides, I reject the idea that materialist doctors are the experts when it comes to how we think and feel about life. The best they can do as materialist is to tell us the potential physical risks of using holistically-operating drugs, but individuals are the experts on what motivates them in life, on their own particular hopes and dreams and on what risks they deem necessary to obtain them, to pursue happiness, that is, which objective our legislators outlawed when they outlawed all substances that can help facilitate happiness in the properly motivated and educated individual.
The real answer is not for authors to give groveling apologies for being honest, however: the real answer is for kids to be educated about the basics of wise substance use -- and for America to come to grips with the fact that we will always be surrounded by "drugs" -- and that the goal should be to ensure safe use, not to keep endlessly arresting minorities and removing them from the voting rolls on behalf of the clinically insane idea that we should outlaw mother nature to protect our kids -- and this in a purportedly Christian country whose very deity told us that his creation was good.
Check out the conversations that I have had so far with the movers and shakers in the drug-war game -- or rather that I have TRIED to have. Actually, most of these people have failed to respond to my calls to parlay, but that need not stop you from reading MY side of these would-be chats.
I don't know what's worse, being ignored entirely or being answered with a simple "Thank you" or "I'll think about it." One writes thousands of words to raise questions that no one else is discussing and they are received and dismissed with a "Thank you." So much for discussion, so much for give-and-take. It's just plain considered bad manners these days to talk honestly about drugs. Academia is living in a fantasy world in which drugs are ignored and/or demonized -- and they are in no hurry to face reality. And so I am considered a troublemaker. This is understandable, of course. One can support gay rights, feminism, and LGBTQ+ today without raising collegiate hackles, but should one dare to talk honestly about drugs, they are exiled from the public commons.
Somebody needs to keep pointing out the sad truth about today's censored academia and how this self-censorship is but one of the many unacknowledged consequences of the drug war ideology of substance demonization.
Democratic societies need to outlaw prohibition for many reasons, the first being the fact that prohibition removes millions of minorities from the voting rolls, thereby handing elections to fascists and insurrectionists.
I personally hate beets and I could make a health argument against their legality. Beets can kill for those allergic to them. Sure, it's a rare condition, but since when has that stopped a prohibitionist from screaming bloody murder?
Just think how many ayahuasca-like godsends that we are going without because we dogmatically refuse to even look for them, out of our materialist disdain for mixing drugs with drugs.
I have dissed MindMed's new LSD "breakthrough drug" for philosophical reasons. But we can at least hope that the approval of such a "de-fanged" LSD will prove to be a step in the slow, zigzag path toward re-legalization.
Check out the 2021 article in Forbes in which a materialist doctor professes to doubt whether laughing gas could help the depressed. Materialists are committed to seeing the world from the POV of Spock from Star Trek.
There are endless creative ways to ward off addiction if all psychoactive medicines were at our disposal. The use of the drugs synthesized by Alexander Shulgin could combat the psychological downsides of withdrawal by providing strategic "as-needed" relief.
Today's Washington Post reports that "opioid pills shipped" DROPPED 45% between 2011 and 2019..... while fatal overdoses ROSE TO RECORD LEVELS! Prohibition is PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE.
Meanwhile, no imaginable downside could persuade westerners that guns and alcohol were too dangerous. Yet the DEA lies about almost all psychoactive drugs, saying there are no good uses. That's a lie! Then they pass laws that keep us from disproving their puritanical conclusion.
Drug Warriors never take responsibility for incentivizing poor kids throughout the west to sell drugs. It's not just in NYC and LA, it's in modest-sized towns in France. Find public housing, you find drug dealing. It's the prohibition, damn it!
Cop and detective shows are loaded with subtle drug war propaganda, including lines like, "She had a history of drug use, so..." The implication being that anyone who uses substances that politicians hate cannot be trusted.
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, The common sense way to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to Frederick S. Barrett, Ph.D., cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University, published on April 23, 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)
ear Dr. Barrett:
You have been reading an article entitled, The common sense way to get off of antidepressants: an open letter to Frederick S. Barrett, Ph.D., cognitive neuroscientist at Johns Hopkins University, published on April 23, 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)