The Crucial Connection Between Antidepressants and the War on Drugs
notes on getting off of Effexor
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
November 8, 2024
he full evil of the war on drugs cannot be understood without reference to the psychiatric pill mill, which turns users into patients for life. This highly dystopian and anti-patient therapeutic paradigm would have been totally unnecessary had materialists not decided to ignore common sense psychology and to leverage dependency for profit instead. For common sense tells us that the wisely scheduled use of substances1 like coca, opium, phenethylamines and laughing gas, could help the depressed by getting them through tough times -- and this is only the low-hanging fruit gleaned from the few psychoactive substances that are on our radar today.
There are hundreds of psychoactive substances out there that could be helpful for the depressed based on mere common sense, as opposed to microscopic evidence and materialist theory that presupposes human beings to be replaceable biochemical widgets. See, for instance, Plants of the Gods by ethnobotanist Richard Schultes2 or the hundreds of non-addictive godsends synthesized by Alexander Shulgin, drugs which inspire and elate3. Unfortunately, however, common sense is in short supply in a world in which drug researchers search for efficacy under a microscope while ignoring all anecdotal and historical reports of use, especially of beneficial use, which they censor from their libraries and reading lists.
Drug warriors will scream, "There are insufficient studies,"4 but, of course, they are doing all they can to make sure that that will always be the case. They do this not just through prohibition, but by insisting that holistic-working drugs be studied using materialist tests for efficacy: which means that these drugs must be studied separately for treating any particular condition in the disease-mongering DSM, which, of course, keeps decriminalization moving glacially. Meanwhile, science supports this unjust procrastination by refusing to consider the blazingly obvious psychological benefits of outlawed drugs. Yes, cocaine has risks but it has also safely inspired massive achievements -- though few are ready to admit this. One of the few refreshing exceptions is British talk-show host Graham Norton, who freely says that cocaine is a wonderful drug. Opium has risks but it can bring about an almost surreal appreciation of the world around one, as it did for Lovecraft and Poe, especially as evinced in the latter author's "Tale of the Ragged Mountains."5
In short, euphoria has obvious and time-honored benefits -- and until puritanical Americans accept that fact, they will continue to cause millions to weep and cry unnecessarily in hopeless silence.
Opium in particular could be a godsend for those who do not want to take Big Pharma drugs every day of their lives, drugs that have been associated with a loss of creativity and which bring about a humiliating lifelong dependence on doctors, including irritatingly perky interns who are half one's age, if that. And yet Americans are brainwashed to think that a lifetime dependency on Big Pharma drugs is fine while a lifetime dependence on a drug like opium is horrible.
This is just Christian Science prejudice -- not a scientific truth, and shows the hideous anti-patient presumption of drug law -- laws that seek to make us fear one substance while considering a similar but approved substance to be so much lamb's milk.
But be warned, antidepressant users: some of these pills are harder to quit than heroin.
I have found it impossible to get off of Effexor. I was off it for almost three months but then I became desperately depressed, just could scarcely move.
And this is a universal reaction to Effexor withdrawal, accounting for its 95% recidivism rate for long-term users who wish to get off the drug.
Most long-term antidepressant use has negative withdrawal effects of this kind for long-term users.
Psychiatrists will turn around and say: "See, the drugs are working because you're depressed without it."
But is liquor working because alcoholics feel "better" while on the drug? And how are these miracle drugs resulting in states of depression that are far worse than the one with which one started before treatment? And if Effexor was working, then we could say the same of opium and coca and heroin in many cases. A founder of Johns Hopkins spent his entire working life on morphine and no one even noticed the fact. After his death, his colleagues scratched their heads, asking, "How could he have been so professional and effective while on that drug?" As Thomas Szasz pointed out, they never stopped to consider that the morphine use might have had a beneficial effect on the user's work habits. Why not? Because Drug War orthodoxy refuses to believe that "drugs" can have any benefits.
But the biggest problem with Big Pharma antidepressants is that they turn patients into users for life. If I am to be dependent on a drug for life, I would far prefer to be dependent on the drug alone and not on the entire self-satisfied healthcare system and their expensive and lifelong prying into my moods.
DOCTOR: "Have you ever contemplated suicide in the last 3 months?"
ME: "Only when I consider how psychiatry has turned me into a patient for life."
Despite the notorious downsides of Effexor withdrawal, it makes sense that I could get off the drug with the help of other drugs -- but we are so far from being able to work with a full pharmacopoeia to test this thesis that it will be ages before it can be fairly trialed in the light of day. It will first require a huge reset of American attitudes toward drugs before we can begin finding out what they can really do for us in specific situations, at specific doses, in specific combinations, in specific settings, with specific people, etc.
The Drug War preemptively rules out all creative uses and so the depressed are forced to shop at the only guy in town when it comes to mental and mood adjustment: their local materialist doctor, who will set them up with antidepressants which they will then be taking for a lifetime, with the doctor unable to see anything demoralizing about that arrangement.
Speaking of the hypocrisy about opium, my latest psychiatrist praised Effexor because its withdrawal symptoms do not include "craving" for the drug.
But this is a hypocritical and value-laden presumption on his part. Why is it okay for me to feel like absolute hell and want to die (when coming off of Effexor) but it's horrible for me to have cravings for a drug? Hell is hell, doc, I mean, come on. I'd choose the hell that's easiest to end. Jim Hogshire wrote about "sleep cures" for unwanted opiate addictions that work in a week. It's still not clear to me that ANY treatment for unwanted Effexor dependency could work in a lifetime, let alone a week.
I'm still not back to zero, however. I find I can go for long swaths of time without using Effexor. But getting off it entirely is apparently a big ask. But again, the problem is not just Effexor -- it is the Drug War which keeps us from using all sorts of substances to help combat Effexor's seeming monopoly on one's mood and mentation. If I can take a drug made by Alexander Shulgin that makes me feel like I'm touching the hand of God, it is blazingly clear that it would have value in keeping me off of unwanted substances. If I can use laughing gas on occasion, that would cheer me up, both while on nitrous oxide and while anticipating its use. Likewise, if i can use opium once a week, say while visiting the theater, my mood would be buoyed, not just on the weekend but on the weekdays thanks to anticipation. This is all common sense, however, and materialists these days do not have common sense.
Of course, the question of how much any given drug could help in itself depends on a wide variety of factors: the specific nature of the drug, its dosage, its specific reason for use, etc. etc. But Drug Warriors do not consider details: they are all about promoting the anti-scientific narrative that drugs can be bad in themselves, without regard for details of use. That's why the Drug War is so maddeningly anti-scientific and, in fact, just plain superstitious. It locates evil in "things," not in the bad social policies of human beings which incentivize violence around the world and destroy American democratic liberties at home.
Give an educated person access to the medicines that we have outlawed over the past 100 years and let us profit from our own creative use patterns, the best of which can be shared as bio-hacks. That would be a welcome change after 100 years of insisting that the only things to be learned about drugs are their downsides.
Author's Follow-up: November 8, 2024
Another downside of antidepressants is that they seem to dampen the power of at least some psychedelic drugs to inspire. The interesting thing, however, is that my best experience on psilocybin to date was when I was still on Effexor. It was after cutting back that the positive effects seemed to lessen. My theory is that withdrawal makes one feel like crap and therefore it negatively affects the psychedelic experience. The problem is that many vendors for such drugs make a hard-and-fast rule about denying services to folks on antidepressants, and from what I've learned on this subject, this seems to be an overreaction to reports of a rare condition called "serotonin syndrome." As Paul Stamets points out, that syndrome is deadly only for those who use a wide variety of drugs of uncertain origin. But retreat operators know that it's "one strike, they're out" thanks to the absurdly high-strung sensitivities of Americans with respect to drugs and so they often refuse to seat those who are using modern antidepressants. I can understand this from a legal standpoint, perhaps, but it bothers me when they present this policy as a step toward client safety: I would prefer that they be honest and just tell us that they are barring my participation out of legal concerns.
It's sad however that the very people who need new medicinal approaches the most are precisely the ones who are being denied the benefits of the psychedelic renaissance.
Getting Off Drugs
NOVEMBER 2024
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.
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.
1 Scheduled, as on a calendar, not by the mendacious DEA (up) 2 Schultes, Plants of the Gods:Origins of Hallucinogenic Use, 1979 (up) 3 Shulgin, Alexander, PIHKAL: A Chemical Love Story , Transform Press, (up) 4 As if we even need studies to know that laughing gas would elate or that opium would inspire. (up) 5 When I make such statements, critics sometimes say that not everyone has positive experiences on drugs. But that's the whole point: holistic drugs do not work the same way for everybody, which is the dream of the materialist drug maker. The more education one has, the more inner resources, the more one is likely to have beneficial experiences. As Crowley pointed out, it is the uneducated person who finds cocaine too tempting -- and the answer for that is education, not arrest and punishment and the outlawing of drugs which, for many, can bring massive achievement in life. (up)
Drug warriors have harnessed the perfect storm. Prohibition caters to the interests of law enforcement, psychotherapy, Big Pharma, demagogues, puritans, and materialist scientists, who believe that consciousness is no big "whoop" and that spiritual states are just flukes.
UNESCO celebrates the healing practices of the Kallawaya people of South America. What hypocrisy! UNESCO supports a drug war that makes some of those practices illegal!
We don't need people to get "clean." We need people to start living a fulfilling life. The two things are different.
The Partnership for a Drug Free America should be put on trial for having blatantly lied to Americans in the 1980s about drugs, using our taxpayer money to do it!
Someone should stand outside Jefferson's estate and hand out leaflets describing the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello to confiscate poppy plants. That raid was against everything Jefferson stood for. The TJ Foundation DISHONORED JEFFERSON and their visitors should know that!
Oregon's drug policy is incoherent and cruel. The rich and healthy spend $4,000 a week on psilocybin. The poor and chemically dependent are thrown in jail, unless they're on SSRIs, in which case they're congratulated for "taking their meds."
Don't the Oregon prohibitionists realize that all the thousands of deaths from opiates is so much blood on their hands?
These are just simple psychological truths that drug war ideology is designed to hide from sight. Doctors tell us that "drugs" are only useful when created by Big Pharma, chosen by doctors, and authorized by folks who have spent thousands on medical school. (Lies, lies, lies.)
The DEA stomped onto Thomas Jefferson's estate in 1987 and confiscated the founding father's poppy plants in violation of everything he stood for, politically speaking. And the TJ Foundation helped them! They sold out Jefferson.
There are hundreds of things that we should outlaw before drugs (like horseback riding) if, as claimed, we are targeting dangerous activities. Besides, drugs are only dangerous BECAUSE of prohibition, which compromises product purity and refuses to teach safe use.
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 Crucial Connection Between Antidepressants and the War on Drugs: notes on getting off of Effexor, published on November 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)
he full evil of the war on drugs cannot be understood without reference to the psychiatric pill mill, which turns users into patients for life. This highly dystopian and anti-patient therapeutic paradigm would have been totally unnecessary had materialists not decided to ignore common sense psychology and to leverage dependency for profit instead. For common sense tells us that the wisely scheduled use of substances1 like coca, opium, phenethylamines and laughing gas, could help the depressed by getting them through tough times -- and this is only the low-hanging fruit gleaned from the few psychoactive substances that are on our radar today. 
You have been reading an article entitled, The Crucial Connection Between Antidepressants and the War on Drugs: notes on getting off of Effexor, published on November 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)