What the psychiatrist said when I told him I wanted to get off Effexor
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 28, 2024
For those who haven't noticed, I have somewhat strong feelings about issues related to psychoactive drugs, especially when it comes to the psychiatric pill mill 1 and the War on Drugs. (No, seriously. You'd be surprised!) And yet I am always trying to keep an "open mind." That's why I went into my new psychiatrist's office yesterday with the firm intention of listening to everything he said, without cutting him off or rolling my eyes. I would raise neither my eyebrows nor my voice. I was going to state my own point of view first, of course, but then I was going to "stand down" and actually listen. In this way, I would learn what the "party line" was in present-day psychiatry and just how open its votaries were to change.
Historically speaking (which is to say over the last 20+ years), these in-person visits had just been a pro forma requirement for me to continue receiving "my meds." The psychiatrist would weigh me with my shoes on, apologize for the notorious imprecision of the scale, guide me into the confession booth - er, the psychiatrist's office - and then give me the 10-question form to find out how well I was sleeping at night and whether I was contemplating suicide. (I always wanted to answer that latter question as follows: "Yes, whenever I think about the fact that the Drug War has turned me into an eternal patient by shunting me off onto dependence-causing Big Pharma drugs.") To be fair, however, this psychiatrist skipped the humiliating 10-question quiz entirely. But I still threw him a curveball when the conversation - or rather his monologue - came around to the subject of how I had been feeling since my last office visit, just six months ago.
His response reminded me of the incredulous reaction that Josef K. received when he announced that he was going to fire his lawyer and represent himself in Kafka's "The Trial." I recall the psychiatrist saying something like, "Oh, don't do that," which irritated me a little, to be honest, but I soldiered on, without so much as rolling one single eyeball. In retrospect, his attitude seemed to be: "If it's not broken, don't fix it." I say this based on his subsequent praise for Effexor as an antidepressant and the fact that I was not reporting any psychological or physical problems. I realized, however, that the only way I could protest this misplaced sanguinity on his part would be to reference a bunch of psychological and philosophical considerations that I could never conjure up coherently on the fly: for instance, the fact that I abhor the materialist program of improving mentality through reductively-informed surgical strikes at brain chemistry, based as it is on the false idea that human beings are interchangeable widgets when it comes to treating their emotional lives.
I also believe that it's absurd to remain on dependence-causing materialist-designed drugs in the year 2024, given all that we have learned about the curative powers of natural medicines like psilocybin3, San Pedro Cactus4 and ayahuasca5 - a list of life-changers that is sure to keep growing as the world finally learns to reject the anti-scientific idea that drugs can be voted "good" or "bad" without regard for context of use.
Fortunately, I realized that it would be worse than useless to try to argue these points in a half-hour session with a professional who had been educated in the materialist tradition, especially given my determination to keep this meeting friendly. So I soldiered on by explaining the details of my proposed protocol for getting off of Effexor.
"I have a theory about how I can get off Effexor in one year. It would involve compounding my prescription such that each successive pill that I take contains only 364/365th as much Effexor as its predecessor. During this year, I would be using psilocybin, not just in macrodoses but in microdoses, because there is ample evidence from user reports that such medicine can inspire change and fortitude, especially when used in conjunction with the sorts of empathic human guides that I intend to employ in this protocol. See more from Paul Stamets himself on the promise of psilocybin microdosing6."
The psychiatrist responded so politely and in such a melodious voice that I actually thought he was making sense at the time.
He told me that he had never heard of such a thing, that he had never heard of compounding being used in such a way. He then told me that his preferred procedure would be to immediately drop my daily 225 mg dose by 37.5 mg for three weeks and then drop it by another 37.5 mgs after that. He warned me that I may have what some people call "brain zaps" and tingling sensations, etc., but this was normal and that I would be just fine. The worst problem, he said, is that your depression could return during this time. Naturally, I would require additional appointments during this withdrawal process to make sure that these relatively large dosage decreases were not causing me problems.
What could I say? I had determined not to argue with the guy and besides, he truly sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
I only realized the uselessness of his answers that night as I lay in bed thinking.
He was not making sense at all! He completely ignored the obvious psychological reasons for reducing the drug slowly and steadily with compounding: it was precisely to AVOID the brain zaps and the return of depression. Nor did he place any store in the value of plant medicine to buoy my attitude during the withdrawal process. Drugs like psilocybin, etc., are still being studied, he said, and their usefulness has not been determined.
Of course, in 20-20 hindsight, I should have responded as follows:
"Their usefulness has not been determined by materialist science, perhaps, but indigenous people around the world have known such medicines to be effective for tens of thousands of years. The problem is that materialists are psychologically challenged. They still cannot even figure out if laughing gas 7 could help the depressed8. Even the Reader's Digest figured out that laughing was the best medicine, over a century ago. Surely such drug use would at least be better than suicide 9 or electroshock therapy! And don't get me started on the many elating and inspiring substances synthesized by Alexander Shulgin, none of which turn the user into a patient for life10. Such substances would HAVE to help me, psychologically speaking, to make the tapering routine WORK, by helping me wrap my mind around the process and inwardly commit to a Big Pharma 1112 -free life."
But it was just as well that I kept quiet and let the psychiatrist talk. Now I better understand the anti-patient nature of the psychiatric party line and why I need to stop being dependent on psychiatrists altogether.
PS I forgot to mention: I asked the psychiatrist what I would do when the dosage got down to the 37.5 mg capsule, given that 37.5 is the smallest capsule that pharmaceutical companies make for Effexor. He said "No problem. You can just open the 37.5 capsules and count the itty-bitty pilules inside until you get the dosage that you want."
WHAT? Surely, that's what compounding pharmacies are for, to count the itty-bitty pilules!
Conclusion: When psychiatrists tell you the best way to get off of Effexor, they mean the best way for THEM as a psychiatrist, not for you as a patient.
There will always be people who don't use drugs wisely, just as there are car drivers who don't drive wisely, and rock climbers who fall to their death. America needs to grow up and accept this, while ending prohibition and teaching safe use.
My consciousness, my choice.
That's why I created the satirical Partnership for a Death Free America. It demonstrates clearly that drug warriors aren't worried about our health, otherwise they'd outlaw shopping carts, etc. The question then becomes: what are they REALLY afraid of? Answer: Free thinkers.
That's how antidepressants came about: the idea that sadness was a simple problem that science could solve. Instead of being caused by a myriad of interrelated issues, we decided it was all brain chemistry that could be treated with precision. Result? Mass chemical dependency.
Any self-respecting mycologist should denounce the criminalization of mushrooms.
Richard Evans Schultes seems to have originated the harebrained idea (since used by the US Supreme Court to suppress new religions) that you have no right to use drugs in a religious ritual if you did not grow up in a society that had such practices. What tyrannical idiocy!
Governor Kotek is "dealing" with the homelessness problem in Oregon by arresting her way out of it, in fealty to fearmongering drug warriors.
In 1886, coca enthusiast JJ Tschudi referred to prohibitionists as 'kickers.' He wrote: "If we were to listen to these kickers, most of us would die of hunger, for the reason that nearly everything we eat or drink has fallen under their ban."
Michael Pollan is the Leona Helmsley of the Drug War. He uses outlawed drugs freely while failing to support the re-legalization of Mother Nature. Drug laws are apparently for the little people.
When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.
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