What the psychiatrist said when I told him I wanted to get off Effexor
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
June 28, 2024
or 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 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.
I wanted to get off Effexor, I told him.
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 psilocybin1, San Pedro Cactus2 and ayahuasca3 - 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 microdosing4."
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 could help the depressed5. 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 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 life6. 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-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.
This is the "Oprah fallacy," which has led to so much suffering. She told women they were fools if they accepted a drink from a man. That's crazy. If we are terrified by such a statistically improbable event, we should be absolutely horrified by horses and skateboards.
The DEA should be tried for crimes against humanity. They have been lying about drugs for 50 years and running interference between human beings and Mother Nature in violation of natural law, depriving us of countless potential and known godsends in order to create more DEA jobs.
When Americans "obtain their majority" and wish to partake of drugs safely, they should be paired with older adults who have done just that. Instead, we introduce them to "drug abusers" in prerecorded morality plays to reinforce our biased notions that drug use is wrong.
Just think how much money bar owners in the Old West would have saved on restoration expenses if they had served MDMA instead of whiskey.
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."
What attracts me about "drug dealers" is that they are NOT interested in prying into my private life. What a relief! With psychiatry, you are probed for pathological behavior on every office visit. You are a child. To the "drug dealer," I am an adult at least.
That's another problem with "following the science." Science downplays personal testimony as subjective. But psychoactive experiences are all ABOUT subjectivity. With such drugs, users are not widgets susceptible to the one-size-fits-all pills of reductionism.
The worst form of government is not communism, socialism or even unbridled capitalism. The worst form of government is a Christian Science Theocracy, in which the government controls how much you are allowed to think and feel in life.
This massive concern for safety is downright bizarre in a country that will not even criminalize bump stocks for automatic weapons.
When the FDA tells us in effect that MDMA is too dangerous to be used to prevent school shootings and to help bring about world peace, they are making political judgments, not scientific ones.
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
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, What the psychiatrist said when I told him I wanted to get off Effexor published on June 28, 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)
or 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 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. 
You have been reading an article entitled, What the psychiatrist said when I told him I wanted to get off Effexor published on June 28, 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)