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.
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.
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.
If any master's candidates are looking for a thesis topic, consider the following: "The Drug War versus Religion: how the policy of substance prohibition outlaws the attainment of spiritual states described by William James in 'The Varieties of Religious Experience.'"
The Drug War brought guns to the "hoods," thereby
incentivizing violence in the name of enormous profits. Any site featuring victims of gun violence should therefore be rebranded as a site featuring victims of the drug war. Otherwise, many people don't make the connection.
This is why I call the drug war 'fanatical Christian Science.' People would rather have grandpa die than to let him use laughing gas or coca or opium or MDMA, etc. etc.
News flash: certain mushrooms can help you improve your life! It's the biggest story in the history of mycology! And yet you wouldn't know it from visiting the websites of most mushroom clubs.
We should no more arrest drug users than we arrest people for climbing sheer rock faces or for driving a car.
There are endless ways that psychoactive drugs could be creatively combined to combat addiction and a million other things. But the drug warrior says that we have to study each in isolation, and then only for treating one single board-certified condition.
"When two men who have been in an aggressive mood toward each other take part in the ritual, one is able to say to the other, 'Come, let us drink, for there is something between us.' " re: the Mayan use of the balche drink in Encyc of Psych Plants, by Ratsch & Hofmann
That's so "drug war" of Rick: If a psychoactive substance has a bad use at some dose, for somebody, then it must not be used at any dose by anybody. It's hard to imagine a less scientific proposition, or one more likely to lead to unnecessary suffering.
Americans won't be true grown-ups until they learn to react to drug deaths the same way that they react to deaths related to horseback riding and mountain climbing. They don't blame such deaths on horses and mountains; neither should they blame drug-related deaths on drugs.
I wonder if Nixon knew what a favor he was doing medical capitalism when he outlawed psychedelics. Those drugs can actually cure things, and there's no money in that.
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)