An open letter to apologists for the psychiatric pill mill
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
May 16, 2023
When you cut me do I not bleed, when I send you a 150-page book full of op-ed pictures in protest of the Drug War, do I not expect at least an acknowledgment of receipt?
I thought it would be easy to find like minds in the fight to end prohibition. Unfortunately, I'm finding some of the big-name advocates of pushback are also firm believers in the power of antidepressants to treat depression. I personally do not think that anyone completely understands the Drug War if they do not realize that the psychiatric pill mill is a creation of that war, for prohibition gives psychiatry a monopoly on mind medicine. The supporters will tell you that some users say the meds are useful -- but if I've learned anything after 40 years of poorly treated depression, it's that a depressed person is the last person qualified to report on their own condition. I used to think I was not depressed -- until I stopped and looked at all the goals I had not accomplished in the past in spite of what I had considered to be my firm commitment to that end. Moreover, when I took a psychedelic in my early 20s, I was exposed to a world of such potential that I suddenly considered the ambition of psychiatry to be shabby. Their pills did not motivate by comparison, they tranquilized.
But the real problem is this: 1 in 4 American women are dependent on Big Pharma for life. That's a scandal! And a profitable one, apparently, because I'm one of the few who even mentions that it exists. (See Julie Holland for some more honesty on this score.)
Now, you're not going to tell me that 25% of American females are depressed enough to warrant turning them into wards of the healthcare state? Well, if they really ARE that depressed, then something is wrong with America, not with its female population.
Finally, there are two ways to view psychiatry today: one is the typical way, in which we ignore the Drug War, in which we might say that pill-popping is the only game in town. The other way to look at psychiatry today is realistically, by taking into account the war on drugs by which we outlaw almost all psychoactive medicines. If psychiatrists saw their field in this true light -- as the expensive and demoralizing default option only because of tyrannical law that outlaws mother nature -- then they would (or at least they should) be the first to protest on behalf of patients and say to government: "We demand the right to prescribe anything that will work for our patients!"
Instead, psychiatrists have gone along with this game, pretending that antidepressants are good in and of themselves, telling patients to "take their meds," when the best one can say about those meds is that they're the only medicine the government will let people have for depression. That's a poor endorsement, indeed, especially since lifelong users like myself have been infantilized by these drugs, turned into a ward of the healthcare state and denied the meds that truly work, many of which grow at my very feet, the drugs that inspire rather than tranquilize.
So if they wish to ignore me, fine: But I'm not going to behave like Polonius and switch my opinions to suit the self-interested zeitgeist, even if it might encourage folks like Rick Doblin and DJ Nutt to respond to my letters, or at least to acknowledge receipt for the book of mine that I sent them two years ago now.
Who are these apologists for antidepressants? They're easy to identify. Just look for folks who use the term "treatment-resistant depression," for the use of that term implies that there is a legal treatment for depression that works -- namely, SSRIs and SNRIs -- and that those who do not profit from them are the oddballs with the quirky body chemistry that does not know a cure when it sees one.
The irony is that, even if SSRIs worked for me, their positive effect would be negated by the fact that psychiatry has turned me into a patient for life, with the demoralizing trips to the doctor every three months to see an LPN that is half my age (at best), to answer questions about my predilection for suicide and how much sleep I'm getting.
LPN: Have you considered suicide in the last three months?
ME: Only when I think about the fact that psychiatry has turned me into an eternal patient.
May 19, 2023
I know, folks, I know. I told Brian he was being rash, but I'm just his editor, not his boss, as he himself is wont to remind me from time to time. I do want to clarify, however, that Rick Doblin is not a psychiatrist, as might be inferred from the above (ahem) no doubt interesting remarks. However, Rick IS playing ball with the DEA and the federal government, in which case he's probably forced to adhere to the well-funded fiction that SSRIs and SNRIs "have their place." I mean, who's going to help Rick with drug legalization if he even SUGGESTS that such a step would render Big Pharma's drugs unnecessary?
Still, I think it is fair to ask: would it have killed Rick to have at least acknowledged receipt of Brian's 150-page book with op-ed pics making points about the Drug War that no one else has even thought of, even if the book in question DID bash the psychiatric pill mill?
Hey, I don't know. I'm just a simple guy. Maybe it would have killed him. You tell me.
I can't believe that no one at UVA is bothered by the DEA's 1987 raid on Monticello. It was, after all, a sort of coup against the Natural Law upon which Jefferson had founded America, asserting as it did the government's right to outlaw Mother Nature.
America is insane: it makes liquor officially legal and then outlaws all the drugs that could help prevent and cure alcoholism.
We need a scheduling system for psychoactive drugs as much as we need a scheduling system for sports activities: i.e. NOT AT ALL. Some sports are VERY dangerous, but we do not outlaw them because we know that there are benefits both to sports and to freedom in general.
The Partnership for a Death Free America is launching a campaign to celebrate the 50th year of Richard Nixon's War on Drugs. We need to give credit where credit's due for the mass arrest of minorities, the inner city gun violence and the civil wars that it's generated overseas.
My approach to withdrawal: incrementally reduce daily doses over 6 months, or even a year, meanwhile using all the legal entheogens and psychedelics that you can find in a way likely to boost your endurance and "sense of purpose" to make withdrawal successful.
If we let "science" decide about drugs, i.e. base freedom on health concerns, then tea can be as easily outlawed as beer. The fact that horses are not illegal shows that prohibition is not about health. It's about the power to outlaw certain "ways of being in the world."
We need a Controlled Prohibitionists Act, to get psychiatric help for the losers who think that prohibition makes sense despite its appalling record of causing civil wars overseas and devastating inner cities.
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.
By reading "Drug Warriors and Their Prey," I begin to understand why I encounter a wall of silence when I write to authors and professors on the subject of "drugs." The mere fact that the drug war inspires such self-censorship should be grounds for its immediate termination.
Thanks to the Drug War, folks are forced to become amateur chemists to profit from DMT, a drug that occurs naturally in most living things. This is the same Drug War that is killing American young people wholesale by refusing to teach safe use and regulate drug supply.
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, Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me: An open letter to apologists for the psychiatric pill mill, published on May 16, 2023 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)
You have been reading an article entitled, Why Rick Doblin is Ghosting Me: An open letter to apologists for the psychiatric pill mill, published on May 16, 2023 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)