Getting Off Drugs Should Be Fun

Resolved: that getting off drugs should be fun.

There is a whole religion of gloom and doom that has built up around the addiction process in America. When it comes to particularly strong addictions, it’s taken as a matter of faith that the problem will be there for a lifetime and that the addict must face one day at a time and that, above all, he or she must suffer, suffer, suffer. There’s simply no hope for it.

As an experienced addict, I disagree. Although I’ve only ever been addicted to the legal drugs that psychiatry itself has foisted on me, I’ve always known in my heart of hearts that there was a better way to beat addiction, albeit one to which society seemed almost religiously averse. I personally never saw the need for recovering addicts to don sackcloth and ashes.

This straitlaced response to addiction strikes me rather as a sort of knee-jerk masochism with roots in our Protestant ancestry and its religiously inspired call for self-denial. It is certainly not the only way to approach the problem of drug withdrawal and, in fact, makes no sense at all for those of us who have long since jettisoned the religious presuppositions on which it was based, i.e., the idea that life is a vale of tears, to be slogged through stoically, with all eyes turned toward the prize of a redeeming afterlife. Indeed, according to this latter view, suffering is an opportunity to demonstrate one's own pious indifference to the self rather than an evil to be overcome by some creative medicinal intervention.

What do I suggest then for addicts like myself who refuse to sleep on the bed of nails proffered them by psychiatry's medieval mindset toward addiction recovery?

Well, to come up with a meaningful addiction therapy, we first have to ask the following question (a question that psychiatry has never been interested in asking since they assumed that they had found their silver bullets in drugs like SSRIs some fifty years ago):

What is the worst part of the drug withdrawal process from the addict’s point of view?

Answer: It’s the knowledge that the discomfort that he or she is experiencing at any given moment will continue without a foreseeable respite. This is why relapse is so common in addiction, the fact that the addict feels no realistic hope that things will ever improve, that Friday will be as dismal as Thursday and so forth to the end of time. If things are never going to change for the better, psychologically speaking, why NOT have a relapse: at least it brings a momentary peace of mind. Relapsing is a highly logical act when there is no long-term hope.

Earth to psychiatrists: the struggling addict needs something tangible to look forward to – they need to know that there is a time, not far away, when they will be able to breathe easily and see the world with wonder again.

With this in mind, I propose the following treatment for addiction. The dosages and dates below are just guesses on my part, but the point of the following protocol is to merely suggest a new way of treating addicts in America: one that offers more carrot than stick, one that gives an addict hope for real change, one whose novel potential might even encourage closet addicts to bring their condition to the light of day.

PAGING RESEARCHERS

That said, the following sample protocol was written with my own addiction in mind. So if some researcher out there wants a willing guinea pig on whom to test my therapeutic ideas, please let me know. I’m more than ready to get off of Effexor, especially since its serotonergic actions are now precluding me from safely pursuing psychedelic therapy for depression. (True, I’m writing anonymously, but that’s merely to avoid provoking awkward conversations with conventional-thinking family members. A little searching should reveal my identity – or at least one of those identities – to the committed online detective. Hint: my initials are BQ.)

Between the two of us, dear researcher, maybe we can convince the psychiatric world of the power of happiness and joy in beating addiction.

Protocol for weaning a patient off of 225mg Effexor/day:

Week 1: Patient takes 200 milligrams of Effexor each day. On weekend, patient enjoys outdoors while on a counselor-guided “trip” via cocaine, opium, amphetamines, etc. etc. etc. (Note to doctor: Be inventive and diversify. Choose from the widest possible pharmacopeia so as to avoid addicting your patient to any one of these mood elevating substances.)

Week 2: Patient takes 175 milligrams of Effexor each day. On weekend, patient visits art museums or opera on a counselor-guided “trip” via cocaine, opium, amphetamines, etc. etc. etc.

…and so on through to…

Week 8: Patient takes 25 milligrams of Effexor each day. On weekend, patient has friendly open discussion of issues with therapist and others while on a counselor-guided “trip” via cocaine, opium, amphetamines, etc. etc. etc.

Week 9: Patient begins guided LSD therapy to help “wrap” his or her mind around a new drug-free way of living, thereby shoring up gains made in the last eight weeks.

Get it?

This protocol uses diverse pharmacological interventions to distract the addict’s mind and body from the psychological trouble that the withdrawal process would otherwise bring about. Even in their most uncomfortable weekday hours, the patient is psychologically motivated to stay on the withdrawal path, knowing as they do that emotional respite is never more than a week a way. Nor will the mood-elevating substances mentioned above serve to re-addict the addict, since a variety of drugs will be used to accomplish the required mood control, each drug having its own unique mechanism of action and none used to the point of habituation.

Of course, there is reason to believe that many addictions can be overcome with the help of certain powerful psychedelics alone without resorting to the controversial pharmacopeia cited above. Unfortunately, we SSRI addicts cannot safely go that route thanks to the dangers posed by the still poorly understood phenomenon of SSRI toxicity.

FORESEEING THE CRITICISMS

Of course, this plan will be hard for modern psychiatry to accept, since that field currently relies on such a tiny well-marketed subset of drugs to treat mental conditions, despite the vast pharmacopeia of substances to which they could theoretically resort (just like the modern soda buyers who will always get Coke and Pepsi despite the plethora of alternatives available, many of which are arguably better tasting). Besides, the last thing that psychiatry wants to do is search the pharmacopeia for drugs that will make an addict, of all people, feel better. “What heresy after all!” thinks the modern clinician. “Such patients should be attending 12-step meetings and self-identifying as an addict, not trying to enjoy life in the very teeth of the withdrawal process! Unheard of! Let the addict know his or her place! Humph!”

PSYCHIATRY, J'ACCUSE!

But in reacting in this way to the proposed strategic use of mood elevators, psychiatry betrays its prudery, forgetting that drugs like cocaine and amphetamines are not bad in and of themselves but to the extent that they are allowed to cause addiction. Indeed, if psychiatry had remembered this fact 25 years ago, I would not be addicted to Effexor today!

Submitted September 28, 2018 at 01:17PM by Psychedelic_Therapy https://ift.tt/2NOI7Gg