The reasons you should not be taking psychiatric drugs

In this book Drs. Breggin & Cohen review the reasons you should not be taking any kind of psychiatric drug:

"No psychiatric drug has ever been tailored to a known biochemical derangement. ... no biochemical imbalances have ever been documented with certainty in association with any psychiatric diagnosis. The hunt goes on for these illusive imbalances; but their existence is pure speculation, inspired by those who advocate drugs" (p. 35).
"Although medication advocates often speak with seeming confidence about how psychiatric drugs can correct biochemical imbalances in the brain, they are merely indulging in pure speculation. There's little evidence for the existence of any such imbalances and no way to demonstrate how drugs would affect them if they did exist" (p. 34).
"Often, patients are told, 'It's biological and genetic.' Never mind that there's no substantial evidence that any psychiatric diagnoses have a physical basis" (p. 93).

"Precisely because there is so little scientific backing for the use of psychiatric drugs, mystification and slogans are often communicated to doctors by drug advertising, and then to patients by doctors" (p. 112-123, underline added).
"Indeed, we should suspect that any psychoactive drug - any drug that affects mental function - tends to produce irreversible changes in some if not most people. What hope can we have that bathing the brain in a psychiatric drug will actually improve the overall function of this mysterious organ? Almost none. In fact ... most of what we know about the various neurotransmitters has been gathered by studying how psychiatric drugs disrupt or spoil their functioning" (p. 9 - underline added).
"Advocates of psychiatric drugs often claim that the medications improve learning and the ability to benefit from psychotherapy, but the contrary is true. There are no drugs that improve mental function, self-understanding, or human relations. Any drug that affects mental processes does so by impairing them" (p. 97-98).
"Despite a hugely successful promotional campaign by drug companies and biological psychiatry, the effectiveness of most or all psychiatric drugs remains difficult to demonstrate. The drugs often prove no more effective than sugar pills, or placebos - and to accomplish even these limited positive results, the clinical trials and data that they generate typically have to be statistically manipulated" (p. 37).
"But isn't psychiatry science? Isn't faith in psychiatry based on facts? On research? Can't we 'trust in research'? The sad truth is that, in the field of psychiatry, it is impossible to 'trust in research.' Nearly all of the research in this field is paid for by drug companies and conducted by people who will 'deliver' in the best way possible for those companies. ... Sadly, even well-informed people too often put their faith in psychiatry and psychiatric research. It is the same as putting their faith in a drug company" (p. 189-190).
"...emotional suffering cannot be dulled without harming other functions such as concentration, alertness, sensitivity, and self-awareness" (p. 36).
"All psychiatric drugs can cause problems during withdrawal" (p. 16). And the longer you take a psychiatric drug, the more difficult your withdrawal will be.
"...many adverse drug effects are difficult to distinguish from emotional problems" (p. 24).
"Contrary to claims, neuroleptics have no specific effects on irrational ideas (delusions) or perceptions (hallucinations). Like all other psychiatric drugs, they have the same impact on healthy animals, healthy volunteers, and patients - namely, the production of apathy and indifference" (p. 77).
Neuroleptic drugs cause brain damage evidenced by a movement disorder called tardive dyskinesia, but "Neuroleptics actually suppress the symptoms of tardive dyskinesia while the disease is developing. ... The rates of TD [tardive dyskinesia] are extremely high. Many standard textbooks estimate a rate of 5% - 7% per year in healthy young adults [who are taking neuroleptic drugs]. The rate is cumulative so that 25% - 35% of patients [taking neuroleptics] will develop the disorder in 5 years of treatment. Among the elderly [taking neuroleptics], rates of TD reach 20% or more per year. For a variety of reasons, including the failure to include tardive akathisia in estimates, the actual rates are probably much higher for all patients" (p. 78).
So-called antipsychotic or neuroleptic drugs cause a fatal disease called neuroleptic malignant syndrome in up to 2.4% of people taking them. "Using a low-end rate of 1 percent, Maxmen and Ward (1995, p. 33) estimate that 1,000 - 4,000 deaths occur in America each year as a result of neuroleptic malignant syndrome. The actual number is probably much greater" (p. 79).
Neuroleptic, also known as antipsychotic or major tranquilizer drugs "subject almost every system in the body to impairment. Research, including a recent study, indicates that these drugs are toxic to cells in general" (p. 81).
Clozaril ... was banned in some European countries because it caused so many fatalities; but the escalating power of drug companies subsequently led to its approval by the FDA" in the United States (p. 82).
If you are pregnant, psychiatric drugs you take will cross into the baby's bloodstream "and from there, to enter the unborn infant's brain. Similarly, psychiatric drugs enter the mother's milk and thus also affects the nursing infant's brain" (p. 26).
"...women who take lithium during pregnancy expose their infants to an increased rate of heart defects" (p. 26).
"Some physicians try to reassure pregnant or nursing mothers about their baby's safety while they are taking psychiatric drugs. But there is no scientific basis for offering this reassurance in regard to any drug that affects the brain" (p. 84).
http://www.antipsychiatry.org/br-ydmby.htm

PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS:
Cure or Quackery?
by Lawrence Stevens, J.D.

Psychiatric drugs are worthless, and most of them are harmful. Many cause permanent brain damage at the doses customarily given. Psychiatric drugs and the profession that promotes them are dangers to your health.

ANTIDEPRESSANTS
The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry/IV, published in 1985, says "The tricyclic-type drugs are the most effective class of anti-depressants" (Williams & Wilkins, p. 1520). But in his book Overcoming Depression, published in 1981, Dr. Andrew Stanway, a British physician, says "If anti-depressant drugs were really as effective as they are made out to be, surely hospital admission rates for depression would have fallen over the twenty years they've been available. Alas, this has not happened. ... Many trials have found that tricyclics are only marginally more effective than placebos, and some have even found that they are not as effective as dummy tablets" (Hamlyn Publishing Group, Ltd., p. 159-160). In his textbook Electroconvulsive Therapy, Richard Abrams, M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at Chicago Medical School, explains the reason for the 1988 edition of his book updating the edition published 6 years earlier: "During these six years interest in ECT has bourgeoned. ... What is responsible for this volte-face in American psychiatry? Disenchantment with the antidepressants, perhaps. None has been found that is therapeutically superior to imipramine [a tricyclic], now over 30 years old, and the more recently introduced compounds are often either less effective or more toxic than the older drugs, or both" (Oxford Univ. Press, p. xi). In this book, Dr. Abrams says "despite manufacturers' claims, no significant progress in the pharmacological treatment of depression has occurred since the introduction of imipramine in 1958" (p. 7). In the Foreword to this book, Max Fink, M.D., a psychiatry professor at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, says the reason for increased use of electroconvulsive "therapy" (ECT) as a treatment for depression is what he calls "Disappointment with the efficacy of psychotropic drugs" (p. vii). In his book Psychiatric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain, published in 1983, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, M.D., asserts: "The most fundamental point to be made about the most frequently used major antidepressants is that they have no specifically antidepressant effect. Like the major tranquilizers to which they are so closely related, they are highly neurotoxic and brain disabling, and achieve their impact through the disruption of normal brain function. ... Only the `clinical opinion' of drug advocates supports any antidepressant effect" of so-called antidepressant drugs (Springer Pub. Co., pp. 160 & 184). An article in the February 7, 1994 Newsweek magazine says that "Prozac...and its chemical cousins Zoloft and Paxil are no more effective than older treatments for depression" (p. 41). Most of the people I have talked to who have taken so-called antidepressants, including Prozac, say the drug didn't work for them. This casts doubt on the often made claim that 60% or more of the people who take supposedly antidepressant drugs benefit from them.

LITHIUM
Lithium is said to be helpful for people whose mood repeatedly changes from joyful to despondent and back again. Psychiatrists call this manic-depressive disorder or bipolar mood disorder. Lithium was first described as a psychiatric drug in 1949 by an Australian psychiatrist, John Cade. According to a psychiatric textbook: "While conducting animal experiments, Cade had somewhat incidentally noted that lithium made the animals lethargic, thus prompting him to administer this drug to several agitated psychiatric patients." The textbook describes this as "a pivotal moment in the history of psychopharmacology" (Harold I. Kaplan, M.D. & Benjamin J. Sadock, M.D., Clinical Psychiatry, Williams & Wilkins, 1988, p. 342). However, if you don't want to be lethargic, taking lithium would seem to be of dubious benefit. A supporter of lithium as psychiatric therapy admits lithium causes "a mildly depressed, generally lethargic feeling". He calls it "the standard lethargy" caused by lithium (Roger Williams, "A Hasty Decision? Coping in the Aftermath of a Manic-Depressive Episode", American Health magazine, October 1991, p. 20). Similarly, one of my relatives was diagnosed as manic-depressive and was given a prescription for lithium carbonate. He told me, years later, "Lithium insulated me from the highs but not from the lows." It should be no surprise a lethargy-inducing drug like lithium would have this effect. Amazingly, psychiatrists sometimes claim lithium wards off feelings of depression even though, if anything, lethargy-inducing drugs like lithium (like most psychiatric drugs) promote feelings of despondency and unhappiness - even if they are called antidepressants.

MINOR TRANQUILIZER/ANTI-ANXIETY DRUGS
Among the most widely used psychiatric drugs are the ones called minor tranquilizers, including Valium, Librium, Xanax, and Halcion. Doctors who prescribe them say they have calming, anti-anxiety, panic-suppressing effects or are useful as sleeping pills. Anyone who believes these claims should go to the nearest library and read the article "High Anxiety" in the January 1993 Consumer Reports magazine, or read Chapter 11 in Toxic Psychiatry (St. Martin's Press, 1991), by psychiatrist Peter Breggin, both of which allege the opposite is closer to the truth. Like all or almost all psychiatric drugs, the so-called minor tranquilizers don't cure anything but are merely brain-disabling drugs. In one clinical trial, 70 percent of persons taking Halcion "developed memory loss, depression and paranoia" ("Halcion manufacturer Upjohn Co. defends controversial sleeping drug", Miami Herald, December 17, 1991, p. 13A). According to the February 17, 1992 Newsweek, "Four countries have banned the drug outright" (p. 58). In his book Toxic Psychiatry, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, speaking of the minor tranquilizers, says "As with most psychiatric drugs, the use of the medication eventually causes an increase of the very symptoms that the drug is supposed to ameliorate" (ibid, p. 246).

PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS versus SLEEP: SLEEP DISTINGUISHED FROM DRUG-INDUCED UNCONSCIOUSNESS
Contrary to the claim major and minor tranquilizers and so-called antidepressants are useful as sleeping pills, their real effect is to inhibit or block real sleep. When I sat in on a psychiatry class with a medical student friend, the professor told us "Research has shown we do not need to sleep, but we do need to dream." The dream phase of sleep is the critical part. Most psychiatric drugs, including those promoted as sleeping medications or tranquilizers, inhibit this critical dream-phase of sleep, inducing a state that looks like sleep but actually is a dreamless unconscious state - not sleep. Sleep, in other words, is an important mental activity that is impaired or stopped by most psychiatric drugs. A self-help magazine advises: "Do not take sleeping pills unless under doctor's orders, and then for no more than 10 consecutive nights. Besides losing their effectiveness and becoming addictive, sleep-inducing medications reduce or prevent the dream-stage of sleep necessary for mental health" (Going Bonkers? magazine, premiere issue, p. 75). In The Brain Book, University of Rhode Island professor Peter Russell, Ph.D., says "During sleep, particularly during dreaming periods, proteins and other chemicals in the brain used up during the day are replenished" (Plume, 1979, p. 76). Sleep deprivation experiments on normal people show loss of sleep causes hallucinations if continued long enough (Maya Pines, The Brain Changers, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973, p. 105). So what would seem to be the consequences of taking drugs that inhibit or block real sleep?

MAJOR TRANQUILIZER/NERUOLEPTIC/ANTI-PSYCHOTIC/ ANTI-SCHIZOPHRENIC DRUGS
Even as harmful as psychiatry's (so-called) antidepressants and lithium and (so-called) antianxiety agents (or minor tranquilizers) are, they are nowhere near as damaging as the so-called major tranquilizers, sometimes also called "antipsychotic" or "antischizophrenic" or "neuroleptic" drugs. Included in this category are Thorazine (chlorpromazine), Mellaril, Prolixin (fluphenazine), Compazine, Stelazine, and Haldol (haloperidol) - and many others. In terms of their psychological effects, these so-called major tranquilizers cause misery - not tranquility. They physically, neurologically blot out most of a person's ability to think and act, even at commonly given doses. By disabling people, they can stop almost any thinking or behavior the "therapist" wants to stop. But this is simply disabling people, not therapy. The drug temporarily disables or permanently destroys good aspects of a person's personality as much as bad. Whether and to what extent the disability imposed by the drug can be removed by discontinuing the drug depends on how long the drug is given and at how great a dose. The so-called major tranquilizer/ antipsychotic/neuroleptic drugs damage the brain more clearly, severely, and permanently than any others used in psychiatry. Joyce G. Small, M.D., and Iver F. Small, M.D., both Professors of Psychiatry at Indiana University, criticize psychiatrists who use "psychoactive medications that are known to have neurotoxic effects", and speak of "the increasing recognition of long-lasting and sometimes irreversible impairments in brain function induced by neuroleptic drugs. In this instance the evidence of brain damage is not subtle, but is grossly obvious even to the casual observer!" (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, March 1984, Vol. 7, p. 34). According to Conrad M. Swartz, Ph.D., M.D., Professor of Psychiatry at Chicago Medical School, "While neuroleptics relieve psychotic anxiety, their tranquilization blunts fine details of personality, including initiative, emotional reactivity, enthusiasm, sexiness, alertness, and insight. ... This is in addition to side effects, usually involuntary movements which can be permanent and are hence evidence of brain damage" (Behavioral and Brain Sciences, March 1984, Vol. 7, pp. 37-38). A report in 1985 in the Mental and Physical Disability Law Reporter indicates courts in the United States have finally begun to consider involuntary administration of the so-called major tranquilizer/antipsychotic/neuroleptic drugs to involve First Amendment rights "Because...antipsychotic drugs have the capacity to severely and even permanently affect an individual's ability to think and communicate" ("Involuntary medication claims go forward", January-February 1985, p. 26 - emphasis added). In Molecules of the Mind: The Brave New Science of Molecular Psychology, Professor Jon Franklin observed: "This era coincided with an increasing awareness that the neuroleptics not only did not cure schizophrenia - they actually caused damage to the brain. Suddenly, the psychiatrists who used them, already like their patients on the fringes of society, were suspected of Nazism and worse" (Dell Pub. Co., 1987, p. 103). In his book Psychiatric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, M.D., alleges that by using drugs that cause brain damage, "Psychiatry has unleashed an epidemic of neurological disease on the world" one which "reaches 1 million to 2 million persons a year" (op. cit., pp. 109 & 108). In severe cases, brain damage from neuroleptic drugs is evidenced by abnormal body movements called tardive dyskinesia. However, tardive dyskinesia is only the tip of the iceberg of neuroleptic caused brain damage. Higher mental functions are more vulnerable and are impaired before the elementary functions of the brain such as motor control. Psychiatry professor Richard Abrams, M.D., has acknowledged that "Tardive dyskinesia has now been reported to occur after only brief courses of neuroleptic drug therapy" (in: Benjamin B. Wolman (editor), The Therapist's Handbook: Treatment Methods of Mental Disorders, Van Nostrand Reinhold Co., 1976, p. 25). In his book The New Psychiatry, published in 1985, Columbia University psychiatry professor Jerrold S. Maxmen, M.D., alleges: "The best way to avoid tardive dyskinesia is to avoid antipsychotic drugs altogether. Except for treating schizophrenia, they should never be used for more than two or three consecutive months. What's criminal is that all too many patients receive antipsychotics who shouldn't" (Mentor, pp. 155-156). In fact, Dr. Maxmen doesn't go far enough. His characterization of administration of the so-called antipsychotic/anti-schizophrenic/major tranquilizer/neuroleptic drugs as "criminal" is accurate for all people, including those called schizophrenic, even when the drugs aren't given long enough for the resulting brain damage to show up as tardive dyskinesia. The author of the Preface of a book by four physicians published in 1980, Tardive Dyskinesia: Research & Treatment, made these remarks: "In the late 1960s I summarized the literature on tardive dyskinesia ... The majority of psychiatrists either ignored the existence of the problem or made futile efforts to prove that these motor abnormalities were clinically insignificant or unrelated to drug therapy. In the meantime the number of patients affected by tardive dyskinesia increased and the symptoms became worse in those already afflicted by this condition. ... there are few investigators or clinicians who still have doubts about the iatrogenic [physician caused] nature of tardive dyskinesia. ... It is evident that the more one learns about the toxic effects of neuroleptics on the central nervous system, the more one sees an urgent need to modify our current practices of drug use. It is unfortunate that many practitioners continue to prescribe psychotropics in excessive amounts, and that a considerable number of mental institutions have not yet developed a policy regarding the management and prevention of tardive dyskinesia. If this book, which reflects the opinions of the experts in this field, can make a dent in the complacency of many psychiatrists, it will be no small accomplishment" (in: William E. Fann, M.D., et al., Tardive Dyskinesia: Research & Treatment, SP Medical & Scientific). In Psychiatric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, M.D., says this: "The major tranquilizers are highly toxic drugs; they are poisonous to various organs of the body. They are especially potent neurotoxins, and frequently produce permanent damage to the brain. ... tardive dyskinesia can develop in low-dose, short-term usage... the dementia [loss of higher mental functions] associated with the tardive dyskinesia is not usually reversible. ... Seldom have I felt more saddened or more dismayed than by psychiatry's neglect of the evidence that it is causing irreversible lobotomy effects, psychosis, and dementia in millions of patients as a result of treatment with the major tranquilizers"(op. cit., pp. 70, 107, 135, 146).
Psychiatry professor Richard Abrams, M.D., has pointed out that "Tricyclic Antidepressants...are minor chemical modifications of chlorpromazine [Thorazine] and were introduced as potential neuroleptics" (in: B. Wolman, The Therapist's Handbook, op. cit., p. 31). In his book Psychiatric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain, Dr. Breggin calls the so-called antidepressants "Major Tranquilizers in Disguise" (p. 166). Psychiatrist Mark S. Gold, M.D., has said antidepressants can cause tardive dyskinesia (The Good News About Depression, Bantam, 1986, p. 259).
Why do the so-called patients accept such "medication"? Sometimes they do so out of ignorance about the neurological damage to which they are subjecting themselves by following their psychiatrist's advice to take the "medication". But much if not most of the time, neuroleptic drugs are literally forced into the bodies of the "patients" against their wills. In his book Psychiatric Drugs: Hazards to the Brain, psychiatrist Peter Breggin, M.D., says "Time and again in my clinical experience I have witnessed patients driven to extreme anguish and outrage by having major tranquilizers forced on them. ... The problem is so great in routine hospital practice that a large percentage of patients have to be threatened with forced intramuscular injection before they will take the drugs" (p. 45).

FORCED PSYCHIATRIC TREATMENT COMPARED WITH RAPE
Forced administration of a psychiatric drug (or a so-called treatment like electroshock) is a kind of tyranny that can be compared, physically and morally, with rape. Compare sexual rape and involuntarily administration of a psychiatric drug injected intramuscularly into the buttocks, which is the part of the anatomy where the injection usually is given: In both sexual rape and involuntary administration of a psychiatric drug, force is used. In both cases, the victim's pants are pulled down. In both cases, a tube is inserted into the victim's body against her (or his) will. In the case of sexual rape, the tube is a penis. In the case of what could be called psychiatric rape, the tube is a hypodermic needle. In both cases, a fluid is injected into the victim's body against her or his will. In both cases it is in (or near) the derriere. In the case of sexual rape the fluid is semen. In the case of psychiatric rape, the fluid is Thorazine, Prolixin or some other brain-disabling drug. The fact of bodily invasion is similar in both cases if not (for reasons I'll explain) actually worse in the case of psychiatric rape. So is the sense of outrage in the mind of the victim of each type of assault. As psychiatry professor Thomas Szasz once said, "violence is violence, regardless of whether it is called psychiatric illness or psychiatric treatment." Some who are not "hospitalized" (that is, imprisoned) are forced to report to a doctor's office for injections of a long-acting neuroleptic like Prolixin every two weeks by the threat of imprisonment ("hospitalization") and forced injection of the drug if they don't comply.

Why is psychiatric rape worse than sexual rape? As brain surgeon I. S. Cooper, M.D., said in his autobiography: "It is your brain that sees, feels, thinks, commands, responds. You are your brain. It is you. Transplanted into another carrier, another body, your brain would supply it with your memories, your thoughts, your emotions. It would still be you. The new body would be your container. It would carry you around. Your brain is you" (The Vital Probe: My Life as a Brain Surgeon, W.W.Norton & Co., 1982, p. 50-emphasis in original). The most essential and most intimate part of you is not what is between your legs but what is between your ears. An assault on a person's brain such as involuntary administration of a brain-disabling or brain-damaging "treatment" (such as a psychoactive drug or electroshock or psychosurgery) is a more intimate and morally speaking more horrible crime than sexual rape. Psychiatric rape is in moral terms a worse crime than sexual rape for another reason, also: The involuntary administration of psychiatry's biological "therapies" cause permanent impairment of brain function. In contrast, women usually are still fully sexually functional after being sexually raped. They suffer psychological harm, but so do the victims of psychiatric assault. I hope I will not be understood as belittling the trauma or wrongness of sexual rape if I point out that I have counselled sexually raped women in my law practice and that each of the half-dozen or so women I have known who have been sexually raped have gone on to have apparently normal sexual relationships, and in most cases marriages and families. In contrast, the brains of people subjected to psychiatric assault often are not as fully functional because of the physical, biological harm done by the "treatment". On a TV talk show in 1990, psychoanalyst Jeffrey Masson, Ph.D., said he hopes those responsible for such "therapies" will one day face "Nurnburg trials" (Geraldo, Nov. 30, 1990).

BRAIN-DAMAGING PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS ARE INFLICTED ON NURSING HOME RESIDENTS
These very same brain-damaging (so-called) neuroleptic/antipsychotic drugs are routinely administered - involuntarily - to mentally healthy old people in nursing homes in the United States. According to an article in the September/October 1991 issue of In-Health magazine, "In nursing homes, antipsychotics are used on anywhere from 21 to 44 percent of the institutionalized elderly... half of the antipsychotics prescribed for nursing home residents could not be explained by the diagnosis in the patient's chart. Researchers suspect the drugs are commonly used by such institutions as chemical straightjackets - a means of pacifying unruly patients" (p. 28). I know of two examples of feeble old men in nursing homes who were barely able to get out of their wheelchairs who were given a neuroleptic/antipsychotic drug. One complained because he was strapped into a wheelchair to prevent his attempts to try to walk with his cane. The other was strapped into his bed at night to prevent him from getting up and falling when going to the bathroom, necessitating defecating in his bed. Both were so physically disabled they posed no danger to anyone. But both dared complain bitterly about how they were mistreated. In both cases the nursing home staffs responded to these complaints with injections of Haldol - mentally disabling these men, thereby making it impossible for them to complain. The use of these damaging drugs on nursing home residents who are not considered to have psychiatric problems shows that their real purpose is control, not therapy. Therapeutic claims for neuroleptic drugs are rationalizations without factual support.

SUPPOSEDLY "DOUBLE-BLIND" PSYCHIATRIC DRUG STUDIES ARE BIASED
Studies indicating psychiatric drugs are helpful are of dubious credibility because of professional bias. All or almost all psychiatric drugs are neurotoxic and for this reason cause symptoms and problems such as dry mouth, blurred vision, lightheadedness, dizziness, lethargy, difficulty thinking, menstrual irregularities, urinary retention, heart palpitations, and other consequences of neurological dysfunction. Psychiatrists deceptively call these "side-effects", even though they are the only real effects of today's psychiatric drugs. Placebos (or sugar pills) don't cause these problems. Since these symptoms (or their absence) are obvious to psychiatrists evaluating psychiatric drugs in supposedly double-blind drug trials, the drug trials aren't really double-blind, making it impossible to evaluate psychiatric drugs impartially. This allows professional bias to skew the results.

MODES OF ACTION: UNKNOWN
Despite various unverified theories and claims, psychiatrists don't know how the drugs they use work biologically. In the words of Columbia University psychiatry professor Jerrold S. Maxmen, M.D.: "How psychotropic drugs work is not clear" (The New Psychiatry, Mentor, 1985, p. 143). Experience has shown that the effect of all of today's commonly used psychiatric drugs is to disable the brain in a generalized way. None of today's psychiatric drugs have the specificity (e.g., for depression or anxiety or psychosis) that is often claimed for them.

LIKE TAKING INSULIN FOR DIABETES?
It is often asserted that taking a psychiatric drug is like taking insulin for diabetes. Although psychiatric drugs are taken continuously, as is insulin - it's an absurd analogy. Diabetes is a disease with a known physical cause. No physical cause has been found for any of today's so-called mental illnesses. The mode of action of insulin is known: It is a hormone that instructs or causes cells to uptake dietary glucose (sugar). In contrast, the modes of action of psychiatry's drugs are unknown - although advocates of psychiatric drugs as well as critics theorize they prevent normal brain functioning by blocking neuroreceptors in the brain. If this theory is correct it is another contrast between taking insulin and taking a psychiatric drug: Insulin restores a normal biological function, namely, normal glucose (or sugar) metabolism. Psychiatric drugs interfere with a normal biological function, namely, normal neuroreceptor functioning. Insulin is a hormone that is found naturally in the body. Psychiatry's drugs are not normally found in the body. Insulin gives a diabetic's body a capability it would not have in the absence of insulin, namely, the ability to metabolize dietary sugar normally. Psychiatric drugs have an opposite kind of effect: They take away (mental) capabilities the person would have in the absence of the drug. Insulin affects the body rather than mind. Psychiatric drugs disable the brain and hence the mind, the mind being the essence of the real self.



THE AUTHOR, Lawrence Stevens, is a lawyer whose practice has included representing psychiatric "patients". His pamphlets are not copyrighted. You are invited to make copies for distribution to those who you think will benefit.

Whew! A lot of reading!!! After reading I wondered Shrink R would you care to observe me 24/7 if I went off my meds? Can you guarantee that I will be just fine with no meds? You see I prefer taking them because every time I quit I end up in a nasty depression and almost lose my life. No one is forcing me to take meds...life is just so much easier on them.

Kathy

For me personally, I've tried to be off meds for my depression, anxiety and PTSD, however after a short while I had a terrible crash and was put back on and felt better.

Some people can go off meds and feel fine, however others cannot. Maybe one day I can deal without the help of meds, but right now however I know that is not the best idea for me right now...been there done that, didn't work.

Also agrees with Kathy yet again.

I agree with much of what Shrink resistant has said about the meds used for mental illness. I have read many of the books that he mentions.

The main problem with going off of our meds is the rebound effect. Our nerves get used to having the meds around. Our nerves change. If we quit cold turkey in most cases all of our symptoms come back with a vengence. It's like all of our depression was just being saved up, and it all jumps on us at once when we stop our meds. The key to get off is very, very slow reduction. Many of us would need a year or two to get completly off of our meds. It took me many years. We also should plan on getting off of our meds only when our lives are stable. We need to anticipate having a return of our symptoms for a while.

Getting our of our meds is like getting off of cigerattes. Sure, a few people have no trouble, but most seem to have a rough time qutiting.

Contray to popular beliefs there are a number of effective methods of dealing with depression. However, they are not quick acting like many medications are. Some people need quick relief, so meds are the best alternative for them.

I study a lot of economics. Psychtropic drugs are one of the best things for making money. Investing in stocks of drug companies or mutual funds that own them has made a lot of us richer. Once started on meds for depression, most people will be on them for life. The drug companies are making a fortune.

Jim S

Jim S

Did you see this article.

How Do Doctors Diagnose Depression?

From 4/27/05 Washington Post:

Actors pretending to be patients with symptoms of stress and fatigue were five times as likely to walk out of doctors' offices with a prescription when they mentioned seeing an ad for the heavily promoted antidepressant Paxil, according an unusual study being published today.

The study employed an elaborate ruse—sending actors with fake symptoms into 152 doctors' offices to see whether they would get prescriptions. Most who did not report symptoms of depression were not given medications, but when they asked for Paxil, 55 percent were given prescriptions, and 50 percent received diagnoses of depression.

The study adds fuel to the growing controversy over the estimated $4 billion a year the drug industry spends on such advertising. Many public health advocates have long complained about ads showing happy people whose lives were changed by a drug, and now voices in Congress, the Food and Drug Administration and even the pharmaceutical industry are asking whether things have gone too far.

I too recently have my doubts if meds are good or not. Perhaps, they should be used in moderation, as I have the feeling that they are prescribed very easily. Watching how weird a friend occasionally behaved while he was on meds (you might have heard of meds' side effects like confusion etc) and how much better he does now that he quit using them (given that he also took control of his life), I am more cautious about the use of meds. I'll write again later, as I am busy lately.

The only gripe I have with medication is that is too easily given. Psychiatrists will sit with someone for less than ten minutes and their answer to your problems is quickly medication. I think that medication is used as a band aid approach to a deeper problem and not really given to solve anything. The problem persists.

Medication is easy to give and you dont need an explanation or a way to solve complex problems of the mind to use it. They are used as a cop out by psychiatry. They dont know what causes these mental problems, they dont know the solution but they have a magic pill that will make everything go away and make everything better. Better for them not necessarily for you. With pills they are able to control the "mentals" and not really have to deal with their problems or solve them.

Its a quick fix but medicine in general as become that way. There is no longer a need to cure an illness if their is a drug that will stop its symptoms. Its all business, for money, unfortunately and nothing else. When I go and see my psychiatrist, theres these drug marketers trying to sneek in and meet with the doctors to give them try outs to their new wonder pill. Pharmaceutical companies are making big money out of this because everyone wants to fix things NOW not later. Everyone is looking for that magic pill, whether its to stop depression or loose weight, people dont want to actually work at their problems, they just want something to do it for them.

In the long run we dont know what the side effects of these powerful neurological drugs are. We dont know what they are really doing to your brain or what altering certain chemicals in your brain can do to you. These drugs are not for curing mental problems because they admit themselves, they dont know what causes these problems. It can be such a vast number of reasons that are known to unknown that it is impossible for them to make a medicaiton that its actually going to cure you for your symptoms. Its basically like being a guinea pig for the drug companies. They are giving people all these drugs and then monitpring the effects and whether they work or not.

Im not saying that their arent people out there that need medication and Im not saying that medication hasnt worked in all cases to help people but I just think they are being prescribed too easily and they are being marketed to vigorously. I also am not againts taking medication at all. But these psychiatric drugs are not like antibiotics or insulin that actually solve a problem, these are just pill that they themselves dont know how they work or why. Alternatives are not being given the same kind of attention and their are alternatives.

A lot of the poeple taking these medications are people that are recieving government help for their health care and its a shame that the government does not want to invest more money is finding other forms of treatment that are not a pill. They dont want to pay doctors enough money to actually counsel people, they figure its much quicker to just hand out pills to everyone than to go through the work and time consumption of counseling and other cognitive treatments. You got to one of these clinics out here for help and they are a meat market in there. Patients going in and out with prescriptions basically and nothing else. The average length of time with a doctor is 5 minutes.

Im not going to turn my brain to tooth paste while trying to help myself. That is just something Im not going to go through. As long as Im not psychotic and Im still functioning, Im going to try and use other methods to help myself. Ive never taken a psychiatric drug in my entire life, not even a simple sleeping pill.

I think that if I wouldve started taking all these medicines a long time ago since my problems started, I would be a dependant zombie by now or maybe the medication would have helped me deal with my problem much more effectively and I wouldnt be on here today but Im not willing to take the risk to see which one it would be.

I like what MysteryRider has said. I do believe that some people need to take medication, but most probably could do better without meds. It's my belief that much of what we call depression is actually normal sadness over something in our lives. If we have to live with a situation that we do not have control over and it prevents us from doing what we wanted to do or what we expected to do--we will feel disappointed, sad, or depressed. Pick the label you like the best.

Today many are grossly overweight in a country that makes us think we should all be thin. So it seems to me that we will feel depressed. Losing 50 pounds takes a lot of work and maybe a lot of will power with a diet. Taking a pill to remove our sadness is easy. But it does not help the underlying problem. I do think the pills we have are pretty effective. Many people can be happy in bad situations. I also know about how it is to be fat--real fat--and how much work it takes to lose the weight. I lost over 100 pounds and kept it off.
Jim S