What a horrific crime. Depression is your body telling you to take steps to get your life in order. By claiming it's a chemical imbalance, the depressed person is left feeling more helpless when, in fact, there is much she can do to overcome it.
About a decade ago, WSJ ran a story on how difficult it was for those taking SSRIs to wean themselves off this mind-altering drug when their depression abated (time heals all...). Many found the side-effects so terrible that they went back on the drug. Customers for life.
Last week I was enduring the annual Medicare "wellness" exam in the torture chamber where everyone is enthusiastically muzzled. The doctor was going through the Medicare checklist more deeply than usual, trying to sell more services and drugs. She noticed that the last time I went to the ER was ten years ago. What was that about? I answered truthfully: "That was a panic attack. After that I decided not to have panic attacks. Too expensive."
She obviously didn't believe the answer, but it's true. Turning off anxiety and panic is a physical trick, not requiring drugs. It's a kind of "internal loosening", hard to describe but easy to do.
Terrific article, useful for millions who will never read it and heart-warming confirmation, perhaps, of the lived experiences of those "few, those lucky few" who do read it. If a man shouts truth in a desert, it's still truth though no one hears it.
On doctor's advice, I took SSRI's for years after great personal tragedy in my life, when I was diagnosed as suffering "clinical depression." The SSRI's were useless, with debilitating side effects as their ONLY noticeable impact, especially when (on my own recognizance) I stopped taking them, contrary to doctor's advice. Then, through intensive self-reflection and education, I emerged from my long, deep, psychological hole. I will never take SSRI's again.
I once joked with my friend and neighbor, a psychiatrist with decades of experience, about a cartoon I had recently seen in the New Yorker Magazine, to the effect that "chemistry saved psychiatry." My neighbor laughed and agreed with me.
Anti-depressants made Big Pharma more money than any other drug in history, until the China Virus vaccines, and gave psychiatrists what Big Pharma had already given other medical doctors, the professional power and personal profit of pushing pills, as an excuse for not truly examining and treating their patients holistically, all the while giving patients false hope that they would get better if they just stayed the recommended, never-ending course of pill popping.
Therapy works, SSRI's do not. Prozac put far more people on the couch than Freud, with far less success than the "talking cure" in overcoming their depression. SSRI's empowered psychiatry at the expense of patients.
SSRI's warped the medical culture, too, especially that of children and teens, by falsely enhancing the public's trust in the curative powers of psychotropic drugs. Just look at what we did to kids with Ritalin, after the culture swallowed the Prozac Kool Aid. And note that among young male mass shooters, anti-depressant dependency seems to be a common factor. Narcotizing school kids to keep them quiet, then, when they become depressed teens, putting them on the crutches of SSRI's and Facebook are more deadly than the right to keep and bear arms, is my bet. I'll also bet that the same is true of teen sex-identity struggles and doubts, another professionally-manufactured health crisis (sic). Let's truly study those matters and then "follow the science."
There's a lot more to understanding, treating and overcoming depression and other forms of mental illness than biochemistry (and surgery.)
But I believe the data would show that in suicidal and seriously bipolar cases, psychotropics help to save lives (sometimes if only by sedating dangerous patients. In the early Seventies, when crazies were still hospitalized and treated, before the self- righteous meddlers of the Left emptied the mental hospitals, I represented a crazed, dangerous man accused of murdering his wife. He was declared unfit to stand trial b/c he was medicated on thorazine. When his thorazine medication was stopped, he became psychotic and was then again declared unfit to stand trial. He belonged in a mental hospital.) Since those olden days, pharma has made great progress with paranoiacs and schizophrenics, for whom therapy is all but impossible. You cannot change their mental malfunction by talking to them.
The same is true of most personality disorders, which are rife among supporters of the DemocRat Party.
Thank you for sharing. This may be one of your most important articles.
What a horrific crime. Depression is your body telling you to take steps to get your life in order. By claiming it's a chemical imbalance, the depressed person is left feeling more helpless when, in fact, there is much she can do to overcome it.
About a decade ago, WSJ ran a story on how difficult it was for those taking SSRIs to wean themselves off this mind-altering drug when their depression abated (time heals all...). Many found the side-effects so terrible that they went back on the drug. Customers for life.
Last week I was enduring the annual Medicare "wellness" exam in the torture chamber where everyone is enthusiastically muzzled. The doctor was going through the Medicare checklist more deeply than usual, trying to sell more services and drugs. She noticed that the last time I went to the ER was ten years ago. What was that about? I answered truthfully: "That was a panic attack. After that I decided not to have panic attacks. Too expensive."
She obviously didn't believe the answer, but it's true. Turning off anxiety and panic is a physical trick, not requiring drugs. It's a kind of "internal loosening", hard to describe but easy to do.
Thanks for that.
Terrific article, useful for millions who will never read it and heart-warming confirmation, perhaps, of the lived experiences of those "few, those lucky few" who do read it. If a man shouts truth in a desert, it's still truth though no one hears it.
On doctor's advice, I took SSRI's for years after great personal tragedy in my life, when I was diagnosed as suffering "clinical depression." The SSRI's were useless, with debilitating side effects as their ONLY noticeable impact, especially when (on my own recognizance) I stopped taking them, contrary to doctor's advice. Then, through intensive self-reflection and education, I emerged from my long, deep, psychological hole. I will never take SSRI's again.
I once joked with my friend and neighbor, a psychiatrist with decades of experience, about a cartoon I had recently seen in the New Yorker Magazine, to the effect that "chemistry saved psychiatry." My neighbor laughed and agreed with me.
Anti-depressants made Big Pharma more money than any other drug in history, until the China Virus vaccines, and gave psychiatrists what Big Pharma had already given other medical doctors, the professional power and personal profit of pushing pills, as an excuse for not truly examining and treating their patients holistically, all the while giving patients false hope that they would get better if they just stayed the recommended, never-ending course of pill popping.
Therapy works, SSRI's do not. Prozac put far more people on the couch than Freud, with far less success than the "talking cure" in overcoming their depression. SSRI's empowered psychiatry at the expense of patients.
SSRI's warped the medical culture, too, especially that of children and teens, by falsely enhancing the public's trust in the curative powers of psychotropic drugs. Just look at what we did to kids with Ritalin, after the culture swallowed the Prozac Kool Aid. And note that among young male mass shooters, anti-depressant dependency seems to be a common factor. Narcotizing school kids to keep them quiet, then, when they become depressed teens, putting them on the crutches of SSRI's and Facebook are more deadly than the right to keep and bear arms, is my bet. I'll also bet that the same is true of teen sex-identity struggles and doubts, another professionally-manufactured health crisis (sic). Let's truly study those matters and then "follow the science."
There's a lot more to understanding, treating and overcoming depression and other forms of mental illness than biochemistry (and surgery.)
But I believe the data would show that in suicidal and seriously bipolar cases, psychotropics help to save lives (sometimes if only by sedating dangerous patients. In the early Seventies, when crazies were still hospitalized and treated, before the self- righteous meddlers of the Left emptied the mental hospitals, I represented a crazed, dangerous man accused of murdering his wife. He was declared unfit to stand trial b/c he was medicated on thorazine. When his thorazine medication was stopped, he became psychotic and was then again declared unfit to stand trial. He belonged in a mental hospital.) Since those olden days, pharma has made great progress with paranoiacs and schizophrenics, for whom therapy is all but impossible. You cannot change their mental malfunction by talking to them.
The same is true of most personality disorders, which are rife among supporters of the DemocRat Party.
Thanks for this.