“The anguish, anxiety and nightmares were unbearable,” the former film executive Tod Abrams had wrote in a note to his family. “It was only a month after he had sought help with his addiction to Xanax, a sedative used to treat anxiety, at a $60,000-a-month residential facility run by Caron Treatment Centers in an upscale oceanside neighborhood in Delray Beach.”
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The following day, his caretakers diagnosed him with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia and put him on Zyprexa, an antipsychotic medication.
Of course they did, standard practice to diagnose acute and post acute benzo withdrawals as bipolar, schizophrenia and any other label they can use for insurance billing before the shut you up pills that make you all tired and causes anhedoinia (sucks the ability to feel joy from anything out of you).
Zyprexa is evil shit, like thalidomide, sorry for the s word but I survived this very nightmare and can tell you that Zyprexa withdrawal is WORSE than quitting Xanax. The effects of this drug are evil, you can’t describe anhedonia with words or at least I can’t.
After Abrams’ death, his toxicology report showed a significant amount of caffeine in his system.
Well of course it did, Zyprexa victims will drink a ton of coffee trying to overcome the fatigue and anhedionia but it doesn’t work. I did the same thing.
I will write more later, I don’t feel like even thinking about my own Xaxax to Zyprexa nightmare right now.
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“Any time a kid says, ‘I’m going to kill myself,’ he gets Baker Acted,” said a Delray Beach firefighter-paramedic who asked not to be named and who has often transported such patients. “We’re doing 10 of those a week.”
People quickly learn expressing suicidal thoughts results in that big scene of cop cars and emergency vehicles , getting handcuffed and transported to a locked facility to be strip searched , dehumanized, cell phone and numbers inside confiscated and then get forced to take nasty drugs like Haldol . The entire inpatient nightmare they call “help”. After the first time many will answer NO to questions about suicidal thoughts no matter how bad they are feeling.
Do you feel like hurting yourself ?
Translation – Do you feel like being abused inpatient and enduring that nightmare ?
Threats of the baker act are often used against rehab clients in some of these places to push them around.
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“As is evidenced by this tragic story, a highly accomplished, creative and well-respected artist lost his battle to an insidious brain disease that robbed him of hope,” Lehman said. “May he rest in peace.”
Brain disease ?! Thats like saying the children in flint Michigan who drank the water with the lead in it have a disease that caused their problems. Show me a test using medical science anyone with an addiction problem is diseased.
that robbed him of hope I often use the word robbery to describe the effects of Zyprexa. Hope is just one more feeling erased by that insidious evil drug.
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In any case, she said, the death of her brother has left her not only deeply saddened but remorseful. “I feel incredible guilt,” she said, “for not hospitalizing him here in Los Angeles when he told me he was suicidal.”
Don’t. Read this website and also do this Google search “suicide after psychiatric hospitalization” http://www.google.com/search?q=suicide+after+psychiatric+hospitalization
They make it worse for most people because they expect help but get the inpatient strip search and coerced drug you till you drool lockup experience instead and come out feeling much more hopeless.
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the task was to wean him off his dependence on Xanax and transition him to lesser narcotics.
From the frying pan of Xanax to the burn out your brain fire of Zyprexa, nice job people.
I am going to take another break, its difficult having lived this nightmare myself . At this point just want to throw insults at these quacks.
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Cat
I appreciate your comments on these subjects very much. The way you weave your own personal experiences with very powerful sarcastic critiques of today’s mental health and addiction treatment approaches are often filled with a combination of strong emotions and insightful knowledge.
People should read the actual news story included in this posting. It represents just one aspect of the benzodiazepine crisis, and is such a powerful indictment of Big Pharma, Psychiatry, and mainstream medicine when it comes to how they prescribe this category of drug and treat its resulting damage.
Unfortunately this man who committed suicide will most likely be labeled as “an addict with a disease” even though his story most likely began as another example of iatrogenic dependence caused by medical malpractice. From there his experiences may have evolved into some aspects of addiction, but I have zero trust that “The System” knows how to make those determinations and/or find the appropriate help for such a person. It sounds like he was suffering from horrible benzo withdrawal made worse by additional psychiatric drug cocktails.
This is a very sad story (watch the personal video that is imbedded in the news article) that is unfortunately repeating itself thousands of times throughout this country.
Richard
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“It was only a month after he had sought help with his addiction to Xanax, a sedative used to treat anxiety, at a $60,000-a-month residential facility run by Caron Treatment Centers in an upscale oceanside neighborhood in Delray Beach. ”
And he got the treatment-as-usual, the very same that is doled out to people on SSI and medicaid. Yet all you ever hear from the “mental health” professionals, organizations and advocacy groups is that “services” are grossly under-funded, that they need more money, as if not throwing another trillion dollars at it to begin with was the problem all along.
Gee, I wonder where all that money goes, since unlike things like food and energy costs, services like these do not rely on natural or otherwise objective resources.
“The system has failed, we pump out close to 400 billion a year in psychiatric care in the U.S. and we’ve still failed miserably, it cant be our fault we must just need another 400 billion a year, we’re grossly under-funded!”
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He seems to be classified as an addict, but he took this stuff as a sleep aid, and the doctors did not tell him it was addictive, according to his own words. Why is that not the focus of this story? And their use of new diagnoses and “treatments” instead of recognizing that he was fine before he started on this addictive substance is very typical and disheartening behavior from the system.
Is there some way to get someone to cover this story from the angle of a guy who was misled and effectively killed by his “medical treatment?”
— Steve
