Psychiatry Poured Oil Down the Hill I Was Climbing

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In the summer and fall of 2007 my body was under a lot of physical stress. In early June, I fell down stairs and broke my foot. I spent the next few months maneuvering up and down the four levels of stairs in my home on my rear, using my hands to support my casted leg and foot. Within a month, I was exhibiting signs of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in my hands. The diagnosis was confirmed in early August and I was prescribed anti-rheumatic drugs, as well as Prednisone to control the pain and inflammation. As a corticosteroid, Prednisone can cause anxiety and jitteriness. In September, I had a very severe panic attack like nothing I had ever experienced before. As is common, I thought I was having a heart attack or stroke. I was given Ativan in the ER and a short RX of Ativan to take home with me.

Upon following up with my primary care doctor, I was given a prescription for Xanax to use as needed. For whatever reason, I became susceptible to panic attacks after that and had a few more that fall. My primary care doctor then sent me to a psychiatrist, with whom I made the ill-fated decision to take Ativan on a nightly basisā€”to prevent future panic attacksā€”because I did not want to have the sexual side effects of an SSRI. This was the worst decision I ever made.

At no time during my intake appointment or future appointments did the behavioral health providers suggest that my history of adverse childhood experiences (e.g., trans-ethnic adoption, multiple forms of abuse, abandonment, parental death from ALS) could have impacted my developing neurobiology in such as way as to predispose me to a lower threshold for anxiety and panic, nor did they suggest that I could retrain my body to calm itself through mind-body interventions without the use of psychotropic drugs. Had I been toldā€”given the chance to give INFORMED CONSENTā€”about the possibility of a protracted withdrawal syndrome with extreme neuromuscular dysfunction resembling Parkinsonā€™s disease or MS; dysautonomia; central sensitization including nerve pain and intolerances to chemicals and some of my favorite foods; derealization; depersonalization; Alice in Wonderland syndrome and other visual distortions… essentially feeling like I was having a bad acid trip while simultaneously being poisoned on a daily basis for 14 MONTHS… followed by residual symptoms at a lower level INDEFINITELY, along with susceptibility to more severe SETBACKS following future physical trauma or surgery due to central nervous system KINDLING, you can be sure I would have left that psychiatristā€™s office without a prescription and never come back!

Between 2008 and 2012, I was in undiagnosed tolerance withdrawal, resulting in multiple ER visits and being tested for cardiac, neurological and pulmonary problems due to the palpitations, vertigo, esophageal spasms, and hyperventilation I developed each time I became tolerant to a particular dose of Ativan. I never had these symptoms prior to being prescribed benzos and they were very different from the panic attacks that had led to the benzo RX. Multiple times, my psychiatrist diagnosed a worsening anxiety disorder and increased my dose, going from an initial 1mg at night to 1mg three times per day. I remember asking my doctors if the Ativan could be responsible for my symptoms and was assured that it could not.

As a result, I had multiple CT scans and MRIs of my brain, stress tests, and was eventually prescribed an SSRI (Prozac)ā€”polydrugged to treat symptoms of the neuroplastic changes my body was making to compensate for having my GABA receptors increasingly down-regulated by Ativan. At one point during an exceedingly bad episode of tolerance withdrawal with undiagnosed akathisia, I was prescribed Seroquel as well. Thankfully I took that for only two nights because it made me feel like I was drifting into a comatose state and becoming paralyzed. Years after my second and final benzo withdrawal in 2012, I had Genomind genetics testing and learned that, due to my genetic makeup, I should not be prescribed SSRIs or atypical antipsychotics like Seroquel due to heightened risk for adverse reactions.

Because I understood that Ativan could be addictive (which in my mind meant craving the drugā€”something I never once experienced), I decided on my own to come off it in Fall of 2011. I came off Prozac too, tapering over the course of a few months. I did not have severe symptoms right away but by January of 2012 I started to have increasing anxiety. I thought it was related to life events and I began to take the Ativan (but not the Prozac) again at a lower dose. I guess the first withdrawal had sensitized me to Ativan withdrawal because when I reinstated, I began to have severe withdrawal symptoms (shakiness, paresthesia, anxiety, breathing trouble, blurred vision, feeling like I was having drops in blood pressure) within a few hours after each dose. I did not understand that these were withdrawal symptoms at the time but I found that Ativan helped, so I increased my dose over time and was back up to 3mg per day by April of 2012.

Unfortunately, Ativan did not work as well as it had previously and I continued to have symptoms in between doses. At this point, I told my primary care doctor what was happening. He told me that I was having an ā€œadverse reactionā€ to Ativan, that I should not have been prescribed it for as long as I had been on it, and that I needed to get off it. He then direct-switched me to Klonopin because of its longer half-life. When I went back to the psychiatrist to update her on what had been happening, she treated me like a drug addict and accused me of taking more than she had prescribed. I lost any trust I had left in her at this point because my health had been turned upside down in an extremely frightening way, and she had treated me like I was to blame for it. I also made the mistake of thinking that ā€œadverse reactionā€ was the same as ā€œallergic reactionā€ and that I should get off the newly prescribed Klonopin as quickly as possible before I had the same type of reaction to it as I had been having to Ativan. At no time did either the primary care doctor or psychiatrist suggest to me that I had become physically dependent on benzos and was experiencing withdrawal!

I was terrified of benzos at this point, only took half the Klonopin dose prescribed to me, and tapered off that over the course of 6 weeks (last dose in July 2012). This was essentially a cold-turkey withdrawal and could have caused me seizures at the very least (I did have two abnormal EEGs a few months after my last dose, showing slowing in the left frontal temporal lobe and beta spindling, which have returned to normal years later). I experienced depersonalization, derealization, gait disturbance, fast heart rate, paresthesia, palpitations, visual distortions, metallic taste, and phantom smells such as ammonia and smoke throughout this taper. And this was only the beginning. ALL HELL broke loose a couple of months after my very last dose, when I developed nearly every symptom associated with benzo withdrawal, including the rare ones.

By some miracle, during my taper I was able to finish the final semester of my part-time, online MA in Sociology, maintaining my 4.0 GPA, but within 9 months had to go on long-term disability leave from my employment as a research associate conducting evaluations of federal education programs. This was the competent life I had been living when my psychiatrist and other doctors began treating me as if I was a recreational drug addict or someone with severe psychological problems! Because they did not understand my tolerance and withdrawal symptoms, they even suggested that I had somatoform disorder. I later got detailed copies of all my medical records, including the psychiatric records, and saw they were describing me as someone with a ā€œlong history of psychiatric problems.ā€ I assume this was because I had informed the doctors about having seen therapists on and off since adolescence. This was not evidence of a mental disorder, but the result of a history of traumatic childhood experiences that led to an anxious attachment style, which in turn led to emotional devastation over relationship breakups as an adolescent and adult.

The biomedical model of pathologizing victims of trauma has to stop. I did not need a drug prescription! I needed someone to tell me about normal emotional and behavioral responses to abnormal circumstances, to explain attachment dynamics and the repercussions of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). I had to become knowledgeable of these topics on my own. Compelled by the additional trauma I went through due to benzo damage and the way I was treated by the healthcare system while trying to get help for that damage, I stumbled onto and then fervently pursued everything I could read about adult children of alcoholics/dysfunctional families; attachment styles; ACEs, and the neurobiology of trauma. I learned that the issues I had been experiencing BEFORE being damaged by psychiatrists and their drugs of choice could be managed with education and behavioral changes. But itā€™s a much higher, harder hill to climb AFTER suffering iatrogenic physiological damage.

Benzobuddies.org was a lifesaver for me. I had spent months trying to figure out what was causing my bizarre symptoms, having yet more medical testing, spending more money on that, and becoming increasingly fearful and frustrated. The doctorsā€™ refusal to acknowledge that my withdrawal symptoms could be so bad and all-encompassing left me questioning if there indeed was some other medical condition to account for my experience. I finally Googled ā€œadverse reaction to benzodiazepines,ā€ found Benzobuddies, and learned that my ā€œadverse reactionā€ was actually withdrawal symptoms due to physical dependence. At that point, being a research professional, I found and printed multiple documents from benzo withdrawal support websites, detailing the very symptoms I was experiencing, along with peer-reviewed journal articles about benzo withdrawal, and delivered these to the doctors I had seen. Bewilderingly, they continued to dismiss me and told me repeatedly, ā€œwithdrawal symptoms only last a few weeks.ā€

I had 14 months of severely disabling symptoms daily. My symptoms got much worse before they got better. During this time, I also developed sudden-onset intolerance to foods, drugs, and chemicals Iā€™d tolerated my whole life. I havenā€™t been able to eat pizza or ice cream since a few months into my benzo withdrawal because of the severe anaphylactic-like (not true allergy but perhaps mast cell activation) reaction I developed to cowā€™s milk products. I had a similar reaction to my RA medications. From 2007 until benzo withdrawal in 2012, my RA had been very well controlled; but because I had to stop taking my RA drugs for almost 6 months, I developed deformities in my hands. I tried to take Prednisone for the pain and immediately felt like I was experiencing an extremely severe wave of benzo withdrawal symptoms (perceptual and sensory distortions, extreme anxiety and agitation).

In a misguided attempt to help with my withdrawal symptoms, I was prescribed Lexapro from September to December, 2013. Within two weeks, I developed extreme sexual anhedonia, and I continue to have post-SSRI sexual dysfunction to this day. Iā€™d maintained normal sexual sensations well into my benzo withdrawal syndrome until Lexapro took that away from me. I believe this extreme response to Lexapro was likely the result of my nervous system having been compromised by benzo withdrawal. I remain intolerant to cowā€™s milk, MSG, aspartame, and volatile gases. My compromised and highly sensitive nervous system frequently responds to these with dystonic reactions, derealization, perceptual distortions, vibrations and other paresthesia, blood pressure drops, and near syncope. I never had any of these problems before.

I was able to go back to work in early 2014, functioning at my new, compromised normal. Unfortunately, in April of 2015 I had a cycling accident that required surgery to repair a broken elbow with a metal implant. I made sure they did not give me any benzos. I was given Propofol, Fentanyl and Decadron (a strong corticosteroid for inflammation). I also had a week or two of Percocet for pain after the surgery. I went back to work within a week, but by the third week after my accident, I felt like I was going through acute benzo withdrawal all over again, only 1000 times worse. I firmly believe that a good part of what happened after my surgery was due to central nervous system kindling from sedative-hypnotic anesthesia drugs, which involves a worsening with each exposure and withdrawal.

Unfortunately, my symptoms worsened in a cascade of debilitation, including new symptoms such as chronic nerve and bone pain in my legs and spine, dysautonomia (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and orthostatic hypotension), orthostatic intolerance with sensations of near collapse, exercise/exertion intolerance, intolerance to weather changes and more. I was eventually diagnosed with a disorder of the autonomic nervous system, fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue.

I have been on long-term disability again for 2.5 years but am no longer bedridden, as I was for the first year of this severe setback. I have been further devastated socially and financially, but I am now able to work part-time again and have begun a part-time, online MSW program. I also attempt the occasional social or recreational activity, even though I again feel as if I have MS or Parkinsonā€™s disease in addition to dysautonomia and fibromyalgia. I do not have an anxiety disorder. I do have neurological damage. I now take a beta-blocker and get acupuncture and neurofeedback to manage and try to correct the heightened sympathetic nervous system responses and reactivity I developed due to iatrogenic neuroplastic changes in my inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters and neuroreceptors. These responses and reactivity involve symptoms I never had before being damaged by benzos.

I have nothing good to say about the psychiatric drugs prescribed to me or about the psychiatrists that prescribed them. I did not have a condition that needed to be medicated. There was no informed consent aboutĀ the possibility of severe and indefinite damage that the drugs caused me, and I did not have the appropriate help withdrawing from them. I was a healthy, intelligent, energetic, fun-loving young woman who had not only survived a very traumatic childhood, but was thriving in many waysā€”and the mental health system poured a perpetual oil slick down the hill Iā€™d been successfully climbing. The psychiatric system caused me to slide nearly all the way back to the bottom twice, but Iā€™m still climbing.

I think of myself as now having a pair of high-traction shoes, and Iā€™m going to continue to climb all the way through an MSW and a PhD in Social Work so I can advocate for people with experiences like mineā€”to prevent them from being damaged by psychiatry where possible, and to bring validation and justice to those whoā€™ve already been harmed.

***

Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussionā€”broadly speakingā€”of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

28 COMMENTS

  1. My condolences, Mescelle! As if a broken foot and arthritis weren’t bad enough those quacks put you on addictive drugs and played mind games with you.

    I remember how frightening it was when my first shrink claimed Anafranil NEVER caused insomnia, hallucinations or mania. Either he was ignorant and too lazy to check his pill manual for side effects–all the things
    I described were listed. Or maybe he was just gas lighting. How many shrinks are into this kind of emotional abuse?

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    • My condolences, too, Mescelle. I had a broken ankle with arthritis, then the quacks put me on opioids, NSAIs, and antidepressants … then antipsychotics, rather than the benzos. But I have a very similar story of staggering amounts of egregious iatrogenic harm to cover up easily recognized iatrogenesis.

      And when I went outside my insurance for a second opinion, I ran into idiot “mental health professionals” wanting to profiteer off of covering up the abuse of my child, as opposed to your personal experience of child abuse.

      But this means I absolutely agree, “The biomedical model of pathologizing victims of trauma has to stop. I did not need a drug prescription!” And overcoming is “a much higher, harder hill to climb AFTER suffering iatrogenic physiological damage,” and I’ll add psychiatric DSM defamation and iatrogenic harm.

      An ethical pastor eventually confessed to me that “the dirty little secret of the two original educated professions” is that the primary functions of today’s “mental health professionals” are covering up easily recognized iatrogenesis by the mainstream doctors and child abuse for the religious leaders.

      And this is true, even according to today’s “mental health professionals” own medical literature. If you can believe, the “mental health professionals” are now even trying to claim “schizophrenia” is caused by child abuse. So they may explain away, and try to cover up the fact, that most of the “seriously mentally ill” are actually child abuse victims.

      https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/heal-for-life/

      My abused child, because I kept him away from the overly intrusive “mental health professionals,” who want to drug up all the well behaved and intelligent children, did heal and become the valedictorian of his high school class, then graduated with highest honors (Phi Beta Kappa) from college.

      No, child abuse does not cause the DSM “mental illnesses.” There’s a paternalistic “dirty little secret of the two original educated professions,” which is that the two primary functions of today’s scientifically “invalid” “mental health industry” are indeed, turning child abuse victims into the seriously “mentally ill” with the psychiatric drugs on a massive scale, and covering up the easily recognized iatrogenesis for the incompetent mainstream medical doctors.

      God bless you in your healing journey, Mescelle, and thanks for sharing your story of the insanity of today’s psychiatric system. The inmates are running the asylum.

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      • Iā€™m sorry for what happened to you. Thank you for your comment, for sharing the success of your child, and for the link to the other blog post (which I read and appreciated very much). I think of all the unwitting parents who just donā€™t realize the potential for harm to their children when they take them into the mental health system, trying to help them with the repercussions of trauma or even temporary adjustment difficulties that are pathologized and diagnosed as a ā€œmental illnessā€ and then medicated with substances that compromise their developing neurological systems. So much education and reform is needed.

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    • There seems to be so many layers to the problems. Doctors have generally only been taught the biomedical model and not trauma-informed care, the system does not allow them to spend enough time with their patients to take a holistic view even if they wanted to and knew how to do so, and then for many there is unconscionable arrogance and willful ignorance. Reform needs to hit the problem from many directions.

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  2. I feel sick reading your all too common account of medical malpractice Meschelle.
    Sadly, all Allopathic drugs (not just psych drugs) cure nothing, mask vital symptoms that alert us to what is wrong, create imbalances and cause real disease in the body. Worse, conventional “medicine” fails to find or address the underlying root cause of what is ailing us as you said. For many this has nothing to do with past trauma but is simply misdiagnoses of a “medical mimic” IE: thyroid or some 60 other diseases that are labeled “mental illness’s”.
    I am happy to hear that you will be advocating to protect the millions who are misdiagnosed and mistreated (insurance fraud) by conventional “medicine’. We are in dire need of people who understand what is really going on and why despite wasting so much money on sick care, we suffer so much disease and continue turning to “medicine” as if it is the answer as opposed to the problem. If you are not already familiar, Dr. Kelly Brogan’s work will resonate with you.
    Best wishes in healing your mitochondria. You strength is an inspiration.

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    • Thank you, Judi. I am interested in Dr. Kelly Brogan’s work (had heard her name somewhere and will now follow up thanks to your reminder!). Functional medicine seems to be a promising direction and I hope it proves beneficial over the long run for avoiding misdiagnoses, as well as getting to the root causes of various ailments and treating them. I’ve looked into this quite a bit since becoming ill and it was actually the prominent benzo survivor/educator/advocate Geraldine Burns who first pointed me in that direction as functional medicine had helped her. I think it’s vital to look at health holistically, with mind-body integration.

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  3. meschelle—you really have been through awful stuff…thanks for sharing your suffering…
    I still believe tho that there are some psychiatrists that are helpful…and all of psychiatry is not bad..
    but the psychiatry system is very badly broken down…I was taken care of by a psychiatrist and psychologist
    a long time ago that were very good and helpful…psychiatry used to pay attention to psychology and sociology together with biology….not just drugs drugs drugs….

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    • I’m glad you had a psychiatrist and psychologist that helped you. I’ve seen a very good psychologist that specializes in mind-body interventions and was the first professional to ever provide me with trauma-informed care. Unfortunately finding this type of professional took almost 20 years and happened only AFTER I had severe iatrogenic damage so he was helping me with PTSD caused by iatrogenic trauma as well as prior traumas. I didn’t know I needed trauma-informed care until I got it, so I hadn’t been looking for it – but it was exactly what I needed. I also didn’t know how much I was being harmed in the mental health system before that until extremely severe, indefinite damage had been done. I think this lack of knowledge is where most patients/clients are coming from and my experience is that those integrative professionals are few and far between in the healthcare system these days. I want to be part of changing this.

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  4. Have heard such stories re benzo withdrawal akathisia so many times. It is horrific and THE most diffiuclt situation I found myself in. When I studied the glutamate system and long-term potentiation, I discovered that magnesium ions regulate the transmission of the major excitatory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system: glutamate. Also that GABA is synthesized from glutamate usung the the enzyme glutamate decaboxylase plus a co factor B6, the active form there of. Hope that helps if you still suffer anxiety.

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    • I’m sorry you are experiencing akathisia. I agree that it’s horrific – completely overwhelming and it’s not like you can run away from yourself to escape it. I do take a magnesium supplement plus a B complex every day. It took quite a while before B vitamins stopped being too stimulating for me, but I can take them now. I hope they have been able to help you also.

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  5. Mescelle, those of us who’ve been ‘there’ in that world of pure psychotic mental torture of benzo’s don’t just read your words, we feel them, we relive them. The left over trauma sees to it. But I have never heard anyone describe the unrelenting hell we have to go through all in the name of Psychiatry, where the ‘Hippocratic Oath’ does not apply, as articulately and eloquently as you just did. I have nothing good or positive to say about Psychiatry. They stole decades from me, they even went after my soul, in the end they stole everything from me they could steal. All psychiatric drugs, especially the benzo’s take your mind places you never even knew existed, and once you get there you quickly realize youā€™re living in for the worst nightmare imaginable, living in abject terror every waking second absolutely terrified we’ll never be able find our way out of this nightmare we’ve found ourselves in with no help from anyone in the medical field. I equated my c/t Klonopin withdrawal to taking 10 hits of pure LSD, went completely insane which most people can’t understand what this feels like, let alone believe it. And those lucky enough to survive are never the same again. My motto is and will always be – ‘benzo withdrawal have any hero’s, it only leaves survivors.’ And I’m ever so grateful that you are one of them. Although you suffered endlessly and needlessly, your beautifully written words is the best gift we psychiatric drug survivors could ever hear. They provide something no one in the Mental Health field ever gave me, and that is – hope. And thank you for that.

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    • Sandra, I really related to your comments. Iā€™m very sorry for what youā€™ve been through. The ā€œpure psychotic mental torture of benzosā€ is something that people cannot even begin to imagine unless theyā€™ve experienced it. I think thatā€™s likely especially true for cold-turkey withdrawals and extremely rapid tapers like ours. During the worst of it, I used to wake from nightmares that I had gone insane and could never get back to normal, and experienced that ā€œabject terrorā€ afterwards ā€“ unreal, like my brain and the world as I knew it had been hijacked. You feel so isolated in the terror, and you really are because no one can penetrate it and be there with you. You said it so well that it takes ā€œyour mind places you never even knew existed.ā€ I have said so many times that I had symptoms I never even knew were humanly possible to experience. I didnā€™t even know how to describe them. People understand pain and they understand nausea, but when you tell them you feel like your body fluids have been replaced battery acid and youā€™re being simultaneously poisoned and electrocuted ā€“ and that description doesnā€™t even really begin to describe the bizarre sensations that go so far beyond any frame of reference weā€™ve had up until that point in our lives – they canā€™t begin to relate to it even if theyā€™re willing to believe it. No, weā€™ll never be the same. We have to make do with our new normal and weā€™re in a bizarre little club we would never have chosen to be in, but here we are. Hereā€™s to surviving.

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      • Meschelle Linjean, Meschelle, your words are music to my ears when not anyone from my mental healthcare ‘team’ who I saw every week, their psychiatrist, or my GP ever believed I word I was telling them as I began my descent into hell concerning my c/t K-pin withdrawal. It’s the worst acid trip anyone could ever imagine. It’s torture – medically induced mental torture. Plain & simple. My horror story was recently published here, too, although it’s very difficult to cram 35 years of being psychiatrically poisoned in short form. I’ve also detailed it in book form, ‘Life Sentence: life behind bars of the Mental Health-care system’ that tells in detail my Klonopin then Effexor, Lithium & Trazodone cold-turkey withdrawals. Welcome to hell all over again …our benzo stories so bizarre that if one has never been ‘there’, in that psychotic hell abyss where ‘time’ doesn’t even exist, only endless terror, pain and utter insanity, they’d never believe it. This is how far out it takes your mind. And then it wants to know if you’re going to be strong enough to live through it. Tragically, so many don’t. It was difficult writing my memoir because I had to relive it to write it. Excruciatingly painful at times. Only another psychiatric drug survivor knows the hell we go through. It seems to be Psychiatry’s dirty little secret. Only evil, grows in the dark. So, thank you for your compassion and dedication to educating others, and shining that light. You know America comes in First Place for drugging the most children than any country on Earth. This offense is so shameful it’s disgusting. Children have no voice, they can be tortured to death. They have no voice. We have to be the children’s voice. So thank you for your part in saving humanity. Could I ask you a question in a more private setting? Would that be alright?

        Sandy

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        • Sandy, it’s legally sanctioned torture, chemical lobotomy and neurological maiming! Legally sanctioned disregard for basic human rights. I will look for your story on this website soon. Has the longer version been published? I have wondered about our PTSA (I generally say “post-traumatic stress ADAPTATION” because I believe the condition is a normal outcome from trauma – not a DISORDER) and the traumatic memories stored in the body. This PTSA from the physical and mental symptoms of benzo withdrawal that have gone on for years, seems so compounded when we relive it in the telling of our stories. Many people with PTSA “relive” their trauma experience as part of their condition and have hyperarousal symptoms, but our PTSA was CAUSED in great part by the hyperarousal and neurological symptoms themselves, so it seems there needs to be more nuanced recovery from it (how, I don’t yet know). Anyway, I also hope to write my own memoir about this someday, but first I’ve got to get through the MSW program — extremely difficult with the ongoing disabilities. Actually, right now for one of my classes I’m working on a policy analysis regarding the problem of unwarranted use of psychotropic drugs in foster care children, so I really feel your last remarks. You can certainly email me.

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          • Meschelle, I have an email all ready to send you but don’t quite understand where to email this to you. I’d rather not post the contents here. Please advise. I’m going to try and use the ‘mail’ box next to your story here to send it to you personally but I don’t have a clue if you’ll actually get it privately. We’ll see. Here goes…

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  6. Meschelle,

    Your story is so poignant, moving me to tears as I recall my 45 year old daughter’s experience that began in 2011 and ended on June 16, 2016 with her suicide as she fell victim to the ravages of poly psychopharmacy . There is a place in hell for physicians who, out of their realm, misdiagnose and treat patients with psychotropic drugs, creating a chemical imbalance that the fragile brain struggles unsuccessfully to correct throughout their sadistic “drug trial” without informed consent. I am telling her story to everyone who will listen from consumer watchdog agencies to medical boards and government officials. In fact, today I sent an appeal to the Florida division of the American Academy of Pediatric Doctors to urge them to reexamine the use of psychotropic drugs like Aderall on children diagnosed with ADHD. The sale of this drug has recently realized an increased popularity among college students as it offers enlightened euphoria.
    Psychiatric meds are a scourge on the culture and are the precipitating factor in the mental health crisis we are experiencing. I, too, suggest you acquaint yourself with the works of Dr. Brogan, Dr. Gotzche and Dr. Whitaker. Please align yourself with these and others who are in an uphill battle to shine the light on this travesty occurring because of the greed of Big Pharma and the willful ignorance of the complicit medical community and FDA/NIH. I too would like to contact you and share my daughter’s story if that is permissible. I am so grateful you survived and will be a voice for those who did not. God bless.

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    • grievingmother, can relate so very well to your words for Meschelle. Big pharma has every one of my family members in their clutches. Every one is on 1 or more psychiatric drugs, and I am forced to watch the quality of their lives go from happy, spontaneous people to anxiety ridden, depressed and sickly. But it’s the hardest watching my 41 year old daughter who’s been polydrugged for decades. It’s hard watching my grandchildren neglected and abused by a mother who can no longer function in any capacity of the word from taking so many toxic drugs. Psychiatry made sure she followed right in my footsteps. Dr.’s told her the same old lie they told me over 35 years ago, chemical imbalance and the need to take drugs for the rest of your life. I have to watch the drugs literally destroying her life, and that of her children’s. It’s heartbreaking. It’s more heartbreaking listening to someone who’s lost a loved one due to our so called ‘medicines’. I mean how many lives have be sacrificed to Psychiatry? How many lives do they want? expect? The mental torture the drugs put us through is very difficult to live through. Extremely difficult. Most have no idea. Dr. Brogan, Robert Whitaker, Dr. Breggin are fantastic advocates, but my all time favorite is Peter Gotzsche. I love that man beyond words. Keep up the good fight, and in the meantime, us psychiatric drug survivors will continue screaming from the roof tops until some one actually hears us. God Bless you grieving mother.

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      • Thank you Sandra for your compassionate response which only other victims completely understand. We must be the voices for those without the capacity to express how they have been victimized by our medical/pharmaceutical model of healthcare. I am working with an organization that is serious about informing the public and putting an end to this abuse under the guise of therapeutic intervention.
        The CCHR (Citizens Commission on Human Rights) has offices throughout the world and they are filing a complaint with the Florida Medical Board on my behalf regarding my daughter Lori’s mismanaged case. I just completed the application one week ago but many other complaints are being filed with their local office in Clearwater, Fl. (800-782-2878). Parents whose children are being removed from classrooms and taken to mental health facilities at the behest of teachers without parental consent and placed on psych drugs. They are somehow circumventing “informed consent”. Parents and in fact most people have little grasp of the long term consequences of these mind altering psychotropic drugs irregardless of the age of the patient but their effects are particularly egregious when used in the children as young as 3-4 years old. We must speak out against these atrocities as we are literally allowing ourselves and our children to become guinea pigs for the pharmaceutical industry as we provide them with long term study statistics.

        Please consider joining the fight alongside CCHR and if you wish to report negative effects of these and other drugs you are aware of, please contact the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research to file your report. It remains to be seen if they relent, but I ask you to join me in contacting your US Congressmen and request they hold hearings to bring this abuse to light. We should consider starting a nationwide petition. Perhaps this website would host and submit to the FDA.gov…? I will not be silent because I don’t want other families to experience the grief that I have lived since my daughter’s death. May God bless and comfort those who share this this painful legacy.

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  7. Update: Since I wrote my story, I remembered that I was prescribed Ambien for at least one month in fall 2007 to help me sleep with the pain from the RA. I discontinued the Ambien while still on Prednisone, which is likely the reason I began having the panic attacks that led to the Ativan prescription. I have also since researched corticosteroids such as Prednisone and Decadron and learned that they can result in adverse reactions such hypertensive crises, sympathetic activation, HPA axis dysfunction, cognitive dysfunction, agitation and “steroid psychosis” – in other words, many symptoms that can be misdiagnosed as psychiatric in nature. Be aware and exercise care with all medications. Know the adverse reactions and what might be misinterpreted by physicians as panic attacks or other mental distress.

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  8. Meschelle your story with corticosteroids and addiction to benzos and problems with psychotropic meds parallels mine completely. One pharmacist threatened to call the DEA when I tried to fill my Klonopin script a day early. I told her please do call them bkz I have a few things to talk to them about. I dont let anyone speak to me in a way that makes me the bad guy when it comes to benzo addiction. I finally broke free of benzos by following the Ashton protocol. I am sorry they did that to you and to me. I decided to do something about the corticosteroid part. I am building an army of people who have been harmed by corticosteroids. I just began my journey, I have no idea what I am doing. I opened a FB page and a Telegram page called Corticosteroids HELL. I am looking for all people who suffered like us and then as a force we will make the AMA retrain doctors and nurses and all medical professionals that corticosteroids are not candy. They need to be trained regarding the very common psychiatric side effects including suicidal ideation. AND they need to onow know how to treat those side effects without causing benzo addiction. UGH. Please join my FB and Telegram pages, join my army. ~ Andrea

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