You didn’t produce children and then make someone else raise them. Good for you!
Day care is less than care. It is mere maintenance. Parents sometimes must use these services. I wouldn’t condemn them for this. However, child development is done best not in a group.
Now the issue of misdiagnosing a woman because she chooses to care for a child seems nuts. You say that a diagnosis stalks the patient forever. How is that done? How does a record stalk? I don’t doubt you, I only seek a way to halt this violation of liberty. This is more than a civil rights issue; it is a civil liberty issue a constitutional thing.
I admire your dedication to raising your children.
You make a much needed point.
I would add this: The existence of bogus conspiracy theories does not prove that there are not conspiracies.
And this: Medical doctors’ beliefs may and may not represent validated science. A statement is not validated by the fact that an MD says it. A fact is not proven by a human; it is proven by valid scientific method. Opinion is not evidence.
Ad hominem or ad hoc? “You’re not a doctor” is IRRELEVANT. You can think. You can think while free of preconceived beliefs and training. That places you above MD “opinion leaders”.
Does prescribing-ability make psychiatry a branch of medicine?
“This adaptation, as I see it, is a fundamental thing that all long-term psychiatric drug treatment has against it. The body will eventually adapt and when you stop the drug it can create this illusion of an effect because you stop the drug and you feel worse. Is that because you got into contact with the underlying withdrawal state, or is that because the drugs work? The solution to that, which is why we are here, is gradual tapering to solve that problem.”
While there are many good points in this article, I’d address just this: Does any kind of gradual tapering really reverse the deleterious adaptation? It’s a bit glib to say so. Does reversing drug adaptation also correct the attendant alteration of bodily systems? In the case of neuropathy, it clearly does not. Endocrine dysfunction can be altered, as well, and this remains after withdrawal symptoms are overcome.
There is a desire to simplify withdrawal as a set of rules appropriate to everyone, and this may allow a disaster as in post withdrawal illness that has no known end point.
What evidence exists that establishes a percentage reduction as the safe and effective reduction? A percentage addresses only the drug and addresses nothing about the physiology of the patient.
Concerning Benzodiazepines, this article, fortunately, ignores the Heather Ashton demand that Benzo dependent people cold turkey from 0.5Mg of Diazepam to end their tapers. Even the Ashton based websites have quietly moved on.
FACEBOOK?? WTF!!!
From the beginning, I never had any relationship to FB. I saw it as selling personal information and assumed information to businesses for profit. When Zuckerberg was questioned by US Congress, a senator asked Z. how FB made money. “We sell ads, senator” was the answer. Was that a complete answer? How about:” We sell data about our members, and they don’t know it.”? “You are meat for our profit”?
Now, how a hospital is paid for the personal and protected health information “given” to a social media organization is at the core. Obviously HIPPA forbids this sharing by a “covered entity”. How and why are these conflicts successfully ignored by US Government?
Apparently always avoiding Facebook is not preventing Facebook from creating their record of anyone. Do we have the same people working at both places?
We are being sold; and we never noticed it.
Well some of us eschew both medicine and social media but what of the rest of the population?
This will not end well.
Exactly Right! It is common not to change a thing. However, I have heard from people whose prescribers saw a bad reaction as evidence that the patient was not being on enough of the offending drug. The prescriber, then, doubled the dosage.
Coming off of those mega doses is a challenge! Now, might a violent behavior or delusional fit actually be caused by being suddenly left in a cold turkey state?
Exactly Right! It is common not to change a thing. However, I have heard from people whose prescribers saw a bad reaction as evidence that the patient was not being on enough of the offending drug. The prescriber, then, doubled the dosage.
Coming off of those mega doses is a challenge! Now, might a violent behavior or delusional fit actually be caused by being suddenly left in a cold turkey state?
The Columbine-perpetrators were receiving “treatment” (psychoactive drugs) when they became enraged and they killed people. Since that time, and at almost every similar rampage, the attackers were committing violent crime while being treated with prescribed psychiatric medications. The connection never is made in the reporting.
I’ve lived close to two of these events and a major for-profit psychiatric corporation. This corporation’s activity is doling out drugs yet it chimes in the “Aint it awful” public discourse. Connection?
The same corporation implies that it is a government agency. It is not and never was. Government agencies enjoy protections that private entities do not.
Another connection?
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Isn’t still being symptomatic, after the taper, lack of success?
At conclusion of a psyche evaluation, is ANYONE not referred for “treatment”?
Ally, you made essential points so well that the only thing that I’d reject is your statement that you can’t form your thoughts well. You did. You did it so well.
You are an excellent writer.
You expressed what so many of us cannot.
Thank You
The article: ” But one of the psychiatrists said in response, âbenzodiazepines donât really make that much money anymore.â
Benzos are not pharma’s big sellers, but the problems that Benzos eventually build the gateway to poly prescribing- additional drugs ostensibly to address the illness that the Benzo RX, itself, has caused.
I agree that Benzos, themselves, do not make a lot of money. However, the benzo-altered patient must make ongoing payments to the prescribing psychiatrist to prevent the devastatingly painful withdrawal from the prescribed Benzo.
The parallel to organized crime/drug dealing is unmistakable .
Related: An actual sudden Benzo-ban would pose an immediate danger to those in withdrawal as well as those who are unaware of their Benzo-dependent status.
In other words, 1) patients must be given adequate time to plan their medication escapes. 2) Will the medical camp let all of these paying customers leave without an accusation that patients are not competent to make their own decisions and so must be court-ordered to take whatever said licensed prescriber demands?
This is alarming.
Well the digital meds have been around for a while. So has that vague and open ended sort of leading question.
After over a year dealing with a woodsy skin issue, I finally saw a dermatologist. The “new patient” question list was quite ordinary until the last one: “Are you safe?”. What does that mean? It seems to be vague so that the patient will spill just about anything. I wanted to ask: “why the question:, but we all know that that would invite inappropriate prying.
The PCP will tell us that the ‘council on XYZ’ has listed tests and investigations for different demographics. Say:”No thank you” and you risk a “non-compliant” tag or worse, paranoia.
These people do seem to be trawling for “mental disease” and its subsequent treatment. We still can simply not do what is ordered. We can avoid medical contacts.. well usually. I still will be sewn up for injuries and accept the tetanus booster “every ten years or ” time of injury”.
However, if we have young children, the landscape is full of question landmines. Pediatricians will question children about their parents’ lives. Example: Do your parents drink? Do they scare you? It does get worse. Children may not know the answers and may make up a response to make the doctor happy. Still kids do get sick, and they need patching up especially in the summer time. Maybe parents can help children by explaining and offering standard responses that will satisfy the doctor. We ask: Can this happen in our country? It does; so let us be calm and ready.
One medical office exclaimed: “You haven’t seen a doctor in two years?” Oh my goodness, my internal organs will fall out if not billed by a “provider”!
It’s wonderful to hear that false entries can be deleted. In my state, entering false information in a client’s record is a misdemeanor at the first offense. Report the offense and present the primary-sourced evidence to the state and what happens? Nothing happens. If the charge is sexual abuse, there is a deal. The offender can make a deal and not appear on the list of offenders. Hey, I acquired a transcript of the state’s investigations…… from the state.
What can we do to really protect against silly accusations? Walk softly and carry a big bag of evidence and have an attorney ready, or just try not to be noticed. I am doing that last one…for now.
About those negatively shifting outcomes, well what is expected anyway? No one claims that any of these drugs actually cures an illness. Is a good outcome a quiet patient who is now a lifetime source of income?
It’s been pointed out before: An effect of Seroquel is diabetes, and the manufacturer of Seroquel also manufactures treatments for diabetes. Add to this the fact that most prescriptions for Seroquel are not for psychosis but for off-label sales, and we have the perfect business model.
Here is what a psychiatrist said to me: “There is a new drug for insomnia; it’s very mild. it just makes you sleepy”. The same guy said: “The most that will happen when stopping Xanax is three nights of trouble sleeping”. He said that while looking at a person visibly quaking in withdrawal.
We may want to give the benefit of the doubt and say that that guy just didn’t know. The problem: he knew or should have known because he is a licensed prescribing-psychiatrist who does see the results of his work. And who is “in denial”?
This same doc, who claimed no problem with withdrawal from Xanax, then immediately wrote a prescription for an effect of withdrawal from Xanax. Yes, he really did that.
It often is claimed that a physician is better informed of treatment consequences than are we. I think not. We go to the source and Look it up. Was this doc absent on the day when drug monographs were taught?
There is informed consent, and then there is misinformed consent.
Of course I agree completely. If incarceration is sought, Miranda warning is required. Yet remaining silent will be taken as evidence of mental incapacity. I “want a lawyer” does seem acceptable, but here is another and more vague aspect: a denial of civil liberties is claimed to be protection of the mentally incapable. And all of this is done without supervision or any attempt to mane a record of the Civil liberty offense.
Mental illness, in itself, isn’t a basis for locking away the accused. Usually it is “being a danger to self or others” that Is punishable. Who decides that?
The right to a trial is ignored as an in-hospital setting rushed process. The right to be represented and the right to defense is in the law, but in practice, something else happens. The accused may be under duress to sign away every right including the right to not be drugged before trial. The requirements of testimony are easily ignored. A court-appointed attorney may and usually will consider the accused guilty. That would be enough for disbarment, but has this happened?
I have an acquaintance who saw the forgoing scenario to its conclusion. The accused was drugged by a long list of chemicals, involuntarily and for three months. The effects of drugs are not just the sum of the chemicals. Drug combinations can harm irreversibly. Who and what is monitoring this abuse?
I understand that MIA may not be the place to initiate action, but it must happen. One life lost is too may lives lost.
A more than 15 year old Supreme Court decision clarified the right of the accused to be taken in and cared-for by a relative or friend who is willing to be the care-giver. . This is a huge decision. It is ignored. The only stipulation is that the accused not be an immediate threat. Now that may be the Achilles’ heel of the decision.
However, citing this decision might provide time to mount a defense.
One more thing is service of process. If the accused does not know that he is accused, he has neither time nor means to marshal a defense.
Everyone should be interested in this because anyone, can be accused, drugged, imprisoned and until death or until no money is left to pay for the atrocity.
Let’s start with Miranda.
The tactic may come down to who is paying for the supposed treatment. Public assistance, in the form of Medicaid, Medicare, et cetera, looks like a bottomless pit of coverage for “services”. Private insurance has limits to what and how long it will pay. But the uninsured might be safest. I say “might” because I don’t have any statistics for this. A social worker asked me how long the average mental health incarceration lasts. The answer? ‘Until the insurance runs out’.
At least one state in the USA names the accused’s family as responsible for payment for coerced hospitalization. Yes, family pay to keep the prisoner alive. Where else have we heard of that practice
?
Is it possible to bankrupt people by forcing diagnosis, treatment, and then extend it all to culminate in a mega personal bill? Is this not a perfect scheme for retaliating for a personal grudge? Yes, I know that it has happened.
This under-scores the need to access records. Hippa denies records called therapy notes. So call it something else. Hospital records are not therapy notes anyway. A tactic to use post incarceration. is to get a transcript of the legal proceedings. Errors will show up there, and this needs no more proof. It is a transcript of a real court record. If this is to be used by the victim in a court proceeding, a judge must stamp the record as true (exemplified copy).
These people do not expect resistance.
Well that really does expose the danger of encouraging them to “get the help that they need’! Who needs this system anyway? Oh yes, the providers need it. They need these populations for income production.
The old expression, dealing with conscripted soldiers, called them “cannon fodder?. Well how about “billing fodder” in the service of the psychiatric industry?
What is “spacing the dose”? I haven’t heard of it. It sounds somewhat like the practice of actual drug addicts as in not taking a dose until the withdrawal effects are too agonizing and then basking in relief when the missing dose is restored. This may be called: tweaking.
The practice doesn’t provide relief in the case of Benzos and A/D’s. but Ketamine- dependence may be very different.
I went to some journals and found that this Ketamine withdrawal can quickly become a life-threatening horror. So thanks for the heads-up.
Can people, incarcerated in mental institutions, vote?
Those convicted of crime cannot, but is a diagnosis equal to a crime? Do any Revised Statutes address the right to vote?
While it is obviously true that a longer taper equals longer exposure to the drug, that longer taper time is exposing to less and less of the tapered substance. If we believe that using less and less ,in a responsible manner, allows the physiology to re calibrate its functioning, is it reasonable to say that longer exposure to any amount of the drug, including lower and lower doses, has the same effect as the same extended exposure time with the original dosage?
In other words: Why worry about exposure length when you are clearly healing (reversing the dependency)?
I, too, appreciate your writing. Well done!
Not many humans would have had the ability to function while being so consistently gaslighted by those with complete control of life and death.
I remember children’s taunts of long ago:” You’re going to go to Elgin” when arguing. That institution was well-known. Apparently we didn’t know everything.
You amaze me. Please write more.
:As an example, for someone coming off a 20mg dose of citalopram (Celexa), a â10% of the previous dose per monthâ strategy will require them to take 29 months, over two years, to reach a 1-milligram jumping-off point. For someone who has been treated for decades, this seems sensible;”
It’s quite true: That strategy would require 29 months. However, there seems to be the assumption that duration of use directly determines the time required to discontinue the drug. Is this supported by evidence?
Since the time required to become dependent can vary by more than 10 years, there seems to be no known relation between time on the drug and time needed to safely taper.
Once the net was full of suggested rules such as “taper X times the time you were taking the drug”. This seems to have faded on credibility.
Other than the fact that continual use allows dependence, is that time really directly relevant to time in taper?
I was aware of this, but not aware of how widespread it is.
What are some things to do to prevent this abusive thievery?
I wonder about holding real estate and investment portfolios in llc’s as possible safeguards. Public records do reveal assets to possible thieves. Hence, the llc question.
Those accused of mental illness seem particularly at risk of this method of abuse. Some points concerning how to be safe would be so much appreciated.
Your argument:
If P, then Q
Q, therefore P.
This is a classic logical fallacy taught in symbolic logic.
In other words: If it rains, the grass gets wet.
The grass is wet.
Therefore, it rained. This actually is the example in the text book.
One effect may have many causes. Finding one possible cause does not change that.
Remember that phrase attached to the conclusion of almost all studies: “Clearly more research is needed”?
Well this is why it is needed. One cause does not a conclusion make. Well, other than “this is one possible cause”.
Thank you for your contact link and interest in different taper perspectives. I do not offer my approach within any internet site. I work only through physicians because information has been so easily corrupted through the internet.
Examples of this can be seen in “Withdrawal Education” classes. Elementary science is absent.
I learned to offer cautions and not advice at internet sites.
” I donât know about other antidepressants but when it comes to Effexor, withdrawals can blindside you weeks or even months later”
I believe that you are right! This is not my own experience but that of someone I know well. Her “months later” experience was mini seizure events. Her body quaked and jerked without relief.
. I hear that this is unusual. Is it?
To begin to illustrate the extreme variations in discontinuation results: I was prescribed the maximum manufacturers’ dosages of two antidepressants. for years. I was warned not to decrease the dosage, but there was reason to believe that this was not wise.
I abruptly stopped taking one and then the other. Not only did I feel better, but I had no withdrawal symptoms at all. Does this mean that the ultimate short discontinuation is safe? No, it does not. The only take away is that this was safe for me; it was merely my experience. My C/T easily could be a disaster for someone else. I take this as an illustration of extreme differences in physiology from person to person. Hence the need for treading carefully when abandoning psyche-meds. Doggedly adhering to “rules” ignores the thing called polymorphism.
Here we are dealing with uncharted waters. The ancient cartographers labeled the unknown territories , “Dragons Be Here”. Well, Dragons really “be here”
A nearby psyche clinic promotes itself as helping near normal people get more out of life. Well that sounded nice. Then they began using Ketamine. I can’t say that it was used to “enhance” life or only to treat intractable depression, but use to enhance life may be too tempting.
In the USA, a physician can lawfully prescribe off-label if that physician thinks that the use is beneficial. Could this situation develop into lawful drug-dealing?
There seems to be an unspoken belief that duration of taper is decided before the initiation of the tape, as part of the taper and not a result of the taper. A taper takes time. Does time determine the taper?
More than 16 years ago, it was common to calculate the individual reductions by arbitrarily naming the number of days that the taper would last and divide the initial dose by that number. The process failed. It was based on a guess and not on physiology This idea seems to have resurfaced.
“Slow” is a by-product of the chosen process and not an element of the process, itself; or “it takes what it takes”. Does anyone believe that overriding our biological limits, in either direction, is rational? Of course arbitrarily deciding to use a very long time is absurd. Is that the point of the article?
Defining terms could enable better discussion. What is “slow” is a common question. Slow, the word, denotes time as in a year. Rate is a ratio of how much over how long or here, dosage unit over unit of time. Rate would tell us more about the taper than simply that it required X number of months or years.
Also there seems to be an assumption that any taper process demands following a specific schedule that already exists either in medicine or at helping-websites. In other words, we are required to pick an existing method or time limit. Why would that be?
I just looked again at the Peter Breggin book, Your Drug May Be Your Problem. He cites the assumed 10% rule. The problem: no scientific basis for the rule is offered. The people who back it are listed as proof of the rule’s validity. I admire Breggin, but I must question that assumption. To say that a thing is true because someone who ought to know says it is true is neither science nor logical. It is a logical fallacy, an ad hominem argument.
“Slow” is an essential word in withdrawal, but slow may mean taking a long time without naming the size or number of dosage reductions. “Slow”, alone, doesn’t tell us more than how long the taper lasted.
Isn’t it missing the mark to adhere to a schedule rather than empirically determining your own optimal rate as in milligrams reduced over a specific time? Will a body’s physiology agree with speed, rate, or schedule, as imposed, or should the rate be determined by the individual body? That later approach is actually available, but not through the usual internet sites.
This is only one of the many essential issues that are presented in the article. The responses as well as the article, itself, are reassuringly thought-provoking. Questioning is good.
At the conclusion of our senior civics class, we toured a psychiatric facility. The most obvious thing were the silent and immobile inmates. They were kept in an enormous hall seated on wicker furniture. We knew so little about them. We thought that appearing catatonic was a feature of their illnesses.
Later, I read in the local paper that new drugs were being used there as an experiment. I questioned the lawfulness of allowing us to view these inmates in any condition. I felt somewhat ashamed to have witnessed this. My questioning was met with: “Well what else would you suggest we do with them?”. It was clear that these drugs were administered to make the recipients almost comatose and unquestioning. They didn’t move; they stared straight ahead. The drugs did nothing to cure people
Now, what would prevent any one of us being treated that way if we were inconvenient people? Were we ever a decent society?
What an appropriate comment that is! State laws vary, but the result seems similar. Someone, anyone, makes an accusation of mental illness. Police make the arrest. Medical incarceration follows with forced medication. Forget harmful drug interactions ordered by ignorant staff. Dependence may follow.
Yes, the mentally accused must pay for his/her incarceration. If no insurance covers incarceration, the patient must pay. I accessed the law in one state and found that family are lawfully billed for this incarceration.Homes are lost. It really does happen. The accused must pay for their own kidnappings. How, then, is this not extortion?
Well this does explain the mass minds so prevalent today. Related is the work, When Prophecy Fails. It is old but still valid. What do doomsday groups do when they are proven wrong? They gather together and shout their falsehoods more loudly.
Quote: “I feel compelled to remind the reader that psychotropic medications should never be suddenly discontinued unless a physician has specifically directed it, and with the patient fully informed of the reasons and the risks associated with discontinuation and full support for the return of symptoms that often accompany withdrawal.”
Really? I wouldn’t be alive today had I followed that imperative. What we feel, when withdrawing, is far from a return to symptoms. Withdrawal is a completely different world bearing no resemblance to any “original complaint”, and why is this mistaken characteristic still sold?
Does that “Baby dose” of Clonazepam mean “Baby sized withdrawal syndrome”? Both medicine and the peer to peer folk seem to support this belief.
“âAt 42 months off clonazepam, I can tell that Iâm finally healing.â I must offer this: If you had employed the appropriate mode of withdrawal for you, you would have found yourself without withdrawal symptoms on the first day post withdrawal. An imposed withdrawal does not address your unique biology. We’ve been doubly misled by both medicine and by the sincere lay-help. One size rarely fits anyone. Many may object to this post, but someone should remind the benzene-dependent that not responding completely to a formula taper never is the patient’s fault. The tapers used today are simply too crude to fully reverse the acquired dependence. This may explain why people feel better only years later.
I suggest that being allowed to “hold a dose” is not being in charge of the taper. “Being allowed” is demeaning to your rights and your intelligence.
. Was this practice validated by any evidence? When did medicine begin to order Benzo Tapers that never were subjected to study of any kind? Without validly constructed study, we are using opinion and not science.
Here is one obvious fact that should have neutralized the claim that symptoms following A/D withdrawal are merely a return of the condition for which the A/D was prescribed: the symptoms of drug withdrawal are not those of that condition for which the drug was prescribed!
Example: Are or were A/D’s prescribed for brain-zapps? How about cog-fog, and its companions? This industry’s defensive claim is truly absurd.
Now here is something remaining unaddressed: When the drug is reintroduced ostensibly to treat that underlying condition, those symptoms remain unabated. Why? If these really were mental illness symptoms and if the drug really treated said mental illness, the lack of expected response does blow that spurious claim clearly out of the water.
Yes, Thank you for your efforts and taking the risks of speaking the truth.
Two things are noticeable here. First, we hear of “tapering” and “tapering slowly” while no definition of these terms is attempted. Taken literally, “slow” may mean taking years to taper while making only a few dosage reductions of huge size during that time.
Yes, when the right curve is found, the curve is hyperbolic. However this curve cannot be prescribed because each person’s correct hyperbolic curve is different.
The historic and current tapers actually name an arbitrary cut supposedly suitable for every patient. The fact that a post withdrawal syndrome remains illustrates this point.
There is no curve here; a straight line, instead, is prescribed
” And one should not keep on halving the dose. You need to reduce the dose much less when you come down to low doses, because the binding curve for the pills is not linear, but hyperbolic.” . Well yes, this is true but historically denied. , Kaiser Permanente’s taper for a benzo is a 50% cut weekly for six weeks and then a total cessation of the remaining dosage. The result is not a surprise. I have no information concerning the number of people who survive this barbarous protocol. Then, the Lisa Ling “expose” of the benzo-damage horror actually concluded with an interview of a Kaiser Permanente doctor! He was both condescending and ignorant of the issues. Are the foxes guarding the Hen House or what!
In addition, the Kaiser discontinuation program is dispensed by nurses. Only one consultation with the “supervising” doctor is allowed each year. The only supervision is a list of psychological questions to be answered in writing at each visit. Actual medical symptoms are not of interest to KP.. During the mandatory “medical checks”, by nurses, absolutely no medical tests or values are done. Not even BP is taken. High diastolic pressure that does not periodically come down, is far from safe. It causes damage to the lower left area of the heart.
Clearly being a licensed facility does not imply either competence or safety.
Yes, when the right curve is found, the curve is hyperbolic. However this curve cannot be prescribed as one size because each person’s hyperbolic curve is different from the others’.
The historic and current tapers, medical or online, actually name an arbitrary cut supposedly suitable for every patient. The fact that a post-withdrawal syndrome remains illustrates this point. I do hope that this will save someone.
I admire your courage in speaking so openly.
Are mental patients’ rights different from human rights?
Those marginalized people seem to think: “Yes”. Well this is the problem.
We must use caution. Extremely educated and kind people can be wrong.
Every taper method, medical or peer to peer, is application of some external standard as in “reduce by this number”. “If that causes harm, just do it less often as in putting more time between “cuts”. Does this make sense to anyone? If the order is harmful, it will be harmful again weeks later.
One of the doctors mentioned, in his book, wrote: find your cut by naming the number of days that you will taper and divide your current dosage by that number”. The body will not adjust to these arbitrary dosages, and haven’t we learned this by actual experience? Naming the number is days is not empirical in any sense. The out of fashion “water-titration” failed partly because it was arbitrary and now one of these doctors just made that same error. Should we follow a doctor’s fame or scientific method?
Sam said:”Psychiatry is a cult, nothing clinical or medical about it” , and he is so clearly correct.
I’d say that mental adjustments are connected to medicine only because some of those subscribing to the mental health mythology can legally prescribe drugs. There is the myth, here are the drugs that address that myth.
Blood and urine tests will indicate the presence of not yet metabolized drugs and metabolites of these drugs. No test will reveal how long the drug has been used. You didn’t ask, but no medical test can determine whether or not you are in a withdrawal state. If one value is out of range, the test still can’t tell you why this is out of range.
The most needed question, for these mind-lords, is:”HOW DO YOU KNOW That ?”. Show us your logic, produce evidence. Those under treatment are told not to be so negative. Who is negative again?
Our lives tend to follow our expectations. Where we are looking becomes where we are going. This is not endorsing denial. It is taking control of futures. Look for more sick episodes, and we will find them. So look toward wellness even when it is derided as unrealistic. He who bills has a vested interest in making you sick.
Psychiatric Fortune Tellers: listen. You can look toward “managing illness” and increase billing, or you can drop the fortune-telling and start helping.
Mark, you are so right, and your analogy is simply great!
This may not seem related to the conversation, but it might cut to the essence of the subject: Why are emotional issues and less than usual behaviors treated as medical issues? Or: why does a medical issue merit incarceration and punishment all without an actual trial?
Framer is the true expert in her own experience, miss-prescribed antidepressants and the resulting suffering.. To claim expertise in treatment for other psychoactive medications is improper. Number of posts indicates the overwhelming lack of effective help in medicine and on the internet. It does not validate a website. Further, mistreatment of well-meaning and more educated posters is not okay.
I am aware of the anger that this may release, but we need to separate the need to create heroes from the need for tested fact. What is the source? What study listed these conclusions? “I saw it on the net” is not primary sourced information. “It was on a respected website” is not evidence.
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Sam, you are so right!
Right now, I doubt that a harmed child can be unharmed. Putting the damaged child in a non-condescending but nurturing environment may the best that can be done, but it will fall short of erasing the harm already visited upon developing creatures.
Are plans to treat really the means to further harm?
Oh My; I got it too. The eight hour day’s number of patients potentially can be multiplied by the number of “allied assistants” also prescribing. If the doc can see 20 patients per day, then each assistant, in theory, has that potential as well. Would insurers be able to see this multiplication factor? Are the visits covered by many different insurers so that the outlandish number is undetected?
Well said, madmom!
It appears that having any sort of angst is treated as criminal behavior, and any objection to absconding with constitutional rights amounts to waving the red flag in the face of assumed power.
How does this happen? Psychiatry warns the public of the “danger” in leaving troubled people alone. Holy COW public safety is at risk? Fear of other people’s thoughts is at the root. Constitutionally guaranteed rights are ignored in the generated fear of anyone not like “us”. So artists and thinking people: BE very careful.
Simply put, the abuse of children is supported as parental rights. The parents’ narrative is preferred and the child is “protected” by denying its rights as a living creature. The response to this issue is to transfer parental rights to the state.
An abused child who is identified is then chattel of the state and the self-interest groups that use courts to enforce their desires.
It happens: Harmed children are taken from their abusive families only to be abused by government’s child protection workers. It’s abuse for their protection?
The issue of mom’s harmful behavior during pregnancy ironically enforces the states’ power to eliminate personal freedom. I don’t pretend to have the answers. However, making these issues known or using the court of public opinion may be a beginning.
While it is truly understandable that you must speak carefully for your protection, your efforts here are laudable. Also, I have been impressed by the success of those grown children who grew up while medicated. Those in foster-care commonly are medicated for no clear reason. When they “age out of the system” medication is no longer free. That “sudden neglect”occasionally has offered possible escape and the opportunity to recover from government-imposed chemical harm. How the developing brain can do this is a mystery and aevidence of personal strength.
However I can’t deny the government spying and attempts to retain control of the escapee.
About 15 years ago. I read about an”underground railroad” for those escaping forced drugging. The complications include managing drug withdrawal while hiding in protection. How does this happen under the Fourth Amendment? Some self-serving rat can just take a life because he claims to know what it best? And a court agrees???
Well said, Oldhead!
Is promoting websites within the rules at MIA?
Is reporting serious abuse at other sites acceptable?
I’ve seen this too. Before Covid, neighborhood get togethers happened a lot. People talked about their lives. All were either using prescribed psycho active drugs or their family members were. The drug combinations were unbelievable.
They would talk about side effects when really they were in beginning stages of tolerance withdrawal. The evidence? Many graduated to full withdrawal syndrome in the next 12 months. If we, who have gone through and survived. had known the warning signs of full benzo withdrawal syndrome, what would we have done?
I keep current with “new “withdrawal schemes” by subscribing to journals and by using Google Scholar. Two aspects are both surprising and disappointing. Medicine remains off track because it uses unsubstantiated assumptions and not verified facts. Just listening to the harmed patients would reveal the errors.
One aside comment: Although I do not support supplements as curing benzo dependence, Point of Return has published an urgent caution concerning Kaiser Permanente’s treatment of the benzo-injured. Making a 50% cut (from ANY benzo ) weekly for six weeks while taking an additional drug to manage the expected seizures is unacceptable, Has anyone survived this? I have first hand experience there. I dis-enrolled, survived, and quietly corrected the damage without “help”.
Methods seem to cycle, If one has been abandoned for ten years, it often is reintroduced as “new”. Citing established science usually is met with hate, and this is not what we expected from our fellow-sufferers. The internet is a place where anyone can pose as an expert; now that is usual. False assumptions rule and many site owners perpetuate this. You Tube certainly does.
I’ve watched this for 16 years. It’s demoralizing.
Verified discontinuation methods are absent from both medicine and internet groups.
Online help groups have the best intentions but still suggest methods based on hearsay. We see the results every day. Desperate people cry for real help, and it is not found. Really horrible stories like a recent one are now the rule. This happens because in the retelling, big errors occur. One poor guy was mixing Lorazepam in water, and asking why that wasn’t “working”.
As for these methods, a lot is added in the translation. The real facts , then are lost and imitation takes over. So we are seeing fallacious methods, that were long abandoned for good reason , resurfacing. These are constantly promoted via You Tube videos. Reading these is cringe-worthy. It isn’t possible to provide substantive correction at these sites or at medical offices. It isn’t allowed. Saving our fellows is not allowed.
Hi Kate;
Can you tell us more about the community in Springfield Massachusetts? This is really interesting.
Hi Boans: From your input, I now see that the misuse of legal systems is far more extreme and calculated than I knew, and I thought that I knew a lot.
Yes, I did say: âIt can lawfully hide its deeds.â, I should have written,”Use of HIPPA” allows misdeeds to remain unknown”. That was my mistake.
Yes, most abuse is against law. However, acts against those laws will not see the light of day when these remain hidden from the view of the victim. Use of HIPPA, denying the right to view the medical record, hides the crime.
I can actually recite the parts of my state code that would clearly be a basis for prosecution. Yet, I know that specific mental health workers did violate the law. The psychiatrist can make deals with the government to prevent criminal prosecution. Oddly enough, my state government mailed me a copy of one such arrangement with the offender’s name in plain sight. I wasn’t even the victim of that unlawful activity.
Bottom line: There are several means of hiding prohibited activity of mental health professionals. One is HIPPA (in the USA) . However, you are quite correct; many countries do have laws against the workers’ bad acts.
All true. All true, but we live with on the fly interpretations of law. You are darned right about the contradiction! There is no point in sequestering information that the subject already knows, but there is a nefarious point in hiding unlawful activity of the record-maker.. HIPPA enables this.There is a point in hiding the fact that one worker who wants revenge and caused other workers to go along to get along and create fresh records to support the charges. HIPPA enables this, too by hiding the records under the guise of protecting the patient. They are hiding criminal activity “for the patient’s own good”. Who decides this? It is a setup protecting the malicious activity of unethical workers.
So, I suggest recording the telephone threats where that is lawful. There is no other way to prove the malicious activity. I’ve heard: “It’s the patient’s word against theirs, and they have credibility”. Well, that credibility ends with hard copy evidence and recordings. Recording must be made according to law. We must do this by the book.
Where is punishment for the wrong doer? A bad doc can contact a new doc, unlawfully and slander the patient. The slander is used by the new doc to harm the patient as a favor to the former doc? HIPPA is used to forbids access to the truth, and here is another problem:HiIPPA has no teeth; it names no punishment for a violation, or it didn’t when I checked.
. So the mental health industry violates law continuously and faces no consequence. It can lawfully hide its deeds.
Of course there are more details to this subject. I deleted some specific incidents. I’ve been talking too much lately.
“There are probably a few great minds that really want to speak up, but they canât. “Yes, Sam!
I first heard the phrase, ” Go along to get along” from a retired school psychologist. Is a well-intentioned psychologist able to survive with ethics intact while serving this system?
Yes, obtain records for protection. Even non-psyche docs will accuse patients and record it. I saw a chiropractor claiming suicidal,idealization when the patient said that an injury couldn’t be ignored because living the rest of life would be disaster with the injury. Pediatricians ask children about their parents’ behavior! We need to proactively plan protection. Record everything by lawful means. If a conversation can be lawfully recorded, do it. Save records. Save old prescription bottles. Pharmacies will print out prescription records for you for past years. Records from phone carriers are more accessible today. These can prove stuff.
Now I live in the USA. We have these HIPPA restrictions. “Psychological” records are not accessible to the patient. So how do we prove what the bad guys recorded?
The psyche records are available to any physician whom you name. Just sign a form, and these records are sent. Once your records are in those friendly hands, these can be provided to you. Hey, I did it. I found, in the individuals’ handwriting, clear violations of law. I used it.
.
Today I maintain the records , both old tapes and hard copy, as insurance. And these folks know that I have an aggressive attorney. I want that reputation.
These are just somethings that I use to protect myself from medical mischief. It would be really good to hear other ideas.
Oh, and my personal policy is never to speak, for any reason, to any of these people. When it is one person’s claim vs another, the Mental Industry will be the default. So we must avoid contact. When the aggressor knows that we have representation ready to go, the bad guys are not likely to fool with us.
Yes, these people will lie. They will go along to get along, but when they commit prohibited activities and lie in writing, they can be placed firmly on the hook.
My policy; Walk softly, don’t attract attention, and maintain evidence in several places. Be prepared; then relax and get some sleep.
I am a USA citizen. Recently I needed to explore living wills for both a friend and myself. An Attorney put my friend’s wishes into correct format, and I am the person designated to carry out those wishes. We are not related. We even live in different states.
Naming a trustworthy person to make “medical” decisions in case of any incapacitation might be challenged, but that challenge might be too much work for the bad guys.
In any case, it appears that, at least in this country, we are not required to name a family member. We can choose any adult.
Your concerns are truly terrifying. Are there governments and then hidden-governments? Is there any movement to correct this abuse and restore human rights?
It seems that,world-wide, the issues are medical and then a legal system that enforces the medical-profiteers’ desires. A complication of concern in the USA are statutes of liability. A harmed person is unable to file any actio0n while harmed. Time runs out. There are provisions for tolling the statute, but representation may be out of reach when the case had this factor.
I’m not a movement-leader, but I’m well enough help someone who is. When people escape the medication prison, few are willing to work against it. The subject matter triggers hard-to-endure reactions.
Who is safe from abuse as things stand? Is this situation comparable to “The Crucible”, a play about accusation? It does seem that in The Crucible of 1650 or the legal systems of 2021, the accusation equals guilt.
Yes, there is non-judgemental support here. This site is unusual because it does not exist to promote itself. It is here to promote you.
This link may shed more light on that subject. I must read it again, but at cursory glance , it is just possible that Sertraline is inhibiting some of the same enzymes that are responsible for metabolizing the Sertraline. If so, the amount of that drug will certainly accumulate. Left unchecked, the built up drug level would be deadly.
(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15547048/) Take a look and be sure. If this really is the case, your doctor should be reported to your state government agency . If you report facts and not solely your judgement, the agency will take steps to protect the public.
The concept of polymorphism deals with the different CYP 450 enzyme styles that we inherit. The different clearance rates ( ex. intermediate and extensive etc. explain a lot about inter-dose withdrawal and why we have different reactions to the same drug,
I am guessing that all of us firmly believe you. It’s just puzzling to see how we can use medical facts to correct the damage while the prescribing doc cannot. Still I wouldn’t bark at the doc. Walk softly and do what you need to stay out of harm’s way. You’ll get emotional support from us because most of us have been in similar spaces. It’s just not possible to comprehend the harm without having been there.
Medical docs really do learn about the CYP450’s. They just don’t connect it to the drugs that they prescribe. There’s a big and empty space there. Our job is not to educate the doc; it’s to save ourselves.
Well Hey, what happened to that “unconditional positive regard” thing? A dose of that would be refreshing right now.
Well my doc was out of his mind then. He told me that :”There is a new drug for sleep that is very mild;it just makes you a little sleepy”. It was Seroquel. I just dug up the old prescription bottle. I keep these as evidence should it ever be needed. He prescribed 600.0mg immediately with no attempt at titration.
Blood glucose testing every three months was the standard. Never did he order a single blood test at anytime.
Here is the other odd part: Seroquel, not even 600.0mg, put me to sleep. Many psychoactive meds have no observable effect in me. This tells me that medication effects are not so much a function of the drug, itself, but mostly a function of the way that the individual metabolizes said drug.
I read the literature. Horrified, I immediately stopped the use of Seroquel. I had no problems with this. However, this does not mean that the drug is benign. It doesn’t mean that many bodies don’t experience severe side effects and then severe withdrawal reactions. It means, at the least, that one human can have a very different drug processing type from others.
Have these docs heard of additive effects before they engage in polypharmacy? Is not prescribing two drugs, in the same category, outside the standard of care?
Still, it is outrageous that humans can fool with other humans’ minds and their lives.
I was fortunate. Not everyone has my experience. Diabetes is a well known possible outcome. (see Zyprexa Papers new Your Times). Oh I was so lucky where Seroquel is concerned, and I am so sorry that this ugly thing happened to you.
Agreed! Epsom salts sometimes are scented. Lavender seems preferred by benzo-people.
Also there is a MgCl2 spray-on product. Directions suggest using an ounce or two. That seems to be a lot, but it’s still safe to use.
It’s true that Magnesium Citrate is sold as a laxative as well as a supplement. The difference in effect stems from dosage. Dividing the day’s dose into two or three equal doses to be taken over the day does seem to eliminate the intestinal aggravation. I use quite a lot of MG for chronic charlie horses, but dividing doses works for me.
Just a bit of input about not tapering vs C/T: A C/T allows protracted withdrawal, and from online reports, that condition is persistent. A taper using standard cuts may still be difficult but better than just jumping off. Jumping from the frying pan to the fire comes to mind.
Posting personal information here seems inappropriate, but if you live in one of two states, I just might have an MD’S name for you. The “low doses” usually are more difficult to taper. Low dose would be in Diazepam. equivalent. Standard changes to cutting seem to require a change that few docs will manage. I worked with one doc, two and a half years ago who was agreeable to the change. I’m hoping getting another doc to supervise custom tapers.
You might post here a few states and include your state in there. I understand that this site’s mission is not to taper psychoactive meds so I an trying not to do that, but sharing sources may be okay.
SA may be able to keep the peace when others cannot .That’s good. Using SA is a personal choice, but I have been distressed by their censorship, lack of very basic science, and misuse of other people’s work (without citing author and source).
Still, the alternatives to SA have their own downsides.
Hey, Lady Blue” Are you being medically gaslighted?
#66? YES!
Adding an antidepressant is seen as a treatment that can aid withdrawal but not its symptoms? This is a mystery. Is not modulating symptoms the same thing as aiding withdrawal?
Although it really is possible to become dependent upon an antidepressant prescribed for easing benzo-withdrawal symptoms, what is the evidence that this is true? We’ve seen examples of people tapering benzos aided by antidepressants, atypicals, and anti-seizure meds. At the conclusion of the benzo taper, symptoms continue and these symptoms are attributed to dependence on the auxiliary drug. But is this correct? Is it not more likely that the continuing symptoms are actually those of an incomplete or faulty benzo withdrawal that is now exposed when the auxiliary drug is no longer used?
In addition to all of this, added medications may interfere with the benzo-recovery.
One example of medicine’s failure to account for this effect: Kaiser Permanente’s (KP) benzo withdrawal consists of making a 50% cut every week for six weeks. Then the taper is cut off. Starting dosage (in milligrams) is irrelevant to this method. Relative potency also is ignored. This “big step” method is recognized, by KP, to cause seizures. So KP prescribes Tegretol to prevent the seizure that KP causes. Now Tegretol also alters the clearance of most benzos. It is said to interact. Result: the benzo taper is skewed and so the rate of taper is no more than a guess. These KP patients may taper with masked symptoms and so do not recognize that their tapers are unsafe.
Drug interactions are a major impediment to a gradual taper, and medicine does not even mention this.
We hear little from the subjects of this type of taper. I fear that few have survived it.
The statements in these medical papers are offered without any evidence at all. Medicine insists that a benzo-taper must be done under medical supervision. REALLY?
Your points are right on the mark, JanCarol.
Looking up Glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) may help. There are many isoforms. For GABA production, we’re interested in GAD-2. GAD acts on glutamate to produce GABA. I was looking at that last night. Then you posted!
Oh yes, Benfotiamine is worth a look too. When the consensus says that exogenous GABA does nor pass the blood brain barrier, the emphasis is on making our own, onsite.
The issue with these peer to peer sites is that their advice reveals lack of very basic science, chemistry and biology. Emotional support can be kind and helpful, but when a site publishes ignorance of the chemical and biological basics well, the advice is no better than that of the doc who never was trained to de-prescribe.
I had decided to leave benzo-patients to discover, themselves, how uneducated the usual benzo-help really is. I didn’t want to be involved in those online arguments. Is this silence unethical?
Unrelated to that: medical articles speak of anxiety as if it were the only benzo withdrawal symptom. The physical torture of an incorrect benzo withdrawal is too extreme to describe. This extreme pain is not acknowledged by the literature. I know that you speak the truth.
S.A may be quite competent to aid coming off of antidepressants. It is unfortunate that this site claims expertise in Benzo-Tapering.
Good input, Evan. There’s a lot more meaning to simple phrases.
This always has impressed me: people subjected to massive drugging, amounts that could kill, may survive with outstanding minds. No, I don’t mean that drugs improve intelligence, but maybe abilities incubate in the crucible.
Oh, I thought that Sam meant averse as opposed to adverse to make a point.
Yes, the medical response to being outed as incorrect, too often, is a warrant to be incarcerated without bond and drugged without any consideration of Patient safety.
Make one of them angry, and risk your civil liberties. I say civil rights because these are constitutionally yours. Civil rights refers to the rights in question during the early sixties.
Incarceration for crime requires evidence and legal procedure. Incarceration for disagreeing with a mental health professional requires opinion and damn the legal procedure.
What happens to people so accused, imprisoned, and drugged? They may become drug-dependent and labeled, Addict.
Now I wonder: Why is the person, accused of mental illness, not Mirandized? How about: ” You have the right to remain silent; but if you do, you will be declared catatonic or oppositional”.
Does the expected benefit to the prescriber outweigh the harm to the patient?
” There is no explanation for how doctors can frame these experiences as ârelapses.” Agreed! My withdrawal syndrome was 100% physiological with not a hint of emotional disturbance. Suddenly my withdrawal is evidence of a mental illness with no mental symptom at all?
We also read that withdrawal from benzos (but possibly from antidepressants) is always the “mirror image” of the symptoms for which the drug was prescribed. No, and the syndrome can be far from the originally diagnosed problem.
We really are chasing a moving providers’ excuse target. New excuses appear as the old ones are exposed.
It is popular to say that most people in a problematic field are honest and well-intentioned. Well today I must doubt that. The evidence is anecdotal, but. it is a tidal wave of anecdotes.
Yes, that is unusually well-written. So many people will see themselves in your account. That really does aid in healing the emotional harm.
Quote:”Many doctors claim that the current prescribing and de-prescribing protocols are successful for most service users. Letâs not skew reality. Are the current trends within psychotropic prescribing conducive to positive outcomes? My definitive answer would be a no.”
I would add that the current benzo help sites too often commit that same offence. They claim success while publishing continued suffering as success. Off the drug, yes. Recovered?
I suggest that the word, success, is often used and never defined. It was puzzling to see the 90% “success” rate claimed for the old pill-splitting routine. How could that be true when so many people write about their continued suffering? It occurs to me, now, that the author of that method defined success as having discontinued the drug, remaining off the drug. No mention was made of the continued suffering from having used a method. The author renamed the failure, Protracted “Withdrawal Syndrome”, does giving it a name explain its occurrence? Failure is not failure of the patient. It is failure of a withdrawal method.
Shouldn’t success mean having fully recovered from the withdrawal syndrome rather than just enduring an ineffective taper’s end point? “Success in what?” is the question.
I was surprised that hearsay from a fellow student or anyone was taken as fact. I should not have been.
Is there a culture of malfeasance in Psychotherapy?
I do know that crime or any bad acts are customarily backed up by colleagues once colleague-status is attained. Until that point, you are fair game.
You are disappointed, but do you really want to work within that kind of system? Could your laudable goals have survived that system? Hey, how about law? Your commitment to good shouldn’t be wasted.
Quote “Researchers have published the first scientific paper looking at how patients can safely come off antipsychotic medication while minimizing the risk of withdrawal effects.”
No it does not.
Quote: “The paper, described as a âhistoric breakthroughâ, suggests that extremely slow tapering with small reductions over months or even years could make it less likely for patients to relapse”
Actually it describes nothing at all. It characterizes in place of describing.
I hope that this “historic paper” is deleted before it causes more disappointment to unsuspecting antipsychotic-dependent people. What is “relapse”?. What is “slow”?” What is “small”? Well what is a “break through”?
It’s shameful to offer a specific breakthrough and publish fuzzy claims in its place.
” During these five years, I never so much as spoke to nor met with a psychiatrist or psychologist.” WOW!
Hey, Mom, can you say; “Munchausen’s by proxy”?
I accessed the Minnesota Revised Statutes related to civil commitment. These listed conditions for commitment. These listed the requirement for “being a danger to self or others”. Being autistic or even mentally ill is not enough. However, we all know that this need not be proven. Only the desire of an RN or mental health worker is needed. One attorney said to me:” These are a tightly-knit group. They will support each other” meaning they will lie for one another. Does this rise to the level of conspiracy to deprive civil liberties. This means civil liberty and not civil rights. It is a constitutional issue. The Fourth Amendment underscores the right to our own bodies. Judges railroad these incarcerations when asked by some worker, and they do not consider evidence or defense.
What can anyone do to prevent further harm by “treatment”?
A 15 year old US supreme court decision made it clear: An person accused of mental illness will be released into the care of a relative or friend willing to do the care- taking. (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/422/563.html)
I’ve noticed that some people who calmly assert this defense are taken more seriously.
In addition, a 72 hour Hold may be used without real cause, but incarceration and treatment are legal actions. A summons served is required, and this allows the accused to access representation and mount defense. Of course the accusers may claim “emergency hold” but “emergency ECT” is ridiculous.
However, if there was no service of process, the decision to incarcerate or force treatment is not lawful. I would look into the process. Was it carried out lawfully? If not, throw the book at them and contact the media. There is an effort to make the public fearful of those so-accused, but the public can be equally fearful of the misuse of commitment. The “Hey it could happen to YOU” might gain support for the unjustly accused.
If the harm is already done, get a transcript of the proceedings. Chances are that you will find serious irregularities. These, you can use.
You have the right to call experts to testify to the medical conditions that were mistaken as mental illness. And never sign your rights away. They will try that. Everyone should have a well informed attorney because there is no way to repair physical brain damage after it is done.
Well something doesn’t look right. The emphasis is on involuntary treatment for some perceived difference in this man’s beliefs or behavior. Is this an offense punishable by law?
So I accessed the Minnesota Revised Statutes ( https://www.mncourts.gov/Help-Topics/Civil-Commitments.aspx). Here, there is a list of “conditions” for which a citizen can lose lawful control of his own body. Almost every one of these requires “danger to self or others”. To use this law to deprive civil liberties, this danger must exist. Then what is the legal procedure? Is the person-object in the court’s cross-hairs served? Is his next of kin served? Who proves the offense? Absurdly, usually two medical doctors must testify to their opinions that the person in question is, indeed, a danger.
Was this procedure followed according to the law? We’d need to see the court transcript to know this. However, absent that transcript, we’d have to use the words of the next of kin. However, it does appear that the law was far from correctly applied.
The judge controls the forum. Was the judge accustomed to ignoring procedure? Who was served the summmons? If service was omitted, the notion of immediate need to prevent bodily harm might have been used, but correct and formal proceedings still are required soon after the arrest.
Here is an idea: if no defense was allowed, the decision is not valid, but is it necessary to formally make these additional objections? If there was no service of summons, the case is moot. Of course the aggressors will try it again, but this time the accused will have had time to prepare.
I remember the Shield from Mindfreedom.com. It isn’t airtight. In addition, by the time that the error is formally presented, the damage may already have occurred. Well at that point a diligent attorney might make the case for vacating the decision and then show assault and possibly intractable brain damage.
My take-away: Guardians, instruct your charges with the facts so that the patient can present as normal and reasonable. Then find an attorney who can prepare before the damage is done. Prevention is far more effective than correcting flawed legal proceedings.
A governor of any state should be embarrassed to have allowed this unsubstantiated accusation stand. Opinion is not evidence. Oh for shame!
I understand that these horrific offenses occur every day. That doesn’t establish them as lawful. Having a medical condition is not equal to being a danger to self or others. Well that part is clearly missing from this case. Danger seems nit to have been proven. Something else remains unproven. That is the connection between a medical condition and correction by forcing voltage through a brain. Then there is the fourth Amendment.
Yes! Agreed, that brain damage one was quietly slipped in.
Close to just slipping in are some unexamined assumptions. Forgetting these really makes the conclusion unsubstantiated.
A big effort was made to include a lot of data while leaving the big questions unaddressed. In anyone’s book, withdrawal rate is dosage-reduced over time. There a % substitutes for actual dosage. No amount of data can change a faulty study (invalid) structure. If the logical structure is faulty, the conclusion is unwarranted.
This paper addressed the activity of the drug and not the activity of the drug in the individual. Is half life a characteristic of a drug, or is it a characteristic of the patient’s body processing the drug? The former is too often assumed and without any evidence.
I’ll guess that this work will be respected and only because it contains a lot of data. The spurious structure of the study will remain unaddressed.
I didn’t know this, Kindred. Thanks for posting the link.
The assumption seems to be that Peterson bought a cure that few other people could have. Is he cured? Someone who must use symptom-masking drugs cured? It seems that his oddly-gotten gains have purchased nothing. The results of detox are masked by other drugs, and this is called, recovery?
” Gradual tapering appears to be an effective way to reduce relapse following cessation as the neurological changes made by antipsychotics have been shown to persist for years after ending antipsychotic use.” That sounds so reasonable, but what IS “gradual tapering” to the reader? These peer to peer help sites publish some truly illogical stuff. Yes, I admit that medicine is no better able to safely taper anything.
No here is one example of a Kaiser Permanente doc’s plan: (paraphrased) Take the full dose on day one, wait for two days, then the full dose and wait for three days….. No matter how long this “taper” is enforced, the dosage obviously remains the same. This activity will never allow the nervous system to reset or correct itself!
How much better are most peer to peer help sites?
Both medicine and help sites can make the same error. They believe that something is true because someone who “should know” says so. This is ad hominem and not ad hoc. Plenty of experts are clueless-even the famous ones.
HEY! Maybe we could distinguish education from training! The Latin origin seems to be educare, to lead out. Doesn’t training imply only giving instructions?
It’s helpful to know about this publisher’s requirement. To maintain the flow of money, Peterson must toe the old line?
Are we to think that Peterson was not wrong before; he is just more right now than he was before? Now where else have we heard that?
Maybe Peterson hasn’t heard it: “Pick on someone your own size”.
Yes! An advanced degree does not signal advanced thinking. It took me many years to realize that someone who contributed a major advancement in one field might be subnormal in all other areas of endeavor.
How could that be? One answer is the lack of what educators call “critical thinking”. How does that differ from just thinking ? Thinking must be taught?
Well maybe it does just a bit.
Requiring study of symbolic logic could prevent the mass-mind disasters that seem to be increasing in both number and absurdity. Passing a logic exam was required for an advanced philosophy degree when I last checked. Why isn’t it required in every field?
Will Medicare pay for benzo prescriptions? I don’t think so. Okay they’re not out-of-sight expensive as antipsychotics.
You have the right to know the possible consequences and take the risk.
As I shook and violently quaked in front of him, my doctor said: “The only problem that you could have is difficulty in sleeping for three days.” This is not simple lack of informed consent; it is a lie.
Sometimes anxiety is assumed to be hereditary only because it may occur in several members of the same family. That’s a weak assumption. Haven’t we seen attitudes enforced in families. “We’re an XYZ sort of family” indicates that a characteristic is enforced.
I remember way back when. In class we saw family members “catching schizophrenia ” from one member. Learned behavior is the fashionable cause today. Could anxiety be learned? Yep!
Another question: Where are these studies that we hear about? An opinion is not a study. Review of hospital records is more hearsay than study. Where are the elements of a study either double blind or clinical trial? Dr. X made a study 30 years ago? Where is it? We see its shadow as in mentioning it, but where is the evidence that it ever existed? This is too common today especially when speaking of psychiatric drug problems.
Show us the actual studies if they exist.
Three years ago, I contacted Roche, an office in the USA. I spoke to one of their pharmacists about Diazepam. She was unaware of any adverse outcomes in using Benzodiazepines. She had no discontinuation advice.
A European Roche office had institutions for coming off of their Klonopin ( clonazepam). This was” reduce the dosage by 0.25mgs every three days”. When asked about the success of this plan, he said that they do not follow up or record results. ( Do NOT do this!) I am in contact with people who did!
What led me to contact Roche was the claim, at BenzoBuddies, that Brand name Valium was no longer manufactured. I contacted the manufacturer, directly, The claim was false.
My take away: always vet a statement with primary-sourced information. Both Medical providers as well as benzo-sites make incorrect statements. A non-primary source is a report about a report and a primary source is the original scientific work. Benzo-sites too often publish hearsay, non-primary-sourced material.
The most important question: “And why should I believe that?” “Because someone important said it” is not an answer. We require substantiation and not reputation.
Thanks for reading this, I feel better now.
How many people recover via use of Taper strips? Where do we find the data? From examining the reality of predetermined decrements, I expect that no one has recovered from psychoactive drug dependence through use of ANY taper strip. These strips are about as useful as pill-splitting. They lock the patient into an assumed rate. Humans are so biologically different from one another that those “standard” sized reductions are not relevant. Where is the science? What are the results? Who came up with this idea anyway?
Does anyone know who the manufacturer is?
About “high level of education”: what we usually are talking about is many years studying a single subject. Overarching and broad education are easily missing from the resume’ of the PhD. So maybe we shouldn’t say that Peterson should have known better. Did his education include formal logic or the hard sciences? His degrees do not require either of these; do they?
“Another missed opportunity was Peterson not elaborating that his later problems where caused because he kept taking more deadly illness causing drugs to address the effects of the current deadly drugs he was addicted to”
YES!!! You nailed it!
An advanced degree in psychology is indicated by Psychology. PhD for those working in research and Psy-D for those working in therapy. Which one Peterson is is not indicated. Maybe the designations are different in Canada.
He does pontificate a lot.
I agree with you, LUH17. You Tube responders rarely comprehend the obvious difference between addiction and iatrogenic-caused physical dependence. The error is common, but by this time, three is no excuse for that ignorance. It plays right into the game of pop-docs on TV and sensationalist writing in the media. I, too, have stopped correcting people.
As for hostility toward Peterson, well he is a hostile person who erred “big time”. Most responses will be seen as hostile in that context. Maybe it would help to differentiate between responses to Peterson as a person and Peterson’s clear ignorance of the subject of Benzo-Withdrawal Illness. He attributed some of his physiological reactions to “food sensitivities” and without offering evidence. The thinking is without scientific process.
The last time I read anything about Peterson or his daughter, he was still taking an anti-seizure medication. Those of us who have gone through the Benzo-ringer, complete with medical mythology, remember that this class of drugs functions to mask Benzo-withdrawal syndrome. These drugs do not reverse benzo-dependence. Use of these drugs has masked many out of reason Benzo tapers. When the taper is “completed”, then the anti-seizure meds are also tapered. Symptoms of benzo withdrawal emerge quickly. The conclusion usually is a new dependence or Anti-seizure drug withdrawal. I strongly suspect that Peterson, too, will conflate the uncovering of a drug-masked Benzo- Syndrome as a withdrawal from the anti-seizure medication.
We could be sympathetic to Peterson’s suffering while concurrently acknowledging his Benzo ignorance and lack of scientific thinking. Yes, many of us know how badly the Benzo-Victim suffers. We are sorry for his suffering. We don’t have to agree that he responded intelligently.
It does appear that Peterson, at each treatment failure, sought a cure through taking another drug. He is a psychologist, though. I don’t expect him to have had professional judgement concerning drugs or their discontinuation.
On another point, someone mentioned a video about a man trying to help his wife through her Benz o-withdrawal. This might refer to the case of Cheryl Knight whose crucible-like journey is was interspersed through the Gary Null documentary, Death by Medicine. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mB7KjbpzVQ) The work is about 13 years old.
The documentary has been called too political, and it may be outdated. However, the parts of the video taping Cheryl’s ordeal are real. I personally have witnessed her continued damage and loss of life.
Over the time that I was present, she never did “continue to recover” as the documentary claimed. Cheryl is brain damaged by improper withdrawal instruction. She was denied the chance to discontinue the benzo when her doctor insisted that he was an expert. He was not. He “tapered” 10.0mgs Valium per month in large decrements, a feat that we know to be impossible. She was then forced into a facility because her withdrawal was taken as “Mental Illness”. Notice that her symptoms were physical and not mental.
This is why the case is one of miscarriage of justice as well as medical malpractice. At 13 years post incident, legal remedy for medical malpractice is barred. Medicine remains unable to mitigate the damage. Benzo-use, as prescribed, may be dangerous, but improper withdrawal is far worse.
The often stated claim that a 10% reduction, in any psychoactive medication is established, is false. This has been repeated enough to be believed. I have searched for any valid scientific study that establishes this belief. Yes, both medical people as well as some possibly well-intentioned peer to peer website personalities do repeat the claim. So what? We require valid studies, and these are lacking.
The fact that medicine is misinformed does not imply that a well-known website owner is knowledgeable.
Be wary especially of spreadsheets based on any percents .
You didn’t produce children and then make someone else raise them. Good for you!
Day care is less than care. It is mere maintenance. Parents sometimes must use these services. I wouldn’t condemn them for this. However, child development is done best not in a group.
Now the issue of misdiagnosing a woman because she chooses to care for a child seems nuts. You say that a diagnosis stalks the patient forever. How is that done? How does a record stalk? I don’t doubt you, I only seek a way to halt this violation of liberty. This is more than a civil rights issue; it is a civil liberty issue a constitutional thing.
I admire your dedication to raising your children.
You make a much needed point.
I would add this: The existence of bogus conspiracy theories does not prove that there are not conspiracies.
And this: Medical doctors’ beliefs may and may not represent validated science. A statement is not validated by the fact that an MD says it. A fact is not proven by a human; it is proven by valid scientific method. Opinion is not evidence.
Ad hominem or ad hoc? “You’re not a doctor” is IRRELEVANT. You can think. You can think while free of preconceived beliefs and training. That places you above MD “opinion leaders”.
Does prescribing-ability make psychiatry a branch of medicine?
“This adaptation, as I see it, is a fundamental thing that all long-term psychiatric drug treatment has against it. The body will eventually adapt and when you stop the drug it can create this illusion of an effect because you stop the drug and you feel worse. Is that because you got into contact with the underlying withdrawal state, or is that because the drugs work? The solution to that, which is why we are here, is gradual tapering to solve that problem.”
While there are many good points in this article, I’d address just this: Does any kind of gradual tapering really reverse the deleterious adaptation? It’s a bit glib to say so. Does reversing drug adaptation also correct the attendant alteration of bodily systems? In the case of neuropathy, it clearly does not. Endocrine dysfunction can be altered, as well, and this remains after withdrawal symptoms are overcome.
There is a desire to simplify withdrawal as a set of rules appropriate to everyone, and this may allow a disaster as in post withdrawal illness that has no known end point.
What evidence exists that establishes a percentage reduction as the safe and effective reduction? A percentage addresses only the drug and addresses nothing about the physiology of the patient.
Concerning Benzodiazepines, this article, fortunately, ignores the Heather Ashton demand that Benzo dependent people cold turkey from 0.5Mg of Diazepam to end their tapers. Even the Ashton based websites have quietly moved on.
FACEBOOK?? WTF!!!
From the beginning, I never had any relationship to FB. I saw it as selling personal information and assumed information to businesses for profit. When Zuckerberg was questioned by US Congress, a senator asked Z. how FB made money. “We sell ads, senator” was the answer. Was that a complete answer? How about:” We sell data about our members, and they don’t know it.”? “You are meat for our profit”?
Now, how a hospital is paid for the personal and protected health information “given” to a social media organization is at the core. Obviously HIPPA forbids this sharing by a “covered entity”. How and why are these conflicts successfully ignored by US Government?
Apparently always avoiding Facebook is not preventing Facebook from creating their record of anyone. Do we have the same people working at both places?
We are being sold; and we never noticed it.
Well some of us eschew both medicine and social media but what of the rest of the population?
This will not end well.
Exactly Right! It is common not to change a thing. However, I have heard from people whose prescribers saw a bad reaction as evidence that the patient was not being on enough of the offending drug. The prescriber, then, doubled the dosage.
Coming off of those mega doses is a challenge! Now, might a violent behavior or delusional fit actually be caused by being suddenly left in a cold turkey state?
Exactly Right! It is common not to change a thing. However, I have heard from people whose prescribers saw a bad reaction as evidence that the patient was not being on enough of the offending drug. The prescriber, then, doubled the dosage.
Coming off of those mega doses is a challenge! Now, might a violent behavior or delusional fit actually be caused by being suddenly left in a cold turkey state?
The Columbine-perpetrators were receiving “treatment” (psychoactive drugs) when they became enraged and they killed people. Since that time, and at almost every similar rampage, the attackers were committing violent crime while being treated with prescribed psychiatric medications. The connection never is made in the reporting.
I’ve lived close to two of these events and a major for-profit psychiatric corporation. This corporation’s activity is doling out drugs yet it chimes in the “Aint it awful” public discourse. Connection?
The same corporation implies that it is a government agency. It is not and never was. Government agencies enjoy protections that private entities do not.
Another connection?
.
Isn’t still being symptomatic, after the taper, lack of success?
At conclusion of a psyche evaluation, is ANYONE not referred for “treatment”?
Ally, you made essential points so well that the only thing that I’d reject is your statement that you can’t form your thoughts well. You did. You did it so well.
You are an excellent writer.
You expressed what so many of us cannot.
Thank You
The article: ” But one of the psychiatrists said in response, âbenzodiazepines donât really make that much money anymore.â
Benzos are not pharma’s big sellers, but the problems that Benzos eventually build the gateway to poly prescribing- additional drugs ostensibly to address the illness that the Benzo RX, itself, has caused.
I agree that Benzos, themselves, do not make a lot of money. However, the benzo-altered patient must make ongoing payments to the prescribing psychiatrist to prevent the devastatingly painful withdrawal from the prescribed Benzo.
The parallel to organized crime/drug dealing is unmistakable .
Related: An actual sudden Benzo-ban would pose an immediate danger to those in withdrawal as well as those who are unaware of their Benzo-dependent status.
In other words, 1) patients must be given adequate time to plan their medication escapes. 2) Will the medical camp let all of these paying customers leave without an accusation that patients are not competent to make their own decisions and so must be court-ordered to take whatever said licensed prescriber demands?
This is alarming.
Well the digital meds have been around for a while. So has that vague and open ended sort of leading question.
After over a year dealing with a woodsy skin issue, I finally saw a dermatologist. The “new patient” question list was quite ordinary until the last one: “Are you safe?”. What does that mean? It seems to be vague so that the patient will spill just about anything. I wanted to ask: “why the question:, but we all know that that would invite inappropriate prying.
The PCP will tell us that the ‘council on XYZ’ has listed tests and investigations for different demographics. Say:”No thank you” and you risk a “non-compliant” tag or worse, paranoia.
These people do seem to be trawling for “mental disease” and its subsequent treatment. We still can simply not do what is ordered. We can avoid medical contacts.. well usually. I still will be sewn up for injuries and accept the tetanus booster “every ten years or ” time of injury”.
However, if we have young children, the landscape is full of question landmines. Pediatricians will question children about their parents’ lives. Example: Do your parents drink? Do they scare you? It does get worse. Children may not know the answers and may make up a response to make the doctor happy. Still kids do get sick, and they need patching up especially in the summer time. Maybe parents can help children by explaining and offering standard responses that will satisfy the doctor. We ask: Can this happen in our country? It does; so let us be calm and ready.
One medical office exclaimed: “You haven’t seen a doctor in two years?” Oh my goodness, my internal organs will fall out if not billed by a “provider”!
It’s wonderful to hear that false entries can be deleted. In my state, entering false information in a client’s record is a misdemeanor at the first offense. Report the offense and present the primary-sourced evidence to the state and what happens? Nothing happens. If the charge is sexual abuse, there is a deal. The offender can make a deal and not appear on the list of offenders. Hey, I acquired a transcript of the state’s investigations…… from the state.
What can we do to really protect against silly accusations? Walk softly and carry a big bag of evidence and have an attorney ready, or just try not to be noticed. I am doing that last one…for now.
About those negatively shifting outcomes, well what is expected anyway? No one claims that any of these drugs actually cures an illness. Is a good outcome a quiet patient who is now a lifetime source of income?
It’s been pointed out before: An effect of Seroquel is diabetes, and the manufacturer of Seroquel also manufactures treatments for diabetes. Add to this the fact that most prescriptions for Seroquel are not for psychosis but for off-label sales, and we have the perfect business model.
Here is what a psychiatrist said to me: “There is a new drug for insomnia; it’s very mild. it just makes you sleepy”. The same guy said: “The most that will happen when stopping Xanax is three nights of trouble sleeping”. He said that while looking at a person visibly quaking in withdrawal.
We may want to give the benefit of the doubt and say that that guy just didn’t know. The problem: he knew or should have known because he is a licensed prescribing-psychiatrist who does see the results of his work. And who is “in denial”?
This same doc, who claimed no problem with withdrawal from Xanax, then immediately wrote a prescription for an effect of withdrawal from Xanax. Yes, he really did that.
It often is claimed that a physician is better informed of treatment consequences than are we. I think not. We go to the source and Look it up. Was this doc absent on the day when drug monographs were taught?
There is informed consent, and then there is misinformed consent.
Of course I agree completely. If incarceration is sought, Miranda warning is required. Yet remaining silent will be taken as evidence of mental incapacity. I “want a lawyer” does seem acceptable, but here is another and more vague aspect: a denial of civil liberties is claimed to be protection of the mentally incapable. And all of this is done without supervision or any attempt to mane a record of the Civil liberty offense.
Mental illness, in itself, isn’t a basis for locking away the accused. Usually it is “being a danger to self or others” that Is punishable. Who decides that?
The right to a trial is ignored as an in-hospital setting rushed process. The right to be represented and the right to defense is in the law, but in practice, something else happens. The accused may be under duress to sign away every right including the right to not be drugged before trial. The requirements of testimony are easily ignored. A court-appointed attorney may and usually will consider the accused guilty. That would be enough for disbarment, but has this happened?
I have an acquaintance who saw the forgoing scenario to its conclusion. The accused was drugged by a long list of chemicals, involuntarily and for three months. The effects of drugs are not just the sum of the chemicals. Drug combinations can harm irreversibly. Who and what is monitoring this abuse?
I understand that MIA may not be the place to initiate action, but it must happen. One life lost is too may lives lost.
A more than 15 year old Supreme Court decision clarified the right of the accused to be taken in and cared-for by a relative or friend who is willing to be the care-giver. . This is a huge decision. It is ignored. The only stipulation is that the accused not be an immediate threat. Now that may be the Achilles’ heel of the decision.
However, citing this decision might provide time to mount a defense.
One more thing is service of process. If the accused does not know that he is accused, he has neither time nor means to marshal a defense.
Everyone should be interested in this because anyone, can be accused, drugged, imprisoned and until death or until no money is left to pay for the atrocity.
Let’s start with Miranda.
The tactic may come down to who is paying for the supposed treatment. Public assistance, in the form of Medicaid, Medicare, et cetera, looks like a bottomless pit of coverage for “services”. Private insurance has limits to what and how long it will pay. But the uninsured might be safest. I say “might” because I don’t have any statistics for this. A social worker asked me how long the average mental health incarceration lasts. The answer? ‘Until the insurance runs out’.
At least one state in the USA names the accused’s family as responsible for payment for coerced hospitalization. Yes, family pay to keep the prisoner alive. Where else have we heard of that practice
?
Is it possible to bankrupt people by forcing diagnosis, treatment, and then extend it all to culminate in a mega personal bill? Is this not a perfect scheme for retaliating for a personal grudge? Yes, I know that it has happened.
This under-scores the need to access records. Hippa denies records called therapy notes. So call it something else. Hospital records are not therapy notes anyway. A tactic to use post incarceration. is to get a transcript of the legal proceedings. Errors will show up there, and this needs no more proof. It is a transcript of a real court record. If this is to be used by the victim in a court proceeding, a judge must stamp the record as true (exemplified copy).
These people do not expect resistance.
Well that really does expose the danger of encouraging them to “get the help that they need’! Who needs this system anyway? Oh yes, the providers need it. They need these populations for income production.
The old expression, dealing with conscripted soldiers, called them “cannon fodder?. Well how about “billing fodder” in the service of the psychiatric industry?
What is “spacing the dose”? I haven’t heard of it. It sounds somewhat like the practice of actual drug addicts as in not taking a dose until the withdrawal effects are too agonizing and then basking in relief when the missing dose is restored. This may be called: tweaking.
The practice doesn’t provide relief in the case of Benzos and A/D’s. but Ketamine- dependence may be very different.
I went to some journals and found that this Ketamine withdrawal can quickly become a life-threatening horror. So thanks for the heads-up.
Can people, incarcerated in mental institutions, vote?
Those convicted of crime cannot, but is a diagnosis equal to a crime? Do any Revised Statutes address the right to vote?
While it is obviously true that a longer taper equals longer exposure to the drug, that longer taper time is exposing to less and less of the tapered substance. If we believe that using less and less ,in a responsible manner, allows the physiology to re calibrate its functioning, is it reasonable to say that longer exposure to any amount of the drug, including lower and lower doses, has the same effect as the same extended exposure time with the original dosage?
In other words: Why worry about exposure length when you are clearly healing (reversing the dependency)?
I, too, appreciate your writing. Well done!
Not many humans would have had the ability to function while being so consistently gaslighted by those with complete control of life and death.
I remember children’s taunts of long ago:” You’re going to go to Elgin” when arguing. That institution was well-known. Apparently we didn’t know everything.
You amaze me. Please write more.
:As an example, for someone coming off a 20mg dose of citalopram (Celexa), a â10% of the previous dose per monthâ strategy will require them to take 29 months, over two years, to reach a 1-milligram jumping-off point. For someone who has been treated for decades, this seems sensible;”
It’s quite true: That strategy would require 29 months. However, there seems to be the assumption that duration of use directly determines the time required to discontinue the drug. Is this supported by evidence?
Since the time required to become dependent can vary by more than 10 years, there seems to be no known relation between time on the drug and time needed to safely taper.
Once the net was full of suggested rules such as “taper X times the time you were taking the drug”. This seems to have faded on credibility.
Other than the fact that continual use allows dependence, is that time really directly relevant to time in taper?
I was aware of this, but not aware of how widespread it is.
What are some things to do to prevent this abusive thievery?
I wonder about holding real estate and investment portfolios in llc’s as possible safeguards. Public records do reveal assets to possible thieves. Hence, the llc question.
Those accused of mental illness seem particularly at risk of this method of abuse. Some points concerning how to be safe would be so much appreciated.
Your argument:
If P, then Q
Q, therefore P.
This is a classic logical fallacy taught in symbolic logic.
In other words: If it rains, the grass gets wet.
The grass is wet.
Therefore, it rained. This actually is the example in the text book.
One effect may have many causes. Finding one possible cause does not change that.
Remember that phrase attached to the conclusion of almost all studies: “Clearly more research is needed”?
Well this is why it is needed. One cause does not a conclusion make. Well, other than “this is one possible cause”.
Thank you for your contact link and interest in different taper perspectives. I do not offer my approach within any internet site. I work only through physicians because information has been so easily corrupted through the internet.
Examples of this can be seen in “Withdrawal Education” classes. Elementary science is absent.
I learned to offer cautions and not advice at internet sites.
” I donât know about other antidepressants but when it comes to Effexor, withdrawals can blindside you weeks or even months later”
I believe that you are right! This is not my own experience but that of someone I know well. Her “months later” experience was mini seizure events. Her body quaked and jerked without relief.
. I hear that this is unusual. Is it?
To begin to illustrate the extreme variations in discontinuation results: I was prescribed the maximum manufacturers’ dosages of two antidepressants. for years. I was warned not to decrease the dosage, but there was reason to believe that this was not wise.
I abruptly stopped taking one and then the other. Not only did I feel better, but I had no withdrawal symptoms at all. Does this mean that the ultimate short discontinuation is safe? No, it does not. The only take away is that this was safe for me; it was merely my experience. My C/T easily could be a disaster for someone else. I take this as an illustration of extreme differences in physiology from person to person. Hence the need for treading carefully when abandoning psyche-meds. Doggedly adhering to “rules” ignores the thing called polymorphism.
Here we are dealing with uncharted waters. The ancient cartographers labeled the unknown territories , “Dragons Be Here”. Well, Dragons really “be here”
A nearby psyche clinic promotes itself as helping near normal people get more out of life. Well that sounded nice. Then they began using Ketamine. I can’t say that it was used to “enhance” life or only to treat intractable depression, but use to enhance life may be too tempting.
In the USA, a physician can lawfully prescribe off-label if that physician thinks that the use is beneficial. Could this situation develop into lawful drug-dealing?
There seems to be an unspoken belief that duration of taper is decided before the initiation of the tape, as part of the taper and not a result of the taper. A taper takes time. Does time determine the taper?
More than 16 years ago, it was common to calculate the individual reductions by arbitrarily naming the number of days that the taper would last and divide the initial dose by that number. The process failed. It was based on a guess and not on physiology This idea seems to have resurfaced.
“Slow” is a by-product of the chosen process and not an element of the process, itself; or “it takes what it takes”. Does anyone believe that overriding our biological limits, in either direction, is rational? Of course arbitrarily deciding to use a very long time is absurd. Is that the point of the article?
Defining terms could enable better discussion. What is “slow” is a common question. Slow, the word, denotes time as in a year. Rate is a ratio of how much over how long or here, dosage unit over unit of time. Rate would tell us more about the taper than simply that it required X number of months or years.
Also there seems to be an assumption that any taper process demands following a specific schedule that already exists either in medicine or at helping-websites. In other words, we are required to pick an existing method or time limit. Why would that be?
I just looked again at the Peter Breggin book, Your Drug May Be Your Problem. He cites the assumed 10% rule. The problem: no scientific basis for the rule is offered. The people who back it are listed as proof of the rule’s validity. I admire Breggin, but I must question that assumption. To say that a thing is true because someone who ought to know says it is true is neither science nor logical. It is a logical fallacy, an ad hominem argument.
“Slow” is an essential word in withdrawal, but slow may mean taking a long time without naming the size or number of dosage reductions. “Slow”, alone, doesn’t tell us more than how long the taper lasted.
Isn’t it missing the mark to adhere to a schedule rather than empirically determining your own optimal rate as in milligrams reduced over a specific time? Will a body’s physiology agree with speed, rate, or schedule, as imposed, or should the rate be determined by the individual body? That later approach is actually available, but not through the usual internet sites.
This is only one of the many essential issues that are presented in the article. The responses as well as the article, itself, are reassuringly thought-provoking. Questioning is good.
At the conclusion of our senior civics class, we toured a psychiatric facility. The most obvious thing were the silent and immobile inmates. They were kept in an enormous hall seated on wicker furniture. We knew so little about them. We thought that appearing catatonic was a feature of their illnesses.
Later, I read in the local paper that new drugs were being used there as an experiment. I questioned the lawfulness of allowing us to view these inmates in any condition. I felt somewhat ashamed to have witnessed this. My questioning was met with: “Well what else would you suggest we do with them?”. It was clear that these drugs were administered to make the recipients almost comatose and unquestioning. They didn’t move; they stared straight ahead. The drugs did nothing to cure people
Now, what would prevent any one of us being treated that way if we were inconvenient people? Were we ever a decent society?
What an appropriate comment that is! State laws vary, but the result seems similar. Someone, anyone, makes an accusation of mental illness. Police make the arrest. Medical incarceration follows with forced medication. Forget harmful drug interactions ordered by ignorant staff. Dependence may follow.
Yes, the mentally accused must pay for his/her incarceration. If no insurance covers incarceration, the patient must pay. I accessed the law in one state and found that family are lawfully billed for this incarceration.Homes are lost. It really does happen. The accused must pay for their own kidnappings. How, then, is this not extortion?
Well this does explain the mass minds so prevalent today. Related is the work, When Prophecy Fails. It is old but still valid. What do doomsday groups do when they are proven wrong? They gather together and shout their falsehoods more loudly.
Quote: “I feel compelled to remind the reader that psychotropic medications should never be suddenly discontinued unless a physician has specifically directed it, and with the patient fully informed of the reasons and the risks associated with discontinuation and full support for the return of symptoms that often accompany withdrawal.”
Really? I wouldn’t be alive today had I followed that imperative. What we feel, when withdrawing, is far from a return to symptoms. Withdrawal is a completely different world bearing no resemblance to any “original complaint”, and why is this mistaken characteristic still sold?
Does that “Baby dose” of Clonazepam mean “Baby sized withdrawal syndrome”? Both medicine and the peer to peer folk seem to support this belief.
“âAt 42 months off clonazepam, I can tell that Iâm finally healing.â I must offer this: If you had employed the appropriate mode of withdrawal for you, you would have found yourself without withdrawal symptoms on the first day post withdrawal. An imposed withdrawal does not address your unique biology. We’ve been doubly misled by both medicine and by the sincere lay-help. One size rarely fits anyone. Many may object to this post, but someone should remind the benzene-dependent that not responding completely to a formula taper never is the patient’s fault. The tapers used today are simply too crude to fully reverse the acquired dependence. This may explain why people feel better only years later.
I suggest that being allowed to “hold a dose” is not being in charge of the taper. “Being allowed” is demeaning to your rights and your intelligence.
. Was this practice validated by any evidence? When did medicine begin to order Benzo Tapers that never were subjected to study of any kind? Without validly constructed study, we are using opinion and not science.
Here is one obvious fact that should have neutralized the claim that symptoms following A/D withdrawal are merely a return of the condition for which the A/D was prescribed: the symptoms of drug withdrawal are not those of that condition for which the drug was prescribed!
Example: Are or were A/D’s prescribed for brain-zapps? How about cog-fog, and its companions? This industry’s defensive claim is truly absurd.
Now here is something remaining unaddressed: When the drug is reintroduced ostensibly to treat that underlying condition, those symptoms remain unabated. Why? If these really were mental illness symptoms and if the drug really treated said mental illness, the lack of expected response does blow that spurious claim clearly out of the water.
Yes, Thank you for your efforts and taking the risks of speaking the truth.
Two things are noticeable here. First, we hear of “tapering” and “tapering slowly” while no definition of these terms is attempted. Taken literally, “slow” may mean taking years to taper while making only a few dosage reductions of huge size during that time.
Yes, when the right curve is found, the curve is hyperbolic. However this curve cannot be prescribed because each person’s correct hyperbolic curve is different.
The historic and current tapers actually name an arbitrary cut supposedly suitable for every patient. The fact that a post withdrawal syndrome remains illustrates this point.
There is no curve here; a straight line, instead, is prescribed
” And one should not keep on halving the dose. You need to reduce the dose much less when you come down to low doses, because the binding curve for the pills is not linear, but hyperbolic.” . Well yes, this is true but historically denied. , Kaiser Permanente’s taper for a benzo is a 50% cut weekly for six weeks and then a total cessation of the remaining dosage. The result is not a surprise. I have no information concerning the number of people who survive this barbarous protocol. Then, the Lisa Ling “expose” of the benzo-damage horror actually concluded with an interview of a Kaiser Permanente doctor! He was both condescending and ignorant of the issues. Are the foxes guarding the Hen House or what!
In addition, the Kaiser discontinuation program is dispensed by nurses. Only one consultation with the “supervising” doctor is allowed each year. The only supervision is a list of psychological questions to be answered in writing at each visit. Actual medical symptoms are not of interest to KP.. During the mandatory “medical checks”, by nurses, absolutely no medical tests or values are done. Not even BP is taken. High diastolic pressure that does not periodically come down, is far from safe. It causes damage to the lower left area of the heart.
Clearly being a licensed facility does not imply either competence or safety.
Yes, when the right curve is found, the curve is hyperbolic. However this curve cannot be prescribed as one size because each person’s hyperbolic curve is different from the others’.
The historic and current tapers, medical or online, actually name an arbitrary cut supposedly suitable for every patient. The fact that a post-withdrawal syndrome remains illustrates this point. I do hope that this will save someone.
I admire your courage in speaking so openly.
Are mental patients’ rights different from human rights?
Those marginalized people seem to think: “Yes”. Well this is the problem.
We must use caution. Extremely educated and kind people can be wrong.
Every taper method, medical or peer to peer, is application of some external standard as in “reduce by this number”. “If that causes harm, just do it less often as in putting more time between “cuts”. Does this make sense to anyone? If the order is harmful, it will be harmful again weeks later.
One of the doctors mentioned, in his book, wrote: find your cut by naming the number of days that you will taper and divide your current dosage by that number”. The body will not adjust to these arbitrary dosages, and haven’t we learned this by actual experience? Naming the number is days is not empirical in any sense. The out of fashion “water-titration” failed partly because it was arbitrary and now one of these doctors just made that same error. Should we follow a doctor’s fame or scientific method?
Sam said:”Psychiatry is a cult, nothing clinical or medical about it” , and he is so clearly correct.
I’d say that mental adjustments are connected to medicine only because some of those subscribing to the mental health mythology can legally prescribe drugs. There is the myth, here are the drugs that address that myth.
Blood and urine tests will indicate the presence of not yet metabolized drugs and metabolites of these drugs. No test will reveal how long the drug has been used. You didn’t ask, but no medical test can determine whether or not you are in a withdrawal state. If one value is out of range, the test still can’t tell you why this is out of range.
The most needed question, for these mind-lords, is:”HOW DO YOU KNOW That ?”. Show us your logic, produce evidence. Those under treatment are told not to be so negative. Who is negative again?
Our lives tend to follow our expectations. Where we are looking becomes where we are going. This is not endorsing denial. It is taking control of futures. Look for more sick episodes, and we will find them. So look toward wellness even when it is derided as unrealistic. He who bills has a vested interest in making you sick.
Psychiatric Fortune Tellers: listen. You can look toward “managing illness” and increase billing, or you can drop the fortune-telling and start helping.
Mark, you are so right, and your analogy is simply great!
This may not seem related to the conversation, but it might cut to the essence of the subject: Why are emotional issues and less than usual behaviors treated as medical issues? Or: why does a medical issue merit incarceration and punishment all without an actual trial?
Framer is the true expert in her own experience, miss-prescribed antidepressants and the resulting suffering.. To claim expertise in treatment for other psychoactive medications is improper. Number of posts indicates the overwhelming lack of effective help in medicine and on the internet. It does not validate a website. Further, mistreatment of well-meaning and more educated posters is not okay.
I am aware of the anger that this may release, but we need to separate the need to create heroes from the need for tested fact. What is the source? What study listed these conclusions? “I saw it on the net” is not primary sourced information. “It was on a respected website” is not evidence.
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Sam, you are so right!
Right now, I doubt that a harmed child can be unharmed. Putting the damaged child in a non-condescending but nurturing environment may the best that can be done, but it will fall short of erasing the harm already visited upon developing creatures.
Are plans to treat really the means to further harm?
Oh My; I got it too. The eight hour day’s number of patients potentially can be multiplied by the number of “allied assistants” also prescribing. If the doc can see 20 patients per day, then each assistant, in theory, has that potential as well. Would insurers be able to see this multiplication factor? Are the visits covered by many different insurers so that the outlandish number is undetected?
Well said, madmom!
It appears that having any sort of angst is treated as criminal behavior, and any objection to absconding with constitutional rights amounts to waving the red flag in the face of assumed power.
How does this happen? Psychiatry warns the public of the “danger” in leaving troubled people alone. Holy COW public safety is at risk? Fear of other people’s thoughts is at the root. Constitutionally guaranteed rights are ignored in the generated fear of anyone not like “us”. So artists and thinking people: BE very careful.
Simply put, the abuse of children is supported as parental rights. The parents’ narrative is preferred and the child is “protected” by denying its rights as a living creature. The response to this issue is to transfer parental rights to the state.
An abused child who is identified is then chattel of the state and the self-interest groups that use courts to enforce their desires.
It happens: Harmed children are taken from their abusive families only to be abused by government’s child protection workers. It’s abuse for their protection?
The issue of mom’s harmful behavior during pregnancy ironically enforces the states’ power to eliminate personal freedom. I don’t pretend to have the answers. However, making these issues known or using the court of public opinion may be a beginning.
While it is truly understandable that you must speak carefully for your protection, your efforts here are laudable. Also, I have been impressed by the success of those grown children who grew up while medicated. Those in foster-care commonly are medicated for no clear reason. When they “age out of the system” medication is no longer free. That “sudden neglect”occasionally has offered possible escape and the opportunity to recover from government-imposed chemical harm. How the developing brain can do this is a mystery and aevidence of personal strength.
However I can’t deny the government spying and attempts to retain control of the escapee.
About 15 years ago. I read about an”underground railroad” for those escaping forced drugging. The complications include managing drug withdrawal while hiding in protection. How does this happen under the Fourth Amendment? Some self-serving rat can just take a life because he claims to know what it best? And a court agrees???
Well said, Oldhead!
Is promoting websites within the rules at MIA?
Is reporting serious abuse at other sites acceptable?
I’ve seen this too. Before Covid, neighborhood get togethers happened a lot. People talked about their lives. All were either using prescribed psycho active drugs or their family members were. The drug combinations were unbelievable.
They would talk about side effects when really they were in beginning stages of tolerance withdrawal. The evidence? Many graduated to full withdrawal syndrome in the next 12 months. If we, who have gone through and survived. had known the warning signs of full benzo withdrawal syndrome, what would we have done?
I keep current with “new “withdrawal schemes” by subscribing to journals and by using Google Scholar. Two aspects are both surprising and disappointing. Medicine remains off track because it uses unsubstantiated assumptions and not verified facts. Just listening to the harmed patients would reveal the errors.
One aside comment: Although I do not support supplements as curing benzo dependence, Point of Return has published an urgent caution concerning Kaiser Permanente’s treatment of the benzo-injured. Making a 50% cut (from ANY benzo ) weekly for six weeks while taking an additional drug to manage the expected seizures is unacceptable, Has anyone survived this? I have first hand experience there. I dis-enrolled, survived, and quietly corrected the damage without “help”.
Methods seem to cycle, If one has been abandoned for ten years, it often is reintroduced as “new”. Citing established science usually is met with hate, and this is not what we expected from our fellow-sufferers. The internet is a place where anyone can pose as an expert; now that is usual. False assumptions rule and many site owners perpetuate this. You Tube certainly does.
I’ve watched this for 16 years. It’s demoralizing.
Verified discontinuation methods are absent from both medicine and internet groups.
Online help groups have the best intentions but still suggest methods based on hearsay. We see the results every day. Desperate people cry for real help, and it is not found. Really horrible stories like a recent one are now the rule. This happens because in the retelling, big errors occur. One poor guy was mixing Lorazepam in water, and asking why that wasn’t “working”.
As for these methods, a lot is added in the translation. The real facts , then are lost and imitation takes over. So we are seeing fallacious methods, that were long abandoned for good reason , resurfacing. These are constantly promoted via You Tube videos. Reading these is cringe-worthy. It isn’t possible to provide substantive correction at these sites or at medical offices. It isn’t allowed. Saving our fellows is not allowed.
Hi Kate;
Can you tell us more about the community in Springfield Massachusetts? This is really interesting.
Hi Boans: From your input, I now see that the misuse of legal systems is far more extreme and calculated than I knew, and I thought that I knew a lot.
Yes, I did say: âIt can lawfully hide its deeds.â, I should have written,”Use of HIPPA” allows misdeeds to remain unknown”. That was my mistake.
Yes, most abuse is against law. However, acts against those laws will not see the light of day when these remain hidden from the view of the victim. Use of HIPPA, denying the right to view the medical record, hides the crime.
I can actually recite the parts of my state code that would clearly be a basis for prosecution. Yet, I know that specific mental health workers did violate the law. The psychiatrist can make deals with the government to prevent criminal prosecution. Oddly enough, my state government mailed me a copy of one such arrangement with the offender’s name in plain sight. I wasn’t even the victim of that unlawful activity.
Bottom line: There are several means of hiding prohibited activity of mental health professionals. One is HIPPA (in the USA) . However, you are quite correct; many countries do have laws against the workers’ bad acts.
All true. All true, but we live with on the fly interpretations of law. You are darned right about the contradiction! There is no point in sequestering information that the subject already knows, but there is a nefarious point in hiding unlawful activity of the record-maker.. HIPPA enables this.There is a point in hiding the fact that one worker who wants revenge and caused other workers to go along to get along and create fresh records to support the charges. HIPPA enables this, too by hiding the records under the guise of protecting the patient. They are hiding criminal activity “for the patient’s own good”. Who decides this? It is a setup protecting the malicious activity of unethical workers.
So, I suggest recording the telephone threats where that is lawful. There is no other way to prove the malicious activity. I’ve heard: “It’s the patient’s word against theirs, and they have credibility”. Well, that credibility ends with hard copy evidence and recordings. Recording must be made according to law. We must do this by the book.
Where is punishment for the wrong doer? A bad doc can contact a new doc, unlawfully and slander the patient. The slander is used by the new doc to harm the patient as a favor to the former doc? HIPPA is used to forbids access to the truth, and here is another problem:HiIPPA has no teeth; it names no punishment for a violation, or it didn’t when I checked.
. So the mental health industry violates law continuously and faces no consequence. It can lawfully hide its deeds.
Of course there are more details to this subject. I deleted some specific incidents. I’ve been talking too much lately.
“There are probably a few great minds that really want to speak up, but they canât. “Yes, Sam!
I first heard the phrase, ” Go along to get along” from a retired school psychologist. Is a well-intentioned psychologist able to survive with ethics intact while serving this system?
Yes, obtain records for protection. Even non-psyche docs will accuse patients and record it. I saw a chiropractor claiming suicidal,idealization when the patient said that an injury couldn’t be ignored because living the rest of life would be disaster with the injury. Pediatricians ask children about their parents’ behavior! We need to proactively plan protection. Record everything by lawful means. If a conversation can be lawfully recorded, do it. Save records. Save old prescription bottles. Pharmacies will print out prescription records for you for past years. Records from phone carriers are more accessible today. These can prove stuff.
Now I live in the USA. We have these HIPPA restrictions. “Psychological” records are not accessible to the patient. So how do we prove what the bad guys recorded?
The psyche records are available to any physician whom you name. Just sign a form, and these records are sent. Once your records are in those friendly hands, these can be provided to you. Hey, I did it. I found, in the individuals’ handwriting, clear violations of law. I used it.
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Today I maintain the records , both old tapes and hard copy, as insurance. And these folks know that I have an aggressive attorney. I want that reputation.
These are just somethings that I use to protect myself from medical mischief. It would be really good to hear other ideas.
Oh, and my personal policy is never to speak, for any reason, to any of these people. When it is one person’s claim vs another, the Mental Industry will be the default. So we must avoid contact. When the aggressor knows that we have representation ready to go, the bad guys are not likely to fool with us.
Yes, these people will lie. They will go along to get along, but when they commit prohibited activities and lie in writing, they can be placed firmly on the hook.
My policy; Walk softly, don’t attract attention, and maintain evidence in several places. Be prepared; then relax and get some sleep.
I am a USA citizen. Recently I needed to explore living wills for both a friend and myself. An Attorney put my friend’s wishes into correct format, and I am the person designated to carry out those wishes. We are not related. We even live in different states.
Naming a trustworthy person to make “medical” decisions in case of any incapacitation might be challenged, but that challenge might be too much work for the bad guys.
In any case, it appears that, at least in this country, we are not required to name a family member. We can choose any adult.
Your concerns are truly terrifying. Are there governments and then hidden-governments? Is there any movement to correct this abuse and restore human rights?
It seems that,world-wide, the issues are medical and then a legal system that enforces the medical-profiteers’ desires. A complication of concern in the USA are statutes of liability. A harmed person is unable to file any actio0n while harmed. Time runs out. There are provisions for tolling the statute, but representation may be out of reach when the case had this factor.
I’m not a movement-leader, but I’m well enough help someone who is. When people escape the medication prison, few are willing to work against it. The subject matter triggers hard-to-endure reactions.
Who is safe from abuse as things stand? Is this situation comparable to “The Crucible”, a play about accusation? It does seem that in The Crucible of 1650 or the legal systems of 2021, the accusation equals guilt.
Yes, there is non-judgemental support here. This site is unusual because it does not exist to promote itself. It is here to promote you.
This link may shed more light on that subject. I must read it again, but at cursory glance , it is just possible that Sertraline is inhibiting some of the same enzymes that are responsible for metabolizing the Sertraline. If so, the amount of that drug will certainly accumulate. Left unchecked, the built up drug level would be deadly.
(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15547048/) Take a look and be sure. If this really is the case, your doctor should be reported to your state government agency . If you report facts and not solely your judgement, the agency will take steps to protect the public.
The concept of polymorphism deals with the different CYP 450 enzyme styles that we inherit. The different clearance rates ( ex. intermediate and extensive etc. explain a lot about inter-dose withdrawal and why we have different reactions to the same drug,
I am guessing that all of us firmly believe you. It’s just puzzling to see how we can use medical facts to correct the damage while the prescribing doc cannot. Still I wouldn’t bark at the doc. Walk softly and do what you need to stay out of harm’s way. You’ll get emotional support from us because most of us have been in similar spaces. It’s just not possible to comprehend the harm without having been there.
Medical docs really do learn about the CYP450’s. They just don’t connect it to the drugs that they prescribe. There’s a big and empty space there. Our job is not to educate the doc; it’s to save ourselves.
Well Hey, what happened to that “unconditional positive regard” thing? A dose of that would be refreshing right now.
Well my doc was out of his mind then. He told me that :”There is a new drug for sleep that is very mild;it just makes you a little sleepy”. It was Seroquel. I just dug up the old prescription bottle. I keep these as evidence should it ever be needed. He prescribed 600.0mg immediately with no attempt at titration.
Blood glucose testing every three months was the standard. Never did he order a single blood test at anytime.
Here is the other odd part: Seroquel, not even 600.0mg, put me to sleep. Many psychoactive meds have no observable effect in me. This tells me that medication effects are not so much a function of the drug, itself, but mostly a function of the way that the individual metabolizes said drug.
I read the literature. Horrified, I immediately stopped the use of Seroquel. I had no problems with this. However, this does not mean that the drug is benign. It doesn’t mean that many bodies don’t experience severe side effects and then severe withdrawal reactions. It means, at the least, that one human can have a very different drug processing type from others.
Have these docs heard of additive effects before they engage in polypharmacy? Is not prescribing two drugs, in the same category, outside the standard of care?
Still, it is outrageous that humans can fool with other humans’ minds and their lives.
I was fortunate. Not everyone has my experience. Diabetes is a well known possible outcome. (see Zyprexa Papers new Your Times). Oh I was so lucky where Seroquel is concerned, and I am so sorry that this ugly thing happened to you.
Agreed! Epsom salts sometimes are scented. Lavender seems preferred by benzo-people.
Also there is a MgCl2 spray-on product. Directions suggest using an ounce or two. That seems to be a lot, but it’s still safe to use.
It’s true that Magnesium Citrate is sold as a laxative as well as a supplement. The difference in effect stems from dosage. Dividing the day’s dose into two or three equal doses to be taken over the day does seem to eliminate the intestinal aggravation. I use quite a lot of MG for chronic charlie horses, but dividing doses works for me.
Just a bit of input about not tapering vs C/T: A C/T allows protracted withdrawal, and from online reports, that condition is persistent. A taper using standard cuts may still be difficult but better than just jumping off. Jumping from the frying pan to the fire comes to mind.
Posting personal information here seems inappropriate, but if you live in one of two states, I just might have an MD’S name for you. The “low doses” usually are more difficult to taper. Low dose would be in Diazepam. equivalent. Standard changes to cutting seem to require a change that few docs will manage. I worked with one doc, two and a half years ago who was agreeable to the change. I’m hoping getting another doc to supervise custom tapers.
You might post here a few states and include your state in there. I understand that this site’s mission is not to taper psychoactive meds so I an trying not to do that, but sharing sources may be okay.
SA may be able to keep the peace when others cannot .That’s good. Using SA is a personal choice, but I have been distressed by their censorship, lack of very basic science, and misuse of other people’s work (without citing author and source).
Still, the alternatives to SA have their own downsides.
Hey, Lady Blue” Are you being medically gaslighted?
#66? YES!
Adding an antidepressant is seen as a treatment that can aid withdrawal but not its symptoms? This is a mystery. Is not modulating symptoms the same thing as aiding withdrawal?
Although it really is possible to become dependent upon an antidepressant prescribed for easing benzo-withdrawal symptoms, what is the evidence that this is true? We’ve seen examples of people tapering benzos aided by antidepressants, atypicals, and anti-seizure meds. At the conclusion of the benzo taper, symptoms continue and these symptoms are attributed to dependence on the auxiliary drug. But is this correct? Is it not more likely that the continuing symptoms are actually those of an incomplete or faulty benzo withdrawal that is now exposed when the auxiliary drug is no longer used?
In addition to all of this, added medications may interfere with the benzo-recovery.
One example of medicine’s failure to account for this effect: Kaiser Permanente’s (KP) benzo withdrawal consists of making a 50% cut every week for six weeks. Then the taper is cut off. Starting dosage (in milligrams) is irrelevant to this method. Relative potency also is ignored. This “big step” method is recognized, by KP, to cause seizures. So KP prescribes Tegretol to prevent the seizure that KP causes. Now Tegretol also alters the clearance of most benzos. It is said to interact. Result: the benzo taper is skewed and so the rate of taper is no more than a guess. These KP patients may taper with masked symptoms and so do not recognize that their tapers are unsafe.
Drug interactions are a major impediment to a gradual taper, and medicine does not even mention this.
We hear little from the subjects of this type of taper. I fear that few have survived it.
The statements in these medical papers are offered without any evidence at all. Medicine insists that a benzo-taper must be done under medical supervision. REALLY?
Your points are right on the mark, JanCarol.
Looking up Glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) may help. There are many isoforms. For GABA production, we’re interested in GAD-2. GAD acts on glutamate to produce GABA. I was looking at that last night. Then you posted!
Oh yes, Benfotiamine is worth a look too. When the consensus says that exogenous GABA does nor pass the blood brain barrier, the emphasis is on making our own, onsite.
The issue with these peer to peer sites is that their advice reveals lack of very basic science, chemistry and biology. Emotional support can be kind and helpful, but when a site publishes ignorance of the chemical and biological basics well, the advice is no better than that of the doc who never was trained to de-prescribe.
I had decided to leave benzo-patients to discover, themselves, how uneducated the usual benzo-help really is. I didn’t want to be involved in those online arguments. Is this silence unethical?
Unrelated to that: medical articles speak of anxiety as if it were the only benzo withdrawal symptom. The physical torture of an incorrect benzo withdrawal is too extreme to describe. This extreme pain is not acknowledged by the literature. I know that you speak the truth.
S.A may be quite competent to aid coming off of antidepressants. It is unfortunate that this site claims expertise in Benzo-Tapering.
Good input, Evan. There’s a lot more meaning to simple phrases.
This always has impressed me: people subjected to massive drugging, amounts that could kill, may survive with outstanding minds. No, I don’t mean that drugs improve intelligence, but maybe abilities incubate in the crucible.
Oh, I thought that Sam meant averse as opposed to adverse to make a point.
Yes, the medical response to being outed as incorrect, too often, is a warrant to be incarcerated without bond and drugged without any consideration of Patient safety.
Make one of them angry, and risk your civil liberties. I say civil rights because these are constitutionally yours. Civil rights refers to the rights in question during the early sixties.
Incarceration for crime requires evidence and legal procedure. Incarceration for disagreeing with a mental health professional requires opinion and damn the legal procedure.
What happens to people so accused, imprisoned, and drugged? They may become drug-dependent and labeled, Addict.
Now I wonder: Why is the person, accused of mental illness, not Mirandized? How about: ” You have the right to remain silent; but if you do, you will be declared catatonic or oppositional”.
Does the expected benefit to the prescriber outweigh the harm to the patient?
” There is no explanation for how doctors can frame these experiences as ârelapses.” Agreed! My withdrawal syndrome was 100% physiological with not a hint of emotional disturbance. Suddenly my withdrawal is evidence of a mental illness with no mental symptom at all?
We also read that withdrawal from benzos (but possibly from antidepressants) is always the “mirror image” of the symptoms for which the drug was prescribed. No, and the syndrome can be far from the originally diagnosed problem.
We really are chasing a moving providers’ excuse target. New excuses appear as the old ones are exposed.
It is popular to say that most people in a problematic field are honest and well-intentioned. Well today I must doubt that. The evidence is anecdotal, but. it is a tidal wave of anecdotes.
Yes, that is unusually well-written. So many people will see themselves in your account. That really does aid in healing the emotional harm.
Quote:”Many doctors claim that the current prescribing and de-prescribing protocols are successful for most service users. Letâs not skew reality. Are the current trends within psychotropic prescribing conducive to positive outcomes? My definitive answer would be a no.”
I would add that the current benzo help sites too often commit that same offence. They claim success while publishing continued suffering as success. Off the drug, yes. Recovered?
I suggest that the word, success, is often used and never defined. It was puzzling to see the 90% “success” rate claimed for the old pill-splitting routine. How could that be true when so many people write about their continued suffering? It occurs to me, now, that the author of that method defined success as having discontinued the drug, remaining off the drug. No mention was made of the continued suffering from having used a method. The author renamed the failure, Protracted “Withdrawal Syndrome”, does giving it a name explain its occurrence? Failure is not failure of the patient. It is failure of a withdrawal method.
Shouldn’t success mean having fully recovered from the withdrawal syndrome rather than just enduring an ineffective taper’s end point? “Success in what?” is the question.
I was surprised that hearsay from a fellow student or anyone was taken as fact. I should not have been.
Is there a culture of malfeasance in Psychotherapy?
I do know that crime or any bad acts are customarily backed up by colleagues once colleague-status is attained. Until that point, you are fair game.
You are disappointed, but do you really want to work within that kind of system? Could your laudable goals have survived that system? Hey, how about law? Your commitment to good shouldn’t be wasted.
Quote “Researchers have published the first scientific paper looking at how patients can safely come off antipsychotic medication while minimizing the risk of withdrawal effects.”
No it does not.
Quote: “The paper, described as a âhistoric breakthroughâ, suggests that extremely slow tapering with small reductions over months or even years could make it less likely for patients to relapse”
Actually it describes nothing at all. It characterizes in place of describing.
I hope that this “historic paper” is deleted before it causes more disappointment to unsuspecting antipsychotic-dependent people. What is “relapse”?. What is “slow”?” What is “small”? Well what is a “break through”?
It’s shameful to offer a specific breakthrough and publish fuzzy claims in its place.
” During these five years, I never so much as spoke to nor met with a psychiatrist or psychologist.” WOW!
Hey, Mom, can you say; “Munchausen’s by proxy”?
I accessed the Minnesota Revised Statutes related to civil commitment. These listed conditions for commitment. These listed the requirement for “being a danger to self or others”. Being autistic or even mentally ill is not enough. However, we all know that this need not be proven. Only the desire of an RN or mental health worker is needed. One attorney said to me:” These are a tightly-knit group. They will support each other” meaning they will lie for one another. Does this rise to the level of conspiracy to deprive civil liberties. This means civil liberty and not civil rights. It is a constitutional issue. The Fourth Amendment underscores the right to our own bodies. Judges railroad these incarcerations when asked by some worker, and they do not consider evidence or defense.
What can anyone do to prevent further harm by “treatment”?
A 15 year old US supreme court decision made it clear: An person accused of mental illness will be released into the care of a relative or friend willing to do the care- taking. (https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/422/563.html)
I’ve noticed that some people who calmly assert this defense are taken more seriously.
In addition, a 72 hour Hold may be used without real cause, but incarceration and treatment are legal actions. A summons served is required, and this allows the accused to access representation and mount defense. Of course the accusers may claim “emergency hold” but “emergency ECT” is ridiculous.
However, if there was no service of process, the decision to incarcerate or force treatment is not lawful. I would look into the process. Was it carried out lawfully? If not, throw the book at them and contact the media. There is an effort to make the public fearful of those so-accused, but the public can be equally fearful of the misuse of commitment. The “Hey it could happen to YOU” might gain support for the unjustly accused.
If the harm is already done, get a transcript of the proceedings. Chances are that you will find serious irregularities. These, you can use.
You have the right to call experts to testify to the medical conditions that were mistaken as mental illness. And never sign your rights away. They will try that. Everyone should have a well informed attorney because there is no way to repair physical brain damage after it is done.
Well something doesn’t look right. The emphasis is on involuntary treatment for some perceived difference in this man’s beliefs or behavior. Is this an offense punishable by law?
So I accessed the Minnesota Revised Statutes ( https://www.mncourts.gov/Help-Topics/Civil-Commitments.aspx). Here, there is a list of “conditions” for which a citizen can lose lawful control of his own body. Almost every one of these requires “danger to self or others”. To use this law to deprive civil liberties, this danger must exist. Then what is the legal procedure? Is the person-object in the court’s cross-hairs served? Is his next of kin served? Who proves the offense? Absurdly, usually two medical doctors must testify to their opinions that the person in question is, indeed, a danger.
Was this procedure followed according to the law? We’d need to see the court transcript to know this. However, absent that transcript, we’d have to use the words of the next of kin. However, it does appear that the law was far from correctly applied.
The judge controls the forum. Was the judge accustomed to ignoring procedure? Who was served the summmons? If service was omitted, the notion of immediate need to prevent bodily harm might have been used, but correct and formal proceedings still are required soon after the arrest.
Here is an idea: if no defense was allowed, the decision is not valid, but is it necessary to formally make these additional objections? If there was no service of summons, the case is moot. Of course the aggressors will try it again, but this time the accused will have had time to prepare.
I remember the Shield from Mindfreedom.com. It isn’t airtight. In addition, by the time that the error is formally presented, the damage may already have occurred. Well at that point a diligent attorney might make the case for vacating the decision and then show assault and possibly intractable brain damage.
My take-away: Guardians, instruct your charges with the facts so that the patient can present as normal and reasonable. Then find an attorney who can prepare before the damage is done. Prevention is far more effective than correcting flawed legal proceedings.
A governor of any state should be embarrassed to have allowed this unsubstantiated accusation stand. Opinion is not evidence. Oh for shame!
I understand that these horrific offenses occur every day. That doesn’t establish them as lawful. Having a medical condition is not equal to being a danger to self or others. Well that part is clearly missing from this case. Danger seems nit to have been proven. Something else remains unproven. That is the connection between a medical condition and correction by forcing voltage through a brain. Then there is the fourth Amendment.
Yes! Agreed, that brain damage one was quietly slipped in.
Close to just slipping in are some unexamined assumptions. Forgetting these really makes the conclusion unsubstantiated.
A big effort was made to include a lot of data while leaving the big questions unaddressed. In anyone’s book, withdrawal rate is dosage-reduced over time. There a % substitutes for actual dosage. No amount of data can change a faulty study (invalid) structure. If the logical structure is faulty, the conclusion is unwarranted.
This paper addressed the activity of the drug and not the activity of the drug in the individual. Is half life a characteristic of a drug, or is it a characteristic of the patient’s body processing the drug? The former is too often assumed and without any evidence.
I’ll guess that this work will be respected and only because it contains a lot of data. The spurious structure of the study will remain unaddressed.
I didn’t know this, Kindred. Thanks for posting the link.
The assumption seems to be that Peterson bought a cure that few other people could have. Is he cured? Someone who must use symptom-masking drugs cured? It seems that his oddly-gotten gains have purchased nothing. The results of detox are masked by other drugs, and this is called, recovery?
” Gradual tapering appears to be an effective way to reduce relapse following cessation as the neurological changes made by antipsychotics have been shown to persist for years after ending antipsychotic use.” That sounds so reasonable, but what IS “gradual tapering” to the reader? These peer to peer help sites publish some truly illogical stuff. Yes, I admit that medicine is no better able to safely taper anything.
No here is one example of a Kaiser Permanente doc’s plan: (paraphrased) Take the full dose on day one, wait for two days, then the full dose and wait for three days….. No matter how long this “taper” is enforced, the dosage obviously remains the same. This activity will never allow the nervous system to reset or correct itself!
How much better are most peer to peer help sites?
Both medicine and help sites can make the same error. They believe that something is true because someone who “should know” says so. This is ad hominem and not ad hoc. Plenty of experts are clueless-even the famous ones.
HEY! Maybe we could distinguish education from training! The Latin origin seems to be educare, to lead out. Doesn’t training imply only giving instructions?
It’s helpful to know about this publisher’s requirement. To maintain the flow of money, Peterson must toe the old line?
Are we to think that Peterson was not wrong before; he is just more right now than he was before? Now where else have we heard that?
Maybe Peterson hasn’t heard it: “Pick on someone your own size”.
Yes! An advanced degree does not signal advanced thinking. It took me many years to realize that someone who contributed a major advancement in one field might be subnormal in all other areas of endeavor.
How could that be? One answer is the lack of what educators call “critical thinking”. How does that differ from just thinking ? Thinking must be taught?
Well maybe it does just a bit.
Requiring study of symbolic logic could prevent the mass-mind disasters that seem to be increasing in both number and absurdity. Passing a logic exam was required for an advanced philosophy degree when I last checked. Why isn’t it required in every field?
Will Medicare pay for benzo prescriptions? I don’t think so. Okay they’re not out-of-sight expensive as antipsychotics.
You have the right to know the possible consequences and take the risk.
As I shook and violently quaked in front of him, my doctor said: “The only problem that you could have is difficulty in sleeping for three days.” This is not simple lack of informed consent; it is a lie.
Sometimes anxiety is assumed to be hereditary only because it may occur in several members of the same family. That’s a weak assumption. Haven’t we seen attitudes enforced in families. “We’re an XYZ sort of family” indicates that a characteristic is enforced.
I remember way back when. In class we saw family members “catching schizophrenia ” from one member. Learned behavior is the fashionable cause today. Could anxiety be learned? Yep!
Another question: Where are these studies that we hear about? An opinion is not a study. Review of hospital records is more hearsay than study. Where are the elements of a study either double blind or clinical trial? Dr. X made a study 30 years ago? Where is it? We see its shadow as in mentioning it, but where is the evidence that it ever existed? This is too common today especially when speaking of psychiatric drug problems.
Show us the actual studies if they exist.
Three years ago, I contacted Roche, an office in the USA. I spoke to one of their pharmacists about Diazepam. She was unaware of any adverse outcomes in using Benzodiazepines. She had no discontinuation advice.
A European Roche office had institutions for coming off of their Klonopin ( clonazepam). This was” reduce the dosage by 0.25mgs every three days”. When asked about the success of this plan, he said that they do not follow up or record results. ( Do NOT do this!) I am in contact with people who did!
What led me to contact Roche was the claim, at BenzoBuddies, that Brand name Valium was no longer manufactured. I contacted the manufacturer, directly, The claim was false.
My take away: always vet a statement with primary-sourced information. Both Medical providers as well as benzo-sites make incorrect statements. A non-primary source is a report about a report and a primary source is the original scientific work. Benzo-sites too often publish hearsay, non-primary-sourced material.
The most important question: “And why should I believe that?” “Because someone important said it” is not an answer. We require substantiation and not reputation.
Thanks for reading this, I feel better now.
How many people recover via use of Taper strips? Where do we find the data? From examining the reality of predetermined decrements, I expect that no one has recovered from psychoactive drug dependence through use of ANY taper strip. These strips are about as useful as pill-splitting. They lock the patient into an assumed rate. Humans are so biologically different from one another that those “standard” sized reductions are not relevant. Where is the science? What are the results? Who came up with this idea anyway?
Does anyone know who the manufacturer is?
About “high level of education”: what we usually are talking about is many years studying a single subject. Overarching and broad education are easily missing from the resume’ of the PhD. So maybe we shouldn’t say that Peterson should have known better. Did his education include formal logic or the hard sciences? His degrees do not require either of these; do they?
“Another missed opportunity was Peterson not elaborating that his later problems where caused because he kept taking more deadly illness causing drugs to address the effects of the current deadly drugs he was addicted to”
YES!!! You nailed it!
An advanced degree in psychology is indicated by Psychology. PhD for those working in research and Psy-D for those working in therapy. Which one Peterson is is not indicated. Maybe the designations are different in Canada.
He does pontificate a lot.
I agree with you, LUH17. You Tube responders rarely comprehend the obvious difference between addiction and iatrogenic-caused physical dependence. The error is common, but by this time, three is no excuse for that ignorance. It plays right into the game of pop-docs on TV and sensationalist writing in the media. I, too, have stopped correcting people.
As for hostility toward Peterson, well he is a hostile person who erred “big time”. Most responses will be seen as hostile in that context. Maybe it would help to differentiate between responses to Peterson as a person and Peterson’s clear ignorance of the subject of Benzo-Withdrawal Illness. He attributed some of his physiological reactions to “food sensitivities” and without offering evidence. The thinking is without scientific process.
The last time I read anything about Peterson or his daughter, he was still taking an anti-seizure medication. Those of us who have gone through the Benzo-ringer, complete with medical mythology, remember that this class of drugs functions to mask Benzo-withdrawal syndrome. These drugs do not reverse benzo-dependence. Use of these drugs has masked many out of reason Benzo tapers. When the taper is “completed”, then the anti-seizure meds are also tapered. Symptoms of benzo withdrawal emerge quickly. The conclusion usually is a new dependence or Anti-seizure drug withdrawal. I strongly suspect that Peterson, too, will conflate the uncovering of a drug-masked Benzo- Syndrome as a withdrawal from the anti-seizure medication.
We could be sympathetic to Peterson’s suffering while concurrently acknowledging his Benzo ignorance and lack of scientific thinking. Yes, many of us know how badly the Benzo-Victim suffers. We are sorry for his suffering. We don’t have to agree that he responded intelligently.
It does appear that Peterson, at each treatment failure, sought a cure through taking another drug. He is a psychologist, though. I don’t expect him to have had professional judgement concerning drugs or their discontinuation.
On another point, someone mentioned a video about a man trying to help his wife through her Benz o-withdrawal. This might refer to the case of Cheryl Knight whose crucible-like journey is was interspersed through the Gary Null documentary, Death by Medicine. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mB7KjbpzVQ) The work is about 13 years old.
The documentary has been called too political, and it may be outdated. However, the parts of the video taping Cheryl’s ordeal are real. I personally have witnessed her continued damage and loss of life.
Over the time that I was present, she never did “continue to recover” as the documentary claimed. Cheryl is brain damaged by improper withdrawal instruction. She was denied the chance to discontinue the benzo when her doctor insisted that he was an expert. He was not. He “tapered” 10.0mgs Valium per month in large decrements, a feat that we know to be impossible. She was then forced into a facility because her withdrawal was taken as “Mental Illness”. Notice that her symptoms were physical and not mental.
This is why the case is one of miscarriage of justice as well as medical malpractice. At 13 years post incident, legal remedy for medical malpractice is barred. Medicine remains unable to mitigate the damage. Benzo-use, as prescribed, may be dangerous, but improper withdrawal is far worse.
The often stated claim that a 10% reduction, in any psychoactive medication is established, is false. This has been repeated enough to be believed. I have searched for any valid scientific study that establishes this belief. Yes, both medical people as well as some possibly well-intentioned peer to peer website personalities do repeat the claim. So what? We require valid studies, and these are lacking.
The fact that medicine is misinformed does not imply that a well-known website owner is knowledgeable.
Be wary especially of spreadsheets based on any percents .