Mmmm. If holding a cellphone to your ear for long periods (thermal EMF) has been connected to brain cancers . . . . then. . .
I have learned with my husband, who has had stroke, to take headaches very seriously.
I believe that the headaches after the COVID shot were vascular, and honestly they scared the heck out of me, knowing he’d had stroke before, and it presented as headache.
Likewise, if you are getting headaches, it may be a symptom of neurological damage.
Orthomolecular = think Linus Pauling and Abram Hoffer. There’s a practitioner here who is frequently posting about niacin for connecting with reality.
JAMES: what you say here: ” It took all this pain and suffering to get my eyes wide enough to see what was really happening. And, now that they are open i can see how difficult it is for others to get onboard, you literally have to fight every Dr. or other professional you see just about. I have to tell my Dr. what is what, piss him off, and be prepared to walk out ever time I see one. This is not something anyone wants to do, and yet is completely necessary to avoid death and injury.”
OMG this is so true. Why do I feel such intense fear when I have to go to a new doc? Why do I dread the docs I already know? It’s this diligence, this due diligence, to protect your body from them.
For a profession that claims to be about “healing,” it is anything but.
MRI with contrast – I am hearing reports that the contrast does not go away, and that it is found by techs in future MRI’s, but they cannot report it, because – well, it’s their job.
Again – it’s not all one Plant.
Sativa is more manic, creative. Indica is more sedating, relaxing.
Putting all the ranges under the category “Marijuana” (which is an epithet designed to excoriate Mexicans in the US – the correct term is cannabis.) is incorrect.
Respect the Plants. Yes, they can hurt you. Yes, they can help you. Respect them.
Getting the right prescription is important! Sadly, many people are isolated from this Plant Medicine by legal concerns (so they use street) – and there are a lot of cowboys prescribing. The Author was using medical plant prescribed for another person. And street. There are many many combinations of THC – CBD – CBN – A & B. I recently got my medical card, and it’s not as simple as 1+1=2. It’s what strain works for you (100’s of variations here), what form you take (I prefer making oils and edibles for my condition) and how much you use. Even with a prescriber, there is a lot of tweaking involved.
It’s not for everyone. Respect the Plants, they have Power. This goes for tobacco and psychedelics, too – if you Honour the Plant, it is more likely to be an ally. Too many people Abuse the Plant, and the story above is a classic example of addiction rather than mindful use. And – it is difficult to teach this to teenagers, who are experimenting with identity and consciousness.
I’ll stop listening to Tucker Carlson when someone else takes up the baton and discusses these evil drugs. Right now, he’s the only MSM talking about it.
I posted the Tucker Carlson link to my page at Surviving Antidepressants, and got messages telling me I had done a bad thing, that Tucker Carlson is SO HATED by 50% of Americans, that even if the message was good, I shouldn’t have posted it. I did a bad thing – our society is so striated and divided, that people can’t even hear as message if it comes from the “wrong” side. Hmph.
I’ve just been reading the excellent series by Danielle Egan here about DBS – brain implants with a “pacemaker” to constantly shock the brain. One step beyond TMS.
Anyhow, in my research, I believe I found the trial you are speaking of. I was talking to a friend about DBS & TMS, and she said that her local clinic did TMS. So I looked up the clinic: https://www.toowongclinic.com.au/clinical-research-tms
And found that – well, they do TMS – on an experimental basis.
I’m about to read the MIA 2019 article by Andrew Scull about DBS & depression – it seems that the DBS experiments didn’t stop in 2015 with Broaden – they’ve continued under other auspices.
I swear, they won’t be happy until all the brain cells are destroyed.
The very term “treatment resistant depression” usually means: Drug didn’t work and made things worse and more intractable. So the people considered for the study are ones who have already been damaged by multiple drugs.
When you consider that there are so many natural methods of stimulating the vagus nerve, invasion by surgery seems excessive. Singing is the best, vibrates the entire vagus nerve from head to root. Walking is another. Acupuncture. Breathing techniques. So many non-invasive ways of stimulating the vagus nerve without surgery. There are tales of natural Vagal Nerve toning here: https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/topic/3173-vagus-nerve-stimulation/
It’s used to activate other drugs. Gabapentin by itself, not so much. Gabapentin + opiate of choice packs a punch.
Linda, I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t begin to fathom your anger and frustration at what was done to your son.
Here in Australia – as is likely in the USA – gabapentin and pregabalin are considered “safe alternatives” to opiates. Handed out like candy, along with the amitryptaline and Cymbalta.
Because they are cracking down on opiates so hard here (when the OD’s are from street drugs, not prescriptions, here in Australia), docs will prescribe anything BUT what a pain patient really needs.
We hear tales of gabapentin as a street drug in the UK, as an enhancer to other street drugs. Exactly what happened to your son – the combination.
Where I am (I do not receive a disability pension) it is to my benefit to leave that bipolar mess in my chart.
It gives me the excuse to refuse drugs – “They’ll make me manic!” “They’ll make me depressed!” “Not good for my brain!”
So far it’s working, but as we learned with COVID the medical industrial complex can turn on a dime.
Hey LivingPast27, you kinda described a piece of the problem – and that’s the “specialisation.” My GP gets mad when my natural doctor (also an MD) finds something, GP throws a tanty and says, “Well let HIM manage that, then.”
This specialist for pain, that specialist for my throat, another specialist for my rectum, another specialist for endocrine, yet another for diet, and a physiotherapist or exercise physiologist to manage movement. . . . and on and on and on.
I’d love to have one practitioner that looked at me as a whole, instead of just a mouth, a rectum, a skin problem, or a digestive problem. . . .
And no. I don’t trust any of them with my mood. That’s my business, I have a toolkit for that which is superior to anything an MD or specialist could offer.
I was taught this word on Surviving Antidepressants from a veteran there;
There is something to this: my mood is not the business of my medical doctors.
My mood is not their wheelhouse. They can deal with bloods and heart & lungs & bowel & even brain – but my mood is none of their business.
Someone here said boycott is the start of power, here. I agree. But – when so many people are buying into the dominant narrative, we need PSA’s to educate, to counter the billions spent by pharma on their belief that “doctor can fix this.”
I wish to alert the Americans in the audience that 33 out of 200 hospitals are reporting confidential information to Meta (Facebook) and information about appointments, diagnoses, etc. is “out there” and available to all who want to look for it.
Please, friends, take the best care with your privacy that you can. I’m sorry, I don’t have sources at my fingertips, but if you lookup “Hospital Privacy Meta Facebook” you should find it.
You don’t want your private information to be so widely accessible, as Boans story attests!
Or at least call them by their street names.
“Let’s give these kids speed.”
Don’t worry, they will soon have a gene therapy to correct those poor distressed toddler’s mood. They can do this in the womb to make sure women give birth to a healthy, well-adjusted, genetically modified toddler.
In “The Matrix,” it was found that humans didn’t thrive if they were given a perfect world, though. They needed regular stressors to ensure their fulfillment.
Ah, Steve. I’m here in Australia wishing that laudanum were an option in today’s world. It would be so much more gentle than the options we are given, like Lyrica or Seroquel – or for those of us in chronic pain = Cymbalta or Amitryptaline.
My great great grandfather was a doctor who created his own patent medicines. While I’m sure there was a lot of snake oil around before regulation – I’m also sure that so many of these “patent medicines” were far less harmful than today’s drugs.
Where is the Like button @Patrick Hahn!? This is an A+ comment
Billions of dollars – and who HAS been helped?
…and the bugbear (don’t talk about the war!) of parenting disabilities.
It’s hard for a kid to get his/her parent’s attention these days.
And that attention is essential for “treating” “ADHD.”
I like that they did parental interventions first, but still – the charts show that 66% are still drugged at 3 years, and 73% at 6 years. Egads. So this increase is interesting to me – I can see frustrated parents throwing their hands in the air, “just give him/her the drugs!”
Bob cannot comment, every person is an individual. “Thriving” is a relative term, and does not address the long term effects of the drugs.
Bob’s research shows that long term use of stimulants for ADHD has a number of flow-on effects.
In adolescence, they are more likely to “flip” to a bipolar diag-nonsense (caused by the drugs). This results in prescription cascade (antidepressants, “mood stabilisers,” and often “antipsychotics,” too, and the individual has difficulty processing the maturity needed for adulthood. All of these are harmful to the child’s brain & emotional development – as well as harmful to metabolism, cardiac, endocrine, and other systems. (for example a child put on an antidepressant at an early age may never find out what a “normal sex life” feels like.)
Additionally, they become accustomed to adjusting how they “feel” with a pill, leading to addictions. Ritalin is the true gateway drug.
Additionally, long term use of stimulants affects the metabolism and growth of the child (depends on age started, certainly – again, everyone is different)
This is on the aggregate, not individual basis. A child on Ritalin (or other stimulants) is **more likely** to have these problems than a child who is not.
You don’t indicate your relationship to this child, if I were the parent, I would endeavor to do what the child needed (home school? athletic endeavors? emotional regulation?) to avoid the drugs. But if you are writing as a teacher, there is nothing you can do except watch.
Anna_N
The Icarus Harm Reduction Guide
and
Surviving Antidepressants.org
Recommend tapers by 10% of PREVIOUS dose, at monthly intervals (no less than 3 weeks – the time it takes for neurotransmitters to adjust to new dose. A month is better, it gives you a week buffer). So you are tapering more quickly than we would recommend.
THis 10% method – works like this. at 200 mg, you taper 20 mg to 180 mg. YOur next taper is 18 mg. We use scales and other methods to achieve preceise dosing, which is very important for stability.
Follow your symptoms. Which ones are improving as your dose comes down? How are you sleeping? How are you doing with self-care? (that’s the most important part).
There are not tapering strips in most of the world. On Surviving Antidepressants (SA), we have methods to achieve precise doses. And are unlikely to “jump off” until the dose is very very very small (like 1-3 mg for carbamazapine – or even less!).
There are many of us on SA who have been on for decades, and come off successfully.
Congratulations on stepping away from the neurotoxins!
I remember being part of the drug trials for olanzapine for Lilly’s Zyprexa.
In Phase III trials, they were looking at liver enzymes & other measures of interaction with my “mood stabiliser,” Depakote.
For Phase III trials, I was inpatient for a week (while taking the drug for 8 weeks). They measured me constantly, 24/7. If anything went wrong, I was in a university hospital, and would be looked after. If anything went wrong prior to the inpatient trial, I was a phone call away from support.
While I do not know the protocols of the study I was paid to participate in, and whether they hold up to Robert Whitaker’s (and other scholarly) scrutiny – I do know that I was supported through the trial. (turns out, I was on the placebo arm, thank the gods).
However, in this global Phase III trial of the mRNA, I have no such support. I have no recourse if anything goes wrong, and in fact, if anything goes wrong, I will be gaslighted and called “misinformed” or “tinfoil hat” or “antivax.”
Very similar if I went to a psychiatrist and complained of drug effects. “It’s just your ‘depression’ ‘bipolar’ whatever.”
Gaslighting. Coming to a marketing plan near you.
I notice that the words “safe and effective” are used in the above article (and RW’s comment) 10 times.
I have learned not to trust the words “safe and effective,” which I hear altogether too often on other issues.
..and this doesn’t even address the anger I feel at “forced treatment.”
Let the camel’s nose in the tent, surely there will not be other mandates for “treatment.”
For comparison, NNT for antidepressants is something like 20, and that is considered inefficient.
It surprises me to no end, that we as psychiatric survivors who KNOW how corrupt and lying the pharmaceutical companies are – how can we ever trust them again?
The mandates that Richard speaks so highly of – are of a product which is leaky and short acting, at best, and provides temporary benefit which expires after about 6-8 months.
If I refuse to take a drug to alter my mood, why would I consent to regular shots at the behest of a government “health policy” which may be driving the variants and creating more problems than it is solving.
Additionally, my dealings with pharmaceutical products have led me to look for LONG TERM consequences, of which nobody is talking about. What are the results after 3 years? 5 years? 10?
One of the things that Gotzsche taught me to look at is NNT. Number Needed to Treat. I believe it was Robert Malone who pointed out to me that the NNT to prevent ONE case of Covid is something like 240 people. This is inefficient at best.
We learned not to listen to the diag-nonsense, and apparently the PCR test is another form of diag-nonsense.
We, as survivors, learned to NOT trust the products coming off the assembly lines at pharmaceutical companies, how is this product any different?
Well, it’s different in that they are pushing it, cajoling, even punishing those who don’t wish to participate in this experiment. They are forcing employers to mandate it, even if there aren’t government mandates (which is the case here in Australia). If it were so good, wouldn’t the goodness of the product be enough without mandates or facing potential lost jobs, etc.?
It stuns me that anyone who has survived neuroleptics, benzos and “antidespressants” could accept anything Pharma says at face value.
I will answer you in the form of questions.
Do the drugs in question only reside in the brain?
Do you know what it does to your digestive system? (hint: 85-90% of body’s serotonin resides in gut)
Do you know what it does to your liver? Kidneys? Adrenals?
Do you know about the cardiac effects of these drugs?
Do you know about the endocrine effects of these drugs?
Do you know about the drugs’ effects on the nervous/muscular system? (dystonias & dyskinesias?)
Have you ever tried to come off of the drugs, and experienced withdrawals?
Have you had any sexual side effects? (these can be crippling)
Have you been on the drugs longer than 5-10 years? Have you had any mysterious “other” ailments crop up after 5 years on the drugs? (commonly, fibromyalgia, IBS, impotence, arrhythmias, muscle pain & spasms, insomnia, restless legs, tremors, chronic fatigue, autoimmune problems, but these are only the common ones – there are many, many more)
These drugs are not meant for the long term, but the way the drugs work make it extremely hard to come off of them. Extremely hard for a “short course,” because once you’ve been on them for 3 weeks, your body has adjusted to them.
Disease? Like there’s a blood test for this? Or maybe an MRI image? Perhaps there’s some other lab assay for this “disease” that I’m unaware of?
These horrific symptoms are caused by distress, not disease. OFTEN, these horrific symptoms are caused by the very medications that you seem to claim relieve the “disease.”
In my clinical experience in removing people from the drugs, I find that symptoms are often better after the drugs are gone. Symptoms improve remarkably if the individual can take self responsibility for their own mood and well being (that’s the hard one).
Like @Linda Comac above said, “plain as the nose on your face,” and “mental health professionals don’t seem to see the nose.”
That would be you.
I do agree that people in distress lack cognitive freedom, but that is often from the pressure to “do something,” from family, friends, professionals. The freedom would be to choose how to treat, not to always submit to chemical solutions. But the dominant narrative – what you subscribe to – says, “shut up and take your pills” is the only solution. Simply NOT TRUE.
I also agree that many clients want to be “fixed,” and are unwilling to do the work it takes to correct the problem – and drugs are a cheap and easy way to offer something, when someone is unable to leave a job, a relationship, quit a harmful pattern.
I’m all for stopping the “gatekeeping” of drugs, especially as people are able to research and be better informed than even 10 or 20 years ago.
However, to put antidepressants (and anxiolytics and neuroleptics) on the shelf for people to try or not try is like placing bombs for sale at your local hardware store.
Some people have horrible reactions after just one pill. Katinka Blackford Newman, “THe Pill That Steals” is just one example, but I’ve seen several on SA, who said, “I just took 3 days worth, and now I’m screwed.”
These drugs are unsafe, should be banned, and let people smoke cannabis or microdose or some other, safer option.
That said, I do agree with you about the harms of labels. I am fortunate, and able to use that to my benefit: “I’m bipolar, you can’t give me that drug, it will set me off.” I’ve used this to refuse Lyrica, amitryptaline – all those helpful “pain” drugs.
But there are many many people who cannot get health care – their health scares are “all in their head” because of that diag-nonsense label. It can affect work, medical, privacy issues – even confrontations with law enforcement can be sullied by that effing label.
Actually, had a mate who, when COVID hit, his prescription ran out. He thought: “I’m fine, I can go without this,” so he quit CT.
Now, 18 months later, he’s asking me, “when will the suffering be over?”
I wish I had something good to tell him, because once you destabilise, the experience becomes very individual.
What people do not consider is the long term effects of being drugged.
I don’t “feel” anything is being damaged, and yet, my kidneys and liver don’t work as well as they used to.
These drugs affect the entire body – digestion, cardiovascular, endocrine, muscular, more. The whole body – not just the brain.
Over time (in my experience, about 3-5 years) you start to develop mysterious illnesses. Maybe it looks like an autoimmune disorder; maybe it looks like IBS; maybe it’s restless legs, or sexual dysfunction; maybe it shows up as chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia.
These drugs affect far more than mood (or brain).
There are millions of things you can do for depression.
The hard part is that it’s challeinging to “do something” when depressed.
My depressions (and I’ve heard from others with similar experience) are about my body trying to shut me down because I’ve made choices in my life that go against my true being (psyche). When I shut down in depression, everything falls away, and the only things I pick up are the things I can.
Depression is about winnowing away the unnecessary “do” and “stuff” and “relationships” in life. It’s a warning to be heeded.
So – while waiting, you may nap a lot. Maybe you will indulge in some binge watching, or play video games. Maybe you will walk in the sun, go swimming, ride your bike, change your diet (do not underestimate the ability of gluten, processed foods, etc., to damage your mood), maybe take up yoga or exercise of some sort. Maybe you will, as Richard suggests – talk to someone. Maybe it will be a professional, or a religious person, or just a beloved friend or family member. Maybe you will be understood, maybe you won’t. Maybe you will write about it instead, or make art, or music or dance to express it.
There are as many ways out of depression as there are ways in. To say that a pill is the ONLY answer is extremely limiting.
“Trying” a drug is not so simple. If you try it for 3 days, and have a horrible experience, you can walk away, but if you “try” it for 3 weeks or more, then you are faced with having your neurotransmitters altered, homeostatis getting involved – and the long difficult haul of trying to get off of the drug.
You don’t “try” something that requires tapering unless you are sure. Or desperate. Or uninformed. Or misinformed.
I remember when I first accepted diag-nonsense. And “medication for life” and “broken brain” and “chemical imbalance” and “I was made this way” nonsense.
And for my “recovery” Rule #1 was: take meds (drugs) as prescribed.
(Rule #2 was “don’t get caught” in the hospital system, and #3 & 4 were about eating & sleeping)
It wasn’t until I broke Rule #1, though, that I got better.
OK. Let me count the ways.
Antidepressants, neuroleptics, anxiolytics, statins, PPI’s, fluroquinolone in antibiotics, and what the heck – opiates (though these are actually the safest of the bunch).
The words “safe and effective,” we survivors have heard them many times before.
It has been brought to my attention that there is a thing called “Havana Syndrome” inflicted upon US diplomats (and CIA assets) in Cuba, China, and now in Washington DC.
The symptoms are intensely familiar to those of us who have heard the complaints about TMS.
I’ve been thinking about Havana Syndrome in the context of TMS & ECT, and thinking about – how easy it is to weaponise these things. We all know that microwaves & EMF are not great for the brain & body tissue. It’s easy to make a thing to destroy something. Just blast it.
How much harder then, is it to target a thing like this for healing? Like Sam says, this machinery doesn’t only affect a specific target. There would be collateral damage. EVEN if you aimed to excite vs. inhibit, or this or that part of the brain. It’s not brain surgery, and even brain surgery is not entirely precise – there is usually collateral damage.
Yes, but attorneys won’t take the case if there is no win.
Doctors have a shield called “Standard of Care,” which on the ground (and in the courts) looks like, “But this is what all the Doctors do,” and if the treatment complies with Standard of Care (they usually do), it is not an actionable lawsuit.
Proving Psych damage – whether drugs or otherwise – is extremely difficult. The victim of the “treatments” also has a diag-nonsense to invalidate their claims, and the doctors can claim rebound and relapse and progression of illness. It’s a hard case to get heard, much less win. The best successes have been in class action, where story after story after story of the same horrific symptoms / results get heard better.
So the next legal question: who wants to pursue a TMS Class Action? That’s not your usual “no fee up front” ambulance chaser.
Someone who wants to work with the law might want to look at how to change “Standard of Care” as a defense.
I have to add, that if mag citrate gives someone the runs, I recommend using Mag Glycinate or Mag Taurate, which does not have this side effect unless you take heaps of it.
I am also a strong proponent of magnesium baths – either epsom salts or mag chloride flakes. 2 cups to a bath, awesome attitude adjustment, very relaxing and soothing. I am due for one today. No bowel effects at all from soaking in it!
I’m reminded of people who are trying to quit alcohol. The number of people in AA meetings who are on neuroleptics and antidepressants – and AA actually encourages this – is quite shocking.
Here, you want to quit this drug? Here’s another one.
It’s a toxic mindset that “taking a drug helps” and learning to manage your own mood and problems is irrelevant.
This is what distinguishes SA from other peer sites.
We try and base our protocols on 2 things:
1. experience
2. science (as much as possible – since the medical/pharma industry science refuses to look at what we are suffering from).
So – much of SA protocols are based on upregulation time in neurotransmitters as wll as occupation site curves of the drug on those neurotransmitters. This is science. A broken leg takes 6 weeks to heal. Stay off it. (so is your neurotransmitter system, there is a shift in neurotransmitters every 3 weeks, it’s biologically based.)
By comparison, many other peer sites devolve into shouting matches based on opinion – some of the opinions are more educated/learned/experienced than others, but the person receiving the advice does not know who is who.
Actually, the expertise is there, but the manpower is not.
Benzo withdrawal is an especially needy group, requiring close and careful attention, and SA usually only has 1-2 moderators who are versed in it.
It’s a shame that Benzo Buddies is a Wild West site where every Joe, Jane and Johnny have an opinion about how to approach a benzo taper – when people overwhelm our person-power at SA, and require more social support, this is where we send them. Benzo Buddies does have great social support.
Your standard upper middle class person is unlikely to do a global book tour. His bestseller, 12 Rules, has sold 5 million copies worldwide.
He’s comfortable enough to check into Russia to be put into a coma, and comfortable enough to go to Serbia when that doesn’t work out.
I don’t know many people in withdrawal who have these kinds of opportunities.
I’ve been meditating on what I’ve said about “nothing to be done, here.”
And I realise I may have misspoken (and I owe a friend an apology) – that I personally do not have the fire in me to pin Dr. Peterson against a wall and blame him for all of the pain and suffering we have experienced in the name of psychiatry.
I also know that the methods he chose – were chosen so that he could continue to work. Good on him, that he came out of this with the ability to work.
But my experience with Surviving Antidepressants tells me that if he continues “business as usual,” that he is in for yet a greater break/breakdown. Not that I would wish it upon him, but perhaps this is what is needed for him to realise – so many things about psychiatry, psychiatric drugs, diagnonsense and “treatments.”
“Privilege.”
I’ve been thinking about this one.
If perhaps, he was not so privileged he would have been forced to do the withdrawal the way the rest of us have – the hard way, experiencing discomforts, distresses, neuro-emotions, akathisia, sleep disturbances, the whole gamut.
@kindredspirit – I was talking with an old friend about how when we were children, we learned tooth and claw, manipulation, how to “fight” our way to get what we wanted from our environment.
Nobody spoke to us about the values of sweetness and kindness (sure, we heard the old chestnut about “honey instead of vinegar” but it didn’t play out in the environment.)
Now I find I am attracted to sweet and kind people – and yet these same qualities have been so difficult to develop in my own self.
He has spoken about Practice. And Clients.
I don’t know where the Practice ends, and the Acadamia begins – but he has worked in prisons and on reservations, in schools and privately.
We fell from the Garden of Eden, Mate.
G-d didn’t want us to be like him, so They gave us Original Sin, instead.
And that is the consumption of thought.
(just a theory)
@Diaphenous – this is so clear.
Thinking vs. Feeling.
I was just thinking today, as I was writing to a friend I knew from the 6th grade. We were both “smart kids” but outcast kids, too. So we related well to one another. We took pride in being “smart kids.”
Well in my letter to her, I thought: I no longer care if I am “smart,” I care that I am “kind.” It seems to work better.
And in my “arguments” with friends over politics, I shocked them when I said, “You know, this stuff doesn’t really matter. All that matters is what I can do with myself, my environment, and make my path a little clearer, hopefully help people and planet along the way.” As I think about this in retrospect, I was musing, “It’s *fun* to think about these politics and power plays and things, but that’s just a thinking exercise. My heart tells me it’s not really relevant.”
Does this echo what you are expressing?
Give the guy a break. It’s easy to armchair quarterback on someone else’s journey.
Here is a man who – subscribed to mainstream beliefs and views about the drugs and psychiatry, and who is – and always has been – eager to use diag-nonsense and adhere to the DSM.
So – when faced with his own depression, he submitted to the DSM / psychiatry / and the drugs.
I’ve been following his benzo debacle with intensity, like other readers here, commenting on YT about his use of SSRI’s. This is the first I heard that:
HE COLD TURKEY’ed OFF OF CELEXA in 2016!!!! OMFG, that’s the start of the benzo disaster, not 3 years later when it went “paradoxical.”
But – if you watch his videos, he sincerely believes that he is being vulnerable with us in sharing his story. Sadly, he used drugs to get off of drugs – so his story is not as inspiring as it could be. But he is trying, and making the best use of a really bad experience.
I would love to see him shake his beliefs even deeper than DSM, as the writer of this article implies. He has adjusted his perspective many times during his career – though, it seems (again, as Jon Sedarati implies) that he is locking down his beliefs in psychiatry & the DSM – after all – he used to be reliant upon these twisted tools for his income.
Of course, now he is rich and famous – and doesn’t need the DSM for billing purposes. I hope and pray he can let it go, but I’m not holding my breath. But he, too, is a human, and his response to his extreme states is in alignment with where he has come from.
Shocking. And not a word in the article about the drugs this person has been on – likely for decades – that may have *caused* the severe syndrome to begin with. (I have no proof, but if dystonia is an issue with these drugs – and it is – then other nerve and muscular syndromes may be, too).
They said chief cause of early deaths in “mental ill” population is due to stigma. Harumph. Again, not a peep about the debilitating drugs.
How long, do you reckon, until we see “conspiracy disorder” in the DSM?
Yah, Marianne Demasi got canned for her Statin presentation. She was very critical of Pharma, and excoriated for it. It was like “strike three” they had warned her after they pulled the Antidepressant story. I thought I had links to vid copies of these pulled stories, but cannot put my hands on them at the mo. Demasi tweets regularly – mostly about statins.
There is a growing “anti-drug” movement in doctors, as “bro-science” is starting to filter back up to mainstream, and keto, low carb, paleo, bio-hacking style solutions are making it clear that most of the drugs do more harm than good.
(Nice to meet you Mik, I’m a Yank, now Australian in Brissy)
Nice post, @oldhead – drawing the line between:
psychiatry as social control
corporate desire and power for social control, and the
media as the arm of this corporate desire.
@Jill while brain inflammation can be caused by a number of factors – toxic use of herbicides, pesticides and industrial waste, poor (SAD) diet, sedentary practices, poor sleep hygiene, and recreational drug use –
Your bio bio bio explanation completely overlooks the trauma that I have seen consistently in every “delusional” person I’ve known.
Why hasn’t this “brain inflammation” showed up in the multitude of MRI studies that psychiatrists have run in order to “prove” the bio basis of “schizophrenia”?
Inflammation – systemic and specific – is a cause of a multitude of problems. Heart disease, even cancers, and the many degnerative and autoimmune disorders. The more I learn about carbs and carb restriction, a lot of the inflammation can be reduced via diet and exercise, and even prevent neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimers, and even MS. (Ref: Dr. Nadir Ali).
But this overlooks the role of trauma on the mind, and how it causes adaptive and maladaptive states and behaviours which make it a challenge for these people in emergency to cope in modern society. And a bio bio bio explanation just tells them they are broken. When someone is in a state of emergency, it is difficult to tell them to “cut carbs” or go on an autoimmune or GAPS diet to reduce inflammation. (so much easier to get out the prescription pad, which just aggravates inflammation, if that is indeed a factor.)
At this time, they need to be kept safe and listened to, and trusted, and believed, in order to build a bridge between the inner state and the outer one.
I look at this – and it may be true. Maybe someone can prove it or disprove it.
But the bottom line for me is this: it doesn’t matter where it came from, it is here.
And I am not inclined to trust the people involved in the capitalist development of the “solution” to a problem they may or may not have created.
Removed for moderation.
Removed for moderation.
Steve, I like this. “Scientism.” The Belief or Religion of Science.
And to disagree – puts you in the realm of “conspiracy theory” or “fringe” or even “fake news…..”
Mmm. “Survival of the fittest” is kind of an economic monster which has been thrown onto evolution.
New work is coming out that shows “survival of the cooperative” is stronger than “survival of the fittest.”
That those who join together in solidarity and mutual support are what creates the next rung of evolution. This fits well with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, that as we develop past Survival needs (tooth and claw) and into Social (families, communities), that is where the rubber meets the road.
Hey Richard –
Even if you don’t look at where it came from, it is here now, and it is killing people. In the nursing home where my mother is, 30 of the 200 residents have died. Were they all COVID? Or complications with the illnesses and challenges which put them in the nursing home to begin with? How does this number compare to “normal” nursing home deaths in this facility? We don’t get these numbers.
But Fauci? Isn’t it strange that he has conflict of interest that he is not informing the public about. He has had stock, investment, and research time invested in developing an mRNA vaccine at least 10 years prior to now. Everyone wonders how they produced this vaccine so quickly? Well, it was already in development before this COVID thing hit. And Fauci owns stock in it (as well as research and other investment in it). Is it any wonder that he wants us all to take it? That the WHOLE WORLD will be taking this vaccine which he has financial and substantial interest in?
People stand to profit immensely from this vaccine gig, Fauci chief among them. You rail against capitalism, and yet stand by the lies that we are being told.
And like with any drug trial, these vaccines have only been trialled for 6 week periods – we will not see the long term effects of an mRNA vaccine until much further down the line. If you think about the “safe and effective” psych drugs we’ve been inflicted with, how can we trust something as universal as this vaccine?
Add to it the totalitarian “vaccine passport” which is coming. Here in Australia we might be refused entry to certain venues if we cannot prove we are vaccinated. We might even need vaccine passports to cross state borders in the near future. As it is, our state borders are frequently close to people from “hot spots.” They aren’t talking about the “vaccine passports” yet, but it will effectively separate Australians into two classes: the vaccinated, and the non-vaccinated. And the former group will have the rights of a free society, while the others? We’ll see.
It is dystopian, and the capitalist profits will be feeding the fat cats at the top, while we take the risks of injecting this vaccine into our bodies – making permanent changes to our RNA (not our DNA, we are assured) so that our bodies are more likely to reject coronaviruses.
But that’s okay, take the vaccine, feel safe, trust the mainstream science that got us into this mess. I find it difficult to rail against psych drugs but then – out of the other side of my mouth – to praise the “science” that brought them to us, which is being used to roll out other “cures” and “solutions.”
Too hard to keep the website updated for current events.
And high school daze? I don’t think so! That’s “personal information.”
However, articles about space and science and art and music, sure, they can determine a lot from how I use keystrokes and everything. . . but that’s where I draw the line.
“mostly about egotism and social posturing.”
That may be the case. I am often shocked at how many people put their children on there.
I have to use it in order to run events. No other platform reached the people I need to reach.
As for my personal posts, none of them are personal, political or religious. Mostly I post funny things, or useful interesting articles.
Apparently my friends do read what I post, so I post judiciously, and ask that nobody put my face or tag me on FB.
I tried to get out of it, but then found that I could not get my events announced any other way.
Yes, truth. But this human skill is not nearly as refined as our other, more “concrete” senses.
I hear what you are saying, that to you – this is a concrete.
But that person who “reads my mind” – still does not have my perspective. And perspective is a vital part of mind.
It is what makes mind subjective.
When I have a broken finger, or a cut on my hand, there is something objective that other people can perceive. I can go to a doctor to get it fixed.
When I have a disruption of mind, only I can see it. It is subjective, and it is not something which I do not want anyone outside of myself to tamper with. I can talk about it, I can tell someone, but only *I* can perceive what is in my mind. It is subjective. Personal. Not subject to “consensus reality.”
My mind is certainly real. But it is only within my perceptions, consciousness, attention, and awareness. I don’t think humans have fully developed the capacity to engage telepathically and therefore perceive accurately what is in another’s mind.
Therefore what we call “mind” is a metaphor for this direct but subjective human experience.
Is this what you mean, Oldhead?
Nice work Bojana!
It is sad to see the state of psychiatry in so many different countries. It really is a cult.
I encourage you to think beyond your diag-nonsense. You are NOT a “Bipolar” whatever that means, you are a human who has been through certain experiences which have affected your presentation to society.
As you walk the path to clarity, you have seen that “experts” know little or nothing about your internal life (mind, emotions, etc.) – and you will find that you have the power to change your own behaviour, your own response to your feelings and thoughts. In fact, only you have this power.
“Liberal / Progressive” is generally pro drugging.
After all, these “poor people are suffering and need MEDICAL ATTENTION.”
Don’t expect more from liberal / progressive. Liberal / Progressives know what is best for you.
evanhaar – I’ve been watching the excellent BBC series “Good Omens,” written quite tongue in cheek by Terry Pratchett (RIP) and Neil Gaiman. I read the book in the 90’s, but am enjoying the movie/mini-series version.
What stands out to me most on this viewing is that the “Sides” = “good” and “evil” are more about “delight” and “disgust” and the Angel Aziraphale and the Demon Crowley are the enlightened ones, saying, “Why can’t we all just get along?” “Why must there be a war?”
Even the “good’ side says, “there must be a war so that we can *win*” Sigh.
I recommend getting ahold of this miniseries and enjoying!
UK (and most other countries) cops’ training is less gun focused than USA cops’ training. THey get a certain amount of “political correctness” and social skills training to de-escalate situations without weapons. (of course, guns per capita in the UK public are admittedly much less)
I’d much rather be confronted with a UK cop than an American – or even Australian – one.
Actually, I know a few people who were saved from doctors of psychiatry by doctors of neurology – stating that they were damaged by the drugs. . .
It is something to consider when the drugs and “treatments” have so severely disabled you, that a doctor of neurology might be the path ***out*** of psychiatry.
If we didn’t have to taper, we would need no doctor at all, but in today’s legal climate, buying black market drugs is a bad idea for your tapering. You need a prescriber.
My psychologist was a PhD psychologist. But I loved her, and called her by her first name. We were partners in my healing, so much so that I send her letters from time to time to let her know what I am doing in the world.
I didn’t call her “Dr. Firstname” I called her Firstname.
I guess what I’m saying is that I tend to take it on a case by case basis.
I think it is more important to address the power imbalance than it is to address the title of the power imbalance.
Is the title of the novel as vital as the story it tells?
Change the story, the title will shift.
Chiropractors – you were helped by one; I was harmed by one. What can I say?
So – how do we determine what honorifics are “okay” and which ones are not?
My father was about more than money. It was about his taking charge of his life and working hard. He earned it, and the respect that went with it. To reduce it to merely “poverty vs. riches” is to remove all nuance from that story.
Sera –
I did not state that honorifics should or should not be used.
i merely told stories of times they are used, and that they can have meaning – and otehr times that they are useless.
I don’t have time or energy to address each of your concerns – but please do not put beliefs in my mouth.
I do like your statement about recognition and celebration of accomplishment – and a bar for professional performance (which does not guarantee it, but is an indicator) without feeding the power un-equilibrium.
I am wondering what this is doing in MIA? What this actually has to do with psych – iatry or -ology or the suffering induced under those. I admit that those who prescribe (and the legal gateway which allows them to do so because of the papers they hold) are involved in a power imbalance – but – this article seems more political and social – or even linguistic – than is appropriate for MIA.
So – I will tell stories. My father was the first in his family to even attend a university. His family came out of Kentucky poverty, and he was determined not to perpetuate that poverty in his own family. He grew up during the Great Depression, and remembers his shell-shocked and gassed WW1 father drinking the money that his mother tried to hide. He remembers standing in line to get shoes, ashamed that he had to beg for them. Doggedly, he pursued education, and after about a dozen years of university, earned his Doctorate in Business Administration with a specialty in Business Communication. We called him Doctor; he earned this. It was more than a piece of paper, it was his growing identity. Something which made him stand out from the pack – his family, his friends, he achieved all of this on his own.
He worked as much as possible to pay for these degrees – a Westinghouse refrigerator factory, selling tires for Firestone, butchering chickens for his local grocer…
Those were different times, but he worked hard for that “honorific” (as Sarah calls it), and so – we used it. My chilhood friends called him “Dr. Name,” as well as his colleagues. He was Dr. Name his entire life, and his achievements in his field never hit the New York Times or WSJ, but in our community he made a difference. He built up his faculty and developed one of the best undergraduate business schools in the state. He never got credit for it, never got called “Dean,” even though that was the last honorific he wanted. (My brother made sure that the title “Dean” got into his Obituary, to honour him.)
Using his title “Dr.” was a way of respecting what he had been through – not only his education, but his roots and life experience.
But those were different times.
In my time in Bloomington Indiana – it was an appealing little town, and many people who graduated Indiana University wanted to stay and live there, even though there were only a few jobs for the highly educated. So in this IU town, there were PhD’s waiting tables and swishing toilets. Did we call the wait staff “Dr. Wait Staff”? Or the janitor “Dr. Janitor”? No, we did not. There were a lot of hidden PhD’s in that town, managing grocery stores, running call centres, selling cars, and yes, washing floors.
In today’s society, the essentialness of a degree has been emphasized – for even simple jobs, a university Bachelor’s is minimum requirement. And the related student debt has, therefore skyrocketed. (this is a crisis of national proportions, and eliminating student debt is not something that the Powers That Be will consider, even though it is a burden that all society will bear.)
Is it a meaningless piece of paper? Some would argue yes. But I know that my piece of paper was earned, and I am proud of it, and pleased at the opportunities it has brought me, even when I am not utilising them in the way I thought I would when I was a bright eyed, idealistic young student.
Lastly, in this era of pandemic, I get disgusted at chiropractors who call themselves “Doctor,” when I know that their degree was probably easier than mine. In this era of pandemic, there ***is*** a difference between an MD or DO, and a practitioner who took weekend seminars to become an ND or “functional medicine practitioner.” In this era of pandemic, I do not want to take medical advice from a Doctor of Psychology (for example). In this era of “bro science” it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, and I am more inclined to listen to The Paleo Cardiologist or Dr. Peter Breggin than I am Pete Evans or Pam Popper. That MD is a bar, and the minimum required to leap it is an important measure.
So – in this era of pandemic, do we wish to distinguish medical doctors from doctors of chiropractic or PhD’s in Education? I know that we are more than the letters after our name, and some of them seem to be ego stroking – but many of them are, indeed earned.
I do subscribe to calling medical doctors that I am fond of, “Dr. Firstname” – but there are some MD’s in my life that I respect too highly to even do that. My GP is one, my osteopath (who is also an MD) is another. They are, and always will be, “Dr. Lastname.”
Linguistics, words do matter. And there is a power differential in psychiatry as well as psychology that is frequently abused in the name of DSM and diag-nonsense.
But to revoke all honorifics seems like a broad brush, and throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I’m with Marie – is this really vital to our society? Or would it be better to house the homeless, feed the hungry, educate those who want to learn? I’m thinking of the principles of harm reduction, where this first world problem of worrying about honorifics has much less effect than taking care of people in crisis and in need.
While I would love to attend the discussion live, as I am a fan of nearly all of the panel – being in Australia makes this impossible to be there at the right time.
It is my fond hope that these discussions will be recorded and widely available after the event.
Hey Steve –
When I talk about 3 weeks – I’m only talking about 10% tapers.
EACH 10% taper takes about 3 weeks to adjust, and for symptoms to resolve. (and yes, it can take longer – but never shorter)
IF you Cold Turkey – you could be talking years, for all of these 3 week neurotransmitter adjustments to take place. They “stack up” and all your dysregulated systems have to try and right the ship before it topples. In Surviving Antidepressants, we call it “Humpty falls off the wall.”
The 3 weeks seems to be carved in stone, however, whether you’ve been on the drugs for 1 year or 10 – that there is an adjustment after 3 weeks of chemical change. This may be true of other neurotransmitter affecting drugs, like alcohol, tobacco, etc. It seems to be true of all psych drugs, whether “antidepressant,” benzo, neuroleptic, or “mood stabiliser.”
You cannot heal a broken leg faster than you can. Likewise, when your brain has upregulated or downregulated to a drug OR A DOSE (tapering) – it takes at least 3 weeks to recover from that change.
This may be why the label literature speaks of “resolved in 2-4 weeks” = but we all know that is a lie for at least 50-80% of people who have taken these drugs.
Actually, as evidenced in tapering and withdrawal – the neurotransmitters do take about 3 weeks to upregulate or downregulate from chemical intervention.
Somewhere on SurvivingAntidepressants.org is a study which led our founder in establishing our protocols. It really does seem to be true.
So – taking the drug – it takes 3 weeks to upregulate and adjust to the chemical intrusion. And withdrawing from the drug – it takes 3 weeks after each adjustment. (SurvivingAntidepressants recommends 4 weeks between tapers, so that these adjustments don’t stack up and throw your system into chaos. This gives a week buffer for symptoms to settle.)
This is why “med changes” – especially the “cold switch” = are hell.
It’s similar to the way that a broken leg cannot knit any faster than 6 weeks…it takes at least 3 weeks for neurotransmitters to adjust to these chemical changes.
Yes, it is convenient for drug companies that this is enough time to be hooked on the drug – but that is not the only factor at play here.
@wonnell, have you considered that your “mental health crisis” may have been exacerbated by all those drugs you were on? And that the ECT just “mellowed it all out” a bit?
Ativan = depressing. Zoloft, Risperdal, Trazadone = can induce akathisia, an internal restlessness that is difficult to quell. All of these drugs mess with hormones, endocrine, digestion, and sexual function. They don’t go straight to your brain, but affect many systems. The longer you are on them, the more difficult it is to “control your mood” and other weird health affects may come into play. Additionally, the longer you are on them, they may “poop out” which is likely how you ended up on this complex cocktail to begin with.
“Mental health crisis” = the more I think about this, the more I feel it isn’t about our brains **at** **all**!!!! It’s about the ability to regulate emotions. Sometimes when we are children, emotional states serve us in order to survive, but when we reach adulthood, they no longer support and serve (quite the opposite). Bottom line: only *I* can regulate my emotional state – drugs and shocks can numb it out – but only I can actually regulate it.
Please people can we stop with the “meds” business? THEY ARE DRUGS.
I know that this article is meant to distinguish between “taking your meds” and “seeking illicit drugs”
But psych drugs are NOT medicine.
Excuse me – but I refuse to go to a practitioner to “change my brain.”
There are so many things I can do to change my own brain. Sunlight. Diet, exercise.
Daily walks, seeing the horizon, listening to music, meditation, qigong, yoga – all of these I am in complete control of.
When I get in your chair (I assume you, @class1quirk, are also a practitioner, like jjnoles) – that choice is taken away from me, and I am at the mercy of the practitioner.
No, thank you. And thank you James Hall for pointing out these risks.
class1quirk: and so – how do you suggest one sorts out the “legitimate” practitioners from the cowboys, wild west and snake oil cures?
Is this a job of the regulator – like FDA? AMA?
Or is it the job of the practitioner? If this is the case – how does a “consumer” (egads) choose the right practitioner?
If practitioner C gets excellent effects, but practitioners A and B have problems (or vice versa) – how are we to know? Where is the reporting on this?
If you have 3 auto mechanics, and 1 of them is always breaking things – well, that’s my car, and I can take it to a good mechanic to repair the damage done by the bad mechanic.
But my body – once you damage that – yes, it is a self healing amazing body, but – where do I take it to get it “fixed?”
The answer is: nowhere, you have to fix it yourself, and your mileage may vary.
Sam – too right! I know people who have been “addicted” to their puffers since childhood, and there becomes a tendency to hit the puffer anytime one is anxious or uncomfortable. It seems that the long term consequences of the puffers is similar to any other drug use: the body acclimates to it, homeostasis sets in, and the next thing you know, you “need” the drug.
Asthma is a huge business here in Oz, and I have wondered: what if the children were taught QiGong breathing exercises instead? Or yoga? When will it be acceptable for a GP or paediatrician to have a “breathing” specialist on staff?
As children, we change our breathing to squelch our Shadows, our “unacceptable emotions.” (ref: Dennis Lewis, “Natural breathing.”) So there is a psych element involved in these puffers and their use as well.
If a child learns to breathe through emotions – then they will not suffer “shallow breathing,” which leads to asthma.
I’m not a parent, so I’ve never been through the fear of “my child cannot breathe!” and the trips to the emergency room – so – perhaps I’m not qualified to comment. But perhaps that child never learned to breathe through their feelings (without suppressing them) to begin with.
JefferyC: Drug damage is too true, and I would hazard a guess that Mr. Hall’s use of antidepressants (even intermittently) was the thing that made his depression “sticky” and “chronic.” At least that is what Mr. Whitaker’s work points to.
Too right, Sam! Can you put it back the way it was?
It is difficult to report a treatment when, if you go to physicians, you are gaslighted into believing “it’s only your ‘illness’ which is causing these problems.”
This is why the drugs took so long to be excoriated.
Physicians don’t like to contradict other physicians, and declare “OMG you’ve been HARMED.” Even James Hall’s neurologist said something like, “Well, it will likely clear up, but I can’t find anything . . . ” refusing to contradict this physician referred “treatment.”
I suspect it is brain damaging, and that the damages caused by TMS “regulate mood” somewhat. Sadly, James got the damage without the mood regulation.
No, they have seen the light on benzodiazapenes. AFAIK, he is still on SSRI’s, and on some sort of anticonvulsant post benzo. From a Surviving Antidepressants perspective, he still has a lot of tapering to do before he is free.
The “Lobster” chapter of his book is about as bio-bio-bio as they come. He has a lot of adjustment to do before he accepts the nature of trauma…Daniel Mackler made a good video about this topic: https://youtu.be/GtwP6AbbAUc
I’m working on a letter to him (and/or Mikhaila) about the dangers of SSRIs, that they can produce the SAME SYMPTOMS that the benzos caused…
It would help if I’m not the only voice from MIA doing so. If he sees the light, we could have a powerful, popular ally. He’s not afraid to be excoriated (as evidenced by his stance on making certain pronouns required by law) – he would be an excellent ally for anti-psychiatry – IF he can let go of everything he’s ever learned.
And I’m not sure he can, but – he believes that learning (from his 12 Rules book) is a little death, and that by letting go of the old, you are cast into chaos, and it is up to you to build a new Order.
he has definitely been through the Chaos (I believe his chaos / order model is very black/white simplicity, but – he does have a good mind) and it is my fond hope that he can see through the lies.
I hear you Berzerk. I have witnessed cognitive decline in all kinds of polypharmacy. Sometimes it’s the simple “pain prescription” of Cymbalta + Lyrica. Heck, Lyrica does a number all by itself, as do the neuroleptics and tranquilisers. Then there’s the “over time” problem, taking polypharmacy for 2 years. 5 years. 10 years. Watch the brain go away. I’ve seen this happen, too.
I’m pleased to see this information getting out there – but – a single case study? This feels underwhelming for the magnitude of the problem.
Ah but they can. That’s called “the algorithm. It has been shown that algorithm get way skewed and prejudiced – the prejudices of the people writing the parameters get amplified in the echo chambers of algorithms and turn into very prejudicial AI’s….
Though – you said *one* person. It would depend on what parameters on the algorithm any one person fits or doesn’t fit.
I have met some of the New Zealand moderators and members, back in the days when we might meet in person. I tried to hold meetings in my local area (Brisbane), but it was like herding cats, as everyone was too “anxious” or “having a symptom wave” to come out, meet people, and have a cuppa….
So you don’t need to do it in person, and, in fact, it’s contraindicated – withdrawal makes it hard to meet face to face (even if there were no COVID). Have a look around the SA site, and you can help people with the information presented there.
Be aware, however, that most people don’t want to be helped. I am an expert, thanks to the training of AltoStrata, but most people dismiss me as “just a paranoid person” when I try to warn them about how wrong these drugs are. I am not a doctor, and most folks are inclined to listen only to doctors. Even those that are psychiatrists. Ugh!
Rachel sez: “They know the drugs cause excessive weight gain, kidney failure, severe GI problems, heart arhythmia, diabetes and extensive damage to the brain and CNS”
And if you go to the doctor – with a detached retina, cardiovascular problems, kidney damage, metabolic disorder, diabetes, cognitive loss, blindness, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue – practically anything –
They won’t even CONSIDER removing the drugs that caused it.
It’s like there’s a hierarchy, and psych drugs are at the top – if you remove the psych drugs, the person dissolves into a puddle. EVEN if the drugs are causing all the above problems. The medical doctors are in collusion with the psychiatrists in supporting their drugging regime.
Yes, when the WHO says “corporal punishment of children is *always* bad” I’m inclined to question.
I have heard of tales of Americans in Scandanavian countries who spanked their children, and ended up with their children removed from their custody into foster care. Surely this, too, is an extreme?
I can see why Peterson probably takes umbrance with this worldwide policy, as he is at the sharp end of the liberal stick at times.
What he states in his book is nuanced. It is VITALLY important for children to have clarity and consistency, because it is the child’s job to test the boundaries at all times. If the boundary is in the same place, consistently, and there are consequences for crossing that boundary – to their level of understanding – then they will learn better. Especially if this is done from the support of love. “I love you, not this behaviour, but I love you.”
It is the parents who sometimes say it’s okay for a child to throw a tantrum and then give them a lolly to shut them up, and then the next tantrum smacks them – that raises a confused and wild – and surely – abusive antisocial child. I’ve seen this more often than I can count.
As for Peterson, it is my fond hope that his Dark Night of the Soul with his benzo / antidepressant withdrawal will help his great mind (and he does have an excellent, if rigid, mind) to transform and he will be able to drop his labels.
One of his psychologist’s skills is to label everything. Diag-nonsense labels. “post-Marxist” “neoliberal” labels.
It is my fond hope that – not that I wish anyone to suffer – his suffering will soften his heart and integrate his mind much more fully into opening.
Perhaps, even, he is getting Iboga, or some other psychedelic treatment to facilitate this process.
“I am firmly against forced psychiatric drugging, but this does not mean that I also reject modern medicine and the idea of mass vaccination against dangerous viruses and bacteria.”
How about “trust me, I’m a doctor” = ?
Many of us in here have been as harmed by the system of modern medicine as we have by psychiatry. Some of us had physical illnesses which were written off as “psych problems.”
While I was numbed from psych drugs, I was convinced to have 2 major surgeries which have deteriorated my health. The surgeries were skillfully performed, they did what they were meant to do (thyroidectomy, hysterectomy) – and yet – I was not given any alternatives (dietary changes, etc.). Numb from the lithium, I submitted to the medical procedures. Maybe I couldn’t have avoided them – but they were deemed necessary at the time.
I am now very cautious about anything involving the system of modern medicine – whose protocols are developed by pharma. Remember, it’s GP’s giving out most of these drugs, or getting people started on them.
I just read an interesting article on communication about vaccines.
There is harm done by them, largely swept under the rug of the “vaccine court,” and the billions paid out in claims against them only cover a few of the cases reported. It is difficult to prove that the vaccine caused harm, and yet many people believe that “things were never the same” after the jab.
So: Those who question vaccines (“anti-vax” is a slur, and has absolutely no subtletly) are asking: “Will this hurt my child?”
This is about communication. And so the scientists and doctors keep replying, “We need herd immunity.”
So the first question is never answered. And the studies are not there to answer the question. The studies are about herd immunity and control of a disease, but the question of individual safety is frequently cast aside for this herd immunity.
The scientists are not listening to the parents, and the parents no longer trust the scientists, because their concerns are not being heard or answered.
The faster a vaccine is rolled out, the less I trust it. There were some vaccines which came out after SARS and MERS that were quite questionable.
I’ll want to see how well it is doing before I join the herd.
My mother was not separated as she suffered from COVID symptoms (but they wouldn’t test her to verify).
I have a friend in Indiana who is helping a homeless man sue the local hospital who turned him back out onto the streets, COVID positive. Hey, let’s eliminate the homeless population in one sweep!
So – no, these protocols to “help the vulnerable” aren’t really helping the vulnerable.
Yes, I’ve seen the Snowdon vid. I have a story of people whose phones (in Singapore) which were OFF – blinked and text messaged “Stop talking about that.” (I think they were talking about surveillance)
I have not disconnected camera or mic …however I do not let the phone connect to internet.
We all have our lines. That one is mine. And so – no app for me. Likely requires internet / data connection.
Your link to Dastyari is behind a paywall, so couldn’t see. I remember hearing the name, but not the controversy.
I learned more about the tracker app. It is not for warning you off an active case, but if you do test positive, they go to your phone, and have a list of every phone you’ve come into contact with in the past 3 weeks. It’s for tracing contacts (which, they are doing a pretty good job of now, without the app).
2 million (so far) have downloaded it.
And Boans, the next “enemy” might not be Jews (there aren’t that many here, to my knowledge). Who knows what random enemy the state will create for us? When everyone is tracked (including medicine), it could be for a gene allele, or – as Oldhead postulates, a virus caste system.
I opted out of MyHealth. It’s my understanding that in the US, there is something similar in response to the “opioid crisis” that tracks people nationally through pharmacies. We’ve noted on SA that it’s hard to get labels dropped from your file, even after moving.
Mmmm. If holding a cellphone to your ear for long periods (thermal EMF) has been connected to brain cancers . . . . then. . .
I have learned with my husband, who has had stroke, to take headaches very seriously.
I believe that the headaches after the COVID shot were vascular, and honestly they scared the heck out of me, knowing he’d had stroke before, and it presented as headache.
Likewise, if you are getting headaches, it may be a symptom of neurological damage.
Orthomolecular = think Linus Pauling and Abram Hoffer. There’s a practitioner here who is frequently posting about niacin for connecting with reality.
JAMES: what you say here: ” It took all this pain and suffering to get my eyes wide enough to see what was really happening. And, now that they are open i can see how difficult it is for others to get onboard, you literally have to fight every Dr. or other professional you see just about. I have to tell my Dr. what is what, piss him off, and be prepared to walk out ever time I see one. This is not something anyone wants to do, and yet is completely necessary to avoid death and injury.”
OMG this is so true. Why do I feel such intense fear when I have to go to a new doc? Why do I dread the docs I already know? It’s this diligence, this due diligence, to protect your body from them.
For a profession that claims to be about “healing,” it is anything but.
MRI with contrast – I am hearing reports that the contrast does not go away, and that it is found by techs in future MRI’s, but they cannot report it, because – well, it’s their job.
Again – it’s not all one Plant.
Sativa is more manic, creative. Indica is more sedating, relaxing.
Putting all the ranges under the category “Marijuana” (which is an epithet designed to excoriate Mexicans in the US – the correct term is cannabis.) is incorrect.
Respect the Plants. Yes, they can hurt you. Yes, they can help you. Respect them.
Getting the right prescription is important! Sadly, many people are isolated from this Plant Medicine by legal concerns (so they use street) – and there are a lot of cowboys prescribing. The Author was using medical plant prescribed for another person. And street. There are many many combinations of THC – CBD – CBN – A & B. I recently got my medical card, and it’s not as simple as 1+1=2. It’s what strain works for you (100’s of variations here), what form you take (I prefer making oils and edibles for my condition) and how much you use. Even with a prescriber, there is a lot of tweaking involved.
It’s not for everyone. Respect the Plants, they have Power. This goes for tobacco and psychedelics, too – if you Honour the Plant, it is more likely to be an ally. Too many people Abuse the Plant, and the story above is a classic example of addiction rather than mindful use. And – it is difficult to teach this to teenagers, who are experimenting with identity and consciousness.
I’ll stop listening to Tucker Carlson when someone else takes up the baton and discusses these evil drugs. Right now, he’s the only MSM talking about it.
I posted the Tucker Carlson link to my page at Surviving Antidepressants, and got messages telling me I had done a bad thing, that Tucker Carlson is SO HATED by 50% of Americans, that even if the message was good, I shouldn’t have posted it. I did a bad thing – our society is so striated and divided, that people can’t even hear as message if it comes from the “wrong” side. Hmph.
I’ve just been reading the excellent series by Danielle Egan here about DBS – brain implants with a “pacemaker” to constantly shock the brain. One step beyond TMS.
Anyhow, in my research, I believe I found the trial you are speaking of. I was talking to a friend about DBS & TMS, and she said that her local clinic did TMS. So I looked up the clinic:
https://www.toowongclinic.com.au/clinical-research-tms
And found that – well, they do TMS – on an experimental basis.
I’m about to read the MIA 2019 article by Andrew Scull about DBS & depression – it seems that the DBS experiments didn’t stop in 2015 with Broaden – they’ve continued under other auspices.
I swear, they won’t be happy until all the brain cells are destroyed.
The very term “treatment resistant depression” usually means: Drug didn’t work and made things worse and more intractable. So the people considered for the study are ones who have already been damaged by multiple drugs.
When you consider that there are so many natural methods of stimulating the vagus nerve, invasion by surgery seems excessive. Singing is the best, vibrates the entire vagus nerve from head to root. Walking is another. Acupuncture. Breathing techniques. So many non-invasive ways of stimulating the vagus nerve without surgery. There are tales of natural Vagal Nerve toning here: https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/topic/3173-vagus-nerve-stimulation/
It’s used to activate other drugs. Gabapentin by itself, not so much. Gabapentin + opiate of choice packs a punch.
Linda, I’m so sorry for your loss. I can’t begin to fathom your anger and frustration at what was done to your son.
Here in Australia – as is likely in the USA – gabapentin and pregabalin are considered “safe alternatives” to opiates. Handed out like candy, along with the amitryptaline and Cymbalta.
Because they are cracking down on opiates so hard here (when the OD’s are from street drugs, not prescriptions, here in Australia), docs will prescribe anything BUT what a pain patient really needs.
We hear tales of gabapentin as a street drug in the UK, as an enhancer to other street drugs. Exactly what happened to your son – the combination.
Where I am (I do not receive a disability pension) it is to my benefit to leave that bipolar mess in my chart.
It gives me the excuse to refuse drugs – “They’ll make me manic!” “They’ll make me depressed!” “Not good for my brain!”
So far it’s working, but as we learned with COVID the medical industrial complex can turn on a dime.
Hey LivingPast27, you kinda described a piece of the problem – and that’s the “specialisation.” My GP gets mad when my natural doctor (also an MD) finds something, GP throws a tanty and says, “Well let HIM manage that, then.”
This specialist for pain, that specialist for my throat, another specialist for my rectum, another specialist for endocrine, yet another for diet, and a physiotherapist or exercise physiologist to manage movement. . . . and on and on and on.
I’d love to have one practitioner that looked at me as a whole, instead of just a mouth, a rectum, a skin problem, or a digestive problem. . . .
And no. I don’t trust any of them with my mood. That’s my business, I have a toolkit for that which is superior to anything an MD or specialist could offer.
I was taught this word on Surviving Antidepressants from a veteran there;
Diag-nonsense.
It’s all diag-nonsense.
https://youtu.be/YecBv-5JXmQ
(King Crimson: Elephant Talk)
There is something to this: my mood is not the business of my medical doctors.
My mood is not their wheelhouse. They can deal with bloods and heart & lungs & bowel & even brain – but my mood is none of their business.
Someone here said boycott is the start of power, here. I agree. But – when so many people are buying into the dominant narrative, we need PSA’s to educate, to counter the billions spent by pharma on their belief that “doctor can fix this.”
Ah! I found it. Not a conspiracy theory, folks, but a class action lawsuit: https://www.classaction.org/medical-data-tracking-privacy-lawsuits
Yeah. Protect your privacy, people.
@Boans – “Unlawful leaking of your records”
I wish to alert the Americans in the audience that 33 out of 200 hospitals are reporting confidential information to Meta (Facebook) and information about appointments, diagnoses, etc. is “out there” and available to all who want to look for it.
Please, friends, take the best care with your privacy that you can. I’m sorry, I don’t have sources at my fingertips, but if you lookup “Hospital Privacy Meta Facebook” you should find it.
You don’t want your private information to be so widely accessible, as Boans story attests!
Or at least call them by their street names.
“Let’s give these kids speed.”
Don’t worry, they will soon have a gene therapy to correct those poor distressed toddler’s mood. They can do this in the womb to make sure women give birth to a healthy, well-adjusted, genetically modified toddler.
In “The Matrix,” it was found that humans didn’t thrive if they were given a perfect world, though. They needed regular stressors to ensure their fulfillment.
Ah, Steve. I’m here in Australia wishing that laudanum were an option in today’s world. It would be so much more gentle than the options we are given, like Lyrica or Seroquel – or for those of us in chronic pain = Cymbalta or Amitryptaline.
My great great grandfather was a doctor who created his own patent medicines. While I’m sure there was a lot of snake oil around before regulation – I’m also sure that so many of these “patent medicines” were far less harmful than today’s drugs.
Where is the Like button @Patrick Hahn!? This is an A+ comment
Billions of dollars – and who HAS been helped?
…and the bugbear (don’t talk about the war!) of parenting disabilities.
It’s hard for a kid to get his/her parent’s attention these days.
And that attention is essential for “treating” “ADHD.”
I like that they did parental interventions first, but still – the charts show that 66% are still drugged at 3 years, and 73% at 6 years. Egads. So this increase is interesting to me – I can see frustrated parents throwing their hands in the air, “just give him/her the drugs!”
Bob cannot comment, every person is an individual. “Thriving” is a relative term, and does not address the long term effects of the drugs.
Bob’s research shows that long term use of stimulants for ADHD has a number of flow-on effects.
In adolescence, they are more likely to “flip” to a bipolar diag-nonsense (caused by the drugs). This results in prescription cascade (antidepressants, “mood stabilisers,” and often “antipsychotics,” too, and the individual has difficulty processing the maturity needed for adulthood. All of these are harmful to the child’s brain & emotional development – as well as harmful to metabolism, cardiac, endocrine, and other systems. (for example a child put on an antidepressant at an early age may never find out what a “normal sex life” feels like.)
Additionally, they become accustomed to adjusting how they “feel” with a pill, leading to addictions. Ritalin is the true gateway drug.
Additionally, long term use of stimulants affects the metabolism and growth of the child (depends on age started, certainly – again, everyone is different)
This is on the aggregate, not individual basis. A child on Ritalin (or other stimulants) is **more likely** to have these problems than a child who is not.
You don’t indicate your relationship to this child, if I were the parent, I would endeavor to do what the child needed (home school? athletic endeavors? emotional regulation?) to avoid the drugs. But if you are writing as a teacher, there is nothing you can do except watch.
Anna_N
The Icarus Harm Reduction Guide
and
Surviving Antidepressants.org
Recommend tapers by 10% of PREVIOUS dose, at monthly intervals (no less than 3 weeks – the time it takes for neurotransmitters to adjust to new dose. A month is better, it gives you a week buffer). So you are tapering more quickly than we would recommend.
THis 10% method – works like this. at 200 mg, you taper 20 mg to 180 mg. YOur next taper is 18 mg. We use scales and other methods to achieve preceise dosing, which is very important for stability.
Follow your symptoms. Which ones are improving as your dose comes down? How are you sleeping? How are you doing with self-care? (that’s the most important part).
There are not tapering strips in most of the world. On Surviving Antidepressants (SA), we have methods to achieve precise doses. And are unlikely to “jump off” until the dose is very very very small (like 1-3 mg for carbamazapine – or even less!).
There are many of us on SA who have been on for decades, and come off successfully.
Congratulations on stepping away from the neurotoxins!
I remember being part of the drug trials for olanzapine for Lilly’s Zyprexa.
In Phase III trials, they were looking at liver enzymes & other measures of interaction with my “mood stabiliser,” Depakote.
For Phase III trials, I was inpatient for a week (while taking the drug for 8 weeks). They measured me constantly, 24/7. If anything went wrong, I was in a university hospital, and would be looked after. If anything went wrong prior to the inpatient trial, I was a phone call away from support.
While I do not know the protocols of the study I was paid to participate in, and whether they hold up to Robert Whitaker’s (and other scholarly) scrutiny – I do know that I was supported through the trial. (turns out, I was on the placebo arm, thank the gods).
However, in this global Phase III trial of the mRNA, I have no such support. I have no recourse if anything goes wrong, and in fact, if anything goes wrong, I will be gaslighted and called “misinformed” or “tinfoil hat” or “antivax.”
Very similar if I went to a psychiatrist and complained of drug effects. “It’s just your ‘depression’ ‘bipolar’ whatever.”
Gaslighting. Coming to a marketing plan near you.
I notice that the words “safe and effective” are used in the above article (and RW’s comment) 10 times.
I have learned not to trust the words “safe and effective,” which I hear altogether too often on other issues.
..and this doesn’t even address the anger I feel at “forced treatment.”
Let the camel’s nose in the tent, surely there will not be other mandates for “treatment.”
For comparison, NNT for antidepressants is something like 20, and that is considered inefficient.
It surprises me to no end, that we as psychiatric survivors who KNOW how corrupt and lying the pharmaceutical companies are – how can we ever trust them again?
The mandates that Richard speaks so highly of – are of a product which is leaky and short acting, at best, and provides temporary benefit which expires after about 6-8 months.
If I refuse to take a drug to alter my mood, why would I consent to regular shots at the behest of a government “health policy” which may be driving the variants and creating more problems than it is solving.
Additionally, my dealings with pharmaceutical products have led me to look for LONG TERM consequences, of which nobody is talking about. What are the results after 3 years? 5 years? 10?
One of the things that Gotzsche taught me to look at is NNT. Number Needed to Treat. I believe it was Robert Malone who pointed out to me that the NNT to prevent ONE case of Covid is something like 240 people. This is inefficient at best.
We learned not to listen to the diag-nonsense, and apparently the PCR test is another form of diag-nonsense.
We, as survivors, learned to NOT trust the products coming off the assembly lines at pharmaceutical companies, how is this product any different?
Well, it’s different in that they are pushing it, cajoling, even punishing those who don’t wish to participate in this experiment. They are forcing employers to mandate it, even if there aren’t government mandates (which is the case here in Australia). If it were so good, wouldn’t the goodness of the product be enough without mandates or facing potential lost jobs, etc.?
It stuns me that anyone who has survived neuroleptics, benzos and “antidespressants” could accept anything Pharma says at face value.
I will answer you in the form of questions.
Do the drugs in question only reside in the brain?
Do you know what it does to your digestive system? (hint: 85-90% of body’s serotonin resides in gut)
Do you know what it does to your liver? Kidneys? Adrenals?
Do you know about the cardiac effects of these drugs?
Do you know about the endocrine effects of these drugs?
Do you know about the drugs’ effects on the nervous/muscular system? (dystonias & dyskinesias?)
Have you ever tried to come off of the drugs, and experienced withdrawals?
Have you had any sexual side effects? (these can be crippling)
Have you been on the drugs longer than 5-10 years? Have you had any mysterious “other” ailments crop up after 5 years on the drugs? (commonly, fibromyalgia, IBS, impotence, arrhythmias, muscle pain & spasms, insomnia, restless legs, tremors, chronic fatigue, autoimmune problems, but these are only the common ones – there are many, many more)
These drugs are not meant for the long term, but the way the drugs work make it extremely hard to come off of them. Extremely hard for a “short course,” because once you’ve been on them for 3 weeks, your body has adjusted to them.
Disease? Like there’s a blood test for this? Or maybe an MRI image? Perhaps there’s some other lab assay for this “disease” that I’m unaware of?
These horrific symptoms are caused by distress, not disease. OFTEN, these horrific symptoms are caused by the very medications that you seem to claim relieve the “disease.”
In my clinical experience in removing people from the drugs, I find that symptoms are often better after the drugs are gone. Symptoms improve remarkably if the individual can take self responsibility for their own mood and well being (that’s the hard one).
Like @Linda Comac above said, “plain as the nose on your face,” and “mental health professionals don’t seem to see the nose.”
That would be you.
I do agree that people in distress lack cognitive freedom, but that is often from the pressure to “do something,” from family, friends, professionals. The freedom would be to choose how to treat, not to always submit to chemical solutions. But the dominant narrative – what you subscribe to – says, “shut up and take your pills” is the only solution. Simply NOT TRUE.
I also agree that many clients want to be “fixed,” and are unwilling to do the work it takes to correct the problem – and drugs are a cheap and easy way to offer something, when someone is unable to leave a job, a relationship, quit a harmful pattern.
I’m all for stopping the “gatekeeping” of drugs, especially as people are able to research and be better informed than even 10 or 20 years ago.
However, to put antidepressants (and anxiolytics and neuroleptics) on the shelf for people to try or not try is like placing bombs for sale at your local hardware store.
Some people have horrible reactions after just one pill. Katinka Blackford Newman, “THe Pill That Steals” is just one example, but I’ve seen several on SA, who said, “I just took 3 days worth, and now I’m screwed.”
These drugs are unsafe, should be banned, and let people smoke cannabis or microdose or some other, safer option.
That said, I do agree with you about the harms of labels. I am fortunate, and able to use that to my benefit: “I’m bipolar, you can’t give me that drug, it will set me off.” I’ve used this to refuse Lyrica, amitryptaline – all those helpful “pain” drugs.
But there are many many people who cannot get health care – their health scares are “all in their head” because of that diag-nonsense label. It can affect work, medical, privacy issues – even confrontations with law enforcement can be sullied by that effing label.
Actually, had a mate who, when COVID hit, his prescription ran out. He thought: “I’m fine, I can go without this,” so he quit CT.
Now, 18 months later, he’s asking me, “when will the suffering be over?”
I wish I had something good to tell him, because once you destabilise, the experience becomes very individual.
What people do not consider is the long term effects of being drugged.
I don’t “feel” anything is being damaged, and yet, my kidneys and liver don’t work as well as they used to.
These drugs affect the entire body – digestion, cardiovascular, endocrine, muscular, more. The whole body – not just the brain.
Over time (in my experience, about 3-5 years) you start to develop mysterious illnesses. Maybe it looks like an autoimmune disorder; maybe it looks like IBS; maybe it’s restless legs, or sexual dysfunction; maybe it shows up as chronic fatigue or fibromyalgia.
These drugs affect far more than mood (or brain).
There are millions of things you can do for depression.
The hard part is that it’s challeinging to “do something” when depressed.
My depressions (and I’ve heard from others with similar experience) are about my body trying to shut me down because I’ve made choices in my life that go against my true being (psyche). When I shut down in depression, everything falls away, and the only things I pick up are the things I can.
Depression is about winnowing away the unnecessary “do” and “stuff” and “relationships” in life. It’s a warning to be heeded.
So – while waiting, you may nap a lot. Maybe you will indulge in some binge watching, or play video games. Maybe you will walk in the sun, go swimming, ride your bike, change your diet (do not underestimate the ability of gluten, processed foods, etc., to damage your mood), maybe take up yoga or exercise of some sort. Maybe you will, as Richard suggests – talk to someone. Maybe it will be a professional, or a religious person, or just a beloved friend or family member. Maybe you will be understood, maybe you won’t. Maybe you will write about it instead, or make art, or music or dance to express it.
There are as many ways out of depression as there are ways in. To say that a pill is the ONLY answer is extremely limiting.
“Trying” a drug is not so simple. If you try it for 3 days, and have a horrible experience, you can walk away, but if you “try” it for 3 weeks or more, then you are faced with having your neurotransmitters altered, homeostatis getting involved – and the long difficult haul of trying to get off of the drug.
You don’t “try” something that requires tapering unless you are sure. Or desperate. Or uninformed. Or misinformed.
I remember when I first accepted diag-nonsense. And “medication for life” and “broken brain” and “chemical imbalance” and “I was made this way” nonsense.
And for my “recovery” Rule #1 was: take meds (drugs) as prescribed.
(Rule #2 was “don’t get caught” in the hospital system, and #3 & 4 were about eating & sleeping)
It wasn’t until I broke Rule #1, though, that I got better.
OK. Let me count the ways.
Antidepressants, neuroleptics, anxiolytics, statins, PPI’s, fluroquinolone in antibiotics, and what the heck – opiates (though these are actually the safest of the bunch).
The words “safe and effective,” we survivors have heard them many times before.
It has been brought to my attention that there is a thing called “Havana Syndrome” inflicted upon US diplomats (and CIA assets) in Cuba, China, and now in Washington DC.
The symptoms are intensely familiar to those of us who have heard the complaints about TMS.
I’ve been thinking about Havana Syndrome in the context of TMS & ECT, and thinking about – how easy it is to weaponise these things. We all know that microwaves & EMF are not great for the brain & body tissue. It’s easy to make a thing to destroy something. Just blast it.
How much harder then, is it to target a thing like this for healing? Like Sam says, this machinery doesn’t only affect a specific target. There would be collateral damage. EVEN if you aimed to excite vs. inhibit, or this or that part of the brain. It’s not brain surgery, and even brain surgery is not entirely precise – there is usually collateral damage.
Yes, but attorneys won’t take the case if there is no win.
Doctors have a shield called “Standard of Care,” which on the ground (and in the courts) looks like, “But this is what all the Doctors do,” and if the treatment complies with Standard of Care (they usually do), it is not an actionable lawsuit.
Proving Psych damage – whether drugs or otherwise – is extremely difficult. The victim of the “treatments” also has a diag-nonsense to invalidate their claims, and the doctors can claim rebound and relapse and progression of illness. It’s a hard case to get heard, much less win. The best successes have been in class action, where story after story after story of the same horrific symptoms / results get heard better.
So the next legal question: who wants to pursue a TMS Class Action? That’s not your usual “no fee up front” ambulance chaser.
Someone who wants to work with the law might want to look at how to change “Standard of Care” as a defense.
I have to add, that if mag citrate gives someone the runs, I recommend using Mag Glycinate or Mag Taurate, which does not have this side effect unless you take heaps of it.
I am also a strong proponent of magnesium baths – either epsom salts or mag chloride flakes. 2 cups to a bath, awesome attitude adjustment, very relaxing and soothing. I am due for one today. No bowel effects at all from soaking in it!
I’m reminded of people who are trying to quit alcohol. The number of people in AA meetings who are on neuroleptics and antidepressants – and AA actually encourages this – is quite shocking.
Here, you want to quit this drug? Here’s another one.
It’s a toxic mindset that “taking a drug helps” and learning to manage your own mood and problems is irrelevant.
This is what distinguishes SA from other peer sites.
We try and base our protocols on 2 things:
1. experience
2. science (as much as possible – since the medical/pharma industry science refuses to look at what we are suffering from).
So – much of SA protocols are based on upregulation time in neurotransmitters as wll as occupation site curves of the drug on those neurotransmitters. This is science. A broken leg takes 6 weeks to heal. Stay off it. (so is your neurotransmitter system, there is a shift in neurotransmitters every 3 weeks, it’s biologically based.)
By comparison, many other peer sites devolve into shouting matches based on opinion – some of the opinions are more educated/learned/experienced than others, but the person receiving the advice does not know who is who.
Actually, the expertise is there, but the manpower is not.
Benzo withdrawal is an especially needy group, requiring close and careful attention, and SA usually only has 1-2 moderators who are versed in it.
It’s a shame that Benzo Buddies is a Wild West site where every Joe, Jane and Johnny have an opinion about how to approach a benzo taper – when people overwhelm our person-power at SA, and require more social support, this is where we send them. Benzo Buddies does have great social support.
Your standard upper middle class person is unlikely to do a global book tour. His bestseller, 12 Rules, has sold 5 million copies worldwide.
He’s comfortable enough to check into Russia to be put into a coma, and comfortable enough to go to Serbia when that doesn’t work out.
I don’t know many people in withdrawal who have these kinds of opportunities.
I’ve been meditating on what I’ve said about “nothing to be done, here.”
And I realise I may have misspoken (and I owe a friend an apology) – that I personally do not have the fire in me to pin Dr. Peterson against a wall and blame him for all of the pain and suffering we have experienced in the name of psychiatry.
I also know that the methods he chose – were chosen so that he could continue to work. Good on him, that he came out of this with the ability to work.
But my experience with Surviving Antidepressants tells me that if he continues “business as usual,” that he is in for yet a greater break/breakdown. Not that I would wish it upon him, but perhaps this is what is needed for him to realise – so many things about psychiatry, psychiatric drugs, diagnonsense and “treatments.”
“Privilege.”
I’ve been thinking about this one.
If perhaps, he was not so privileged he would have been forced to do the withdrawal the way the rest of us have – the hard way, experiencing discomforts, distresses, neuro-emotions, akathisia, sleep disturbances, the whole gamut.
@kindredspirit – I was talking with an old friend about how when we were children, we learned tooth and claw, manipulation, how to “fight” our way to get what we wanted from our environment.
Nobody spoke to us about the values of sweetness and kindness (sure, we heard the old chestnut about “honey instead of vinegar” but it didn’t play out in the environment.)
Now I find I am attracted to sweet and kind people – and yet these same qualities have been so difficult to develop in my own self.
He has spoken about Practice. And Clients.
I don’t know where the Practice ends, and the Acadamia begins – but he has worked in prisons and on reservations, in schools and privately.
We fell from the Garden of Eden, Mate.
G-d didn’t want us to be like him, so They gave us Original Sin, instead.
And that is the consumption of thought.
(just a theory)
@Diaphenous – this is so clear.
Thinking vs. Feeling.
I was just thinking today, as I was writing to a friend I knew from the 6th grade. We were both “smart kids” but outcast kids, too. So we related well to one another. We took pride in being “smart kids.”
Well in my letter to her, I thought: I no longer care if I am “smart,” I care that I am “kind.” It seems to work better.
And in my “arguments” with friends over politics, I shocked them when I said, “You know, this stuff doesn’t really matter. All that matters is what I can do with myself, my environment, and make my path a little clearer, hopefully help people and planet along the way.” As I think about this in retrospect, I was musing, “It’s *fun* to think about these politics and power plays and things, but that’s just a thinking exercise. My heart tells me it’s not really relevant.”
Does this echo what you are expressing?
Give the guy a break. It’s easy to armchair quarterback on someone else’s journey.
Here is a man who – subscribed to mainstream beliefs and views about the drugs and psychiatry, and who is – and always has been – eager to use diag-nonsense and adhere to the DSM.
So – when faced with his own depression, he submitted to the DSM / psychiatry / and the drugs.
I’ve been following his benzo debacle with intensity, like other readers here, commenting on YT about his use of SSRI’s. This is the first I heard that:
HE COLD TURKEY’ed OFF OF CELEXA in 2016!!!! OMFG, that’s the start of the benzo disaster, not 3 years later when it went “paradoxical.”
But – if you watch his videos, he sincerely believes that he is being vulnerable with us in sharing his story. Sadly, he used drugs to get off of drugs – so his story is not as inspiring as it could be. But he is trying, and making the best use of a really bad experience.
I would love to see him shake his beliefs even deeper than DSM, as the writer of this article implies. He has adjusted his perspective many times during his career – though, it seems (again, as Jon Sedarati implies) that he is locking down his beliefs in psychiatry & the DSM – after all – he used to be reliant upon these twisted tools for his income.
Of course, now he is rich and famous – and doesn’t need the DSM for billing purposes. I hope and pray he can let it go, but I’m not holding my breath. But he, too, is a human, and his response to his extreme states is in alignment with where he has come from.
Shocking. And not a word in the article about the drugs this person has been on – likely for decades – that may have *caused* the severe syndrome to begin with. (I have no proof, but if dystonia is an issue with these drugs – and it is – then other nerve and muscular syndromes may be, too).
They said chief cause of early deaths in “mental ill” population is due to stigma. Harumph. Again, not a peep about the debilitating drugs.
How long, do you reckon, until we see “conspiracy disorder” in the DSM?
Yah, Marianne Demasi got canned for her Statin presentation. She was very critical of Pharma, and excoriated for it. It was like “strike three” they had warned her after they pulled the Antidepressant story. I thought I had links to vid copies of these pulled stories, but cannot put my hands on them at the mo. Demasi tweets regularly – mostly about statins.
There is a growing “anti-drug” movement in doctors, as “bro-science” is starting to filter back up to mainstream, and keto, low carb, paleo, bio-hacking style solutions are making it clear that most of the drugs do more harm than good.
(Nice to meet you Mik, I’m a Yank, now Australian in Brissy)
Nice post, @oldhead – drawing the line between:
psychiatry as social control
corporate desire and power for social control, and the
media as the arm of this corporate desire.
@Jill while brain inflammation can be caused by a number of factors – toxic use of herbicides, pesticides and industrial waste, poor (SAD) diet, sedentary practices, poor sleep hygiene, and recreational drug use –
Your bio bio bio explanation completely overlooks the trauma that I have seen consistently in every “delusional” person I’ve known.
Why hasn’t this “brain inflammation” showed up in the multitude of MRI studies that psychiatrists have run in order to “prove” the bio basis of “schizophrenia”?
Inflammation – systemic and specific – is a cause of a multitude of problems. Heart disease, even cancers, and the many degnerative and autoimmune disorders. The more I learn about carbs and carb restriction, a lot of the inflammation can be reduced via diet and exercise, and even prevent neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson’s and Alzheimers, and even MS. (Ref: Dr. Nadir Ali).
But this overlooks the role of trauma on the mind, and how it causes adaptive and maladaptive states and behaviours which make it a challenge for these people in emergency to cope in modern society. And a bio bio bio explanation just tells them they are broken. When someone is in a state of emergency, it is difficult to tell them to “cut carbs” or go on an autoimmune or GAPS diet to reduce inflammation. (so much easier to get out the prescription pad, which just aggravates inflammation, if that is indeed a factor.)
At this time, they need to be kept safe and listened to, and trusted, and believed, in order to build a bridge between the inner state and the outer one.
I look at this – and it may be true. Maybe someone can prove it or disprove it.
But the bottom line for me is this: it doesn’t matter where it came from, it is here.
And I am not inclined to trust the people involved in the capitalist development of the “solution” to a problem they may or may not have created.
Removed for moderation.
Removed for moderation.
Steve, I like this. “Scientism.” The Belief or Religion of Science.
And to disagree – puts you in the realm of “conspiracy theory” or “fringe” or even “fake news…..”
Mmm. “Survival of the fittest” is kind of an economic monster which has been thrown onto evolution.
New work is coming out that shows “survival of the cooperative” is stronger than “survival of the fittest.”
That those who join together in solidarity and mutual support are what creates the next rung of evolution. This fits well with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, that as we develop past Survival needs (tooth and claw) and into Social (families, communities), that is where the rubber meets the road.
Hey Richard –
Even if you don’t look at where it came from, it is here now, and it is killing people. In the nursing home where my mother is, 30 of the 200 residents have died. Were they all COVID? Or complications with the illnesses and challenges which put them in the nursing home to begin with? How does this number compare to “normal” nursing home deaths in this facility? We don’t get these numbers.
But Fauci? Isn’t it strange that he has conflict of interest that he is not informing the public about. He has had stock, investment, and research time invested in developing an mRNA vaccine at least 10 years prior to now. Everyone wonders how they produced this vaccine so quickly? Well, it was already in development before this COVID thing hit. And Fauci owns stock in it (as well as research and other investment in it). Is it any wonder that he wants us all to take it? That the WHOLE WORLD will be taking this vaccine which he has financial and substantial interest in?
People stand to profit immensely from this vaccine gig, Fauci chief among them. You rail against capitalism, and yet stand by the lies that we are being told.
And like with any drug trial, these vaccines have only been trialled for 6 week periods – we will not see the long term effects of an mRNA vaccine until much further down the line. If you think about the “safe and effective” psych drugs we’ve been inflicted with, how can we trust something as universal as this vaccine?
Add to it the totalitarian “vaccine passport” which is coming. Here in Australia we might be refused entry to certain venues if we cannot prove we are vaccinated. We might even need vaccine passports to cross state borders in the near future. As it is, our state borders are frequently close to people from “hot spots.” They aren’t talking about the “vaccine passports” yet, but it will effectively separate Australians into two classes: the vaccinated, and the non-vaccinated. And the former group will have the rights of a free society, while the others? We’ll see.
It is dystopian, and the capitalist profits will be feeding the fat cats at the top, while we take the risks of injecting this vaccine into our bodies – making permanent changes to our RNA (not our DNA, we are assured) so that our bodies are more likely to reject coronaviruses.
But that’s okay, take the vaccine, feel safe, trust the mainstream science that got us into this mess. I find it difficult to rail against psych drugs but then – out of the other side of my mouth – to praise the “science” that brought them to us, which is being used to roll out other “cures” and “solutions.”
Too hard to keep the website updated for current events.
And high school daze? I don’t think so! That’s “personal information.”
However, articles about space and science and art and music, sure, they can determine a lot from how I use keystrokes and everything. . . but that’s where I draw the line.
“mostly about egotism and social posturing.”
That may be the case. I am often shocked at how many people put their children on there.
I have to use it in order to run events. No other platform reached the people I need to reach.
As for my personal posts, none of them are personal, political or religious. Mostly I post funny things, or useful interesting articles.
Apparently my friends do read what I post, so I post judiciously, and ask that nobody put my face or tag me on FB.
I tried to get out of it, but then found that I could not get my events announced any other way.
Yes, truth. But this human skill is not nearly as refined as our other, more “concrete” senses.
I hear what you are saying, that to you – this is a concrete.
But that person who “reads my mind” – still does not have my perspective. And perspective is a vital part of mind.
It is what makes mind subjective.
When I have a broken finger, or a cut on my hand, there is something objective that other people can perceive. I can go to a doctor to get it fixed.
When I have a disruption of mind, only I can see it. It is subjective, and it is not something which I do not want anyone outside of myself to tamper with. I can talk about it, I can tell someone, but only *I* can perceive what is in my mind. It is subjective. Personal. Not subject to “consensus reality.”
My mind is certainly real. But it is only within my perceptions, consciousness, attention, and awareness. I don’t think humans have fully developed the capacity to engage telepathically and therefore perceive accurately what is in another’s mind.
Therefore what we call “mind” is a metaphor for this direct but subjective human experience.
Is this what you mean, Oldhead?
Nice work Bojana!
It is sad to see the state of psychiatry in so many different countries. It really is a cult.
I encourage you to think beyond your diag-nonsense. You are NOT a “Bipolar” whatever that means, you are a human who has been through certain experiences which have affected your presentation to society.
As you walk the path to clarity, you have seen that “experts” know little or nothing about your internal life (mind, emotions, etc.) – and you will find that you have the power to change your own behaviour, your own response to your feelings and thoughts. In fact, only you have this power.
“Liberal / Progressive” is generally pro drugging.
After all, these “poor people are suffering and need MEDICAL ATTENTION.”
Don’t expect more from liberal / progressive. Liberal / Progressives know what is best for you.
evanhaar – I’ve been watching the excellent BBC series “Good Omens,” written quite tongue in cheek by Terry Pratchett (RIP) and Neil Gaiman. I read the book in the 90’s, but am enjoying the movie/mini-series version.
What stands out to me most on this viewing is that the “Sides” = “good” and “evil” are more about “delight” and “disgust” and the Angel Aziraphale and the Demon Crowley are the enlightened ones, saying, “Why can’t we all just get along?” “Why must there be a war?”
Even the “good’ side says, “there must be a war so that we can *win*” Sigh.
I recommend getting ahold of this miniseries and enjoying!
UK (and most other countries) cops’ training is less gun focused than USA cops’ training. THey get a certain amount of “political correctness” and social skills training to de-escalate situations without weapons. (of course, guns per capita in the UK public are admittedly much less)
I’d much rather be confronted with a UK cop than an American – or even Australian – one.
Actually, I know a few people who were saved from doctors of psychiatry by doctors of neurology – stating that they were damaged by the drugs. . .
It is something to consider when the drugs and “treatments” have so severely disabled you, that a doctor of neurology might be the path ***out*** of psychiatry.
If we didn’t have to taper, we would need no doctor at all, but in today’s legal climate, buying black market drugs is a bad idea for your tapering. You need a prescriber.
My psychologist was a PhD psychologist. But I loved her, and called her by her first name. We were partners in my healing, so much so that I send her letters from time to time to let her know what I am doing in the world.
I didn’t call her “Dr. Firstname” I called her Firstname.
I guess what I’m saying is that I tend to take it on a case by case basis.
I think it is more important to address the power imbalance than it is to address the title of the power imbalance.
Is the title of the novel as vital as the story it tells?
Change the story, the title will shift.
Chiropractors – you were helped by one; I was harmed by one. What can I say?
So – how do we determine what honorifics are “okay” and which ones are not?
My father was about more than money. It was about his taking charge of his life and working hard. He earned it, and the respect that went with it. To reduce it to merely “poverty vs. riches” is to remove all nuance from that story.
Sera –
I did not state that honorifics should or should not be used.
i merely told stories of times they are used, and that they can have meaning – and otehr times that they are useless.
I don’t have time or energy to address each of your concerns – but please do not put beliefs in my mouth.
I do like your statement about recognition and celebration of accomplishment – and a bar for professional performance (which does not guarantee it, but is an indicator) without feeding the power un-equilibrium.
I am wondering what this is doing in MIA? What this actually has to do with psych – iatry or -ology or the suffering induced under those. I admit that those who prescribe (and the legal gateway which allows them to do so because of the papers they hold) are involved in a power imbalance – but – this article seems more political and social – or even linguistic – than is appropriate for MIA.
So – I will tell stories. My father was the first in his family to even attend a university. His family came out of Kentucky poverty, and he was determined not to perpetuate that poverty in his own family. He grew up during the Great Depression, and remembers his shell-shocked and gassed WW1 father drinking the money that his mother tried to hide. He remembers standing in line to get shoes, ashamed that he had to beg for them. Doggedly, he pursued education, and after about a dozen years of university, earned his Doctorate in Business Administration with a specialty in Business Communication. We called him Doctor; he earned this. It was more than a piece of paper, it was his growing identity. Something which made him stand out from the pack – his family, his friends, he achieved all of this on his own.
He worked as much as possible to pay for these degrees – a Westinghouse refrigerator factory, selling tires for Firestone, butchering chickens for his local grocer…
Those were different times, but he worked hard for that “honorific” (as Sarah calls it), and so – we used it. My chilhood friends called him “Dr. Name,” as well as his colleagues. He was Dr. Name his entire life, and his achievements in his field never hit the New York Times or WSJ, but in our community he made a difference. He built up his faculty and developed one of the best undergraduate business schools in the state. He never got credit for it, never got called “Dean,” even though that was the last honorific he wanted. (My brother made sure that the title “Dean” got into his Obituary, to honour him.)
Using his title “Dr.” was a way of respecting what he had been through – not only his education, but his roots and life experience.
But those were different times.
In my time in Bloomington Indiana – it was an appealing little town, and many people who graduated Indiana University wanted to stay and live there, even though there were only a few jobs for the highly educated. So in this IU town, there were PhD’s waiting tables and swishing toilets. Did we call the wait staff “Dr. Wait Staff”? Or the janitor “Dr. Janitor”? No, we did not. There were a lot of hidden PhD’s in that town, managing grocery stores, running call centres, selling cars, and yes, washing floors.
In today’s society, the essentialness of a degree has been emphasized – for even simple jobs, a university Bachelor’s is minimum requirement. And the related student debt has, therefore skyrocketed. (this is a crisis of national proportions, and eliminating student debt is not something that the Powers That Be will consider, even though it is a burden that all society will bear.)
Is it a meaningless piece of paper? Some would argue yes. But I know that my piece of paper was earned, and I am proud of it, and pleased at the opportunities it has brought me, even when I am not utilising them in the way I thought I would when I was a bright eyed, idealistic young student.
Lastly, in this era of pandemic, I get disgusted at chiropractors who call themselves “Doctor,” when I know that their degree was probably easier than mine. In this era of pandemic, there ***is*** a difference between an MD or DO, and a practitioner who took weekend seminars to become an ND or “functional medicine practitioner.” In this era of pandemic, I do not want to take medical advice from a Doctor of Psychology (for example). In this era of “bro science” it is difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff, and I am more inclined to listen to The Paleo Cardiologist or Dr. Peter Breggin than I am Pete Evans or Pam Popper. That MD is a bar, and the minimum required to leap it is an important measure.
So – in this era of pandemic, do we wish to distinguish medical doctors from doctors of chiropractic or PhD’s in Education? I know that we are more than the letters after our name, and some of them seem to be ego stroking – but many of them are, indeed earned.
I do subscribe to calling medical doctors that I am fond of, “Dr. Firstname” – but there are some MD’s in my life that I respect too highly to even do that. My GP is one, my osteopath (who is also an MD) is another. They are, and always will be, “Dr. Lastname.”
Linguistics, words do matter. And there is a power differential in psychiatry as well as psychology that is frequently abused in the name of DSM and diag-nonsense.
But to revoke all honorifics seems like a broad brush, and throwing out the baby with the bathwater. I’m with Marie – is this really vital to our society? Or would it be better to house the homeless, feed the hungry, educate those who want to learn? I’m thinking of the principles of harm reduction, where this first world problem of worrying about honorifics has much less effect than taking care of people in crisis and in need.
While I would love to attend the discussion live, as I am a fan of nearly all of the panel – being in Australia makes this impossible to be there at the right time.
It is my fond hope that these discussions will be recorded and widely available after the event.
Hey Steve –
When I talk about 3 weeks – I’m only talking about 10% tapers.
EACH 10% taper takes about 3 weeks to adjust, and for symptoms to resolve. (and yes, it can take longer – but never shorter)
IF you Cold Turkey – you could be talking years, for all of these 3 week neurotransmitter adjustments to take place. They “stack up” and all your dysregulated systems have to try and right the ship before it topples. In Surviving Antidepressants, we call it “Humpty falls off the wall.”
The 3 weeks seems to be carved in stone, however, whether you’ve been on the drugs for 1 year or 10 – that there is an adjustment after 3 weeks of chemical change. This may be true of other neurotransmitter affecting drugs, like alcohol, tobacco, etc. It seems to be true of all psych drugs, whether “antidepressant,” benzo, neuroleptic, or “mood stabiliser.”
You cannot heal a broken leg faster than you can. Likewise, when your brain has upregulated or downregulated to a drug OR A DOSE (tapering) – it takes at least 3 weeks to recover from that change.
This may be why the label literature speaks of “resolved in 2-4 weeks” = but we all know that is a lie for at least 50-80% of people who have taken these drugs.
Actually, as evidenced in tapering and withdrawal – the neurotransmitters do take about 3 weeks to upregulate or downregulate from chemical intervention.
Somewhere on SurvivingAntidepressants.org is a study which led our founder in establishing our protocols. It really does seem to be true.
So – taking the drug – it takes 3 weeks to upregulate and adjust to the chemical intrusion. And withdrawing from the drug – it takes 3 weeks after each adjustment. (SurvivingAntidepressants recommends 4 weeks between tapers, so that these adjustments don’t stack up and throw your system into chaos. This gives a week buffer for symptoms to settle.)
This is why “med changes” – especially the “cold switch” = are hell.
It’s similar to the way that a broken leg cannot knit any faster than 6 weeks…it takes at least 3 weeks for neurotransmitters to adjust to these chemical changes.
Yes, it is convenient for drug companies that this is enough time to be hooked on the drug – but that is not the only factor at play here.
@wonnell, have you considered that your “mental health crisis” may have been exacerbated by all those drugs you were on? And that the ECT just “mellowed it all out” a bit?
Ativan = depressing. Zoloft, Risperdal, Trazadone = can induce akathisia, an internal restlessness that is difficult to quell. All of these drugs mess with hormones, endocrine, digestion, and sexual function. They don’t go straight to your brain, but affect many systems. The longer you are on them, the more difficult it is to “control your mood” and other weird health affects may come into play. Additionally, the longer you are on them, they may “poop out” which is likely how you ended up on this complex cocktail to begin with.
“Mental health crisis” = the more I think about this, the more I feel it isn’t about our brains **at** **all**!!!! It’s about the ability to regulate emotions. Sometimes when we are children, emotional states serve us in order to survive, but when we reach adulthood, they no longer support and serve (quite the opposite). Bottom line: only *I* can regulate my emotional state – drugs and shocks can numb it out – but only I can actually regulate it.
http://www.survivingantidepressants.org – a site to help people taper safely off of psych drugs.
https://youtu.be/ppQdFRRo9UE
Acting Very Strange
Is Acting Very Human.
Please people can we stop with the “meds” business? THEY ARE DRUGS.
I know that this article is meant to distinguish between “taking your meds” and “seeking illicit drugs”
But psych drugs are NOT medicine.
Excuse me – but I refuse to go to a practitioner to “change my brain.”
There are so many things I can do to change my own brain. Sunlight. Diet, exercise.
Daily walks, seeing the horizon, listening to music, meditation, qigong, yoga – all of these I am in complete control of.
When I get in your chair (I assume you, @class1quirk, are also a practitioner, like jjnoles) – that choice is taken away from me, and I am at the mercy of the practitioner.
No, thank you. And thank you James Hall for pointing out these risks.
class1quirk: and so – how do you suggest one sorts out the “legitimate” practitioners from the cowboys, wild west and snake oil cures?
Is this a job of the regulator – like FDA? AMA?
Or is it the job of the practitioner? If this is the case – how does a “consumer” (egads) choose the right practitioner?
If practitioner C gets excellent effects, but practitioners A and B have problems (or vice versa) – how are we to know? Where is the reporting on this?
If you have 3 auto mechanics, and 1 of them is always breaking things – well, that’s my car, and I can take it to a good mechanic to repair the damage done by the bad mechanic.
But my body – once you damage that – yes, it is a self healing amazing body, but – where do I take it to get it “fixed?”
The answer is: nowhere, you have to fix it yourself, and your mileage may vary.
Sam – too right! I know people who have been “addicted” to their puffers since childhood, and there becomes a tendency to hit the puffer anytime one is anxious or uncomfortable. It seems that the long term consequences of the puffers is similar to any other drug use: the body acclimates to it, homeostasis sets in, and the next thing you know, you “need” the drug.
Asthma is a huge business here in Oz, and I have wondered: what if the children were taught QiGong breathing exercises instead? Or yoga? When will it be acceptable for a GP or paediatrician to have a “breathing” specialist on staff?
As children, we change our breathing to squelch our Shadows, our “unacceptable emotions.” (ref: Dennis Lewis, “Natural breathing.”) So there is a psych element involved in these puffers and their use as well.
If a child learns to breathe through emotions – then they will not suffer “shallow breathing,” which leads to asthma.
I’m not a parent, so I’ve never been through the fear of “my child cannot breathe!” and the trips to the emergency room – so – perhaps I’m not qualified to comment. But perhaps that child never learned to breathe through their feelings (without suppressing them) to begin with.
JefferyC: Drug damage is too true, and I would hazard a guess that Mr. Hall’s use of antidepressants (even intermittently) was the thing that made his depression “sticky” and “chronic.” At least that is what Mr. Whitaker’s work points to.
Too right, Sam! Can you put it back the way it was?
It is difficult to report a treatment when, if you go to physicians, you are gaslighted into believing “it’s only your ‘illness’ which is causing these problems.”
This is why the drugs took so long to be excoriated.
Physicians don’t like to contradict other physicians, and declare “OMG you’ve been HARMED.” Even James Hall’s neurologist said something like, “Well, it will likely clear up, but I can’t find anything . . . ” refusing to contradict this physician referred “treatment.”
I suspect it is brain damaging, and that the damages caused by TMS “regulate mood” somewhat. Sadly, James got the damage without the mood regulation.
No, they have seen the light on benzodiazapenes. AFAIK, he is still on SSRI’s, and on some sort of anticonvulsant post benzo. From a Surviving Antidepressants perspective, he still has a lot of tapering to do before he is free.
The “Lobster” chapter of his book is about as bio-bio-bio as they come. He has a lot of adjustment to do before he accepts the nature of trauma…Daniel Mackler made a good video about this topic: https://youtu.be/GtwP6AbbAUc
I’m working on a letter to him (and/or Mikhaila) about the dangers of SSRIs, that they can produce the SAME SYMPTOMS that the benzos caused…
It would help if I’m not the only voice from MIA doing so. If he sees the light, we could have a powerful, popular ally. He’s not afraid to be excoriated (as evidenced by his stance on making certain pronouns required by law) – he would be an excellent ally for anti-psychiatry – IF he can let go of everything he’s ever learned.
And I’m not sure he can, but – he believes that learning (from his 12 Rules book) is a little death, and that by letting go of the old, you are cast into chaos, and it is up to you to build a new Order.
he has definitely been through the Chaos (I believe his chaos / order model is very black/white simplicity, but – he does have a good mind) and it is my fond hope that he can see through the lies.
I hear you Berzerk. I have witnessed cognitive decline in all kinds of polypharmacy. Sometimes it’s the simple “pain prescription” of Cymbalta + Lyrica. Heck, Lyrica does a number all by itself, as do the neuroleptics and tranquilisers. Then there’s the “over time” problem, taking polypharmacy for 2 years. 5 years. 10 years. Watch the brain go away. I’ve seen this happen, too.
I’m pleased to see this information getting out there – but – a single case study? This feels underwhelming for the magnitude of the problem.
Ah but they can. That’s called “the algorithm. It has been shown that algorithm get way skewed and prejudiced – the prejudices of the people writing the parameters get amplified in the echo chambers of algorithms and turn into very prejudicial AI’s….
Though – you said *one* person. It would depend on what parameters on the algorithm any one person fits or doesn’t fit.
Hey Teresa,
The forum http://www.survivingantidepressants.org has moderators and members in New Zealand. Our protocols work there as well as anywhere!
I have met some of the New Zealand moderators and members, back in the days when we might meet in person. I tried to hold meetings in my local area (Brisbane), but it was like herding cats, as everyone was too “anxious” or “having a symptom wave” to come out, meet people, and have a cuppa….
So you don’t need to do it in person, and, in fact, it’s contraindicated – withdrawal makes it hard to meet face to face (even if there were no COVID). Have a look around the SA site, and you can help people with the information presented there.
Be aware, however, that most people don’t want to be helped. I am an expert, thanks to the training of AltoStrata, but most people dismiss me as “just a paranoid person” when I try to warn them about how wrong these drugs are. I am not a doctor, and most folks are inclined to listen only to doctors. Even those that are psychiatrists. Ugh!
Rachel sez: “They know the drugs cause excessive weight gain, kidney failure, severe GI problems, heart arhythmia, diabetes and extensive damage to the brain and CNS”
And if you go to the doctor – with a detached retina, cardiovascular problems, kidney damage, metabolic disorder, diabetes, cognitive loss, blindness, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue – practically anything –
They won’t even CONSIDER removing the drugs that caused it.
It’s like there’s a hierarchy, and psych drugs are at the top – if you remove the psych drugs, the person dissolves into a puddle. EVEN if the drugs are causing all the above problems. The medical doctors are in collusion with the psychiatrists in supporting their drugging regime.
Yes, when the WHO says “corporal punishment of children is *always* bad” I’m inclined to question.
I have heard of tales of Americans in Scandanavian countries who spanked their children, and ended up with their children removed from their custody into foster care. Surely this, too, is an extreme?
I can see why Peterson probably takes umbrance with this worldwide policy, as he is at the sharp end of the liberal stick at times.
What he states in his book is nuanced. It is VITALLY important for children to have clarity and consistency, because it is the child’s job to test the boundaries at all times. If the boundary is in the same place, consistently, and there are consequences for crossing that boundary – to their level of understanding – then they will learn better. Especially if this is done from the support of love. “I love you, not this behaviour, but I love you.”
It is the parents who sometimes say it’s okay for a child to throw a tantrum and then give them a lolly to shut them up, and then the next tantrum smacks them – that raises a confused and wild – and surely – abusive antisocial child. I’ve seen this more often than I can count.
As for Peterson, it is my fond hope that his Dark Night of the Soul with his benzo / antidepressant withdrawal will help his great mind (and he does have an excellent, if rigid, mind) to transform and he will be able to drop his labels.
One of his psychologist’s skills is to label everything. Diag-nonsense labels. “post-Marxist” “neoliberal” labels.
It is my fond hope that – not that I wish anyone to suffer – his suffering will soften his heart and integrate his mind much more fully into opening.
Perhaps, even, he is getting Iboga, or some other psychedelic treatment to facilitate this process.
“I am firmly against forced psychiatric drugging, but this does not mean that I also reject modern medicine and the idea of mass vaccination against dangerous viruses and bacteria.”
How about “trust me, I’m a doctor” = ?
Many of us in here have been as harmed by the system of modern medicine as we have by psychiatry. Some of us had physical illnesses which were written off as “psych problems.”
While I was numbed from psych drugs, I was convinced to have 2 major surgeries which have deteriorated my health. The surgeries were skillfully performed, they did what they were meant to do (thyroidectomy, hysterectomy) – and yet – I was not given any alternatives (dietary changes, etc.). Numb from the lithium, I submitted to the medical procedures. Maybe I couldn’t have avoided them – but they were deemed necessary at the time.
I am now very cautious about anything involving the system of modern medicine – whose protocols are developed by pharma. Remember, it’s GP’s giving out most of these drugs, or getting people started on them.
I just read an interesting article on communication about vaccines.
There is harm done by them, largely swept under the rug of the “vaccine court,” and the billions paid out in claims against them only cover a few of the cases reported. It is difficult to prove that the vaccine caused harm, and yet many people believe that “things were never the same” after the jab.
So: Those who question vaccines (“anti-vax” is a slur, and has absolutely no subtletly) are asking: “Will this hurt my child?”
This is about communication. And so the scientists and doctors keep replying, “We need herd immunity.”
So the first question is never answered. And the studies are not there to answer the question. The studies are about herd immunity and control of a disease, but the question of individual safety is frequently cast aside for this herd immunity.
The scientists are not listening to the parents, and the parents no longer trust the scientists, because their concerns are not being heard or answered.
The faster a vaccine is rolled out, the less I trust it. There were some vaccines which came out after SARS and MERS that were quite questionable.
I’ll want to see how well it is doing before I join the herd.
My mother was not separated as she suffered from COVID symptoms (but they wouldn’t test her to verify).
I have a friend in Indiana who is helping a homeless man sue the local hospital who turned him back out onto the streets, COVID positive. Hey, let’s eliminate the homeless population in one sweep!
So – no, these protocols to “help the vulnerable” aren’t really helping the vulnerable.
Yes, I’ve seen the Snowdon vid. I have a story of people whose phones (in Singapore) which were OFF – blinked and text messaged “Stop talking about that.” (I think they were talking about surveillance)
I have not disconnected camera or mic …however I do not let the phone connect to internet.
We all have our lines. That one is mine. And so – no app for me. Likely requires internet / data connection.
Your link to Dastyari is behind a paywall, so couldn’t see. I remember hearing the name, but not the controversy.
I learned more about the tracker app. It is not for warning you off an active case, but if you do test positive, they go to your phone, and have a list of every phone you’ve come into contact with in the past 3 weeks. It’s for tracing contacts (which, they are doing a pretty good job of now, without the app).
2 million (so far) have downloaded it.
And Boans, the next “enemy” might not be Jews (there aren’t that many here, to my knowledge). Who knows what random enemy the state will create for us? When everyone is tracked (including medicine), it could be for a gene allele, or – as Oldhead postulates, a virus caste system.
I opted out of MyHealth. It’s my understanding that in the US, there is something similar in response to the “opioid crisis” that tracks people nationally through pharmacies. We’ve noted on SA that it’s hard to get labels dropped from your file, even after moving.