I know that niacinamide goes to the same neural sites as benzos. Is it possible to use it for benzo withdrawal in the same fashion as it’s brother niacin, can be used for alcohol withdrawal. Of course, becuse benzos are fat soluble, you’d have to use it for a much longer period of time as niacin, although some alcoholics have to permanently stay on niacin to remain happily sober.
Serotonin’s just the neurotransmitter of the week. Antidepressants have been pushed for decades as antagonists of assorted malfunctioning neurotransmitters, which have gone in and out of fashion as their treatment uselessness was established (I do remember dopamine, the pre-serotonin villain).
You had to take your vitamins, but under the guidance of someone who knows how to use them therapeutically, rather than the mental health chumps who medicated you into a daze.
They don’t have the awareness that we mad folk do. And since they’re psychotically afraid of us, we can’t help guide them, either.
If these cops don’t know what’s going on when they meet mental patients, they may need psychiatric chieu hois to go on calls with them to explain what patients are doing as well as initiating interactions with such individuals when the cops are called about their activities and don’t know what to do.
Here’s a career opening for former mental patients, particularly those with the hospital experience that’s given them the opportunity to encounter a variety of “diagnoses” they’ve likely had previous experience dealing with while they were patients.
(Duplicate comment)
If I weren’t a geezer, I’d investigate the idea of being a secret orthomolecular practitioner (secret megavitamin dealer complement to drug dealers?) with an obscure address in some university town. I could take on significantly more clients than the school counselors and their referrals would be in better shape than they are now.
There probably are records of therapeutic LSD use in Saskatchewan, kicking around from the old Hoffer/Osmond days prior to the DEA sanctions from the US. Prior to the DEA “saving” that region of North America, the Canadians treated a multitude of alcoholics with psychedelic therapy, which led the province to make psychedelic therapy mainstream until the DEA saved Saskatchewan from LSD by threatening the province with isolation.
The Personality Disorders- proud inhabitants of the Diagnostic Wastebasket. What would our shrinks do without the Diagnostic Wastebasket to hide their failures?
Superstitious belief.
So- our boy’s seeking a psilocybin monopoly, eh. Does he plan to sue every farm in the South that has a cow pasture for violating his monopoly? Psilocybe cubensis does grow wild there. Maybe he could sue everyone with pastureland in Spain. Psilocybe cubensis is an import from there, courtesy of the conquistadores.
This reminds me of an incident that occurred while I was in Vietnam. My company was leaving a small firebase it was occupying, to be replaced by another the next day, and my drunken squad leader staggered up to a group of us stoners to tell us that we were the only individuals capable of fighting, should the VC show up that night to give us a violent sendoff.
Makes me glad I got into orthomolecular medicine decades ago, where I can easily avoid these bombardments promoting pharmaceutical miracle substances before the lawsuits featuring them hit the media.
Like the other psychiatric “diseases”, depression is but a syndrome that can have any number of origins, which is why these common psychiatric “treatments” are frequently useless or damaging, just as they are for the other psych “diseases”.
You can start to sort your subjects via testing their perceptual stability, one of the easiest ways being the HOD test, which is quantitative. The folks with unstable perceptions are more likely to bum or freak out than people whose perceptual worlds are more stable.
Many years ago, I had an illustrative experience that demonstrated this. Some young chap at the center where I volunteered, wanted to take LSD, but he wanted to take the test to see if this was a good idea. His score was very high, as though he were tripping already (he wasn’t), so I told him he was high risk and I wouldn’t supervise (guide?) his upcoming trip unless he took 3 grams of ascorbic acid (vit. C) per day for several days prior to his voyage, so he wouldn’t lose his marbles and jump out a window.
He didn’t take the C but did drop the acid and had a miserable time, finally telling me in an embarassed voice that he’d jumped out of a window in his house.
Alas, I was unaware that “real” medicine’s only purpose was to churn out profit for pharmaceutical companies, while therapeutic benefits were only side effects.
No, as megavitamins B3 and C will frequently appropriately treat both “real” and drug-induced schizophrenias, which you’d know, were you into orthomolecular medicine.
These bad reactions to antidepressants come as no surprise, since shrinks and GP’s don’t like to assess the perceptual status of their patients before prescribing something, preferring to be surprised by toxic drug reactions, instead.
You have to remember that Big-time Psychiatry has only a pseudo-medical model to justify its actions. The orthomolecular guys, who do use the same medical model that GP’s do, are subjected to constant criticism from Big-time Psychiatry’s alleged thought leaders for believing nutrient therapy superior to constant heavy medicating with the drugs MIA members despise.
So, does this mean I’m a point man for a host of the Khan’s barbarians when I say that depression isn’t a disease at all, but a syndrome arising from multiple conditions and that antidepressants alone don’t really treat any of them?
I find this discussion a little too arcane, as I also know how H&O used to treat flashbacks and unwanted perceptual anomalies- with mega B3 and C. Having used it myself with various people by following H&O’s written guidance, I’d be obliged to agree with them and not with the outraged shrinks on the subject.
By the way, the way to prevent these Experiences in the first place is to screen subjects with perceptually based “psych” tests like the Hoffer/Osmond Diagnostic or the Experiential World Inventory before giving them a hallucinogenic substance. High scores on them make hallucinogens a bad choice for the test taker.
That was indeed an impressive cocktail (cocktails?) of drugs these alleged doctors were giving you. were they showing off for your pharmacist? Had they been hypnotized into writing scripts whenever you showed up at the pharmacy? Were they business partners with the pharmacist?
Then they pretend they’re following a medical model. Sometimes regulars who follow this blog are deceived by this pretense, thereby going on prolonged screeds after mistaking psych “medicine” for real medicine.
For some years, now, I’ve wondered if niacinamide can be used for benzo withdrawal in a similar fashion to using niacin for alcohol withdrawal. Naturally, as a withdrawal substance, you’d have to use it for a much longer period than niacin, as the benzos are fat soluble, which means it takes much longer to clear them from your system.
Personality Disorder? Another long term inhabitant of the Diagnostic Wastebasket stands up and identifies itself.
What we call “depression” is just a behavioral description that can actually arise from a number of origins that can either be social or organic, running from miserable life circumstances to organic ailments, such as heavy metal poisoning. There’s obviously no “one size fits all” treatment that relieves all of them and some that make depressed states more intense.
You become a borderline by not responding to treatment, even though said treatment is likely to be faulty.
You may find it entertaining that the orthomolecular guys are about the only ones who actually practice medically based psychiatry and the only ones who draw outrage from all our psychiatric “schools” at the very mention of the word “orthomolecular”.
The scammers who got the old dude daffy, would have likely pulled their scam off had they known that B3 in multigram quantities would have put paid to his unpleasant states much more easily than a trip to the alleged funny farm. They wouldn’t even have to flee.
This is unfortunate for our bosom pals at Big Pharma and our Big Time Academicians, but not for us as it gives us an opportunity to avoid Big Time medicating with the latest ineffectual Big Time Antidepressant for good reason. Maybe it will even eventually occur to the Big Time Academics that depression isn’t a single source ailment.
There are multiple reasons for depression. Successful treatments depend on knowing the origin of the depressed mood (and if there’s anything else besides simple circumstantial depressed moods) which can very from circumstantial to heavy metal poisoning (plus many things in between)- many of which will NOT respond to antidepressants.
Well, there is a sort of test for schizophrenia syndrome (I use this term in lieu of disease, as it has multiple causes), the old test for “mauve factor” created in Saskatchewan in its LSD for screening alcoholics for psychedelic treatment. It’s regularly bad-mouthed in the psych world because an outside committee found the “mauve positive” individuals had multiple diagnoses according to a group of shrinks. Interestingly (and entertainingly) enough, the actual symptoms displayed were constant while the “diagnoses” differed. Oh yes, and their responses to LSD were invariably bad.
Even more significant, the best treatment for eliminating it was later found to be B6 and zinc instead of proprietary drugs, which I’m crass enough to find entertaining, knowing that this disqualifies the condition as worth attention from Big Pharma.
It was an unstable and unsound empire to begin with. Its disintegration should come as no surprise.
If you’re interested in screening, you might enjoy the actions of the Canadian Schizophrenia Foundation, an organization featuring patient participation and use of the Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic Test (HOD) as a kind of psychiatric thermometer. They oversaw creating a pocket copy of same to use as a “psychiatric thermometer” to test yourself, so you could see how you’re doing, a psych version of your bathroom thermometer you could take with you on trips. Of course the CSF advocates for the orthomolecular nutritional treatment for disease, which will cerainly deny them credibility in the pharma-crossed USA.
This “screening” might have some value if it looked into subjects’ perceptual status as well as their moods, which could serve as a clue to appropriate medicating (having “depressed” patients suddenly going bananas is more of a sign of incompetent medicating than of “treatment resistance”).
I believe Schizophrenics Anonymous is still going strong in Canada. They’re likely getting grief if they’re in the USA, as they’re fans of orthomolecular medicine (the first organizers were patients of Abram Hoffer).
The amusing thing about this is that these self-appointed “authorities” would go into convulsions at the very thought of nutritional elements having any effect on mental functioning, despite getting a few minutes discussion about pellagra and scurvy with no mention about their psychological “side effects” while they were students (I recall the contorted faces of the professionals who found out I used niacin regularly instead of “meds”).
Actually, what we call schizophrenia isn’t an independent illness at all, but a bunch of them, which have different effective treatments, depending on their origins. “Schizophrenia” is actually a syndrome, a collection of signs and symptoms, rather than a disease unto itself (excuse me for being so materialistic).
Congratulations. You’re the first MH guy I’ve ever read who admitted that.
A tricky question. It can work for depressed mood, but only if you’re experiencing many disperceptions and perceptual distortions at the same time. If I have to do psychiatric things, I use my Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic Test in the “initial interview” if I can, so I have a better idea about what needs to be done if I’ve got to oversee the treatment.
BPD? That shows you were dealing with bumblers who didn’t know what they were doing, BPD being a true wastebasket diagnosis.
It also demonstrates why shrinks are so afraid of megavitamin therapy. You can sometimes successfully deal with others’ treatment failures without enduring multiple years of grad school in the process.
Steve. I got discharged from a halfway house for substance abusers by secretly treating a couple of them with niacinamide (I was working nights with no other staff around) and was caught because they were supposed to be failures, but graduated, instead. I was supposed to stop doing something that did work.
This study merely demonstrates the need to examine the “depressed” more thoroughly than is presently done, so you don’t have treatment failures that go floridly bonkers thanks to the faulty “therapeutic” approaches you’re using.
Yes, Miranda, as they used to say about travelling in the Old West, we’ve seen the Elephant.
R.e. “psychiatric alternatives”. There’s also nutrient therapy. Although it drives main line psychiatrists into a frenzy (no pharma company bennies, no freebie trips to conferences in warm places during winter), it frequently works where “standard treatments” don’t.
Excellent. Now I don’t have to worry so much about my own copy being stolen.
I notice that these enthusiasts don’t seem to believe in screening their “patients” for perceptual distortions prior to giving them psychedelics- a must for determining whether said patients are decent candidates for psychedelic therapy. Maybe these pseudo shrinks should try to find a copy of Hoffer and Osmond’s book *The Hallucinogens*, which describes psychedelic therapy in detail (long out of print, alas).
How, exactly are we supposed to find cures for entities like “depression” and/or “schizophrenia” when those aren’t entities unto themselves, but behavioral descriptions? I should be surprised that the DSM’s are intellectualized gibberish?
An interesting observation of kids on speed is whether or not their behavior was more appropriate because they thought people, particularly their teachers, were spying on them. I don’t know if “classical” experimenters could find out, but the area’s speed freaks would almost certainly know.
One of the things in the article that I immediately noticed was that these companies make no effort to explore their patients’ experiential worlds in some detail, which would eliminate or reduce much of this nonsense caused when their pet drugs are mistakenly used, causing their patients to go bananas.
But then I noticed these companies are only interested in their bottom lines, where one drug failure can be “corrected” by using another (company manufactured) drug, thereby generating more profit.
Viva pharmacotherapy!
Thanks, but I’ll just keep taking my vitamins and avoid junk food.
Well, the industry must do all it can to prevent pregnant women from taking B6 and zinc in the final trimester of pregnancy in order to sell expensive high-tech treatments that won’t work, as elevated serum copper seems to be the real reason for these “depressions”.
Ah, but if you recover from psychotic illnesses using unusual means- real medicine, nutrients, dietary avoidance, treating allergies, support groups like SA, etc., then Big Time Psychiatry will rise with righteous fury to tell the world how you’ve let yourself be deceived by scoundrels and are destined to finish your life drooling in the back wards of some institution.
The big hassle here is that “depression” is misinterpreted as a disease unto itself instead of a syndrome likely to have differing causes, which is why you have individuals carelessly labeled as suffering from a disease called depression, when such isn’t the case. This is also why you have patients with this “disease” losing their marbles when (erroneously) prescribed antidepressants.
The problem is that the alleged medical model of psychiatry isn’t medical at all, but a pseudo-medical model, as the alleged diseases are merely behavioral descriptions, rather than diseases unto themselves.
It seems to be a state secret that niacin can be used to remove the dangers associated with alcohol withdrawal, while as niacinamide, it can serve in aiding withdrawal from benzos. Of course, little money can be made by Big Pharma (or Big Hospitalization) as the withdrawal process is speeded up and your “medication” isn’t patented and thus isn’t lucrative.
I’ve overseen (home) alcohols before, but I haven’t supervised a benzo withdrawal, although I’ve read articles by the orthomolecular guys that suggests that they have done so.
Well, Steve, treatments that do work are likely to be frowned upon by our “professional” classes as forms of black magic, or maybe hypnotism, that are likely to direct youthful patients into subversive antisocial activities instead of leaving them bland vegetables.
Why are things like low magnesium, low zinc and unstable blood sugar coming to mind? Why am I thinking about niacinamide? Why am I curious about perceptual instability? I’m supposed to radiate reassurance and puff the skills of shrinks.
The problem to the question you’re asking, is that the answer is, “it depends.” It depends on user perceptual status, the kind of substances most commonly used as well as or in addition to cannabis, the presence and kind of users’ physical and social peculiarities, and so on.
Poor babies- actually having to do something positive for their patients in order to get paid for it.
This article illustrates the difference between real medicine and the pseudo-medical model that Big-Time Psychiatry considers medical (as well as demonstrating why I don’t have anything to do with most shrinks). It’s their own heads that have shrunk.
“Borderline Personality Disorder,” eh? You just got tossed into the Diagnostic Wastebasket, so the shrink wouldn’t have to face his own ineptitude, demonstrated by the ineffective series of ECT you just had.
I know, Steve, but remember, if I have to do psychiatric things, it’s as a kind of psychiatric mechanic seeing other people’s (professionals, actually) treatment failures, which is why I don’t do them very often because I can get in trouble, even if I’m “brilliantly” successful (for example, I lost a job at a residential treatment center for substance abusers when two guys “graduated” who weren’t supposed to, shocking the professional staff- I was so peeved, I never told the staff people I’d simply put them on niacinamide, which I could administer when the professionals had gone for the evening).
I’m glad I’m not spending any money for this certain-to-fail initiative. Depression, as the shrinks call it, isn’t an illness unto itself, but a syndrome (particular group of signs and symptoms) that can have any number of causes. I’m just a chump without formal psychiatric training, but I can think of several (thyroid, vitamin dependencies and deficiencies, heavy metal poisoning, hypoglycemia, cerebral allergies) that quickly come to mind while I’m sitting here typing. Notice that none of my examples can be readily treated with antidepressants or SSRI’s.
Think psychiatry doesn’t critically vet treatments? Follow psychiatry’s fight against the clinical use of vitamin B3 in psychiatric treatments, which seems to have taken on the nature of a crusade- ditch that dangerous vitamin and other equally dangerous substances like vitamin C for safe antipsychotic drugs (I’m sure all those patients with drug-induced dyskinesias will want to jump on this bandwagon and join the crusade, particularly when they discover manganese salts in competent hands can relieve this condition).
Time management problems? Take up tournament chess. The clock will show you how to manage time.
That was well put, Steve. I think the idea of the mind as a product of the brain and is dependent on its effective functioning is a little too deep for our present shrinks.
“Personality disorders” just reeks of the diagnostic wastebasket approach to psychiatric matters…”you don’t know what’s going on? Just dump the whole thing into this diagnostic wastebasket here”.
I find it unusual that shrinks would use a CNS depressant (anesthetic) in “antidepressant therapy”. It would seem that you’d have to ignore physiology to be a successful shrink, although you might be able to suppress suicidal ideation by leaving the patient so anesthetized that he/she would be incapable of any ideation.
Where do these places get their “alleged” doctors? Do they come from the Frankenstein Medical Institute? Many, if not most psych drugs have antihistaminic properties, so Bridgewater’s psychiatric “disciplinarians” are doing the equivalent of giving their patients downers and alcohol simultaneously. This will eventually come out of the woodwork when a patient dies or flips out (simultaneously thrashing the security staff in the process with the super strength they inadvertently gave him/her) or both.
When I read these articles, I have some difficulty with the psychotherapy stories about treating “mental” illnesses properly, as psychiatric “diagnoses” are just descriptions of syndromes that can have a number of possible origins that don’t all have the same treatment. There’s no “one size fits all” for the proper treatment of “mental” syndromes.
I’m a bit surprised they’re still being prescribed in such quantities. It was only 50+ years ago I first heard they were addictive and that withdrawing from them was worse than coming off heroin.
Maybe so, but if their institutional attitudes are frozen, they’re goners, like the French in 1940, when the Germans came.
These fumbling treatments for depression exist because it was believed that depression was an entity unto itself, rather than a sign that something was amiss with the sufferer that indicated further inquiry and/or examination was necessary.
Think of psychiatry as an army under siege. After only minimal gains, it has now been driven back to its starting point and feels itself in danger of total collapse, should it lose further intellectual territory.
These studies also don’t presume “Major Depressive Disorder” to be the wastebasket diagnosis it actually is, so they unknowingly have heterogeneous groups of patients. It would be truly remarkable if they did find some Universal Clinical Truth through such diagnostic “methods”.
I hate to quibble, but these drugs like ketamine, esketamine, etc. aren’t psychedelic drugs, but more closely related to anesthetics, illustrating the folly of using psych drugs on the delerious, thanks to these drugs, while under the illusion they’re tripping out, instead. (I hope I don’t sound too confusing)
This reminds me of the hubbub around PCP, aka phencyclidine, a similarly acting drug used as an animal anesthetic around 50 years ago- same properties, same tendency for inducing delerium in subjects, particularly after efforts using antipsychotics to “tranquilize” them when they were bumming out.
In the late 1950’s, H&O began to consider sobering experiences. They’d also gone to a peyote ceremony in Alberta at the invitation of the Blackfeet, who were trying to make their religious peyote ceremonies respectable to white governments. Shortly after this, they created a study using acid to simulate DT’s. While doing this, they discovered that the guys who had the psychedelic experiences instead of the “psychotomimetic” were the most likely to stay sober. From there, they became involved with psychedelic therapy in alcoholics, and devised protocols for proper usage to maximize good results. The government of Saskatchewan was so impressed, it authorized and began to use psychedelic therapy as a first line treatment for alcoholism throughout the province. The Americasn DEA was outraged and forced the province to discontinue psychedelic therapy for their alcoholic patients. (your government hard at work to protect youy from imaginary threats)
Well, the Native American Church uses them (well, peyote, at least) in ways beneficial to the members, as did the Province of Saskatchewan, until the US DEA clamped down on it for providing psychedelic experiences to alcoholics to help sober them up, when the Agency “knew” that this was “impossible”.
At the risk of getting electronically silenced, I’d suggest paying more attention to the work of Hoffer and Osmond, particularly their magnum opus- The Hallucinogens. Although long out of print, you may still find copies in university and college libraries (I’d have to shoot you if you tried to take my copy).
One of the problems I have with commenting is a result of having familiarity with orthomolecular medicine for 45+ years. Something that is old hat for me, such as nutrient therapy for schizophrenia syndromes, is bizarre and strange for readers who have psychosocial beliefs about the syndromes’ origins, so I’ll inadvertently write things that get my correspondence sent to the electronic wasteland instead of getting posted on the site.
Yes, your schizophrenia was indeed right when it told you esketamine was bad for you. Unfortunately, your schizophrenia couldn’t tell you about ketamine antagonists and the anesthesiologist didn’t know anything about the subject, which I can’t reveal if I want a comment to actually get printed.
Like most mental “diseases”, ADHD is a description and not an idenntity unto itself. Also, like many other of these “diseases”, the behaviors that give it its name are also likely to have a variety of origins and likely to have a variety of proper treatments, once you determine the specific identity of the condition you’re dealing with.
One of the common headaches about psychiatric “diagnosis” is that the shrinks pay little attention to your experiential world, thereby knowing little to nothing about your real mental status, raising the likelihood you’ll be ineptly or improperly treated by the shrink’s medication efforts.
Using selected nutrients instead of psych drugs and having done so for years, I find these arguments fairly bizarre, particularly since there’s no real improvement in the treatment groups, although there is a great deal of company puffery about their newest drugs after the alleged studies are done.
Lead is also responsible for inducing hyperactivity in children, which leads me to wonder why this isn’t routinely checked for prior to prescribing ritalin and other stimulants. Speed isn’t going to do you much good if you’re lead crazed, although the doctor can now believe you’re a disordered personality, to absolve himself/herself from guilt by bungling.
If I wanted psychedelic therapy, I’d go to see Maria Sabrina, but she must be gone by now, as she was old when the Wassons saw her back in the 1950’s.
I’m looking forward to seeing the DEA discover that there are hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms that grow wild in every state in the Union- the perpetual drone of helicopters over cattle country seeking manured fields, squads of “heroes” tramping through swamps as they seek the dreaded calamus, helicopters seeking infestations of jimsonweed to spray with herbicide- sights and sites worth seeing and mentioning.
What happens if you know more about psychedelics and hallucinogens than the doctor does?
Duplicate comment.
I wonder how much attention this army of counselers is paying to their students’/clients’ diets. I remember my school days and how I attempted to subsist on sorry school and snack food with lots of added sucrose and caffeine, plus alcohol on weekends. No wonder I was so miserable much of the time.
At least part of this is due to “schizophrenia” not being a single disease entity, so that these studies are attempts to find single “causes” for the existence of a polyglot entity. There should be no surprised all these sub-entities have confused seekers looking for for a single one.
This reminds me of a gentleman some friends of mine picked up while he was hitchhiking. He was a gay gent who happened to have a black belt in taekwando. When he was in a nasty mood, he’d go to a trashy bar in the heart of his hometown, where if he heard patrons badmouthing homosexuals, he’d flame on, and when the badmouthing patrons became irritated, he’d suddenly pay for his drink and leave, right after they’d ordered, which would give him time to get a head start on them.
When they came out, they’d see him dart down a nearby alley he’d previously scouted. If they followed, it meant they were actually headed for the local hospital’s emergency room as new patients, instead of heading for giving this queer the beating they thought he deserved.
Am I correct in suspecting that no effort was made to identify the origins of these suspected depressions? Depressed mood can arrive from numerous origins that naturally have numerous proper treatments- am I thinking of them because I’m a psychiatric mechanic and not a shrink or social worker?
You were likely high in serum copper and low in zinc, a common feature at the end of pregnancies. Psychiatrists aren’t going to tell you this because you’re chances of making them money will become limited, at best, should it be true. Zinc, B6, C and B-complex aren’t going to finance those MD vacation trips by themselves.
As a known practitioner of Crtimethink, I’m obliged to agree with you here, Steve.
It’s probably best to start with a hair sample to see what your manganese levels actually are, because you want to start with larger amounts, which you’ll then decrease when your symptomology does, as excess manganese can cause the same symptoms as the drug- induced dyskinesias- best to see if there’s an orthomolecular practitioner in your neighborhood who knows what they’re doing.
I know that niacinamide goes to the same neural sites as benzos. Is it possible to use it for benzo withdrawal in the same fashion as it’s brother niacin, can be used for alcohol withdrawal. Of course, becuse benzos are fat soluble, you’d have to use it for a much longer period of time as niacin, although some alcoholics have to permanently stay on niacin to remain happily sober.
Serotonin’s just the neurotransmitter of the week. Antidepressants have been pushed for decades as antagonists of assorted malfunctioning neurotransmitters, which have gone in and out of fashion as their treatment uselessness was established (I do remember dopamine, the pre-serotonin villain).
You had to take your vitamins, but under the guidance of someone who knows how to use them therapeutically, rather than the mental health chumps who medicated you into a daze.
They don’t have the awareness that we mad folk do. And since they’re psychotically afraid of us, we can’t help guide them, either.
If these cops don’t know what’s going on when they meet mental patients, they may need psychiatric chieu hois to go on calls with them to explain what patients are doing as well as initiating interactions with such individuals when the cops are called about their activities and don’t know what to do.
Here’s a career opening for former mental patients, particularly those with the hospital experience that’s given them the opportunity to encounter a variety of “diagnoses” they’ve likely had previous experience dealing with while they were patients.
(Duplicate comment)
If I weren’t a geezer, I’d investigate the idea of being a secret orthomolecular practitioner (secret megavitamin dealer complement to drug dealers?) with an obscure address in some university town. I could take on significantly more clients than the school counselors and their referrals would be in better shape than they are now.
There probably are records of therapeutic LSD use in Saskatchewan, kicking around from the old Hoffer/Osmond days prior to the DEA sanctions from the US. Prior to the DEA “saving” that region of North America, the Canadians treated a multitude of alcoholics with psychedelic therapy, which led the province to make psychedelic therapy mainstream until the DEA saved Saskatchewan from LSD by threatening the province with isolation.
The Personality Disorders- proud inhabitants of the Diagnostic Wastebasket. What would our shrinks do without the Diagnostic Wastebasket to hide their failures?
Superstitious belief.
So- our boy’s seeking a psilocybin monopoly, eh. Does he plan to sue every farm in the South that has a cow pasture for violating his monopoly? Psilocybe cubensis does grow wild there. Maybe he could sue everyone with pastureland in Spain. Psilocybe cubensis is an import from there, courtesy of the conquistadores.
This reminds me of an incident that occurred while I was in Vietnam. My company was leaving a small firebase it was occupying, to be replaced by another the next day, and my drunken squad leader staggered up to a group of us stoners to tell us that we were the only individuals capable of fighting, should the VC show up that night to give us a violent sendoff.
Makes me glad I got into orthomolecular medicine decades ago, where I can easily avoid these bombardments promoting pharmaceutical miracle substances before the lawsuits featuring them hit the media.
Like the other psychiatric “diseases”, depression is but a syndrome that can have any number of origins, which is why these common psychiatric “treatments” are frequently useless or damaging, just as they are for the other psych “diseases”.
You can start to sort your subjects via testing their perceptual stability, one of the easiest ways being the HOD test, which is quantitative. The folks with unstable perceptions are more likely to bum or freak out than people whose perceptual worlds are more stable.
Many years ago, I had an illustrative experience that demonstrated this. Some young chap at the center where I volunteered, wanted to take LSD, but he wanted to take the test to see if this was a good idea. His score was very high, as though he were tripping already (he wasn’t), so I told him he was high risk and I wouldn’t supervise (guide?) his upcoming trip unless he took 3 grams of ascorbic acid (vit. C) per day for several days prior to his voyage, so he wouldn’t lose his marbles and jump out a window.
He didn’t take the C but did drop the acid and had a miserable time, finally telling me in an embarassed voice that he’d jumped out of a window in his house.
Alas, I was unaware that “real” medicine’s only purpose was to churn out profit for pharmaceutical companies, while therapeutic benefits were only side effects.
No, as megavitamins B3 and C will frequently appropriately treat both “real” and drug-induced schizophrenias, which you’d know, were you into orthomolecular medicine.
These bad reactions to antidepressants come as no surprise, since shrinks and GP’s don’t like to assess the perceptual status of their patients before prescribing something, preferring to be surprised by toxic drug reactions, instead.
You have to remember that Big-time Psychiatry has only a pseudo-medical model to justify its actions. The orthomolecular guys, who do use the same medical model that GP’s do, are subjected to constant criticism from Big-time Psychiatry’s alleged thought leaders for believing nutrient therapy superior to constant heavy medicating with the drugs MIA members despise.
So, does this mean I’m a point man for a host of the Khan’s barbarians when I say that depression isn’t a disease at all, but a syndrome arising from multiple conditions and that antidepressants alone don’t really treat any of them?
I find this discussion a little too arcane, as I also know how H&O used to treat flashbacks and unwanted perceptual anomalies- with mega B3 and C. Having used it myself with various people by following H&O’s written guidance, I’d be obliged to agree with them and not with the outraged shrinks on the subject.
By the way, the way to prevent these Experiences in the first place is to screen subjects with perceptually based “psych” tests like the Hoffer/Osmond Diagnostic or the Experiential World Inventory before giving them a hallucinogenic substance. High scores on them make hallucinogens a bad choice for the test taker.
That was indeed an impressive cocktail (cocktails?) of drugs these alleged doctors were giving you. were they showing off for your pharmacist? Had they been hypnotized into writing scripts whenever you showed up at the pharmacy? Were they business partners with the pharmacist?
Then they pretend they’re following a medical model. Sometimes regulars who follow this blog are deceived by this pretense, thereby going on prolonged screeds after mistaking psych “medicine” for real medicine.
For some years, now, I’ve wondered if niacinamide can be used for benzo withdrawal in a similar fashion to using niacin for alcohol withdrawal. Naturally, as a withdrawal substance, you’d have to use it for a much longer period than niacin, as the benzos are fat soluble, which means it takes much longer to clear them from your system.
Personality Disorder? Another long term inhabitant of the Diagnostic Wastebasket stands up and identifies itself.
What we call “depression” is just a behavioral description that can actually arise from a number of origins that can either be social or organic, running from miserable life circumstances to organic ailments, such as heavy metal poisoning. There’s obviously no “one size fits all” treatment that relieves all of them and some that make depressed states more intense.
You become a borderline by not responding to treatment, even though said treatment is likely to be faulty.
You may find it entertaining that the orthomolecular guys are about the only ones who actually practice medically based psychiatry and the only ones who draw outrage from all our psychiatric “schools” at the very mention of the word “orthomolecular”.
The scammers who got the old dude daffy, would have likely pulled their scam off had they known that B3 in multigram quantities would have put paid to his unpleasant states much more easily than a trip to the alleged funny farm. They wouldn’t even have to flee.
This is unfortunate for our bosom pals at Big Pharma and our Big Time Academicians, but not for us as it gives us an opportunity to avoid Big Time medicating with the latest ineffectual Big Time Antidepressant for good reason. Maybe it will even eventually occur to the Big Time Academics that depression isn’t a single source ailment.
There are multiple reasons for depression. Successful treatments depend on knowing the origin of the depressed mood (and if there’s anything else besides simple circumstantial depressed moods) which can very from circumstantial to heavy metal poisoning (plus many things in between)- many of which will NOT respond to antidepressants.
Well, there is a sort of test for schizophrenia syndrome (I use this term in lieu of disease, as it has multiple causes), the old test for “mauve factor” created in Saskatchewan in its LSD for screening alcoholics for psychedelic treatment. It’s regularly bad-mouthed in the psych world because an outside committee found the “mauve positive” individuals had multiple diagnoses according to a group of shrinks. Interestingly (and entertainingly) enough, the actual symptoms displayed were constant while the “diagnoses” differed. Oh yes, and their responses to LSD were invariably bad.
Even more significant, the best treatment for eliminating it was later found to be B6 and zinc instead of proprietary drugs, which I’m crass enough to find entertaining, knowing that this disqualifies the condition as worth attention from Big Pharma.
It was an unstable and unsound empire to begin with. Its disintegration should come as no surprise.
If you’re interested in screening, you might enjoy the actions of the Canadian Schizophrenia Foundation, an organization featuring patient participation and use of the Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic Test (HOD) as a kind of psychiatric thermometer. They oversaw creating a pocket copy of same to use as a “psychiatric thermometer” to test yourself, so you could see how you’re doing, a psych version of your bathroom thermometer you could take with you on trips. Of course the CSF advocates for the orthomolecular nutritional treatment for disease, which will cerainly deny them credibility in the pharma-crossed USA.
This “screening” might have some value if it looked into subjects’ perceptual status as well as their moods, which could serve as a clue to appropriate medicating (having “depressed” patients suddenly going bananas is more of a sign of incompetent medicating than of “treatment resistance”).
I believe Schizophrenics Anonymous is still going strong in Canada. They’re likely getting grief if they’re in the USA, as they’re fans of orthomolecular medicine (the first organizers were patients of Abram Hoffer).
The amusing thing about this is that these self-appointed “authorities” would go into convulsions at the very thought of nutritional elements having any effect on mental functioning, despite getting a few minutes discussion about pellagra and scurvy with no mention about their psychological “side effects” while they were students (I recall the contorted faces of the professionals who found out I used niacin regularly instead of “meds”).
Actually, what we call schizophrenia isn’t an independent illness at all, but a bunch of them, which have different effective treatments, depending on their origins. “Schizophrenia” is actually a syndrome, a collection of signs and symptoms, rather than a disease unto itself (excuse me for being so materialistic).
Congratulations. You’re the first MH guy I’ve ever read who admitted that.
A tricky question. It can work for depressed mood, but only if you’re experiencing many disperceptions and perceptual distortions at the same time. If I have to do psychiatric things, I use my Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic Test in the “initial interview” if I can, so I have a better idea about what needs to be done if I’ve got to oversee the treatment.
BPD? That shows you were dealing with bumblers who didn’t know what they were doing, BPD being a true wastebasket diagnosis.
It also demonstrates why shrinks are so afraid of megavitamin therapy. You can sometimes successfully deal with others’ treatment failures without enduring multiple years of grad school in the process.
Steve. I got discharged from a halfway house for substance abusers by secretly treating a couple of them with niacinamide (I was working nights with no other staff around) and was caught because they were supposed to be failures, but graduated, instead. I was supposed to stop doing something that did work.
This study merely demonstrates the need to examine the “depressed” more thoroughly than is presently done, so you don’t have treatment failures that go floridly bonkers thanks to the faulty “therapeutic” approaches you’re using.
Yes, Miranda, as they used to say about travelling in the Old West, we’ve seen the Elephant.
R.e. “psychiatric alternatives”. There’s also nutrient therapy. Although it drives main line psychiatrists into a frenzy (no pharma company bennies, no freebie trips to conferences in warm places during winter), it frequently works where “standard treatments” don’t.
Excellent. Now I don’t have to worry so much about my own copy being stolen.
I notice that these enthusiasts don’t seem to believe in screening their “patients” for perceptual distortions prior to giving them psychedelics- a must for determining whether said patients are decent candidates for psychedelic therapy. Maybe these pseudo shrinks should try to find a copy of Hoffer and Osmond’s book *The Hallucinogens*, which describes psychedelic therapy in detail (long out of print, alas).
How, exactly are we supposed to find cures for entities like “depression” and/or “schizophrenia” when those aren’t entities unto themselves, but behavioral descriptions? I should be surprised that the DSM’s are intellectualized gibberish?
An interesting observation of kids on speed is whether or not their behavior was more appropriate because they thought people, particularly their teachers, were spying on them. I don’t know if “classical” experimenters could find out, but the area’s speed freaks would almost certainly know.
One of the things in the article that I immediately noticed was that these companies make no effort to explore their patients’ experiential worlds in some detail, which would eliminate or reduce much of this nonsense caused when their pet drugs are mistakenly used, causing their patients to go bananas.
But then I noticed these companies are only interested in their bottom lines, where one drug failure can be “corrected” by using another (company manufactured) drug, thereby generating more profit.
Viva pharmacotherapy!
Thanks, but I’ll just keep taking my vitamins and avoid junk food.
Well, the industry must do all it can to prevent pregnant women from taking B6 and zinc in the final trimester of pregnancy in order to sell expensive high-tech treatments that won’t work, as elevated serum copper seems to be the real reason for these “depressions”.
Ah, but if you recover from psychotic illnesses using unusual means- real medicine, nutrients, dietary avoidance, treating allergies, support groups like SA, etc., then Big Time Psychiatry will rise with righteous fury to tell the world how you’ve let yourself be deceived by scoundrels and are destined to finish your life drooling in the back wards of some institution.
The big hassle here is that “depression” is misinterpreted as a disease unto itself instead of a syndrome likely to have differing causes, which is why you have individuals carelessly labeled as suffering from a disease called depression, when such isn’t the case. This is also why you have patients with this “disease” losing their marbles when (erroneously) prescribed antidepressants.
The problem is that the alleged medical model of psychiatry isn’t medical at all, but a pseudo-medical model, as the alleged diseases are merely behavioral descriptions, rather than diseases unto themselves.
It seems to be a state secret that niacin can be used to remove the dangers associated with alcohol withdrawal, while as niacinamide, it can serve in aiding withdrawal from benzos. Of course, little money can be made by Big Pharma (or Big Hospitalization) as the withdrawal process is speeded up and your “medication” isn’t patented and thus isn’t lucrative.
I’ve overseen (home) alcohols before, but I haven’t supervised a benzo withdrawal, although I’ve read articles by the orthomolecular guys that suggests that they have done so.
Well, Steve, treatments that do work are likely to be frowned upon by our “professional” classes as forms of black magic, or maybe hypnotism, that are likely to direct youthful patients into subversive antisocial activities instead of leaving them bland vegetables.
Why are things like low magnesium, low zinc and unstable blood sugar coming to mind? Why am I thinking about niacinamide? Why am I curious about perceptual instability? I’m supposed to radiate reassurance and puff the skills of shrinks.
The problem to the question you’re asking, is that the answer is, “it depends.” It depends on user perceptual status, the kind of substances most commonly used as well as or in addition to cannabis, the presence and kind of users’ physical and social peculiarities, and so on.
Poor babies- actually having to do something positive for their patients in order to get paid for it.
This article illustrates the difference between real medicine and the pseudo-medical model that Big-Time Psychiatry considers medical (as well as demonstrating why I don’t have anything to do with most shrinks). It’s their own heads that have shrunk.
“Borderline Personality Disorder,” eh? You just got tossed into the Diagnostic Wastebasket, so the shrink wouldn’t have to face his own ineptitude, demonstrated by the ineffective series of ECT you just had.
I know, Steve, but remember, if I have to do psychiatric things, it’s as a kind of psychiatric mechanic seeing other people’s (professionals, actually) treatment failures, which is why I don’t do them very often because I can get in trouble, even if I’m “brilliantly” successful (for example, I lost a job at a residential treatment center for substance abusers when two guys “graduated” who weren’t supposed to, shocking the professional staff- I was so peeved, I never told the staff people I’d simply put them on niacinamide, which I could administer when the professionals had gone for the evening).
I’m glad I’m not spending any money for this certain-to-fail initiative. Depression, as the shrinks call it, isn’t an illness unto itself, but a syndrome (particular group of signs and symptoms) that can have any number of causes. I’m just a chump without formal psychiatric training, but I can think of several (thyroid, vitamin dependencies and deficiencies, heavy metal poisoning, hypoglycemia, cerebral allergies) that quickly come to mind while I’m sitting here typing. Notice that none of my examples can be readily treated with antidepressants or SSRI’s.
Think psychiatry doesn’t critically vet treatments? Follow psychiatry’s fight against the clinical use of vitamin B3 in psychiatric treatments, which seems to have taken on the nature of a crusade- ditch that dangerous vitamin and other equally dangerous substances like vitamin C for safe antipsychotic drugs (I’m sure all those patients with drug-induced dyskinesias will want to jump on this bandwagon and join the crusade, particularly when they discover manganese salts in competent hands can relieve this condition).
Time management problems? Take up tournament chess. The clock will show you how to manage time.
That was well put, Steve. I think the idea of the mind as a product of the brain and is dependent on its effective functioning is a little too deep for our present shrinks.
“Personality disorders” just reeks of the diagnostic wastebasket approach to psychiatric matters…”you don’t know what’s going on? Just dump the whole thing into this diagnostic wastebasket here”.
I find it unusual that shrinks would use a CNS depressant (anesthetic) in “antidepressant therapy”. It would seem that you’d have to ignore physiology to be a successful shrink, although you might be able to suppress suicidal ideation by leaving the patient so anesthetized that he/she would be incapable of any ideation.
Where do these places get their “alleged” doctors? Do they come from the Frankenstein Medical Institute? Many, if not most psych drugs have antihistaminic properties, so Bridgewater’s psychiatric “disciplinarians” are doing the equivalent of giving their patients downers and alcohol simultaneously. This will eventually come out of the woodwork when a patient dies or flips out (simultaneously thrashing the security staff in the process with the super strength they inadvertently gave him/her) or both.
When I read these articles, I have some difficulty with the psychotherapy stories about treating “mental” illnesses properly, as psychiatric “diagnoses” are just descriptions of syndromes that can have a number of possible origins that don’t all have the same treatment. There’s no “one size fits all” for the proper treatment of “mental” syndromes.
I’m a bit surprised they’re still being prescribed in such quantities. It was only 50+ years ago I first heard they were addictive and that withdrawing from them was worse than coming off heroin.
Maybe so, but if their institutional attitudes are frozen, they’re goners, like the French in 1940, when the Germans came.
These fumbling treatments for depression exist because it was believed that depression was an entity unto itself, rather than a sign that something was amiss with the sufferer that indicated further inquiry and/or examination was necessary.
Think of psychiatry as an army under siege. After only minimal gains, it has now been driven back to its starting point and feels itself in danger of total collapse, should it lose further intellectual territory.
These studies also don’t presume “Major Depressive Disorder” to be the wastebasket diagnosis it actually is, so they unknowingly have heterogeneous groups of patients. It would be truly remarkable if they did find some Universal Clinical Truth through such diagnostic “methods”.
I hate to quibble, but these drugs like ketamine, esketamine, etc. aren’t psychedelic drugs, but more closely related to anesthetics, illustrating the folly of using psych drugs on the delerious, thanks to these drugs, while under the illusion they’re tripping out, instead. (I hope I don’t sound too confusing)
This reminds me of the hubbub around PCP, aka phencyclidine, a similarly acting drug used as an animal anesthetic around 50 years ago- same properties, same tendency for inducing delerium in subjects, particularly after efforts using antipsychotics to “tranquilize” them when they were bumming out.
In the late 1950’s, H&O began to consider sobering experiences. They’d also gone to a peyote ceremony in Alberta at the invitation of the Blackfeet, who were trying to make their religious peyote ceremonies respectable to white governments. Shortly after this, they created a study using acid to simulate DT’s. While doing this, they discovered that the guys who had the psychedelic experiences instead of the “psychotomimetic” were the most likely to stay sober. From there, they became involved with psychedelic therapy in alcoholics, and devised protocols for proper usage to maximize good results. The government of Saskatchewan was so impressed, it authorized and began to use psychedelic therapy as a first line treatment for alcoholism throughout the province. The Americasn DEA was outraged and forced the province to discontinue psychedelic therapy for their alcoholic patients. (your government hard at work to protect youy from imaginary threats)
Well, the Native American Church uses them (well, peyote, at least) in ways beneficial to the members, as did the Province of Saskatchewan, until the US DEA clamped down on it for providing psychedelic experiences to alcoholics to help sober them up, when the Agency “knew” that this was “impossible”.
At the risk of getting electronically silenced, I’d suggest paying more attention to the work of Hoffer and Osmond, particularly their magnum opus- The Hallucinogens. Although long out of print, you may still find copies in university and college libraries (I’d have to shoot you if you tried to take my copy).
One of the problems I have with commenting is a result of having familiarity with orthomolecular medicine for 45+ years. Something that is old hat for me, such as nutrient therapy for schizophrenia syndromes, is bizarre and strange for readers who have psychosocial beliefs about the syndromes’ origins, so I’ll inadvertently write things that get my correspondence sent to the electronic wasteland instead of getting posted on the site.
Yes, your schizophrenia was indeed right when it told you esketamine was bad for you. Unfortunately, your schizophrenia couldn’t tell you about ketamine antagonists and the anesthesiologist didn’t know anything about the subject, which I can’t reveal if I want a comment to actually get printed.
Like most mental “diseases”, ADHD is a description and not an idenntity unto itself. Also, like many other of these “diseases”, the behaviors that give it its name are also likely to have a variety of origins and likely to have a variety of proper treatments, once you determine the specific identity of the condition you’re dealing with.
One of the common headaches about psychiatric “diagnosis” is that the shrinks pay little attention to your experiential world, thereby knowing little to nothing about your real mental status, raising the likelihood you’ll be ineptly or improperly treated by the shrink’s medication efforts.
Using selected nutrients instead of psych drugs and having done so for years, I find these arguments fairly bizarre, particularly since there’s no real improvement in the treatment groups, although there is a great deal of company puffery about their newest drugs after the alleged studies are done.
Lead is also responsible for inducing hyperactivity in children, which leads me to wonder why this isn’t routinely checked for prior to prescribing ritalin and other stimulants. Speed isn’t going to do you much good if you’re lead crazed, although the doctor can now believe you’re a disordered personality, to absolve himself/herself from guilt by bungling.
If I wanted psychedelic therapy, I’d go to see Maria Sabrina, but she must be gone by now, as she was old when the Wassons saw her back in the 1950’s.
I’m looking forward to seeing the DEA discover that there are hallucinogenic plants and mushrooms that grow wild in every state in the Union- the perpetual drone of helicopters over cattle country seeking manured fields, squads of “heroes” tramping through swamps as they seek the dreaded calamus, helicopters seeking infestations of jimsonweed to spray with herbicide- sights and sites worth seeing and mentioning.
What happens if you know more about psychedelics and hallucinogens than the doctor does?
Duplicate comment.
I wonder how much attention this army of counselers is paying to their students’/clients’ diets. I remember my school days and how I attempted to subsist on sorry school and snack food with lots of added sucrose and caffeine, plus alcohol on weekends. No wonder I was so miserable much of the time.
At least part of this is due to “schizophrenia” not being a single disease entity, so that these studies are attempts to find single “causes” for the existence of a polyglot entity. There should be no surprised all these sub-entities have confused seekers looking for for a single one.
This reminds me of a gentleman some friends of mine picked up while he was hitchhiking. He was a gay gent who happened to have a black belt in taekwando. When he was in a nasty mood, he’d go to a trashy bar in the heart of his hometown, where if he heard patrons badmouthing homosexuals, he’d flame on, and when the badmouthing patrons became irritated, he’d suddenly pay for his drink and leave, right after they’d ordered, which would give him time to get a head start on them.
When they came out, they’d see him dart down a nearby alley he’d previously scouted. If they followed, it meant they were actually headed for the local hospital’s emergency room as new patients, instead of heading for giving this queer the beating they thought he deserved.
Am I correct in suspecting that no effort was made to identify the origins of these suspected depressions? Depressed mood can arrive from numerous origins that naturally have numerous proper treatments- am I thinking of them because I’m a psychiatric mechanic and not a shrink or social worker?
You were likely high in serum copper and low in zinc, a common feature at the end of pregnancies. Psychiatrists aren’t going to tell you this because you’re chances of making them money will become limited, at best, should it be true. Zinc, B6, C and B-complex aren’t going to finance those MD vacation trips by themselves.
As a known practitioner of Crtimethink, I’m obliged to agree with you here, Steve.
It’s probably best to start with a hair sample to see what your manganese levels actually are, because you want to start with larger amounts, which you’ll then decrease when your symptomology does, as excess manganese can cause the same symptoms as the drug- induced dyskinesias- best to see if there’s an orthomolecular practitioner in your neighborhood who knows what they’re doing.