Well Steve. This is what happens when you try to treat syndromes as real diseases. “Mental illnesses” aren’t real diseases unto themselves, but syndromes- collections of signs and symptoms that can (and likely do) have multiple origins and multiple treatments, depending on the causative agents. Naturally, it should be no surprise that there isn’t genetic simplicity or constancy for everyone with the same syndrome.
I seldom “tell my story”, because most listeners are either disgusted or disbelieving. Getting better by accident has no panache and the involvement of niacin disgusts and dismays “providers”.
It’s an interesting article but I do find myself differing with Mr. B about psychiatry as practiced today. It isn’t biological psychiatry, but pharmaceutical psychiatry. This “medical” approach we see pays little attention to biology, but exerts great effort promoting the latest pharmaceutical “treatments” with new and improved drugs to inflict neurological punishment on psychiatric patients, giving them dyskinesia, akathisia and other amazing side effects generated by companies ignorant of the biological consequences of these supposed treatments.
I’ve been curious about the use of niacinamide for benzo withdrawal, in similar fashion to using niacin (with sometimes also magnesium) for alcohol withdrawal. I didn’t notice any of the article writers referring to it, although I also realize that the term “vitamin B3” induces convulsions of fury in psychiatrists, forcing them to avoid it at all costs.
This is the sort of thing that happens when you treat a syndrome like it was an actual unitary disease. No wonder these alleged researchers are confused- they haven’t teased out members of the many sub-groups of the depressed, so all these groups are combined into one population instead of the heterogeneous groups they actually are.
Psychology might be thought of as more effective if the practitioners didn’t waste a lot of time trying to do great therapeutic things with individuals so delirious they barely know where they are, and are incapable of absorbing ordinary ideas, much less therapeutic ones.
Reminds me of the 17th and 18th Century searches for the identity of phlogiston, which, naturally, didn’t exist.
Steve, you’ve got to remember that those alleged diagnoses in the DSM’s are actually behavioral descriptions that say nothing about their origins or treatments, unlike the conditions that Nic has catalogued.
Naturally. It seems to be a psychiatric cliché that your diet has nothing to do with your mental state, a notion that requires constant attention and effort to defend.
The idea of mental symptomology being caused by conditions other than brain diseases seems to have eluded mental health professionals, despite the existence of the classic dietary deficiency diseases- scurvy, beriberi and pellagra, all of which can induce depression (also notice that all three have different treatments).
Steve. You and I are aware of ketamine’s background, but it’s likely that the desperate individuals who want their suffering to go away don’t. Or if they were aware of what ketamine does, it was 40 years ago and was likely forgotten over time.
Almost makes me wish I were back in school, dealing with the mental issues of others in addition to writing their term papers for them. I wouldn’t want any money for doing treatments, in order to stay vaguely legal, so I’d use receiving favors in lieu of that, the papers being for generating monetary income.
Don’t forget about actions activated by things like blood sugar irregularities, where the perpetrators’ unconscious is reacting to blood sugar changes brought on by excessive sugar consumption or reactions to sensitizing foods. I’d certainly suspect things like these in kids incapable of being calmed down- better than getting them addicted to the robot drugs of 21st Century psychiatry.
Am I to presume these studies simply pronounce you at risk for psychosis without explaining the things you can do to prevent it from actually appearing, such as avoiding alcohol, stimulants, hallucinogens and ADHD drugs, keeping regular hours, maintaining junk free diets? Or are you simply telling your at risk population that florid psychoses will simply leap out of the shadows (gotcha!) no matter what you do, if you aren’t lucky? Or are you to prevent this by becoming a doped up zombie through the agency of preventive antipsychotics (zombie and free!)?
Probably one of the easiest things colleges can do is examine what is served in their dining halls and expel the refined carbohydrates for the duration. Some of the more unpleasant memories of my school days are of the food.
You’re right about the major hallucinogens like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, et. al., but there are some little known ones like adrenochrome and adrenolutin that are pretty close, aren’t psychedelic and also provide prolonged experiences that can go on for days from single doses. You can steal some asthmatic’s adrenaline and let it sit until it turns pink before you snort it, if you want to try, but I’ll pass, thank you.
They’d also have to come off such alleged medications for some time before they were mentally fit to prescribe anything more toxic than aspirin or vitamin C. The antidepressant advocates would be the worst off, as their convalescent time might stretch into years.
Remember, kids. L-glutamine is the likely antagonist for this, as the anesthetics like ketamine and PCP destroy glutamates, so you need enough glutamine to override this action.
One of the items I did miss in the article was the idea of having mental health workers take hallucinogens to understand the experiences their psychotic patients are having. I hope it wasn’t because Humphry Osmond, one of psychiatry’s blackest sheep, encouraged the practice for his staff members when he was superintendent at Weyburn Hospital, Saskatchewan (he also insisted on converting the hospitals “seclusion rooms” into refuges patients could voluntarily visit when overstimulated).
Well, that goes without saying. You’d be wasting your time if you were already under the influence of antipsychotics and be more likely to freak out on antidepressants and/or the jumpers prescribed for ADHD. I do know a few things, oldhead.
As a living fossil, I feel an obligation to describe in more concrete terms the relatively safe use of hallucinogens. Avoid them if you have numerous perceptual distortions of vision, hearing, time sense, etc. Psychiatric diagnoses don’t matter but omnipresent sensory distortions do. Being a first-order relative of someone who does have them is also a warning sign for your own consumptions of hallucinogens.
I’ve cribbed and paraphrased these items from my copy of The Hallucinogens, by Hoffer and Osmond (1967). It’s been out of print for years, but it’s a good item for you collectors to seek.
Nothing, except maybe pharmaceutical sales, but neurology and general medicine probably should.
Of course, if you can get the kid drugged as being mentally ill and are poor, maybe you can sell your kids’ medications instead of getting the kids stoned out. You could unload the speed at a local truck stop. The problem is making sure the kids seem drugged when the piss test times come around, because they’ll have to have that properly dirty urine to “prove” they’re taking their meds- perhaps there are school employees who have that need for speed plus knowledge of the test dates and times.
For many years, I’ve accepted the idea that delusions arise from attempts to explain events originating from trying to explain distorted perceptual experiences. For instance, paranoid notions can easily arise from the sensation of being watched or from auditories whispering or saying bad things about you. Such things are likely to have a biological basis, all right, that can be corrected, but obviously not with “antipsychotic” drugs which simply shut everything down (and you, too, if you overdose).
The problem isn’t with the much despised medical model, but its psychiatric version, which ignores physical difficulties outside the brain that affect its functioning, and which can be manifold. For example, I give you Theron Randolph’s presentation of what he considered cerebral allergies, curable with water fasting and future avoidance, to the APA about 60 years ago, in which he presented histories of 2000 or so patients and demonstrated it on stage with two of his patient volunteers. The APA regarded him with a big ho-hum.
I’ve always liked David Hawkins’ term “metabolic dysperception” since 1974, when I first read it.
Bad idea to have authoritarian shrinks. Knowing nothing about “mental” diseases and having no real knowledge about physical ones are poor foundations for authoritarian types, as there is so little content in their bodies of “knowledge”, a secret authoritarians defend, in lieu of defending a real body of knowledge.
Well, pharmaceutical companies are spending billions trying to convince you that you needed to be medicated for something, that deep, deep down you’re seeking that Big Buzz that will make everything fine- or that you won’t care if nothing’s fine if you do cop that Big Buzz with their drugs.
Start with something simple, like magnesium. You also want to find out about his morning routine and things he does or eats. Does he do or eat the same thing(s) on the mornings he has these episodes? I’d try to get him to take an HOD test eventually, but I’m beginning to sound too much like I know what I’m talking about, and the further things to do might be too manifold for a blog.
I’m wondering if I’ll wind up practicing underground psychiatry again. I seem to know more about the bad characteristics of these drugs than real psychiatrists, plus more about how to treat bad reactions from them.
Think of it as job creation, Steve. How many psychiatric area jobs would be lost if these delirious individuals were revived with a few grams of niacin, ascorbate or l-glutamine and were sent on their way when coherent?
When he went for his alleged help, he may have had to vegetate in the waiting room, waiting among a group of vets suffering from a variety of conditions to be called for his initial interview. VA psych wards in the organization’s general hospitals don’t seem to be bad, although their specialized psych facilities have a number of head injury patients, which can create a rowdy atmosphere- bullets and shell splinters in one’s brain can hardly be considered tranquilizing. The alleged treatments are as sorry as in civilian facilities, although I may be simply peeved at the VA’s inability to diagnose my caffeine sensitivity.
Good idea, Steve. When you’re “diagnosed” by such means when freaking on ketamine/PCP type drugs, you’re likely to deteriorate big time when placed on a psych drug regimen and then get called treatment resistant, which calls for even heavier doses of psych drugs (which is why I became interested in big doses of glutamine for PCP delirium 40+ years ago).
You aren’t supposed to carp about “new” antidepressants, but to fight to ensure nobody uses B1, B3, B6 or B12 should they become depressed. The FDA might even promote you if you did so.
Because office work is done without the workers realizing what’s actually going on, not having studied things like Parkinson’s Law (work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion), or the Peter Principle (employees rise to their level of incompetence, which encourages the creation of incompetent organizations).
That’s the point, YIS. Your mental health is part of your physical health, something the average psychiatrist doesn’t seem to understand, just as these individuals don’t understand you can do ECT’s on patients without erasing their long-term memories, simply by keeping them on B3 (one of the reasons Hoffer, et. al. used them on occasion, but with many fewer shocks per patient, unlike our big-time shock docs).
Incidentally, YIS, I use a DIY protocol, too. Now in my early 70’s, I find it interesting how many professionals are amazed I’m not on some kind of medication at my age, particularly the VA guy who does my annual physicals.
The blog actually raises a question. Who is psychotic, us or Big Pharma?
This reminds me of an item in the old compilation Orthomolecular Psychiatry edited by Linus Pauling and David Hawkins in1974. In an essay by Hawkins describing the North Nassau Mental Health Center, which he ran, he mentioned that the doper patients he had (in the glory days of psychedelic abuse) who only smoked marijuana didn’t relapse like the poly-dopers who were also his patients and were getting basically the same treatments as the others. Perhaps this is related to some of the stuff in this article about CBD.
I’m wondering about the point in doing this. Stroke patients are probably likely to be depressed if they notice significant impairment of functioning- is this alleged treatment supposed to help this state despite no return of “normal” functioning? Or is it to make you happy, though impaired?
Or is this a search for new antidepressant markets?
No “mental” illnesses perhaps, but a number of physical illnesses that present with “mental” symptoms that won’t be relieved with psychiatric drugs (and that shrinks don’t know about because their real medical training is ignored) do exist.
Lead, a behavioral toxin as reported in the JAMA Psychiatry? This is unusual, because it publicly confirms views that the dreaded and derided school of orthomolecular practitioners have held for several decades (though the Journal would never dare to reveal that). It also fails to puff some new pharmaceutical product- heresy!
It’s probably a good thing I’m too old for this. Rapping with the patients wouldn’t be a problem, but I’d be anathema to staff members if I told a client I got better because I found out I’m B3 dependent and that caffeine’s a potentially serious toxic substance for me. Staff would likely get me committed with the diagnosis of Munchausen’s Syndrome.
Kelly. Are there any nutritional means of speeding up this withdrawal process to make it less difficult? I know it’s possible with alcohol, using mega niacin and ascorbate, and amphetamine, using ascorbate and B1 (and B3, if there are hallucinations). I’ve also come across programs for narcotics (I used to subscribe to the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine).
I’m asking you because you seem to be more familiar with such procedures than most of the contributors.
No surprise for me. I stay away from opinion leaders because they’d want me immediately committed if I publicly said I thought B3 was a better idea for “schizophrenic” patients than the most sophisticated psychiatric drugs.
This reminds me of when I first got my Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic test, which measures perceptual stability. I was using it to screen prospective volunteers for safety prior to taking native hallucinogenic mushrooms (no, I don’t live in the South, and yes, manifold dysperceptions contraindicate hallucinogen use). As I worked as a volunteer at a crisis drop-in center, I had no shortage of prospective clients and no shortage of high scores, plus some belonging to curious people on meds, usually for depression which proved to be misdiagnosed by their high scores, but erroneously treated by their physicians, who didn’t use such instruments (and still don’t).
This test isn’t useful for children as they routinely have frequent have high scores, which place them in the same class as my misdiagnosed older test takers. Since SSRI’s have the same kind of bad consequences as the older antidepressants, is there any surprise that “medicated” children are coming unglued on their prescriptions?
This is about supplementing psychiatrists, individuals demonstrably uninterested in looking for underlying medical conditions affecting extreme mental states. The psychiatric community would be outraged if their “lesser” psychological brethren were capable of doing so when they weren’t and actually did so as a result.
Here’s another curiosity about ketamine. It’s related to PCP, the get simple and delirious mainstay of 1970’s simpletons seeking chemical adventures. Emergency room adventures were frequently the consequence of such chemical adventures, particularly since antipsychotic drugs made the PCP delirium worse. Is this also the case for ketamine, a drug with a similar method of chemical action?
This could become a serious problem, since drug cocktails are all the rage in present day psychiatry, raising the likelihood of drug-induced delerium when antipsychotics and ketamine are used together. I suspect few ER’s will use multiple grams of l-glutamine to treat ketamine related deleriums (deleria?), preferring emergency room excitement to using non-drug substances. (by the way- I have successfully used glutamine for PCP on the rare occasion I’ve seen this problem, but then I’m just a crazy without respect for the alleged therapeutic qualities of such drugs)
Well, you wouldn’t expect the Times to feature something like the mega B1 that the late Gertrude Black, MD used to use for her patients- 500mg. B1 immediately, then 100mg. of same per hour up to 5 hours until ideation fades. That isn’t high tech enough, plus it’s using nutrients- plus the MD wasn’t (and had no intentions of becoming) a psychiatrist.
Could definitely be, as the “depressions” preceding these neurological diseases are simply indicative something’s amiss, like the falling barometer pressure preceding hurricanes. Fixing the barometer won’t prevent the hurricane.
Probably more “depressions” are like this, but ones that don’t lead to spectacular neurological disasters. These are the ones that get you addicted to antidepressants that fail to relieve your depressed mood.
I suspect that psychotic impaired awareness is at least part of this. Similar things are also in store for stumbling drunks and other loaded intoxicated stumblers, even if they don’t pass the psychotic history tests (save for maybe constant psychotic drinking/drugging).
Who’s promoting the notion that professionals should get into arguments about delusions? Forty plus years ago, when I was a crisis volunteer, I was told to never get into arguments about delusions. Then my mentor (who once provided the only correct knowledge of a hospitalized client’s severe illness in a room full of doctors, which my associate wasn’t- paraquat poisoning) pointed out how delusions could provide clues to what was affecting an individual, such as altered senses of taste being caused by zinc deficiency.
Abolishing psychiatry? It will likely go the way pellagrology did when Vitamin B3 cured most cases of pellagra. It’s still around in places like India, where inadequate diets are common, but not in the western world, where even white flour is fortified with niacinamide (although some of the “schizophrenias” may be forms of vitamin resistant pellagra).
The difficulty with acquiring psychiatric knowledge is that “psychiatric diseases” don’t exist in a pure form, being descriptions (and not good ones at that) of collections of symptoms compressed into relatively simple categories and groups that are actually heterogeneous in nature. Attempting studies without teasing out all the subgroups in the study population invites certain failure.
Well, we can’t have the suicidal combining B12 and B1 can we? The object of medicine is to ensure income for providers and manufacturers with the actual health of individuals being secondary to this all-important goal.
Maybe it was because the animals talked to St. Francis.
I’m not deep in the know about pre and probiotics like the other commentators, but I am familiar with the use of supplements in place of medications. To set up an appropriate program, I’d have to see you in person for an interview and perhaps a Hoffer Osmond Diagnostic test (the infamous HOD I sometimes mention in correspondence on the site) to find out what nutrients I might have to use. I’m just a former crazy, myself, who accidentally treated himself, so I’d suggest finding out if there’s an orthomolecular practitioner in your neighborhood, many of whom can be found on websites (search “orthomolecular”).
High cholesterol? Heavy drinking? Sounds like a job for niacin if he’s going to get any outside substances administered. Of course the doctors would threaten you for even considering such a “dangerous” substance and they’d want to know who I was, so they could prosecute me as well.
It might be easier to resolve, once you realize that “psychiatric diagnoses” aren’t. Once you realize this, then it’s easy to comprehend that the DSM’s aren’t diagnostic at all, but merely descriptions of extreme states and/or extreme forms of behavior. It’s also easy to comprehend why the world of psychiatry is also the world of treatment failures. The problem isn’t that shrinks are too medical, but that they don’t practice real medicine, preferring linguistic puffery and blind “medical” treatments instead.
You have to remember the influence of that arcane branch of psychology and psychiatry that says illnesses effecting mental functioning (I can’t stand the term “mental illness”) don’t exist, except as an excuse for irresponsible behavior. Therefore psych patients should be punished into the sanity they’re willfully trying to deny.
Well, Cat. You can be safe from consumer participation with the shrinks of America simply by telling them you derive your benefits from large doses of vitamins like niacin and watching your diet, causing mental health professionals to regard you with fear and loathing (you might be a closet axe murderer, disguising herself as an ordinary citizen). Maybe this is why, on occasion, I suddenly out myself to professionals I find to be terminally obtuse.
The African friend didn’t realize that in the western world, health care refers to the financial health of upper level providers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, insurance companies, etc. If these individuals and groups are financially healthy, then we all allegedly become healthy just by contact with them, the way ancient Hebrews became cured of illnesses by touching Jesus’ garments.
Yes, MFC. There are a number of biophysical sources of anxiety, some of them quite simple, like low magnesium or erratic blood sugar. None of them merit extended treatment with benzodiazapines and/or other psychiatric mood drugs that I know of.
Also not mentioned is the likelihood of multiple possible origins for depression, as depression itself is a syndrome instead of a diagnosis, and as such, can have any one or more of a number of multiple origins.
How much of this earlier “research” was company funded? I seem to suffer from the paranoid notion that the original hypothesis was developed to provide a rationale for prescribing SSRI’s.
Temple Grandin made a squeeze machine out of a calf restraining device, which she uses to relax herself. Are we supposed to negatively reinforce this autistic creator of the world’s most sophisticated livestock feed lots until she stops squeezing herself with this machine?
Is it really a surprise that the pharmaceutical company isn’t going to publish a study of a clinical trial with its own product getting negative results?
And how do you suppose our psychiatric mavens will react to the ritual use of hallucinogens in tribal healing ceremonies?
Besides, if you practiced real self-care, the individuals recommending you do all these odd social things would be trying to get you to commit yourself because you have these bizarre notions about your diet, exercise and consuming “dangerous” nutritional supplements.
In WW1, the troops would uisually get shell shocked enduring their enemies’ artillery prep fire, which could go on for days and involve several million rounds. The Germans built exceptionally deep residential bunkers, but the allies didn’t, particularly the British, who wanted to maintain their “spirit of the offensive”, even if it meant inhabiting flimsy fortifications.
The idea of the nutrients is similar to creating solid fortifications to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (sorry, William S, maybe it should be the shells and snipers, instead), while getting one’s psychosocial position in order.
Ms. Hurford could have put her patient on vitamins. That way, he’d have a means of modifying his dysperceptions that didn’t leave him semicomatose, while she’d have some of the social experiences her patient was having daily when her colleagues found out she was using a heretical treatment.
You’re probably lucky you’re still alive. In the hospital, your symptoms would likely be interpreted as resistance to treatment, so they’d increase your meds as you succumbed to pernicious anemia.
No, it’s because our scholars don’t know how to do accurate studies. To do this right, they’d have to eliminate those on psych drugs beforehand, as their alleged medications have the side effect of promoting ravenous appetite and weight gain, corrupting their experimental group. Diet does effect “mental” health, but you can’t learn squat about it with a contaminated experimental group.
The article serves as a reminder to stick with supplements which you know to be properly described on the package and which AREN’T puffed as some kind of magic compound for whatever particular ailment you have, or think you have. Of course this means you need to do your homework so you know what they’re good for. It also helps to know your side effects, e.g., knowing that starting large quantities of niacin is likely to induce flushing, wherein your skin turns red and you feel skin heat like an under the skin sunburn, or that you’ll get the trots taking extremely large quantities of vitamin C, unless you have a virus ailment.
Well, I’m afraid it may be time for manganese supplementation. I’m also afraid you probably don’t live in the Bay area where a Richard Kunin, MD practices. One of his specialties is treating dyskinesias (of which akathisia is one) caused by psych drugs with manganese (and sometimes B3). He does have a web site, though.
You’re right, msmonique. That’s what tardive dyskinesia’s all about- neural damage brought on by drug-induced manganese deficiency, which is why proper treatment can reverse it in its early stage without much trouble, but not so effectively when it becomes chronic. It doesn’t say much for Big Pharma, which could probably prevent much of the nonsense by adding. 2mg. Mn to every tablet of their antipsychotic drugs in the manufacturing process.
PS- I was not zapped.
A curious but interesting story. Back when I got my B3 professionally adjusted, it was by a guy recommended to me by several ex-patients. He was a former shock doc- an internist by training (not a shrink), he was moving into my neck of the woods, seeking an environment where he could practice therapeutic fasting as devised by Theron Randolph, who’d trained him by putting him through a fast of his own. When he got to his new hospital, the executive staff wouldn’t have anything to do with fasting, telling the 70-year old doctor that this was too dangerous to perform in their hospital’s psych ward (apparently thinking ECT was a safer procedure). Fortunately, he wasn’t a psychiatrist by training (actually he was an internist), because he didn’t even curl his patients’ toes, besides keeping them on mega B3 during the procedures to save their long-term memories.
You should see photos and clips of Josef Goebbels, spokesman for the master race. He was short, dark and club-footed. He went through life singing the praises of the alleged Master Race, while doing his best to stay out of sight. Naturally he killed himself, his wife and kids when he realized his Russian/Slavic inferiors were going to take Berlin (they were overrunning the city, going wild) and nothing could stop them.
You wouldn’t expect the psychiatric poohbahs to stop their patients’ olanzapine just because their patients suddenly weigh 300+ pounds, do you? There go the trips and the gifts and the office supplies for those rash enough to believe their health-giving meds might be somehow responsible.
Eric. It just hit me a few minutes after my post. You’d tell the inquisitors you ate the candle because the guy who broached the issue bet you $5 you wouldn’t eat it, and you’re surprised he brought it up at your hearing. Now, if the staff finds this an issue, you can reveal it was one of your scurvy MAD buddies who suggested it, proving it by sending the Men of Psychiatry here to find out for themselves. Best of all, if the accuser denies the Tale of the Candle was real, his argument for keeping you around is gone.
Eric. Maybe, when the junior shrink brought up this item about the candle, you should have told the panel that you ate it, and launch into some spiel about why, bringing up some imaginary incident in which you induce your accuser to supply imaginary details of the nonexistent incident, “helping” him remember the imaginary details. Remember- an imaginary incident needs a preposterous explanation and who better to supply it than our man of mental health?
It is a blind alley, but these “authorities” have to take it in their search for the alleged miracle drug that is not only the Magic Treatment for the supposed discovery, but also the Magic Creator of Fame and Fortune for themselves.
A good piece, illustrating how delusions come to be, in this case, as an attempt to explain the reasons behind the appearance of certain audios and their proliferation.
The next question to be answered is whether this increased screen time is a cause, or result of internalized misery- are you on line because you’re miserable, or is being constantly on line making you miserable?
A crude way to estimate (“guesstimate?”) this is with the old (quantitative) Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic test. You probably won’t see one of these in the UK, because Hoffer was a Canadian, one of those folks who seem to be regarded as ignorant hillbillies by the highly educated in the UK. The old Canadian Schizophrenia Foundation once made a booklet form of this test, so that schizophrenic Foundation members could check themselves out if they felt themselves possibly becoming “strange” again, so they could adjust or resume their vitamins. It was also used to screen alcoholic candidates for psychedelic therapy, which isn’t recommended for those with greatly disturbed perceptions, that class of individuals not responsive to such treatments.
The kind of authority based on knowledge and ability was called “sapiential authority” by Humphry Osmond way back, while he was getting endless grief for his role in creating megavitamin therapy.
Of course exercising’s omitted from treatments for depression. Providers don’t make any money from it, unlike antidepressants, which have to be taken for life, being addictive, thereby providing manufacturers with an opportunity for lifetime income from multitudes of users desperate to avoid withdrawal symptoms.
Remember, folks. The original Bedlam was a British institution- this hospital is carrying on the tradition, minus the painters who depicted it (except for the ones, like Richard Dadd, who were actually patients there).
I don’t know that much about antipsychotic drugs causing mental disorders, but they certainly cause neurological disorders like tardive dyskinesia. This misdirected causation would be more likely with the alleged antidepressants, which are used to tinker with the chemicals involved with moods- plenty of room to go astray there, particularly with careless and/or feckless prescribing.
Does that mean that gaining 100 pounds in a few months is actually a sign of recovery?
I’m waiting for some authority to proclaim that pellagra’s a life-long genetic illness. Or that depression from beriberi or scurvy proves that they’re life-long genetic illnesses. Or that dysperceptions caused by mercury poisoning are part of a life-long genetic illness.
This discussion wouldn’t be happening if shrinks used truly quantitative diagnostic techniques instead of just looking at a few common perceptual and/or mood symptoms and signs. Then I wouldn’t have to risk going to jail because I felt obliged to deal therapeutically with some inept professional’s failure.
Very good, Steve. Depression isn’t an independent entity unto itself, so the idea’s to find its instigators for depressed individuals in order to treat their conditions appropriately.
Am I a hermit in the psychological wilderness because I support the proper use of select nutrients for certain depressive states where appropriate selective features present themselves? Such contributing things as overconsumption of various stimulants (B1), presence of diverse perceptual distortions (B3 and/or B6+zinc), “bipolar” symptoms (B12), suicidal ideation (B1 and/or B12), alcohol abuse (B3 in niacin form, maybe accompanied by glutamine) frequently aren’t dealt with successfully by psychotherapy or antidepressants alone, but can be ameliorated by non-drug means directed by proper questioning and/or a few tests that can properly direct therapeutic interventions (a term I don’t really like).
You’re probably right, as you can’t get tardive dyskinesia if you aren’t on psych drugs.
With these brilliant instructions, I’m ready to go! Where are the patients? Let me at em! I’ll have them nodding robots in no time! When do I get to go to the pharma-sponsored seminars?
This flap does provide some evidence for the idea expressed in the late Abram Hoffer’s radio interview, in which he said that transporting the world’s psychiatrists to Mars would be the best way to improve mental health on earth. It also provides evidence that the medical model big-time psychiatry says it’s following is contaminated by a moral position held by churches, in which they state that they alone are capable of evaluating morality (Osmond’s moral model par excellence).
An expensive way to do nothing, as the results of these antipsychotic drug treatments are no better than absolutely no treatment whatsoever.
And what kind of activity compels you to be off doing self care? Water fasting? Tai chi? Distance running? Or is this some kind of secret activity, like the way Jesus told us to squirrel ourselves away when praying?
So much for the belief in the genetic inferiority of schizophrenics. The MIA readers who are diagnosed schizophrenics might be amused to know that unmedicated schizophrenics don’t get cancer, at least if the late Abram Hoffer’s figure of 4 of his 5,000 schizophrenic patients having cancer is true. But then he invariably used mega ascorbate in his treatment regimens (he and Linus Pauling were buddies).
I was prone to outbursts, losing friends and jobs until I gave up caffeine. I’m no sweetheart but I’m not bursting into fury these days.
Well Steve. This is what happens when you try to treat syndromes as real diseases. “Mental illnesses” aren’t real diseases unto themselves, but syndromes- collections of signs and symptoms that can (and likely do) have multiple origins and multiple treatments, depending on the causative agents. Naturally, it should be no surprise that there isn’t genetic simplicity or constancy for everyone with the same syndrome.
I seldom “tell my story”, because most listeners are either disgusted or disbelieving. Getting better by accident has no panache and the involvement of niacin disgusts and dismays “providers”.
It’s an interesting article but I do find myself differing with Mr. B about psychiatry as practiced today. It isn’t biological psychiatry, but pharmaceutical psychiatry. This “medical” approach we see pays little attention to biology, but exerts great effort promoting the latest pharmaceutical “treatments” with new and improved drugs to inflict neurological punishment on psychiatric patients, giving them dyskinesia, akathisia and other amazing side effects generated by companies ignorant of the biological consequences of these supposed treatments.
I’ve been curious about the use of niacinamide for benzo withdrawal, in similar fashion to using niacin (with sometimes also magnesium) for alcohol withdrawal. I didn’t notice any of the article writers referring to it, although I also realize that the term “vitamin B3” induces convulsions of fury in psychiatrists, forcing them to avoid it at all costs.
This is the sort of thing that happens when you treat a syndrome like it was an actual unitary disease. No wonder these alleged researchers are confused- they haven’t teased out members of the many sub-groups of the depressed, so all these groups are combined into one population instead of the heterogeneous groups they actually are.
Psychology might be thought of as more effective if the practitioners didn’t waste a lot of time trying to do great therapeutic things with individuals so delirious they barely know where they are, and are incapable of absorbing ordinary ideas, much less therapeutic ones.
Reminds me of the 17th and 18th Century searches for the identity of phlogiston, which, naturally, didn’t exist.
Steve, you’ve got to remember that those alleged diagnoses in the DSM’s are actually behavioral descriptions that say nothing about their origins or treatments, unlike the conditions that Nic has catalogued.
Naturally. It seems to be a psychiatric cliché that your diet has nothing to do with your mental state, a notion that requires constant attention and effort to defend.
The idea of mental symptomology being caused by conditions other than brain diseases seems to have eluded mental health professionals, despite the existence of the classic dietary deficiency diseases- scurvy, beriberi and pellagra, all of which can induce depression (also notice that all three have different treatments).
Steve. You and I are aware of ketamine’s background, but it’s likely that the desperate individuals who want their suffering to go away don’t. Or if they were aware of what ketamine does, it was 40 years ago and was likely forgotten over time.
Almost makes me wish I were back in school, dealing with the mental issues of others in addition to writing their term papers for them. I wouldn’t want any money for doing treatments, in order to stay vaguely legal, so I’d use receiving favors in lieu of that, the papers being for generating monetary income.
Don’t forget about actions activated by things like blood sugar irregularities, where the perpetrators’ unconscious is reacting to blood sugar changes brought on by excessive sugar consumption or reactions to sensitizing foods. I’d certainly suspect things like these in kids incapable of being calmed down- better than getting them addicted to the robot drugs of 21st Century psychiatry.
Am I to presume these studies simply pronounce you at risk for psychosis without explaining the things you can do to prevent it from actually appearing, such as avoiding alcohol, stimulants, hallucinogens and ADHD drugs, keeping regular hours, maintaining junk free diets? Or are you simply telling your at risk population that florid psychoses will simply leap out of the shadows (gotcha!) no matter what you do, if you aren’t lucky? Or are you to prevent this by becoming a doped up zombie through the agency of preventive antipsychotics (zombie and free!)?
Probably one of the easiest things colleges can do is examine what is served in their dining halls and expel the refined carbohydrates for the duration. Some of the more unpleasant memories of my school days are of the food.
You’re right about the major hallucinogens like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, et. al., but there are some little known ones like adrenochrome and adrenolutin that are pretty close, aren’t psychedelic and also provide prolonged experiences that can go on for days from single doses. You can steal some asthmatic’s adrenaline and let it sit until it turns pink before you snort it, if you want to try, but I’ll pass, thank you.
They’d also have to come off such alleged medications for some time before they were mentally fit to prescribe anything more toxic than aspirin or vitamin C. The antidepressant advocates would be the worst off, as their convalescent time might stretch into years.
Remember, kids. L-glutamine is the likely antagonist for this, as the anesthetics like ketamine and PCP destroy glutamates, so you need enough glutamine to override this action.
One of the items I did miss in the article was the idea of having mental health workers take hallucinogens to understand the experiences their psychotic patients are having. I hope it wasn’t because Humphry Osmond, one of psychiatry’s blackest sheep, encouraged the practice for his staff members when he was superintendent at Weyburn Hospital, Saskatchewan (he also insisted on converting the hospitals “seclusion rooms” into refuges patients could voluntarily visit when overstimulated).
Well, that goes without saying. You’d be wasting your time if you were already under the influence of antipsychotics and be more likely to freak out on antidepressants and/or the jumpers prescribed for ADHD. I do know a few things, oldhead.
As a living fossil, I feel an obligation to describe in more concrete terms the relatively safe use of hallucinogens. Avoid them if you have numerous perceptual distortions of vision, hearing, time sense, etc. Psychiatric diagnoses don’t matter but omnipresent sensory distortions do. Being a first-order relative of someone who does have them is also a warning sign for your own consumptions of hallucinogens.
I’ve cribbed and paraphrased these items from my copy of The Hallucinogens, by Hoffer and Osmond (1967). It’s been out of print for years, but it’s a good item for you collectors to seek.
Nothing, except maybe pharmaceutical sales, but neurology and general medicine probably should.
Of course, if you can get the kid drugged as being mentally ill and are poor, maybe you can sell your kids’ medications instead of getting the kids stoned out. You could unload the speed at a local truck stop. The problem is making sure the kids seem drugged when the piss test times come around, because they’ll have to have that properly dirty urine to “prove” they’re taking their meds- perhaps there are school employees who have that need for speed plus knowledge of the test dates and times.
For many years, I’ve accepted the idea that delusions arise from attempts to explain events originating from trying to explain distorted perceptual experiences. For instance, paranoid notions can easily arise from the sensation of being watched or from auditories whispering or saying bad things about you. Such things are likely to have a biological basis, all right, that can be corrected, but obviously not with “antipsychotic” drugs which simply shut everything down (and you, too, if you overdose).
The problem isn’t with the much despised medical model, but its psychiatric version, which ignores physical difficulties outside the brain that affect its functioning, and which can be manifold. For example, I give you Theron Randolph’s presentation of what he considered cerebral allergies, curable with water fasting and future avoidance, to the APA about 60 years ago, in which he presented histories of 2000 or so patients and demonstrated it on stage with two of his patient volunteers. The APA regarded him with a big ho-hum.
I’ve always liked David Hawkins’ term “metabolic dysperception” since 1974, when I first read it.
Bad idea to have authoritarian shrinks. Knowing nothing about “mental” diseases and having no real knowledge about physical ones are poor foundations for authoritarian types, as there is so little content in their bodies of “knowledge”, a secret authoritarians defend, in lieu of defending a real body of knowledge.
Well, pharmaceutical companies are spending billions trying to convince you that you needed to be medicated for something, that deep, deep down you’re seeking that Big Buzz that will make everything fine- or that you won’t care if nothing’s fine if you do cop that Big Buzz with their drugs.
Start with something simple, like magnesium. You also want to find out about his morning routine and things he does or eats. Does he do or eat the same thing(s) on the mornings he has these episodes? I’d try to get him to take an HOD test eventually, but I’m beginning to sound too much like I know what I’m talking about, and the further things to do might be too manifold for a blog.
I’m wondering if I’ll wind up practicing underground psychiatry again. I seem to know more about the bad characteristics of these drugs than real psychiatrists, plus more about how to treat bad reactions from them.
Think of it as job creation, Steve. How many psychiatric area jobs would be lost if these delirious individuals were revived with a few grams of niacin, ascorbate or l-glutamine and were sent on their way when coherent?
When he went for his alleged help, he may have had to vegetate in the waiting room, waiting among a group of vets suffering from a variety of conditions to be called for his initial interview. VA psych wards in the organization’s general hospitals don’t seem to be bad, although their specialized psych facilities have a number of head injury patients, which can create a rowdy atmosphere- bullets and shell splinters in one’s brain can hardly be considered tranquilizing. The alleged treatments are as sorry as in civilian facilities, although I may be simply peeved at the VA’s inability to diagnose my caffeine sensitivity.
Good idea, Steve. When you’re “diagnosed” by such means when freaking on ketamine/PCP type drugs, you’re likely to deteriorate big time when placed on a psych drug regimen and then get called treatment resistant, which calls for even heavier doses of psych drugs (which is why I became interested in big doses of glutamine for PCP delirium 40+ years ago).
You aren’t supposed to carp about “new” antidepressants, but to fight to ensure nobody uses B1, B3, B6 or B12 should they become depressed. The FDA might even promote you if you did so.
Because office work is done without the workers realizing what’s actually going on, not having studied things like Parkinson’s Law (work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion), or the Peter Principle (employees rise to their level of incompetence, which encourages the creation of incompetent organizations).
That’s the point, YIS. Your mental health is part of your physical health, something the average psychiatrist doesn’t seem to understand, just as these individuals don’t understand you can do ECT’s on patients without erasing their long-term memories, simply by keeping them on B3 (one of the reasons Hoffer, et. al. used them on occasion, but with many fewer shocks per patient, unlike our big-time shock docs).
Incidentally, YIS, I use a DIY protocol, too. Now in my early 70’s, I find it interesting how many professionals are amazed I’m not on some kind of medication at my age, particularly the VA guy who does my annual physicals.
The blog actually raises a question. Who is psychotic, us or Big Pharma?
This reminds me of an item in the old compilation Orthomolecular Psychiatry edited by Linus Pauling and David Hawkins in1974. In an essay by Hawkins describing the North Nassau Mental Health Center, which he ran, he mentioned that the doper patients he had (in the glory days of psychedelic abuse) who only smoked marijuana didn’t relapse like the poly-dopers who were also his patients and were getting basically the same treatments as the others. Perhaps this is related to some of the stuff in this article about CBD.
I’m wondering about the point in doing this. Stroke patients are probably likely to be depressed if they notice significant impairment of functioning- is this alleged treatment supposed to help this state despite no return of “normal” functioning? Or is it to make you happy, though impaired?
Or is this a search for new antidepressant markets?
No “mental” illnesses perhaps, but a number of physical illnesses that present with “mental” symptoms that won’t be relieved with psychiatric drugs (and that shrinks don’t know about because their real medical training is ignored) do exist.
Lead, a behavioral toxin as reported in the JAMA Psychiatry? This is unusual, because it publicly confirms views that the dreaded and derided school of orthomolecular practitioners have held for several decades (though the Journal would never dare to reveal that). It also fails to puff some new pharmaceutical product- heresy!
It’s probably a good thing I’m too old for this. Rapping with the patients wouldn’t be a problem, but I’d be anathema to staff members if I told a client I got better because I found out I’m B3 dependent and that caffeine’s a potentially serious toxic substance for me. Staff would likely get me committed with the diagnosis of Munchausen’s Syndrome.
Kelly. Are there any nutritional means of speeding up this withdrawal process to make it less difficult? I know it’s possible with alcohol, using mega niacin and ascorbate, and amphetamine, using ascorbate and B1 (and B3, if there are hallucinations). I’ve also come across programs for narcotics (I used to subscribe to the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine).
I’m asking you because you seem to be more familiar with such procedures than most of the contributors.
No surprise for me. I stay away from opinion leaders because they’d want me immediately committed if I publicly said I thought B3 was a better idea for “schizophrenic” patients than the most sophisticated psychiatric drugs.
This reminds me of when I first got my Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic test, which measures perceptual stability. I was using it to screen prospective volunteers for safety prior to taking native hallucinogenic mushrooms (no, I don’t live in the South, and yes, manifold dysperceptions contraindicate hallucinogen use). As I worked as a volunteer at a crisis drop-in center, I had no shortage of prospective clients and no shortage of high scores, plus some belonging to curious people on meds, usually for depression which proved to be misdiagnosed by their high scores, but erroneously treated by their physicians, who didn’t use such instruments (and still don’t).
This test isn’t useful for children as they routinely have frequent have high scores, which place them in the same class as my misdiagnosed older test takers. Since SSRI’s have the same kind of bad consequences as the older antidepressants, is there any surprise that “medicated” children are coming unglued on their prescriptions?
This is about supplementing psychiatrists, individuals demonstrably uninterested in looking for underlying medical conditions affecting extreme mental states. The psychiatric community would be outraged if their “lesser” psychological brethren were capable of doing so when they weren’t and actually did so as a result.
Here’s another curiosity about ketamine. It’s related to PCP, the get simple and delirious mainstay of 1970’s simpletons seeking chemical adventures. Emergency room adventures were frequently the consequence of such chemical adventures, particularly since antipsychotic drugs made the PCP delirium worse. Is this also the case for ketamine, a drug with a similar method of chemical action?
This could become a serious problem, since drug cocktails are all the rage in present day psychiatry, raising the likelihood of drug-induced delerium when antipsychotics and ketamine are used together. I suspect few ER’s will use multiple grams of l-glutamine to treat ketamine related deleriums (deleria?), preferring emergency room excitement to using non-drug substances. (by the way- I have successfully used glutamine for PCP on the rare occasion I’ve seen this problem, but then I’m just a crazy without respect for the alleged therapeutic qualities of such drugs)
Well, you wouldn’t expect the Times to feature something like the mega B1 that the late Gertrude Black, MD used to use for her patients- 500mg. B1 immediately, then 100mg. of same per hour up to 5 hours until ideation fades. That isn’t high tech enough, plus it’s using nutrients- plus the MD wasn’t (and had no intentions of becoming) a psychiatrist.
Could definitely be, as the “depressions” preceding these neurological diseases are simply indicative something’s amiss, like the falling barometer pressure preceding hurricanes. Fixing the barometer won’t prevent the hurricane.
Probably more “depressions” are like this, but ones that don’t lead to spectacular neurological disasters. These are the ones that get you addicted to antidepressants that fail to relieve your depressed mood.
I suspect that psychotic impaired awareness is at least part of this. Similar things are also in store for stumbling drunks and other loaded intoxicated stumblers, even if they don’t pass the psychotic history tests (save for maybe constant psychotic drinking/drugging).
Who’s promoting the notion that professionals should get into arguments about delusions? Forty plus years ago, when I was a crisis volunteer, I was told to never get into arguments about delusions. Then my mentor (who once provided the only correct knowledge of a hospitalized client’s severe illness in a room full of doctors, which my associate wasn’t- paraquat poisoning) pointed out how delusions could provide clues to what was affecting an individual, such as altered senses of taste being caused by zinc deficiency.
Abolishing psychiatry? It will likely go the way pellagrology did when Vitamin B3 cured most cases of pellagra. It’s still around in places like India, where inadequate diets are common, but not in the western world, where even white flour is fortified with niacinamide (although some of the “schizophrenias” may be forms of vitamin resistant pellagra).
The difficulty with acquiring psychiatric knowledge is that “psychiatric diseases” don’t exist in a pure form, being descriptions (and not good ones at that) of collections of symptoms compressed into relatively simple categories and groups that are actually heterogeneous in nature. Attempting studies without teasing out all the subgroups in the study population invites certain failure.
Well, we can’t have the suicidal combining B12 and B1 can we? The object of medicine is to ensure income for providers and manufacturers with the actual health of individuals being secondary to this all-important goal.
Maybe it was because the animals talked to St. Francis.
I’m not deep in the know about pre and probiotics like the other commentators, but I am familiar with the use of supplements in place of medications. To set up an appropriate program, I’d have to see you in person for an interview and perhaps a Hoffer Osmond Diagnostic test (the infamous HOD I sometimes mention in correspondence on the site) to find out what nutrients I might have to use. I’m just a former crazy, myself, who accidentally treated himself, so I’d suggest finding out if there’s an orthomolecular practitioner in your neighborhood, many of whom can be found on websites (search “orthomolecular”).
High cholesterol? Heavy drinking? Sounds like a job for niacin if he’s going to get any outside substances administered. Of course the doctors would threaten you for even considering such a “dangerous” substance and they’d want to know who I was, so they could prosecute me as well.
It might be easier to resolve, once you realize that “psychiatric diagnoses” aren’t. Once you realize this, then it’s easy to comprehend that the DSM’s aren’t diagnostic at all, but merely descriptions of extreme states and/or extreme forms of behavior. It’s also easy to comprehend why the world of psychiatry is also the world of treatment failures. The problem isn’t that shrinks are too medical, but that they don’t practice real medicine, preferring linguistic puffery and blind “medical” treatments instead.
You have to remember the influence of that arcane branch of psychology and psychiatry that says illnesses effecting mental functioning (I can’t stand the term “mental illness”) don’t exist, except as an excuse for irresponsible behavior. Therefore psych patients should be punished into the sanity they’re willfully trying to deny.
Well, Cat. You can be safe from consumer participation with the shrinks of America simply by telling them you derive your benefits from large doses of vitamins like niacin and watching your diet, causing mental health professionals to regard you with fear and loathing (you might be a closet axe murderer, disguising herself as an ordinary citizen). Maybe this is why, on occasion, I suddenly out myself to professionals I find to be terminally obtuse.
The African friend didn’t realize that in the western world, health care refers to the financial health of upper level providers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, insurance companies, etc. If these individuals and groups are financially healthy, then we all allegedly become healthy just by contact with them, the way ancient Hebrews became cured of illnesses by touching Jesus’ garments.
Yes, MFC. There are a number of biophysical sources of anxiety, some of them quite simple, like low magnesium or erratic blood sugar. None of them merit extended treatment with benzodiazapines and/or other psychiatric mood drugs that I know of.
Also not mentioned is the likelihood of multiple possible origins for depression, as depression itself is a syndrome instead of a diagnosis, and as such, can have any one or more of a number of multiple origins.
How much of this earlier “research” was company funded? I seem to suffer from the paranoid notion that the original hypothesis was developed to provide a rationale for prescribing SSRI’s.
Temple Grandin made a squeeze machine out of a calf restraining device, which she uses to relax herself. Are we supposed to negatively reinforce this autistic creator of the world’s most sophisticated livestock feed lots until she stops squeezing herself with this machine?
Is it really a surprise that the pharmaceutical company isn’t going to publish a study of a clinical trial with its own product getting negative results?
And how do you suppose our psychiatric mavens will react to the ritual use of hallucinogens in tribal healing ceremonies?
Besides, if you practiced real self-care, the individuals recommending you do all these odd social things would be trying to get you to commit yourself because you have these bizarre notions about your diet, exercise and consuming “dangerous” nutritional supplements.
In WW1, the troops would uisually get shell shocked enduring their enemies’ artillery prep fire, which could go on for days and involve several million rounds. The Germans built exceptionally deep residential bunkers, but the allies didn’t, particularly the British, who wanted to maintain their “spirit of the offensive”, even if it meant inhabiting flimsy fortifications.
The idea of the nutrients is similar to creating solid fortifications to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (sorry, William S, maybe it should be the shells and snipers, instead), while getting one’s psychosocial position in order.
Ms. Hurford could have put her patient on vitamins. That way, he’d have a means of modifying his dysperceptions that didn’t leave him semicomatose, while she’d have some of the social experiences her patient was having daily when her colleagues found out she was using a heretical treatment.
You’re probably lucky you’re still alive. In the hospital, your symptoms would likely be interpreted as resistance to treatment, so they’d increase your meds as you succumbed to pernicious anemia.
No, it’s because our scholars don’t know how to do accurate studies. To do this right, they’d have to eliminate those on psych drugs beforehand, as their alleged medications have the side effect of promoting ravenous appetite and weight gain, corrupting their experimental group. Diet does effect “mental” health, but you can’t learn squat about it with a contaminated experimental group.
The article serves as a reminder to stick with supplements which you know to be properly described on the package and which AREN’T puffed as some kind of magic compound for whatever particular ailment you have, or think you have. Of course this means you need to do your homework so you know what they’re good for. It also helps to know your side effects, e.g., knowing that starting large quantities of niacin is likely to induce flushing, wherein your skin turns red and you feel skin heat like an under the skin sunburn, or that you’ll get the trots taking extremely large quantities of vitamin C, unless you have a virus ailment.
Well, I’m afraid it may be time for manganese supplementation. I’m also afraid you probably don’t live in the Bay area where a Richard Kunin, MD practices. One of his specialties is treating dyskinesias (of which akathisia is one) caused by psych drugs with manganese (and sometimes B3). He does have a web site, though.
You’re right, msmonique. That’s what tardive dyskinesia’s all about- neural damage brought on by drug-induced manganese deficiency, which is why proper treatment can reverse it in its early stage without much trouble, but not so effectively when it becomes chronic. It doesn’t say much for Big Pharma, which could probably prevent much of the nonsense by adding. 2mg. Mn to every tablet of their antipsychotic drugs in the manufacturing process.
PS- I was not zapped.
A curious but interesting story. Back when I got my B3 professionally adjusted, it was by a guy recommended to me by several ex-patients. He was a former shock doc- an internist by training (not a shrink), he was moving into my neck of the woods, seeking an environment where he could practice therapeutic fasting as devised by Theron Randolph, who’d trained him by putting him through a fast of his own. When he got to his new hospital, the executive staff wouldn’t have anything to do with fasting, telling the 70-year old doctor that this was too dangerous to perform in their hospital’s psych ward (apparently thinking ECT was a safer procedure). Fortunately, he wasn’t a psychiatrist by training (actually he was an internist), because he didn’t even curl his patients’ toes, besides keeping them on mega B3 during the procedures to save their long-term memories.
You should see photos and clips of Josef Goebbels, spokesman for the master race. He was short, dark and club-footed. He went through life singing the praises of the alleged Master Race, while doing his best to stay out of sight. Naturally he killed himself, his wife and kids when he realized his Russian/Slavic inferiors were going to take Berlin (they were overrunning the city, going wild) and nothing could stop them.
You wouldn’t expect the psychiatric poohbahs to stop their patients’ olanzapine just because their patients suddenly weigh 300+ pounds, do you? There go the trips and the gifts and the office supplies for those rash enough to believe their health-giving meds might be somehow responsible.
Eric. It just hit me a few minutes after my post. You’d tell the inquisitors you ate the candle because the guy who broached the issue bet you $5 you wouldn’t eat it, and you’re surprised he brought it up at your hearing. Now, if the staff finds this an issue, you can reveal it was one of your scurvy MAD buddies who suggested it, proving it by sending the Men of Psychiatry here to find out for themselves. Best of all, if the accuser denies the Tale of the Candle was real, his argument for keeping you around is gone.
Eric. Maybe, when the junior shrink brought up this item about the candle, you should have told the panel that you ate it, and launch into some spiel about why, bringing up some imaginary incident in which you induce your accuser to supply imaginary details of the nonexistent incident, “helping” him remember the imaginary details. Remember- an imaginary incident needs a preposterous explanation and who better to supply it than our man of mental health?
It is a blind alley, but these “authorities” have to take it in their search for the alleged miracle drug that is not only the Magic Treatment for the supposed discovery, but also the Magic Creator of Fame and Fortune for themselves.
A good piece, illustrating how delusions come to be, in this case, as an attempt to explain the reasons behind the appearance of certain audios and their proliferation.
The next question to be answered is whether this increased screen time is a cause, or result of internalized misery- are you on line because you’re miserable, or is being constantly on line making you miserable?
A crude way to estimate (“guesstimate?”) this is with the old (quantitative) Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic test. You probably won’t see one of these in the UK, because Hoffer was a Canadian, one of those folks who seem to be regarded as ignorant hillbillies by the highly educated in the UK. The old Canadian Schizophrenia Foundation once made a booklet form of this test, so that schizophrenic Foundation members could check themselves out if they felt themselves possibly becoming “strange” again, so they could adjust or resume their vitamins. It was also used to screen alcoholic candidates for psychedelic therapy, which isn’t recommended for those with greatly disturbed perceptions, that class of individuals not responsive to such treatments.
The kind of authority based on knowledge and ability was called “sapiential authority” by Humphry Osmond way back, while he was getting endless grief for his role in creating megavitamin therapy.
Of course exercising’s omitted from treatments for depression. Providers don’t make any money from it, unlike antidepressants, which have to be taken for life, being addictive, thereby providing manufacturers with an opportunity for lifetime income from multitudes of users desperate to avoid withdrawal symptoms.
Remember, folks. The original Bedlam was a British institution- this hospital is carrying on the tradition, minus the painters who depicted it (except for the ones, like Richard Dadd, who were actually patients there).
I don’t know that much about antipsychotic drugs causing mental disorders, but they certainly cause neurological disorders like tardive dyskinesia. This misdirected causation would be more likely with the alleged antidepressants, which are used to tinker with the chemicals involved with moods- plenty of room to go astray there, particularly with careless and/or feckless prescribing.
Does that mean that gaining 100 pounds in a few months is actually a sign of recovery?
I’m waiting for some authority to proclaim that pellagra’s a life-long genetic illness. Or that depression from beriberi or scurvy proves that they’re life-long genetic illnesses. Or that dysperceptions caused by mercury poisoning are part of a life-long genetic illness.
This discussion wouldn’t be happening if shrinks used truly quantitative diagnostic techniques instead of just looking at a few common perceptual and/or mood symptoms and signs. Then I wouldn’t have to risk going to jail because I felt obliged to deal therapeutically with some inept professional’s failure.
Very good, Steve. Depression isn’t an independent entity unto itself, so the idea’s to find its instigators for depressed individuals in order to treat their conditions appropriately.
Am I a hermit in the psychological wilderness because I support the proper use of select nutrients for certain depressive states where appropriate selective features present themselves? Such contributing things as overconsumption of various stimulants (B1), presence of diverse perceptual distortions (B3 and/or B6+zinc), “bipolar” symptoms (B12), suicidal ideation (B1 and/or B12), alcohol abuse (B3 in niacin form, maybe accompanied by glutamine) frequently aren’t dealt with successfully by psychotherapy or antidepressants alone, but can be ameliorated by non-drug means directed by proper questioning and/or a few tests that can properly direct therapeutic interventions (a term I don’t really like).
You’re probably right, as you can’t get tardive dyskinesia if you aren’t on psych drugs.
With these brilliant instructions, I’m ready to go! Where are the patients? Let me at em! I’ll have them nodding robots in no time! When do I get to go to the pharma-sponsored seminars?
This flap does provide some evidence for the idea expressed in the late Abram Hoffer’s radio interview, in which he said that transporting the world’s psychiatrists to Mars would be the best way to improve mental health on earth. It also provides evidence that the medical model big-time psychiatry says it’s following is contaminated by a moral position held by churches, in which they state that they alone are capable of evaluating morality (Osmond’s moral model par excellence).
An expensive way to do nothing, as the results of these antipsychotic drug treatments are no better than absolutely no treatment whatsoever.
And what kind of activity compels you to be off doing self care? Water fasting? Tai chi? Distance running? Or is this some kind of secret activity, like the way Jesus told us to squirrel ourselves away when praying?
So much for the belief in the genetic inferiority of schizophrenics. The MIA readers who are diagnosed schizophrenics might be amused to know that unmedicated schizophrenics don’t get cancer, at least if the late Abram Hoffer’s figure of 4 of his 5,000 schizophrenic patients having cancer is true. But then he invariably used mega ascorbate in his treatment regimens (he and Linus Pauling were buddies).
I was prone to outbursts, losing friends and jobs until I gave up caffeine. I’m no sweetheart but I’m not bursting into fury these days.