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, even though the kids are a mess and their parents are miserable, the doctor gets to schmooze with agents of the largest pharmaceutical companies in winter seminars in the subtropical regions of this continent, enjoying the sun while company reps misinform him about benevolent new miracle drugs (with plenty of time for recreation) that the company is pushing.
Kids may indeed have a physical problem where they spend all their time in frantic pointless activity. It’s called lead poisoning. Few GP’s or shrinks will look for it, even though doing thorough backgrounds and/or a hair sample aren’t complicated activities which don’t take an Einstein to execute. Synthetic food colors can also sometimes induce hyperactivity, but it’s apparently unpatriotic to badmouth the all American kiddie diet, while allergy fasting is definitely subversive to our way of life.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with notions of chemical imbalances having an effect on mental states, but not the way the industry proclaims them and feeds patients patentable drugs to allegedly correct them.
Well, we won’t have to worry for long, because we’ll soon be extinct, if the gent theorizing that glyphosate in the environment is why our insect pollinators are dying off in droves is correct. How will the last chemical industry CEO get a tombstone that memorializes the fortune he made manufacturing it, if no stonemasons and sculptors are left to make and carve it?
Easy to deduce what social justice means to psychologists. It means they’ll all get raises without having to do any more work.
I suspect it depends on what the chemical fixes are. Methamphetamine doesn’t have a good reputation (at least for most of us), given that it was Hitler’s favorite drug (his “doctor” shot him up with it every day, until the producer’s factory was bombed near the end of the war and the “unmedicated” Fuhrer collapsed). Downers don’t have what it takes, either (picture the president on the nod during a global crisis, though that might not be so bad with our present one). Doesn’t look like a bright future for presidential stoners.
As a fugitive from Mental Health, I’m in no position to adequately discuss these peer movement controversies, lest the peers and their employers find me a Secret Agent for the Blues and take action to protect their communities from people like me. I’m already self exiled from the substance abuse community, so I may just have to keep my evil secrets to myself, lest I be shunned by my other contemporaries.
This sounds like an opportunity for you recovered orthomolecular patients living near a med school, as you’re likely better informed about clinical nutrition than the students AND the teaching staff at these institutions. This provides an opportunity to secretly treat such individuals for appropriate rewards, while providing appropriate references for those caregivers with addiction problems themselves, who were sobered through the use of orthomolecular means.
After reading these accounts, I wonder if niacin shows any benefit in antipsychotic withdrawal. I’d stopped taking it after being hospitalized for temper outbursts (actually caffeine caused), when I thought staff might be outraged if they caught me. I started B3 again secretly upon returning from a Christmas pass and was taking it when I gave up the stelazine cold turkey a few weeks after being discharged, experiencing no problems. But then I’d only been on the antipsychotic a couple of months before I quit, so I’m not sure, even though I know it’s possible to withdraw from alcohol in a short time (2 days plus or minus) using mega niacin (not niacinamide), having overseen a couple of such withdrawals.
Rachel. All Dr. M. knew about your alleged medication was what the pharma company rep told him. It’s after the fact, but you should know that the data from company reps is the medico’s knowledge source for the drugs the rep is selling. (Many years ago I knew a Sandoz rep, whose company car was always packed with samples.)
To a degree, it is. I’ve been taking mega B3 for nearly 50 years and I still read stuff about the peril of consuming more than 20mg/day, thereby learning that I must be in the throes of chronic liver disease that could wipe me out in weeks. I also learn that I still must be hallucinating. Maybe I’m a dumpster diver and don’t notice it because I’m so seriously deluded.
Mercury, binra. It was used in blocking the felt hats of the 19th Century. The mad hatters were mad because they were exposed to mercury by contact.
Hardly, considering that a politically motivated change in the water supply caused it to be contaminated with lead. The poohbahs in Lansing, the capital, were irate at the thought of having to provide uncontaminated drinking water for the populace, so months went by with the city having a contaminated water source, while politicians declaimed their tired message of individual responsibility for governmental bungling- maybe they expected all the citizens to make home distillation units so Lansing could remain blissfully inert, instead of dealing with the problem, itself.
I knew this guy’s treatment was probably abysmal, which Dr. Shipko’s PS confirms, as does reading the black box stuff on Nardil. Plenty of opportunity for psychiatric fumbling, given that the newer antidepressants and the old MAOI can’t be taken simultaneously. But then the guys managing this “treatment” would become crazed with fear or fury if anyone suggested giving the patient 1mg. shots of B12 at intervals.
A critical part- but let’s see what Dr. Furman has to say.
This, of course, is humbug, as it contaminates medicine with sociology. You can’t solve social problems with medicine, which has no business getting the populace stoned out in order to meet social goals, as it corrupts medicine as well as society. This is one thing MIA misses, because the medical model the contributors attack isn’t medical at all, but a grandiose attempt to create a scientifically approved society; hence, you have Nazi shrinks gassing their patients instead of actually practicing medicine, and the present AMA and APA sucking up to drug companies and not paying attention to their patients’ needs (no winter trips to balmy isles without the prerequisite kissing of pharmaceutical behind).
Right now, I’m thinking of ketamine as more or less the same as PCP during its salad days during the early/middle 1970’s, a time featuring numerous delirious characters wandering around (under the influence of PCP) and creating spectacular scenes in hospital emergency rooms after the duty residents shot them up with antipsychotics (BIG mistake!) and got their establishments trashed as a consequence.
It might be, if “schizophrenia” were an entity unto itself, instead of a description of certain kinds of behavior or experiences; but alas, this isn’t so. Therapeutic fasting wasn’t discovered by a psychiatrist, but an allergist named Theron Randolph, back in the 1950’s, who presented his data on 2,000 patients at an APA conference- and was greeted by a ho hum by the psychiatric community. Psychiatric response to vitamin therapy has been to have articles in psychiatric journals warning how dangerous this was, particularly B3 therapy (I must have a liver the size of a basketball from taking B3 for 40+ years, that I don’t notice).
A trivial study, as it’s been known for decades that stimulants can induce hallucinations. Did someone actually believe this wouldn’t be the case with Ritalin? Or did the drug companies believe Ritalin wouldn’t do so, as it isn’t an amphetamine?
Make sure you pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain.
It may take some work, but it’s still possible.
Rachel777. Think of yourself as a spy for coherence. You’re already showing promise, as it doesn’t matter being different as long as nobody on the street notices, while you carefully build your network.
Exercise can be a snap if you find a way to do as a routine where you don’t have to drop what you’re doing to go to the track or the pool or the gym. Can you cycle to the store or to your appointments? Have you got enough time for tai chi before you go about your day ( I pick that because it doesn’t involve violent movement)? Notice that routine activities are a part of your “non-program” instead of separate activities where everything has to stop for you to perform exercises.
If you don’t take any guff from your shrink, you have a personality disorder. If you aren’t compliant with your alleged treatment, you have a personality disorder. If the shrink doesn’t like you, you have a personality disorder. If you don’t “improve” after your alleged treatment, you have a personality disorder. It doesn’t take an Einstein to grasp the essential nature of personality disorders.
Well, if you knew about altered perceptions inducing certain kinds of behaviors, you might not have been so confused by Ann’s actions, but then you’d likely lose some of the feelings you had toward her. Rest in peace, Ann.
Hi Michelle. My first exposure to the use of manganese for TD was in a piece by a Richard Kunin, MD, in an edition of the Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry (now the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine) back in the early 1980’s, in which he described his initial work with Mn. Now in his middle 80’s, Kunin’s still around. He has a web site in which he lists the many conditions he treats, and tardive dyskinesia is one of them.
Anafranil? I never heard of its use as an antidepressant, even though it’s one of the tricyclics. Sounds like irresponsible prescribing to me if you weren’t filling your time with obsessive activities and rituals- stuff the Germans called “zwang”.
The psych folks banned you taking vitamins because nutrients are bad for them, not you. They’d have to learn new techniques, new approaches and that their attempted persecution of the late A. Hoffer, et. al. was riddled with ignorance. They’d also have to trust patient reports and become bereft of drug company perks like “conferences” at warm weather resorts during the winter because they didn’t prescribe enough of their “angel’s” drugs.
They also rob you of manganese, which may result in tardive dyskinesia and akathisia, the reason so many people on antipsychotics have problems with involuntary movements.
Long ago, in Michigan, a Gertrude Black, MD regularly used mega B1 when treating suicidal ideation on a schedule of a 500mg initial dose, plus 100mg every hour thereafter until the ideation faded (I’d also suspect a long-term maintenance follow up). Naturally, her patients never told their local shrinks (this was back in the days when doctors could go to jail for using vitamins in large doses in their practices).
It also saves the significant people in one’s life of having to face the dangers of thought.
You’re not dealing with biological psychiatry, but with pharmacological psychiatry. The earliest guys to promote a biological approach to psychiatry, Hoffer and Osmond, knew about the existence of chlorpromazine and primitive antidepressants, the MAOI drugs (monoamine oxidase inhibitors, which make our SSRI’s look almost benevolent by contrast), but continued their work with B3/C therapy anyway. It was Osmond who reformed procedures at the old Weyburn Hospital, one of the worst in the world in those days, turning the old “seclusion rooms” into refuges by adding furniture and proper lighting, among other things. Both of them were also interested in psychedelic therapy for alcoholics, which our DEA has spent years of great effort to delegitimize.
5 to 20mg./day stelazine. This was before the days of the atypicals. Even on the 5mg. dose I still slept the 15 hours. On the 20mg. I was never really awake, which is why I went to the 5mg. size. I could now be awake 9 hours/day once I did so, which is why I ditched the zine and stuck with the B3/C regimen that most shrinks despise.
If they actually looked at the data, they’d likely find disturbing items about nutrient therapies (such as psychotic patients on niacin having a much lower suicide rate than those who weren’t) that might actually force them to think about the subject and endanger their careers and their standing with professional organizations and drug company sales reps.
I wonder how many of these subjects were on antipsychotics? That alone would flaw the studies, as vigorous activity doesn’t seem too likely for someone sleeping 12+ hours a day (I slept 15 hours/day when I was on them).
Apparently, these professionals didn’t bother themselves with the 50 year old Hoffer/Osmond (HOD) Diagnostic, which is quantitative and inquires directly about experiences. Maybe this is because it’s inconsistent with initial diagnoses, but more consistent with final diagnoses than the initial diagnoses are- humiliating to the professional diagnostician, who prides himself on his diagnostic skill. That, and the fact of both Hoffer and Osmond being advocates of the use of megavitamin B3 as a primary treatment for schizophrenia in lieu of psychiatric drugs, puts their test into the world of crystal gazing and evil sorcery, instead of modern organized psychiatry.
I notice we’re dealing with scientism, rather than real science. Scientism is a kind of religion that worships allegedly scientific discoveries, using “science” as a kind of Godly figure passing down revelations from Heaven to the unwashed herd of mere mortals. Real science is an unknown world to the “scientismists”.
Even more interesting is the psychiatric fury that arises when treatments for such conditions arise that are actually effective, such as dietary/nutrient based actions that use no pharmaceutical agents. The practitioners of such methods are regarded as agents of the Devil, dedicated to restoring medieval superstitions, in addition to condemning such valuable drugs as antidepressants.
I’ll pass. Eating at all at McDonald’s is an adventure in poor eating.
Perhaps, Rasselax.redux, it’s time for supplementation of some kind. Are there any orthomolecular practitioners in your neighborhood? A “face to face” is liable to be necessary, so the practitioner knows what to look and test for. You may be asked questions that seem strange, but actually have a purpose. Tell the practitioner a former madman sent you.
I think I’ll wait on the olanzapine. The only reason I might want to use it, is if I wanted to twitch, march or wander and weigh 300 pounds (I now weigh 175). Since most shrinks would have cows if they found I use mega B3 and C, I think I’ll avoid them, too.
I remember this stuff. This is a drug that promotes fugues and a kind of false awareness in which you do all sorts of things while actually asleep. I always wanted to go to a doctor’s office, saying I needed a scrip because I was driving cross-country to the Pacific coast, and gradually, in our conversation, leaking to the Man of Medicine that I wanted the drug because I planned on driving across the country while asleep.
should you decide to have another child, I’d still suggest zinc and B6 for your last month of pregnancy and your first 6 months or so of motherhood- zinc should you begin to get white spots in your nails and B6 to help metabolize the zinc. The white spots may indicate the presence of high serum copper (cause of depression and likely perceptual distortions), while the B6 facilitates dreaming- no dream memory, not enough, and wild, technicolor dreams, too much- as well as helping control the distortions.
The headache about mental health and violence is exacerbated by the few that do occur because the afflicted individual acts out some spectacular delusion and straight people use this to conjure up delusions of their own- being that all of us are concealing spectacular delusions that repeatedly urge us to act them out.
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, even though the kids are a mess and their parents are miserable, the doctor gets to schmooze with agents of the largest pharmaceutical companies in winter seminars in the subtropical regions of this continent, enjoying the sun while company reps misinform him about benevolent new miracle drugs (with plenty of time for recreation) that the company is pushing.
Kids may indeed have a physical problem where they spend all their time in frantic pointless activity. It’s called lead poisoning. Few GP’s or shrinks will look for it, even though doing thorough backgrounds and/or a hair sample aren’t complicated activities which don’t take an Einstein to execute. Synthetic food colors can also sometimes induce hyperactivity, but it’s apparently unpatriotic to badmouth the all American kiddie diet, while allergy fasting is definitely subversive to our way of life.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with notions of chemical imbalances having an effect on mental states, but not the way the industry proclaims them and feeds patients patentable drugs to allegedly correct them.
Well, we won’t have to worry for long, because we’ll soon be extinct, if the gent theorizing that glyphosate in the environment is why our insect pollinators are dying off in droves is correct. How will the last chemical industry CEO get a tombstone that memorializes the fortune he made manufacturing it, if no stonemasons and sculptors are left to make and carve it?
Easy to deduce what social justice means to psychologists. It means they’ll all get raises without having to do any more work.
I suspect it depends on what the chemical fixes are. Methamphetamine doesn’t have a good reputation (at least for most of us), given that it was Hitler’s favorite drug (his “doctor” shot him up with it every day, until the producer’s factory was bombed near the end of the war and the “unmedicated” Fuhrer collapsed). Downers don’t have what it takes, either (picture the president on the nod during a global crisis, though that might not be so bad with our present one). Doesn’t look like a bright future for presidential stoners.
As a fugitive from Mental Health, I’m in no position to adequately discuss these peer movement controversies, lest the peers and their employers find me a Secret Agent for the Blues and take action to protect their communities from people like me. I’m already self exiled from the substance abuse community, so I may just have to keep my evil secrets to myself, lest I be shunned by my other contemporaries.
This sounds like an opportunity for you recovered orthomolecular patients living near a med school, as you’re likely better informed about clinical nutrition than the students AND the teaching staff at these institutions. This provides an opportunity to secretly treat such individuals for appropriate rewards, while providing appropriate references for those caregivers with addiction problems themselves, who were sobered through the use of orthomolecular means.
After reading these accounts, I wonder if niacin shows any benefit in antipsychotic withdrawal. I’d stopped taking it after being hospitalized for temper outbursts (actually caffeine caused), when I thought staff might be outraged if they caught me. I started B3 again secretly upon returning from a Christmas pass and was taking it when I gave up the stelazine cold turkey a few weeks after being discharged, experiencing no problems. But then I’d only been on the antipsychotic a couple of months before I quit, so I’m not sure, even though I know it’s possible to withdraw from alcohol in a short time (2 days plus or minus) using mega niacin (not niacinamide), having overseen a couple of such withdrawals.
Rachel. All Dr. M. knew about your alleged medication was what the pharma company rep told him. It’s after the fact, but you should know that the data from company reps is the medico’s knowledge source for the drugs the rep is selling. (Many years ago I knew a Sandoz rep, whose company car was always packed with samples.)
To a degree, it is. I’ve been taking mega B3 for nearly 50 years and I still read stuff about the peril of consuming more than 20mg/day, thereby learning that I must be in the throes of chronic liver disease that could wipe me out in weeks. I also learn that I still must be hallucinating. Maybe I’m a dumpster diver and don’t notice it because I’m so seriously deluded.
Mercury, binra. It was used in blocking the felt hats of the 19th Century. The mad hatters were mad because they were exposed to mercury by contact.
Hardly, considering that a politically motivated change in the water supply caused it to be contaminated with lead. The poohbahs in Lansing, the capital, were irate at the thought of having to provide uncontaminated drinking water for the populace, so months went by with the city having a contaminated water source, while politicians declaimed their tired message of individual responsibility for governmental bungling- maybe they expected all the citizens to make home distillation units so Lansing could remain blissfully inert, instead of dealing with the problem, itself.
I knew this guy’s treatment was probably abysmal, which Dr. Shipko’s PS confirms, as does reading the black box stuff on Nardil. Plenty of opportunity for psychiatric fumbling, given that the newer antidepressants and the old MAOI can’t be taken simultaneously. But then the guys managing this “treatment” would become crazed with fear or fury if anyone suggested giving the patient 1mg. shots of B12 at intervals.
A critical part- but let’s see what Dr. Furman has to say.
This, of course, is humbug, as it contaminates medicine with sociology. You can’t solve social problems with medicine, which has no business getting the populace stoned out in order to meet social goals, as it corrupts medicine as well as society. This is one thing MIA misses, because the medical model the contributors attack isn’t medical at all, but a grandiose attempt to create a scientifically approved society; hence, you have Nazi shrinks gassing their patients instead of actually practicing medicine, and the present AMA and APA sucking up to drug companies and not paying attention to their patients’ needs (no winter trips to balmy isles without the prerequisite kissing of pharmaceutical behind).
Right now, I’m thinking of ketamine as more or less the same as PCP during its salad days during the early/middle 1970’s, a time featuring numerous delirious characters wandering around (under the influence of PCP) and creating spectacular scenes in hospital emergency rooms after the duty residents shot them up with antipsychotics (BIG mistake!) and got their establishments trashed as a consequence.
It might be, if “schizophrenia” were an entity unto itself, instead of a description of certain kinds of behavior or experiences; but alas, this isn’t so. Therapeutic fasting wasn’t discovered by a psychiatrist, but an allergist named Theron Randolph, back in the 1950’s, who presented his data on 2,000 patients at an APA conference- and was greeted by a ho hum by the psychiatric community. Psychiatric response to vitamin therapy has been to have articles in psychiatric journals warning how dangerous this was, particularly B3 therapy (I must have a liver the size of a basketball from taking B3 for 40+ years, that I don’t notice).
A trivial study, as it’s been known for decades that stimulants can induce hallucinations. Did someone actually believe this wouldn’t be the case with Ritalin? Or did the drug companies believe Ritalin wouldn’t do so, as it isn’t an amphetamine?
Make sure you pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain.
It may take some work, but it’s still possible.
Rachel777. Think of yourself as a spy for coherence. You’re already showing promise, as it doesn’t matter being different as long as nobody on the street notices, while you carefully build your network.
Exercise can be a snap if you find a way to do as a routine where you don’t have to drop what you’re doing to go to the track or the pool or the gym. Can you cycle to the store or to your appointments? Have you got enough time for tai chi before you go about your day ( I pick that because it doesn’t involve violent movement)? Notice that routine activities are a part of your “non-program” instead of separate activities where everything has to stop for you to perform exercises.
If you don’t take any guff from your shrink, you have a personality disorder. If you aren’t compliant with your alleged treatment, you have a personality disorder. If the shrink doesn’t like you, you have a personality disorder. If you don’t “improve” after your alleged treatment, you have a personality disorder. It doesn’t take an Einstein to grasp the essential nature of personality disorders.
Well, if you knew about altered perceptions inducing certain kinds of behaviors, you might not have been so confused by Ann’s actions, but then you’d likely lose some of the feelings you had toward her. Rest in peace, Ann.
Hi Michelle. My first exposure to the use of manganese for TD was in a piece by a Richard Kunin, MD, in an edition of the Journal of Orthomolecular Psychiatry (now the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine) back in the early 1980’s, in which he described his initial work with Mn. Now in his middle 80’s, Kunin’s still around. He has a web site in which he lists the many conditions he treats, and tardive dyskinesia is one of them.
Anafranil? I never heard of its use as an antidepressant, even though it’s one of the tricyclics. Sounds like irresponsible prescribing to me if you weren’t filling your time with obsessive activities and rituals- stuff the Germans called “zwang”.
The psych folks banned you taking vitamins because nutrients are bad for them, not you. They’d have to learn new techniques, new approaches and that their attempted persecution of the late A. Hoffer, et. al. was riddled with ignorance. They’d also have to trust patient reports and become bereft of drug company perks like “conferences” at warm weather resorts during the winter because they didn’t prescribe enough of their “angel’s” drugs.
They also rob you of manganese, which may result in tardive dyskinesia and akathisia, the reason so many people on antipsychotics have problems with involuntary movements.
Long ago, in Michigan, a Gertrude Black, MD regularly used mega B1 when treating suicidal ideation on a schedule of a 500mg initial dose, plus 100mg every hour thereafter until the ideation faded (I’d also suspect a long-term maintenance follow up). Naturally, her patients never told their local shrinks (this was back in the days when doctors could go to jail for using vitamins in large doses in their practices).
Supplemental magnesium probably wouldn’t hurt, either.
It also saves the significant people in one’s life of having to face the dangers of thought.
You’re not dealing with biological psychiatry, but with pharmacological psychiatry. The earliest guys to promote a biological approach to psychiatry, Hoffer and Osmond, knew about the existence of chlorpromazine and primitive antidepressants, the MAOI drugs (monoamine oxidase inhibitors, which make our SSRI’s look almost benevolent by contrast), but continued their work with B3/C therapy anyway. It was Osmond who reformed procedures at the old Weyburn Hospital, one of the worst in the world in those days, turning the old “seclusion rooms” into refuges by adding furniture and proper lighting, among other things. Both of them were also interested in psychedelic therapy for alcoholics, which our DEA has spent years of great effort to delegitimize.
5 to 20mg./day stelazine. This was before the days of the atypicals. Even on the 5mg. dose I still slept the 15 hours. On the 20mg. I was never really awake, which is why I went to the 5mg. size. I could now be awake 9 hours/day once I did so, which is why I ditched the zine and stuck with the B3/C regimen that most shrinks despise.
If they actually looked at the data, they’d likely find disturbing items about nutrient therapies (such as psychotic patients on niacin having a much lower suicide rate than those who weren’t) that might actually force them to think about the subject and endanger their careers and their standing with professional organizations and drug company sales reps.
I wonder how many of these subjects were on antipsychotics? That alone would flaw the studies, as vigorous activity doesn’t seem too likely for someone sleeping 12+ hours a day (I slept 15 hours/day when I was on them).
Apparently, these professionals didn’t bother themselves with the 50 year old Hoffer/Osmond (HOD) Diagnostic, which is quantitative and inquires directly about experiences. Maybe this is because it’s inconsistent with initial diagnoses, but more consistent with final diagnoses than the initial diagnoses are- humiliating to the professional diagnostician, who prides himself on his diagnostic skill. That, and the fact of both Hoffer and Osmond being advocates of the use of megavitamin B3 as a primary treatment for schizophrenia in lieu of psychiatric drugs, puts their test into the world of crystal gazing and evil sorcery, instead of modern organized psychiatry.
I notice we’re dealing with scientism, rather than real science. Scientism is a kind of religion that worships allegedly scientific discoveries, using “science” as a kind of Godly figure passing down revelations from Heaven to the unwashed herd of mere mortals. Real science is an unknown world to the “scientismists”.
Even more interesting is the psychiatric fury that arises when treatments for such conditions arise that are actually effective, such as dietary/nutrient based actions that use no pharmaceutical agents. The practitioners of such methods are regarded as agents of the Devil, dedicated to restoring medieval superstitions, in addition to condemning such valuable drugs as antidepressants.
I’ll pass. Eating at all at McDonald’s is an adventure in poor eating.
Perhaps, Rasselax.redux, it’s time for supplementation of some kind. Are there any orthomolecular practitioners in your neighborhood? A “face to face” is liable to be necessary, so the practitioner knows what to look and test for. You may be asked questions that seem strange, but actually have a purpose. Tell the practitioner a former madman sent you.
I think I’ll wait on the olanzapine. The only reason I might want to use it, is if I wanted to twitch, march or wander and weigh 300 pounds (I now weigh 175). Since most shrinks would have cows if they found I use mega B3 and C, I think I’ll avoid them, too.
I remember this stuff. This is a drug that promotes fugues and a kind of false awareness in which you do all sorts of things while actually asleep. I always wanted to go to a doctor’s office, saying I needed a scrip because I was driving cross-country to the Pacific coast, and gradually, in our conversation, leaking to the Man of Medicine that I wanted the drug because I planned on driving across the country while asleep.
should you decide to have another child, I’d still suggest zinc and B6 for your last month of pregnancy and your first 6 months or so of motherhood- zinc should you begin to get white spots in your nails and B6 to help metabolize the zinc. The white spots may indicate the presence of high serum copper (cause of depression and likely perceptual distortions), while the B6 facilitates dreaming- no dream memory, not enough, and wild, technicolor dreams, too much- as well as helping control the distortions.
The headache about mental health and violence is exacerbated by the few that do occur because the afflicted individual acts out some spectacular delusion and straight people use this to conjure up delusions of their own- being that all of us are concealing spectacular delusions that repeatedly urge us to act them out.