The powers that be would be a lot less eager to turn the coronavirus loose on the public if they knew that schizophrenics, despite their elevated death rate compared to straight people, are less likely to contract viral illnesses than those individuals who aren’t schizophrenic. They can die of many things, but viruses aren’t one of them, making them one up on their detractors in this respect.
Reminds me of being in the army in Vietnam and having to maintain the interval between me and my neighbors while traveling on foot.
It would be appropriate to inform the GP’s that depression isn’t a disease, but a syndrome ( a recurring collection of signs and symptoms)that can have multiple causes. Since shrinks are frequently out of their leagues when it comes to general medicine, it’s the duty of the GP to quickly tease out the alternative ailments that (A) aren’t responsive to psych drugs, and (B) will respond to “ordinary” medical treatments before reaching for his prescription pad to prescribe an SSRI (or other) antidepressants.
Not quite, Fiachra. “Borderline personality disorder” is just as likely to mean-“I don’t know what’s going on here, but it must be something consequential.”
Since I’m familiar with drugless treatments for “mental” illnesses, I find the pharma ads for psych drugs truly ignorant in concept and scope. I don’t know whether to be bewildered or outraged when I see ads promoting useless benzos as cure-alls for anxieties of one sort or another, particularly when some detail is mentioned that I’d see as a clue for the actual real treatment, but instead is used as a cue for the sponsor’s relentless drugging “therapy”.
This is why I refer to what other bloggers call biomedical as pseudomedical, instead, because it has no relationship to “real” medicine, the kind you get when you’re obviously afflicted with a physical illness.
This is why I take my B3 every day. I don’t have to fight the urge to fly off the handle and I don’t look daffy, nor am I twitching and ticcing from some kind of dyskinesia. Nor am I sleeping 15 hours/day.
R. Gordon Wasson, early authority on the anthropology of mushrooms, thought that the Berserkers got that way by getting buzzed on Fly Amanita mushrooms, which contain anticholinergic hallucinogens. There definitely was something unusual about them, because prior to a fight, they’d be deployed far in front of the Vikings’ main body, where the missile troops could turn them into pincushions if they went after the wrong enemy.
Well, Rachel, the doctor didn’t want to tell you he fumbled your treatment from the getgo, which is why you’re still symptomatic. That would be hard on his professional self impression, as well as his pool of patients- he wouldn’t want evidence of his blunders to come out in the waiting room.
I prefer to think of depression as a syndrome- a collection of symptoms and signs, that, in this case, can have multiple causes. The reason psychiatric treatments for depressed moods are frequently so futile and useless is because psychiatrists are chained to the idea that depression is some kind of unitary entity that responds to a single (chemotherapeutic) treatment.
Doctors from Mars! They’re busy prescribing in your community today! Catch them now before they return to their own planet!
Well, the late Abram Hoffer altered his “labeling” a number of years before he quit psychiatry, calling his “schizophrenics” niacin dependent pellagrins (he was one of the fathers of mega-niacin therapy). His postpartum “depressives” became copper-induced depressions. But then he was never a psychiatrist by training, and was amazed by the antics he saw when his province (Saskatchewan- the province had made him Director of Psychiatric Research) sent him to various famous psych research institutes to acquaint him with psychiatric beliefs and practices.
There is a substance (kryptopyrolle) that appears in the urine of certain patients. Psychiatry ignores it, because patients excreting large quantities of it don’t have consistent DSM diagnoses, despite the dysperceptions that all the group members have, and that B6 and zinc in proper quantities will successfully treat all the varied diagnoses inflicted on the patients. (see the late Carl Pfeiffer’s volumes for more detail on the subject).
There is a substance (kryptopyrolle) that appears in the urine of certain patients. Psychiatry ignores it, because patients excreting large quantities of it don’t have consistent DSM diagnoses, despite the dysperceptions that all the group members have, and that B6 and zinc in proper quantities will successfully treat all the varied diagnoses inflicted on the patients. (see Carl Pfeiffer’s volumes for more detail on the subject).
Well, Pete, your work has probably got these distinguished medicos placing you in the Granola Crowd of crazed naturopaths who oppose all medical drug use, even though many of these “depressions” can be successfully treated by dangerous substances like vitamins B1, B3, B6 and B12. What doubtlessly makes them dangerous is your inability to kill yourself with them, unlike the antidepressants, where suicide by OD is quite common.
We’ve got to have derogatory labels, particularly the “schizophrenics”, who are not only daft, but have at least partial immunity to viral diseases and cancer (when unmedicated), and don’t succumb from wound shock, as they’re resistant to it. How can crazy people have these good qualities unless they got them from the Devil, so they can annoy the world’s Decent Citizens without letup?
Those of us inhabiting the Dark Side of psychiatry know that it takes longer to treat you if you become chronic, but it’s still probable if you’re given correct treatments, although it takes longer to recover.
The Insurance Cure in action.
Sounds like a good idea, but I don’t know if they’d put up with nutrient therapy for PTSD should one of the peers espouse it.
Before the 19th Century mental institutions silted up with chronic patients, gardening was considered an essential element of the Moral Treatment of the day.
Lady Gaga will find out about olanzapine once she puts on the major poundage (tonnage?) this drug is famous for inducing.
That’s why you don’t pay attention to company-funded studies that will always puff the effectiveness of the drugs they’re manufacturing, while hiding the disabling side effects to puff future sales. Think of the companies’ “studies” as advertising instead of science, as advertising doesn’t have to be truthful about anything unless governments force this undesirable practice on companies.
Unfortunately I’m sensitive to caffeine, making tea drinking unacceptable unless I want to quarrel with friends and make an angry spectacle of myself. If I want to exchange thoughts and feelings with someone, I’d better stick to herbal teas.
Probably not. I expect to see contests to see who has the most money when they go extinct- people trying to be the dead folks who were the wealthiest when our species became extinct.
But then I might be pressured to treat THEIR patients, even though I can’t charge the unfortunate for obvious legal reasons. I’d hate to have MD shrinks trying to do me in with drive-bys whenever I was walking or cycling down the street.
Well, it finally occurred to someone that physical illnesses might have “mental” diagnostic symptoms. Maybe it finally might be a good idea for psychiatrists to keep up on what physical diseases might have these alleged mental symptoms. (Do you suppose the unthinkable might be true?)
I prefer invisibility to being “outed”. That way, I’m able to say sensible things without attacks on how daft I must be.
I’m sure you’ll probably get some song and dance answer, but it certainly should be illegal. One can only hope the doctor would give some version about knowledge on the Astral Plane that lets him and his colleagues do it. Then we’d know who the real psychotics are.
Well, the shrinks get more money putting someone on a drug than overseeing medicating him/her. You wouldn’t want them to take pay cuts, rather than let their existing patients die, become (more) psychotic or turn into twitching wrecks, now, would you?
I find it interesting that the searchers for the alleged cause of ADHD pay no attention to lead as an instigator for hyperactive behavior, even though it’s known to do so for animals. I can see the “psychiatric” reasoning why- lead intoxication, by itself, isn’t a good reason for medicating children on a chronic basis, and it’s a physical disease, which is outside the psychiatric “realm” of treatment, but I think it’s malpractice to pretend something so serious doesn’t exist in any hyperactive children.
There actually are eating problems that associate with psych symptoms, but they’re not psychiatric. They’re problems with fluctuating blood sugar and food sensitivities (addictive allergies), neither of which are “psychiatric” problems, though an inattentive shrink may think so if (s)he isn’t able to conduct a proper introductory interview and doesn’t ask about item like sweets’ consumption or favorite foods the interviewee craves and “has” to eat on a regular basis. If such things are true, it’s far better (though not as profitable) to make the proper referral, than to simply say “you have an eating disorder” and risk a session of fist-to-nose therapy with a knowledgeable client.
I’d like one of our brilliant psychiatrists tell me how antidepressants are going to relieve the depression induced by high serum copper levels that occur at the end of pregnancies.
Well, there might be pseudoscience going on here. It is pretty disgraceful if I, a nobody, can rattle off multiple sources for depressed moods, none of which are responsive to therapy with psych drugs, but all of which can be successfully treated. Is the Inquisition going to bust me for witchcraft? Or will the Ministry of Truth get me for spreading defeatist propaganda?
This comes as no surprise. 50+ years ago Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond were on the blacklist because they thought vitamins B3 and C were therapeutic for the schizophrenia syndrome and the Times resolutely refused to publish anything positive about them for years.
Yes-I wonder how many people realize that Hitler and Mussolini gave us the A-bomb, by persecuting physicists out of their countries because the scientists were racial inferiors.
Neither do I. The Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic test can tell you if hallucinogens are safe for you, but you can be sure our present-day shrinks won’t use such devices, Hoffer and Osmond having been psychiatry’s enemy Dark Lords for many years.
Yes, but if they aren’t brilliant, they’re terrible. They don’t do well with ordinary medicine, which also can’t criticize the totalitarian thinking their governments seem to traditionally have, going back to tsarist days, which the Russians have had to endure since the days of Ivan the Terrible, some 500 years ago. When their doctors are good, they’re very, very good, but when they’re bad, they’re awful. AR Luria took grief from Stalin for work he did in the 30’s, but was probably saved from the GULAG by WW2, when 10% of the population suffered significant brain damage, thanks to the Wehrmacht.
Fragging went out of style after Vietnam.
There would be no problem if the doctor knew what he was doing, but alas, psychiatrists are caught up by the discipline’s pseudo-medical model of pathological mental states, which prohibits them from even considering states that can be treated by ordinary medical means, such as heavy metal poisoning, underactive thyroid, hypoglycemia, etc., in lieu of drugging their patients into semi-consciousness.
Because it’s interesting to demonstrate how other societies and cultures deal with neurological impairments and that the Russians have a neurological understanding far beyond the usual stuff about the secret police filling dissidents with antipsychotics to permanently disable them. Remember- Pavlov and AR Luria were Russians.
The financial aspect of this gun violence debate is usually missed. The notion that the world is overrun with dangerous lunatics ready to fly off the handle is a godsend to manufacturers, because they can use it to promote an arms race with yourself, with themselves reaping all the financial benefits. An interesting corollary to this notion is that there should be no prior examination to see why the would-be gunslinger wants a firearm, nor should there be any restriction on the kinds of firearms available over the counter, including the ownership of automatic weapons (and rocket launchers?).
You also need to know about your patient’s experiential world, to establish what you’re going to treat and how you’re going to do it. Treating depressed moods is more than handing out a bottle of pills and hoping your patient doesn’t eat them all at one sitting.
Sorry, folks, but I couldn’t resist when I saw the piece’s subject.
A year ago, I weighed 97 pounds and couldn’t sleep for worry. Now I weigh 350 and sleep 16 hours a day. Another success story for Zyprexa!
I think another feature to properly shape a wild plant or fungus psychedelic experience is to collect the plants or caps yourself, before consuming them.
You can keep the capitalistic away by realizing that hallucinogenic mushrooms grow nationwide. Psilocybe cubensis grows in pastures throughout the South, although it isn’t native to the Americas (and tribal Mexicans first discovered its properties). Lawns in the Pacific Northwest have their Liberty Caps and paneoli grow in pastures in northern states. There are green plants, too, but I can’t mention them on a public site for reasons of conservation.
Before worrying about cultural competence, psychiatrists should devote their attentions to first fostering their medical competence. Medicating patients into catatonic states without knowing anything about garden variety diseases that produce “psychological” conditions is hardly an example of good psychiatric practice, particularly for someone believing in a medical model of “psychiatric” conditions.
Remember, kids. L-glutamine is the safest antidote for this ketamine/phencyclidine class of drug. Antipsychotic drugs will leave you bouncing off the walls should you go to the emergency room and someone there gives you a shot of an antipsychotic to bring you down.
It also indicates why pharmaceutical manufacturers need grammarians and English teachers on their staffs to keep their definitions from sounding too ridiculous.
Well, it would be a discontinuation syndrome if withdrawal from the usual suspect illegal drugs were also grouped into this definition. It would be fairly meaningless, as the correct treatments would differ with each category of drugs within this larger group, but then, who said that psychiatric definitions had to be meaningful in the first place?
Unfortunately, neither Big Pharma nor Big Time Psychiatry are going to be able to effectively treat akathisia, because it responds to properly administered manganese salts, for which there is no (nor can there be) patent to be gained to monopolize the profit.
And these guys are the alleged “Thought Leaders” of Big Time Psychiatry? Are we sure they aren’t space aliens seeking to turn the entire population into hapless zombies?
No, but there are a number of conditions which can mimic the syndrome shrinks mistakenly call schizophrenia. As far as I know, psych drugs have positive effects on few to none of these mimics, other than to perhaps give you dyskinesia, should you be daft enough to call that a positive effect.
Big Pharma has to deluge the market with dubious antipsychotic drugs. NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) is coming on the market. It has the same antipsychotic properties as “straight” niacin, but works much faster in the treatment of various “schizophrenias”, which must be hidden to preserve the market for allegedly antipsychotic drugs, as it’s unpatentable.
With 5 rounds in the revolver instead of one.
Bad idea. Now many more companies will use these guys as models for their own policies. Under our present leadership, the Shkreli Award winners will be models of how to conduct profit-making health care businesses.
This trial was bound to fail, given the molecular nature of “depressions”, which are likely to be as varied as the other “mental disorders”. They’re in the same league as the Michigan shrinks many years ago, who couldn’t understand why a state hospital’s “schizophrenic” patient’s hair turned green (Wilson’s Disease should be coming to mind for you MIA MD’s).
My mother had to put up with that jive back when I was first symptomatic. Fortunately, she no longer put up with it after finding out I was simply B3 dependent and likely low in zinc. (I was in school in Michigan’s copper country during my first bonkers period)
I avoid contacts with shrinks who scream about pill shaming, because I don’t want to show my prophetic powers-“you are about to have a bad physical experience that could be life threatening…”
Dr. Friedman isn’t going to be able to do anything about suicidally depressed teens, because he thinks depression is some kind of exotic disease to be treated with equally exotic drugs. Well, Doc, depression’s a syndrome that can arise from multiple (pedestrian) causes, not an independent illness awaiting treatment with a magic (and expensive) cure from Big Pharma.
Unfortunately, the best treatments for suicidal depression are fought tooth and nail by Big Time Psychiatry because they aren’t drug based. What psychiatrist is going to risk his reputation, his office toys and his free vacation trips at pharmaceutical company expense, just to keep his patients safely alive, when they were bonkers enough to consult with him because they were severely depressed?
Maybe megascorbate taken at the level just below the one that gives you the trots. It has antiviral properties at high levels.
Another case of monumental ineptitude for the ages. Big Time Psychiatry fumbles another post partum incident. Of course it was too much to do this right, using an HOD test to quantify things, checking her nails and asking her if she remembers her dreams. You’re going to treat her with B6, zinc (and maybe magnesium), B100’s and C (which the article’s antidepressant shrinks would find deadly dangerous), raising the B6 to the point where dreams are remembered. Do your tapering after several months. This “depression” is pretty likely the result of high serum copper at the end of the pregnancy. This sort of treatment has only been around for 30+ years.
Well, if the doctor gave you a fatal OD, you wouldn’t be part of the group of depression sufferers any more, would you. Strike another successful therapeutic blow for psychiatry!
It’s easy to see why this study proved to be raw material for cellulose insulation- the only thing the study participants had in common were depressed moods. Other than that, they were probably a heterogeneous group, depression being a syndrome instead of an actual disease.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the article’s “thought leaders” that this ennui about aspirations and goals might come from an individual’s energy levels that might be fading for some reason or other, making the aspirations and goals harder to pursue. Apparently, trying to find out why doesn’t have much of a following in psychiatry.
And the same guys who did these alleged studies would roar with fury at the thought of using B1 and/or B12 as a treatment for depressions, preferring treatments they’d falsely proved to be effective, despite also knowing they’d scammed the results of their alleged studies.
Don’t forget Slavery is Freedom and Ignorance is Strength.
They’re afraid of embarrassment at having their mistakes become public.
To do it correctly, you’d need to replace “schizophrenia” with a number of terms. “Schizophrenia” isn’t a disease at all, but a syndrome- a collection of symptoms and signs with multiple possible origins and treatments- no “one treatment fits all.”
I would be interested in seeing if niacinamide has any value in withdrawing from benzos, occupying the same receptor sites that benzos do. I know it doesn’t work for alcohol withdrawal (but niacin does), but theory suggests it might for benzos.
No. It’s use is more or less confined to antipsychotics, which antagonize manganese. I don’t know what the story is on SSRI’s, which seem to induce certain neurological properties that resemble dyskinesias brought on by antipsychotics.
His passing shows the limits of conventional formal education in pharmacology. He suffered for years from dyskinesia/akathisia without realizing that manganese is therapeutic for it, if we can believe Richard Kunin, MD, who treated a small series of patients with it in the 1980’s. Maybe that’s because the orthomolecular guys took it up right away and now routinely use it, proof positive to the orthodox that such treatments are useless.
Distortions in perception that can involve sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste and perhaps interpretation. Some of them, for example, like those of being watched or talked about, can lead to spectacularly (and frequently) bad results. Hallucinations are obvious ones, but suffering from subtle ones can lead to more unfortunate outcomes.
I wonder if these researchers paid any attention to whether their subjects had dysperceptions prior to their getting ayahuasca. Dysperceptions, particularly numerous ones, are a contradiction against psychedelic therapy, and the most efficient way to find them (HOD test and its relatives) are on the Big Time Psychiatric Black List, thanks to their frequent use by the dreaded orthomolecular practitioners.
I understand, Steve. It’s just that the crazies shout loudest to make their messages real and pretend they’re a group much larger than reality permits. The Republicans with brains are overshadowed by the professional nitwits, in terms of air time.
I wonder if the President should have himself committed, as he’s far more dangerous than all the country’s bums put together.
Removed for moderation.
You’ve got a point there, OH. Nothing’s too ridiculous for psychiatrists to puff- I’ve seen that piece on ketamine in this issue.
Well, the psychiatric “thought” leaders and their Pharma Bros. would have kittens if they knew tardive dyskinesia wouldn’t exist if “antipsychotic” tablets had one mg. of manganese added to each and every one. This information has only been around for 30+ years, which hasn’t given the “thought” leaders time enough to test the hypothesis.
Actually, organized psychiatry has historically been hostile to the notion of nutritional medicine, (correctly) fearing that any GP (or even former “mental” patients) can treat mental conditions as well, or better, than they can (there go the paid winter vacations in the Caribbean).
Try going to the orthomolecular web site. It even has lists of practitioners and even a library, where you can look up pioneer issues of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. I think it’s called orthomolecular.org. (I use the site but haven’t looked up the proper web address for some time as it’s in my machine’s memory, now).
She already knows more about “depression” than conventional psychiatrists, thanks to her experiences. Good thing for them she didn’t recover from a schizophrenia syndrome, which would expose her to constant abusive “correction” from these guys.
This may be interesting, as the nutritional approach to “mental” health is oppositional to big-time corporate pharmacology, as well as big-time psychiatry, which have doubtlessly spent millions “proving” your diet has nothing to do with your sanity, compared to the beneficial effects of “antipsychotics” and “antidepressants”. Don’t forget the “minor” tranquilizers.
Mallet therapy would do the same thing as ketamine at a fraction of the price, there being no drug cost involved in having your head smacked at regular intervals. Though I doubt anyone would look forward to mallet sessions any more than they’d seek to have ECT sessions regularly.
From a dreary career haunting houses to presently writing professionally groundbreaking medical articles about state of the art pharmaceuticals- it’s been a profitable time for the nation’s ghosts.
Makes me wonder how Joe Adams is doing. He had two spectacular psychotic episodes about 60 years ago in which he suffered various delusions about being reincarnated religious fanatics of the early Reformation era. Eventually he became California’s Director of Mental Health (this was probably when the state was toying with alternate “mental health” treatments in the 1960’s, Adams having been working for Hoffer and Osmond when he had the hallucinatory episodes and received megavitamin B3 and C as treatment).
Years ago, the late Abram Hoffer suggested that governments create agencies that did nothing except test therapeutic claims and remedies and was without connections with manufacturers and pressure groups. Considering his reputation as the evil wizard of psychiatry, manufacturers and organized groups benefitting from their largesse will fight tooth and nail to preserve the present business-oriented system.
Biological cause unknown? That’s strange- I can think of several possible causes for each of the above five symptom complexes. I can even treat some of them using off-the-shelf materials, despite being a psychiatric nobody. How am I supposed to be impressed by this psychiatric pretentiousness?
Well, if you’re a shrink, you’d better know about these diseases and be able to identify them- it could be expensive if you didn’t. Though psychiatric patients don’t sue, I suspect a real patient will if wrongly treated for a “psychiatric” disorder for a “mental” disease (s)he didn’t have and you gave them akathisia (to boot) with a misdirected attempt at pharmacotherapy for the nonexistent mental condition.
Mental illnesses probably don’t have an independent existence, but “mental” consequences of physical illnesses certainly do. Obvious things are dietary deficiency diseases like pellagra, heavy metal poisoning, metabolic excesses or shortages. Just being a psychiatrist doesn’t exempt you from knowing these things, while simultaneously pretending to have secret “bio-medical” knowledge unknown to peasants.
AI is probably useless for psych diagnosing, as psych “diagnoses” are totally subjective and inconsistent. With some decent data, AI diagnosticians could identify conditions that led to the alleged diagnoses, but incapable of telling shrinks anything about what they wanted to hear to direct their faulty prescribing.
And he also found out what addictive allergies are all about, while avoiding another session of going bonkers for science.
One separation, though trivial- the number of younger general officers in the Wehrmacht (and likely the SS) having to go on convalescent leave because they suddenly developed heart problems (Guderian, Rommel, etc.)
For the budget minded, it would be interesting to use proper nutrient assisted therapy with the pre-diagnosed losers and psychos, while letting the goody two shoes folks get their usual drug-filled relief from their symptoms.
These contorted efforts to find a positive score for an experimental group lead me to suspect that this was a manufacturer’s sponsored experiment that needed to find something positive about the experimental subjects’ treatment experiences.
True psychiatry in action- trying to make an ineffective treatment worthwhile by doctoring rating scales. Assuming that depressions may have multiple sources is still too much for the psychiatric “thought” leaders to grasp.
There are numerous sources of depressed moods. Without making any effort to identify the particular one(s), antidepressant treatment is no better than random chance in raising an individual’s mood.
I have, but I prefer niacin. Because I have a history of excessive drinking and doping, I don’t mind flushing. Besides, taking 6g daily (2g t.i.d.), I only flush first thing in the AM or if I dally with midday doses. Anyway, now I only feel the flush, but I usually don’t turn red.
Besides, this gives me the opportunity to play evil pranks on those who like to ransack other people’s cars. A dozen 500mg. tablets in a bottle that says “take one at bedtime” stashed in the glove box makes a perfect gift for such individuals. Besides, this way the thief has enough tablets to give to friends.
What about getting addicted to them? Is a nine month course of them a long enough time to develop a jones, the junkies’ term for an active addiction?
The powers that be would be a lot less eager to turn the coronavirus loose on the public if they knew that schizophrenics, despite their elevated death rate compared to straight people, are less likely to contract viral illnesses than those individuals who aren’t schizophrenic. They can die of many things, but viruses aren’t one of them, making them one up on their detractors in this respect.
Reminds me of being in the army in Vietnam and having to maintain the interval between me and my neighbors while traveling on foot.
It would be appropriate to inform the GP’s that depression isn’t a disease, but a syndrome ( a recurring collection of signs and symptoms)that can have multiple causes. Since shrinks are frequently out of their leagues when it comes to general medicine, it’s the duty of the GP to quickly tease out the alternative ailments that (A) aren’t responsive to psych drugs, and (B) will respond to “ordinary” medical treatments before reaching for his prescription pad to prescribe an SSRI (or other) antidepressants.
Not quite, Fiachra. “Borderline personality disorder” is just as likely to mean-“I don’t know what’s going on here, but it must be something consequential.”
Since I’m familiar with drugless treatments for “mental” illnesses, I find the pharma ads for psych drugs truly ignorant in concept and scope. I don’t know whether to be bewildered or outraged when I see ads promoting useless benzos as cure-alls for anxieties of one sort or another, particularly when some detail is mentioned that I’d see as a clue for the actual real treatment, but instead is used as a cue for the sponsor’s relentless drugging “therapy”.
This is why I refer to what other bloggers call biomedical as pseudomedical, instead, because it has no relationship to “real” medicine, the kind you get when you’re obviously afflicted with a physical illness.
This is why I take my B3 every day. I don’t have to fight the urge to fly off the handle and I don’t look daffy, nor am I twitching and ticcing from some kind of dyskinesia. Nor am I sleeping 15 hours/day.
R. Gordon Wasson, early authority on the anthropology of mushrooms, thought that the Berserkers got that way by getting buzzed on Fly Amanita mushrooms, which contain anticholinergic hallucinogens. There definitely was something unusual about them, because prior to a fight, they’d be deployed far in front of the Vikings’ main body, where the missile troops could turn them into pincushions if they went after the wrong enemy.
Well, Rachel, the doctor didn’t want to tell you he fumbled your treatment from the getgo, which is why you’re still symptomatic. That would be hard on his professional self impression, as well as his pool of patients- he wouldn’t want evidence of his blunders to come out in the waiting room.
I prefer to think of depression as a syndrome- a collection of symptoms and signs, that, in this case, can have multiple causes. The reason psychiatric treatments for depressed moods are frequently so futile and useless is because psychiatrists are chained to the idea that depression is some kind of unitary entity that responds to a single (chemotherapeutic) treatment.
Doctors from Mars! They’re busy prescribing in your community today! Catch them now before they return to their own planet!
Well, the late Abram Hoffer altered his “labeling” a number of years before he quit psychiatry, calling his “schizophrenics” niacin dependent pellagrins (he was one of the fathers of mega-niacin therapy). His postpartum “depressives” became copper-induced depressions. But then he was never a psychiatrist by training, and was amazed by the antics he saw when his province (Saskatchewan- the province had made him Director of Psychiatric Research) sent him to various famous psych research institutes to acquaint him with psychiatric beliefs and practices.
There is a substance (kryptopyrolle) that appears in the urine of certain patients. Psychiatry ignores it, because patients excreting large quantities of it don’t have consistent DSM diagnoses, despite the dysperceptions that all the group members have, and that B6 and zinc in proper quantities will successfully treat all the varied diagnoses inflicted on the patients. (see the late Carl Pfeiffer’s volumes for more detail on the subject).
There is a substance (kryptopyrolle) that appears in the urine of certain patients. Psychiatry ignores it, because patients excreting large quantities of it don’t have consistent DSM diagnoses, despite the dysperceptions that all the group members have, and that B6 and zinc in proper quantities will successfully treat all the varied diagnoses inflicted on the patients. (see Carl Pfeiffer’s volumes for more detail on the subject).
Well, Pete, your work has probably got these distinguished medicos placing you in the Granola Crowd of crazed naturopaths who oppose all medical drug use, even though many of these “depressions” can be successfully treated by dangerous substances like vitamins B1, B3, B6 and B12. What doubtlessly makes them dangerous is your inability to kill yourself with them, unlike the antidepressants, where suicide by OD is quite common.
We’ve got to have derogatory labels, particularly the “schizophrenics”, who are not only daft, but have at least partial immunity to viral diseases and cancer (when unmedicated), and don’t succumb from wound shock, as they’re resistant to it. How can crazy people have these good qualities unless they got them from the Devil, so they can annoy the world’s Decent Citizens without letup?
Those of us inhabiting the Dark Side of psychiatry know that it takes longer to treat you if you become chronic, but it’s still probable if you’re given correct treatments, although it takes longer to recover.
The Insurance Cure in action.
Sounds like a good idea, but I don’t know if they’d put up with nutrient therapy for PTSD should one of the peers espouse it.
Before the 19th Century mental institutions silted up with chronic patients, gardening was considered an essential element of the Moral Treatment of the day.
Lady Gaga will find out about olanzapine once she puts on the major poundage (tonnage?) this drug is famous for inducing.
That’s why you don’t pay attention to company-funded studies that will always puff the effectiveness of the drugs they’re manufacturing, while hiding the disabling side effects to puff future sales. Think of the companies’ “studies” as advertising instead of science, as advertising doesn’t have to be truthful about anything unless governments force this undesirable practice on companies.
Unfortunately I’m sensitive to caffeine, making tea drinking unacceptable unless I want to quarrel with friends and make an angry spectacle of myself. If I want to exchange thoughts and feelings with someone, I’d better stick to herbal teas.
Probably not. I expect to see contests to see who has the most money when they go extinct- people trying to be the dead folks who were the wealthiest when our species became extinct.
But then I might be pressured to treat THEIR patients, even though I can’t charge the unfortunate for obvious legal reasons. I’d hate to have MD shrinks trying to do me in with drive-bys whenever I was walking or cycling down the street.
Well, it finally occurred to someone that physical illnesses might have “mental” diagnostic symptoms. Maybe it finally might be a good idea for psychiatrists to keep up on what physical diseases might have these alleged mental symptoms. (Do you suppose the unthinkable might be true?)
I prefer invisibility to being “outed”. That way, I’m able to say sensible things without attacks on how daft I must be.
I’m sure you’ll probably get some song and dance answer, but it certainly should be illegal. One can only hope the doctor would give some version about knowledge on the Astral Plane that lets him and his colleagues do it. Then we’d know who the real psychotics are.
Well, the shrinks get more money putting someone on a drug than overseeing medicating him/her. You wouldn’t want them to take pay cuts, rather than let their existing patients die, become (more) psychotic or turn into twitching wrecks, now, would you?
I find it interesting that the searchers for the alleged cause of ADHD pay no attention to lead as an instigator for hyperactive behavior, even though it’s known to do so for animals. I can see the “psychiatric” reasoning why- lead intoxication, by itself, isn’t a good reason for medicating children on a chronic basis, and it’s a physical disease, which is outside the psychiatric “realm” of treatment, but I think it’s malpractice to pretend something so serious doesn’t exist in any hyperactive children.
There actually are eating problems that associate with psych symptoms, but they’re not psychiatric. They’re problems with fluctuating blood sugar and food sensitivities (addictive allergies), neither of which are “psychiatric” problems, though an inattentive shrink may think so if (s)he isn’t able to conduct a proper introductory interview and doesn’t ask about item like sweets’ consumption or favorite foods the interviewee craves and “has” to eat on a regular basis. If such things are true, it’s far better (though not as profitable) to make the proper referral, than to simply say “you have an eating disorder” and risk a session of fist-to-nose therapy with a knowledgeable client.
I’d like one of our brilliant psychiatrists tell me how antidepressants are going to relieve the depression induced by high serum copper levels that occur at the end of pregnancies.
Well, there might be pseudoscience going on here. It is pretty disgraceful if I, a nobody, can rattle off multiple sources for depressed moods, none of which are responsive to therapy with psych drugs, but all of which can be successfully treated. Is the Inquisition going to bust me for witchcraft? Or will the Ministry of Truth get me for spreading defeatist propaganda?
This comes as no surprise. 50+ years ago Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond were on the blacklist because they thought vitamins B3 and C were therapeutic for the schizophrenia syndrome and the Times resolutely refused to publish anything positive about them for years.
Yes-I wonder how many people realize that Hitler and Mussolini gave us the A-bomb, by persecuting physicists out of their countries because the scientists were racial inferiors.
Neither do I. The Hoffer-Osmond Diagnostic test can tell you if hallucinogens are safe for you, but you can be sure our present-day shrinks won’t use such devices, Hoffer and Osmond having been psychiatry’s enemy Dark Lords for many years.
Yes, but if they aren’t brilliant, they’re terrible. They don’t do well with ordinary medicine, which also can’t criticize the totalitarian thinking their governments seem to traditionally have, going back to tsarist days, which the Russians have had to endure since the days of Ivan the Terrible, some 500 years ago. When their doctors are good, they’re very, very good, but when they’re bad, they’re awful. AR Luria took grief from Stalin for work he did in the 30’s, but was probably saved from the GULAG by WW2, when 10% of the population suffered significant brain damage, thanks to the Wehrmacht.
Fragging went out of style after Vietnam.
There would be no problem if the doctor knew what he was doing, but alas, psychiatrists are caught up by the discipline’s pseudo-medical model of pathological mental states, which prohibits them from even considering states that can be treated by ordinary medical means, such as heavy metal poisoning, underactive thyroid, hypoglycemia, etc., in lieu of drugging their patients into semi-consciousness.
Because it’s interesting to demonstrate how other societies and cultures deal with neurological impairments and that the Russians have a neurological understanding far beyond the usual stuff about the secret police filling dissidents with antipsychotics to permanently disable them. Remember- Pavlov and AR Luria were Russians.
The financial aspect of this gun violence debate is usually missed. The notion that the world is overrun with dangerous lunatics ready to fly off the handle is a godsend to manufacturers, because they can use it to promote an arms race with yourself, with themselves reaping all the financial benefits. An interesting corollary to this notion is that there should be no prior examination to see why the would-be gunslinger wants a firearm, nor should there be any restriction on the kinds of firearms available over the counter, including the ownership of automatic weapons (and rocket launchers?).
You also need to know about your patient’s experiential world, to establish what you’re going to treat and how you’re going to do it. Treating depressed moods is more than handing out a bottle of pills and hoping your patient doesn’t eat them all at one sitting.
Sorry, folks, but I couldn’t resist when I saw the piece’s subject.
A year ago, I weighed 97 pounds and couldn’t sleep for worry. Now I weigh 350 and sleep 16 hours a day. Another success story for Zyprexa!
I think another feature to properly shape a wild plant or fungus psychedelic experience is to collect the plants or caps yourself, before consuming them.
You can keep the capitalistic away by realizing that hallucinogenic mushrooms grow nationwide. Psilocybe cubensis grows in pastures throughout the South, although it isn’t native to the Americas (and tribal Mexicans first discovered its properties). Lawns in the Pacific Northwest have their Liberty Caps and paneoli grow in pastures in northern states. There are green plants, too, but I can’t mention them on a public site for reasons of conservation.
Before worrying about cultural competence, psychiatrists should devote their attentions to first fostering their medical competence. Medicating patients into catatonic states without knowing anything about garden variety diseases that produce “psychological” conditions is hardly an example of good psychiatric practice, particularly for someone believing in a medical model of “psychiatric” conditions.
Remember, kids. L-glutamine is the safest antidote for this ketamine/phencyclidine class of drug. Antipsychotic drugs will leave you bouncing off the walls should you go to the emergency room and someone there gives you a shot of an antipsychotic to bring you down.
It also indicates why pharmaceutical manufacturers need grammarians and English teachers on their staffs to keep their definitions from sounding too ridiculous.
Well, it would be a discontinuation syndrome if withdrawal from the usual suspect illegal drugs were also grouped into this definition. It would be fairly meaningless, as the correct treatments would differ with each category of drugs within this larger group, but then, who said that psychiatric definitions had to be meaningful in the first place?
Unfortunately, neither Big Pharma nor Big Time Psychiatry are going to be able to effectively treat akathisia, because it responds to properly administered manganese salts, for which there is no (nor can there be) patent to be gained to monopolize the profit.
And these guys are the alleged “Thought Leaders” of Big Time Psychiatry? Are we sure they aren’t space aliens seeking to turn the entire population into hapless zombies?
No, but there are a number of conditions which can mimic the syndrome shrinks mistakenly call schizophrenia. As far as I know, psych drugs have positive effects on few to none of these mimics, other than to perhaps give you dyskinesia, should you be daft enough to call that a positive effect.
Big Pharma has to deluge the market with dubious antipsychotic drugs. NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) is coming on the market. It has the same antipsychotic properties as “straight” niacin, but works much faster in the treatment of various “schizophrenias”, which must be hidden to preserve the market for allegedly antipsychotic drugs, as it’s unpatentable.
With 5 rounds in the revolver instead of one.
Bad idea. Now many more companies will use these guys as models for their own policies. Under our present leadership, the Shkreli Award winners will be models of how to conduct profit-making health care businesses.
This trial was bound to fail, given the molecular nature of “depressions”, which are likely to be as varied as the other “mental disorders”. They’re in the same league as the Michigan shrinks many years ago, who couldn’t understand why a state hospital’s “schizophrenic” patient’s hair turned green (Wilson’s Disease should be coming to mind for you MIA MD’s).
My mother had to put up with that jive back when I was first symptomatic. Fortunately, she no longer put up with it after finding out I was simply B3 dependent and likely low in zinc. (I was in school in Michigan’s copper country during my first bonkers period)
I avoid contacts with shrinks who scream about pill shaming, because I don’t want to show my prophetic powers-“you are about to have a bad physical experience that could be life threatening…”
Dr. Friedman isn’t going to be able to do anything about suicidally depressed teens, because he thinks depression is some kind of exotic disease to be treated with equally exotic drugs. Well, Doc, depression’s a syndrome that can arise from multiple (pedestrian) causes, not an independent illness awaiting treatment with a magic (and expensive) cure from Big Pharma.
Unfortunately, the best treatments for suicidal depression are fought tooth and nail by Big Time Psychiatry because they aren’t drug based. What psychiatrist is going to risk his reputation, his office toys and his free vacation trips at pharmaceutical company expense, just to keep his patients safely alive, when they were bonkers enough to consult with him because they were severely depressed?
Maybe megascorbate taken at the level just below the one that gives you the trots. It has antiviral properties at high levels.
Another case of monumental ineptitude for the ages. Big Time Psychiatry fumbles another post partum incident. Of course it was too much to do this right, using an HOD test to quantify things, checking her nails and asking her if she remembers her dreams. You’re going to treat her with B6, zinc (and maybe magnesium), B100’s and C (which the article’s antidepressant shrinks would find deadly dangerous), raising the B6 to the point where dreams are remembered. Do your tapering after several months. This “depression” is pretty likely the result of high serum copper at the end of the pregnancy. This sort of treatment has only been around for 30+ years.
Well, if the doctor gave you a fatal OD, you wouldn’t be part of the group of depression sufferers any more, would you. Strike another successful therapeutic blow for psychiatry!
It’s easy to see why this study proved to be raw material for cellulose insulation- the only thing the study participants had in common were depressed moods. Other than that, they were probably a heterogeneous group, depression being a syndrome instead of an actual disease.
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to the article’s “thought leaders” that this ennui about aspirations and goals might come from an individual’s energy levels that might be fading for some reason or other, making the aspirations and goals harder to pursue. Apparently, trying to find out why doesn’t have much of a following in psychiatry.
And the same guys who did these alleged studies would roar with fury at the thought of using B1 and/or B12 as a treatment for depressions, preferring treatments they’d falsely proved to be effective, despite also knowing they’d scammed the results of their alleged studies.
Don’t forget Slavery is Freedom and Ignorance is Strength.
They’re afraid of embarrassment at having their mistakes become public.
To do it correctly, you’d need to replace “schizophrenia” with a number of terms. “Schizophrenia” isn’t a disease at all, but a syndrome- a collection of symptoms and signs with multiple possible origins and treatments- no “one treatment fits all.”
I would be interested in seeing if niacinamide has any value in withdrawing from benzos, occupying the same receptor sites that benzos do. I know it doesn’t work for alcohol withdrawal (but niacin does), but theory suggests it might for benzos.
No. It’s use is more or less confined to antipsychotics, which antagonize manganese. I don’t know what the story is on SSRI’s, which seem to induce certain neurological properties that resemble dyskinesias brought on by antipsychotics.
His passing shows the limits of conventional formal education in pharmacology. He suffered for years from dyskinesia/akathisia without realizing that manganese is therapeutic for it, if we can believe Richard Kunin, MD, who treated a small series of patients with it in the 1980’s. Maybe that’s because the orthomolecular guys took it up right away and now routinely use it, proof positive to the orthodox that such treatments are useless.
Distortions in perception that can involve sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste and perhaps interpretation. Some of them, for example, like those of being watched or talked about, can lead to spectacularly (and frequently) bad results. Hallucinations are obvious ones, but suffering from subtle ones can lead to more unfortunate outcomes.
I wonder if these researchers paid any attention to whether their subjects had dysperceptions prior to their getting ayahuasca. Dysperceptions, particularly numerous ones, are a contradiction against psychedelic therapy, and the most efficient way to find them (HOD test and its relatives) are on the Big Time Psychiatric Black List, thanks to their frequent use by the dreaded orthomolecular practitioners.
I understand, Steve. It’s just that the crazies shout loudest to make their messages real and pretend they’re a group much larger than reality permits. The Republicans with brains are overshadowed by the professional nitwits, in terms of air time.
I wonder if the President should have himself committed, as he’s far more dangerous than all the country’s bums put together.
Removed for moderation.
You’ve got a point there, OH. Nothing’s too ridiculous for psychiatrists to puff- I’ve seen that piece on ketamine in this issue.
Well, the psychiatric “thought” leaders and their Pharma Bros. would have kittens if they knew tardive dyskinesia wouldn’t exist if “antipsychotic” tablets had one mg. of manganese added to each and every one. This information has only been around for 30+ years, which hasn’t given the “thought” leaders time enough to test the hypothesis.
Actually, organized psychiatry has historically been hostile to the notion of nutritional medicine, (correctly) fearing that any GP (or even former “mental” patients) can treat mental conditions as well, or better, than they can (there go the paid winter vacations in the Caribbean).
Try going to the orthomolecular web site. It even has lists of practitioners and even a library, where you can look up pioneer issues of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. I think it’s called orthomolecular.org. (I use the site but haven’t looked up the proper web address for some time as it’s in my machine’s memory, now).
She already knows more about “depression” than conventional psychiatrists, thanks to her experiences. Good thing for them she didn’t recover from a schizophrenia syndrome, which would expose her to constant abusive “correction” from these guys.
This may be interesting, as the nutritional approach to “mental” health is oppositional to big-time corporate pharmacology, as well as big-time psychiatry, which have doubtlessly spent millions “proving” your diet has nothing to do with your sanity, compared to the beneficial effects of “antipsychotics” and “antidepressants”. Don’t forget the “minor” tranquilizers.
Mallet therapy would do the same thing as ketamine at a fraction of the price, there being no drug cost involved in having your head smacked at regular intervals. Though I doubt anyone would look forward to mallet sessions any more than they’d seek to have ECT sessions regularly.
From a dreary career haunting houses to presently writing professionally groundbreaking medical articles about state of the art pharmaceuticals- it’s been a profitable time for the nation’s ghosts.
Makes me wonder how Joe Adams is doing. He had two spectacular psychotic episodes about 60 years ago in which he suffered various delusions about being reincarnated religious fanatics of the early Reformation era. Eventually he became California’s Director of Mental Health (this was probably when the state was toying with alternate “mental health” treatments in the 1960’s, Adams having been working for Hoffer and Osmond when he had the hallucinatory episodes and received megavitamin B3 and C as treatment).
Years ago, the late Abram Hoffer suggested that governments create agencies that did nothing except test therapeutic claims and remedies and was without connections with manufacturers and pressure groups. Considering his reputation as the evil wizard of psychiatry, manufacturers and organized groups benefitting from their largesse will fight tooth and nail to preserve the present business-oriented system.
Biological cause unknown? That’s strange- I can think of several possible causes for each of the above five symptom complexes. I can even treat some of them using off-the-shelf materials, despite being a psychiatric nobody. How am I supposed to be impressed by this psychiatric pretentiousness?
Well, if you’re a shrink, you’d better know about these diseases and be able to identify them- it could be expensive if you didn’t. Though psychiatric patients don’t sue, I suspect a real patient will if wrongly treated for a “psychiatric” disorder for a “mental” disease (s)he didn’t have and you gave them akathisia (to boot) with a misdirected attempt at pharmacotherapy for the nonexistent mental condition.
Mental illnesses probably don’t have an independent existence, but “mental” consequences of physical illnesses certainly do. Obvious things are dietary deficiency diseases like pellagra, heavy metal poisoning, metabolic excesses or shortages. Just being a psychiatrist doesn’t exempt you from knowing these things, while simultaneously pretending to have secret “bio-medical” knowledge unknown to peasants.
AI is probably useless for psych diagnosing, as psych “diagnoses” are totally subjective and inconsistent. With some decent data, AI diagnosticians could identify conditions that led to the alleged diagnoses, but incapable of telling shrinks anything about what they wanted to hear to direct their faulty prescribing.
And he also found out what addictive allergies are all about, while avoiding another session of going bonkers for science.
One separation, though trivial- the number of younger general officers in the Wehrmacht (and likely the SS) having to go on convalescent leave because they suddenly developed heart problems (Guderian, Rommel, etc.)
For the budget minded, it would be interesting to use proper nutrient assisted therapy with the pre-diagnosed losers and psychos, while letting the goody two shoes folks get their usual drug-filled relief from their symptoms.
These contorted efforts to find a positive score for an experimental group lead me to suspect that this was a manufacturer’s sponsored experiment that needed to find something positive about the experimental subjects’ treatment experiences.
True psychiatry in action- trying to make an ineffective treatment worthwhile by doctoring rating scales. Assuming that depressions may have multiple sources is still too much for the psychiatric “thought” leaders to grasp.
There are numerous sources of depressed moods. Without making any effort to identify the particular one(s), antidepressant treatment is no better than random chance in raising an individual’s mood.
I have, but I prefer niacin. Because I have a history of excessive drinking and doping, I don’t mind flushing. Besides, taking 6g daily (2g t.i.d.), I only flush first thing in the AM or if I dally with midday doses. Anyway, now I only feel the flush, but I usually don’t turn red.
Besides, this gives me the opportunity to play evil pranks on those who like to ransack other people’s cars. A dozen 500mg. tablets in a bottle that says “take one at bedtime” stashed in the glove box makes a perfect gift for such individuals. Besides, this way the thief has enough tablets to give to friends.
What about getting addicted to them? Is a nine month course of them a long enough time to develop a jones, the junkies’ term for an active addiction?