How apropos. My daughter in law recently went on antidepressants, about 6 months ago. She sat in my family room yesterday welling up with tears dropping down her face. She had very recently come off the drugs. I told her coming off the drugs is extremely difficult. Because she’s so bad she’s thinking about going back on them. Her family think I’m looney tunes anyway over the covid vaccines. I really want to send your post Maryanne but I’m sorta in the doghouse. I would love her to read it. Am I poking my nose in where it doesn’t belong? Being the interfering mother in law? Her father and sister are on antidepressants and the family doesn’t see any issues with taking them. I will weigh it out today.
Perhaps suggest the book as a guide for navigating the pitfalls of the mental health system—it’s not preachy at all. Laura’s story is beautiful, tough, and deeply personal, and it deserves to be shared.
My friend, miserable, now obese, slow, is frightened to come off her useless meds in case she has an episode which leads to getting rehospitalised, meanwhile she feels empty, drugged up, on them. Not everyone will experience dire withdrawal symptoms, 1 in 6, so I'd give it a go.
Almost all of us are walking around with unresolved/unprocessed trauma.
Heal the trauma with the right therapist, the right therapy and the grief lifts, the depression lifts, clarity descends, and gratitude sprinkles on your soul.
Please don't take "magic pills" to heal. They are an (addictive) bandaid. Of course coming off them is hard - you are addicted. I was a pharmacist for 24 years. Never seen someone come off them.
Do the work, dig deep, face emotional pain with courage and grace, and you will be forever proud.
Trauma thriver speaking after 31 years in therapy. Now a therapist in private practice.
Brilliant work again Maryanne. I went through this with my first wife. I felt at the time I was caught between a rock and some place hard. She was doing it tough, battling some inner turmoil and some OCD. I was in my 20's and had no clue. The psychiatrists offered hope. And you guessed it. "Chemical imbalance in the brain!" I was deeply angry years later when I realised that was a smoke screen for "we have no clue either". To cut a long story short, those drugs destroyed a bright, profoundly artistically talented woman. She now stays inside almost permanently. She has 2 grandsons, one she has met twice and the other she has never met. It is a heart breaking story. But not too long ago, it dawned on me what had caused her troubles. As a trainee nurse, she was self medicating with antibiotics as she was fearful of acne. She took antibiotics, which her GP's handed out without question, for years. Her gut brain axis would have been decimated. Today, I try to get her family to explore this to find a "next step" for a woman who's life is not yet over and could well have a new opportunity to heal. However, they are not yet open to this. I do look forward to more research being done on this vital issue. Thanks again for bringing this issue to light. Finally, I guess if the Scientologists have done any good in the world, their work fighting against psychiatry has been of great service.
Years ago Thomas Szasz maintained that there is no such thing as mental illness, that it is only a "social construct" and that the practice of psychiatry was basically the medicalization of ordinary life. I think that Szasz had a point but that he went too far. A young woman who has been diagnosed with anorexia because she is literally starving herself to death in order to change her body image can be said to be mentally ill because her behaviour is extremely contrary to normal human instinct. On the other hand so called gender dysphoria really is a social construct and just a modern day version of the classic identity crisis so aptly described by Erik Erikson in the middle of the last century as a normal stage in human growth and development. I guess it depends in part on one's definition of "ordinary life." If you include bad patches that might be characterised by painful and unpleasant moods or some sort of dysfunction in the category of ordinary life then that certainly covers a lot of territory especially if these bad patches end up resolving themselves which with the right support--not including medication--they very often do. Part of the problem is that in our society many people cannot bear any pain or suffering and all too many professions want to rush in and "help" them. It is almost a predator and prey situation. But psychiatrists are the ultimate gatekeepers of medical interventions and there is now tons of evidence that these interventions can do irreparable harm.
In Canada where I live the government has been promoting medically assisted suicide including in the case of mental illness and just the other day a friend of mine who works as a psychiatric social worker mentioned that one of her patients had been so messed up by psychiatric drugs that she opted for that intervention. We learned during the Covid debacle how dangerous is the politicization of medicine and psychiatry is undoubtedly the most politicized of all of the medical specialties. And it must be remembered that prior to the politicization of medicine comes the medicalization of ordinary life which inevitably includes occasional pain and suffering and/or dysfunction during the course of everyone's life.
I wonder how we got to the point that occasional pain and sadness has to be medicalise. It’s ok to be sad sometimes. Taking the focus off oneself helps.
Back in the day, before anaesthetics pain was a part of life and people accepted and learned how to deal with it. I think that one of the things that helped most people deal with it was their faith. Since the West became mainly secular people now want to live a life that is not only painless but super safe. And many people have also become therapy junkies, they no longer know how to wait things out, to endure.
When I was a school principal parents would come to see me if their kid was having some difficulty. It was a small private elementary school and I knew all the kids and we talked about them at staff meetings and discussed how best to help such kids grow and develop so after advising the parents of this my best advice was usually in raising your kid you've got to play the long game, what is now called watchful waiting and its controversial with respect to so called gender dysphoria but back then it was basically the gold standard for all but a very small number of kids. Most took this advice but a few didn't, they were constantly in panic mode and if they took their kid to a psychologist or a psychiatrist they would inevitably come up with a diagnosis, ADHD, childhood bipolar or some such thing and if it was a psychaitrist they would immediately put them on drugs which messed with their brains and entirely distorted the picture. We never had any realy bad endings but I have read that some of these kids just get worse and worse and end up on disability pensions after they turn eighteen. Tragic.
Sometimes. Three of my children were diagnosed with ADHD. One has recently died of a lifetime of alcohol abuse. The other two are doing very well as wonderful adults. They all had medication and the alcoholic took it into adulthood. I was a teacher and couldn’t understand why three out of four found it difficult to learn to read. It was a long hard road.
I don’t know whether the ADHD came from Childhood vaccines or if it was hereditary. My Dad didn’t learn to read early and left school at 14. Everyone is different.
It is interesting that my girls( who had ADHD) are receiving counseling since their brother died. I am a Christian and lean on the Lord for comfort and strength.
Very sorry to hear about your loss, Jillian--thanks for sharing. Chserious ildren are born with different temperaments and there are also differences between the sexes. It is taboo in some circles to say so now but in the 1970s this was conventional wisdom and subject to much curiosity and research. As a Christian you will be well aware that even the Bible recounts such differences as in the story of Jacob and Esau. I should mention that ours was a Montessori school and that the Montessori method is designed for individualized instruction in which children learn at their own pace. In fact Maria Montessori developed her method and special materials specifically in order to be able to work with disadvantaged childr'sen many of which had all sorts of learning issues. We admitted a number of children with serious learning issues--florid Aspergers, Cerebral Palsy, that sort of thing--and mainstreamed them in the classroom as best we could but I would also take them out of the classroom and work with them personally in the library--you do the best you can. There's a lot of mystery in child rearing. Some people who end up having very difficult or troubled children say that having children is a crap shoot. But for most parents having and raising children is the most rewarding thing that they do in their lives. In the Jewish tradition it used to be that when you visit a home with a newborn baby you wish the parents an easy upbringing.
It was a challenge bringing our children up but they are wonderful people. My alcoholic son was a lovely guy too too till the alcohol took hold and he went to rehab. All he learned at rehab were the reasons why he drank. At one point he came home on a cocktail of Antabuse, Valium and dexamphetamine and continued to drink.
I ran individualised programs via a withdrawal system for children like mine at school as well as for the Asperger and ASD children. Our teachers were very good at teaching the different ones. It was a Christian school.
Once again, a further illustration of the clear intent of BigPharma. That being purely and solely its intent to increase the dependency of the whole population across the Western World on the pills they produce.
The raison d'être of Big Pharma has NEVER been to produce products to improve the health of the populous, quite the reverse. Its sole function is dependency and profit.
How more obtuse can the state of BigPharma and the utility of drugs be than to end up with the result that the biggest single killer of humans in the Western World is prescribed medication?
How daft can it be, that the biggest killer is the one commodity, supposedly intended to reduce the deaths of all the other human conditions that we die from and that these commodities are produced to treat.
The facts of the matter seem somewhat Orwellian in nature, don't they?
And even after everything those “top” psychiatrists put her through while she was in their care, Laura doesn’t seem to carry animosity toward them. She’s a better human than I am.
Interesting to see how the medicalisation of mood/ emotion/ personality, always with a drug cure, parallels the "normalisation" of diseases which do not have a drug treatment (e.g. autism becomes "neurodiversity" and the focus shifts to those who function well with the condition), but where the cause may include drugs. Yet another win for Big Pharma.
It is ok to feel sad. If we just start there then maybe this movement to medicalise everything especially our emotions, then perhaps we can generate change.
How apropos. My daughter in law recently went on antidepressants, about 6 months ago. She sat in my family room yesterday welling up with tears dropping down her face. She had very recently come off the drugs. I told her coming off the drugs is extremely difficult. Because she’s so bad she’s thinking about going back on them. Her family think I’m looney tunes anyway over the covid vaccines. I really want to send your post Maryanne but I’m sorta in the doghouse. I would love her to read it. Am I poking my nose in where it doesn’t belong? Being the interfering mother in law? Her father and sister are on antidepressants and the family doesn’t see any issues with taking them. I will weigh it out today.
Perhaps suggest the book as a guide for navigating the pitfalls of the mental health system—it’s not preachy at all. Laura’s story is beautiful, tough, and deeply personal, and it deserves to be shared.
Your Di L can choose to read this or not if you send it.
“Psychiatry is the care of the id by the odd.” Unknown Source.
My friend, miserable, now obese, slow, is frightened to come off her useless meds in case she has an episode which leads to getting rehospitalised, meanwhile she feels empty, drugged up, on them. Not everyone will experience dire withdrawal symptoms, 1 in 6, so I'd give it a go.
I wasn't clear re obesity, it's the meds. Was UK14 clothes, now UK22!
Almost all of us are walking around with unresolved/unprocessed trauma.
Heal the trauma with the right therapist, the right therapy and the grief lifts, the depression lifts, clarity descends, and gratitude sprinkles on your soul.
Please don't take "magic pills" to heal. They are an (addictive) bandaid. Of course coming off them is hard - you are addicted. I was a pharmacist for 24 years. Never seen someone come off them.
Do the work, dig deep, face emotional pain with courage and grace, and you will be forever proud.
Trauma thriver speaking after 31 years in therapy. Now a therapist in private practice.
Brilliant work again Maryanne. I went through this with my first wife. I felt at the time I was caught between a rock and some place hard. She was doing it tough, battling some inner turmoil and some OCD. I was in my 20's and had no clue. The psychiatrists offered hope. And you guessed it. "Chemical imbalance in the brain!" I was deeply angry years later when I realised that was a smoke screen for "we have no clue either". To cut a long story short, those drugs destroyed a bright, profoundly artistically talented woman. She now stays inside almost permanently. She has 2 grandsons, one she has met twice and the other she has never met. It is a heart breaking story. But not too long ago, it dawned on me what had caused her troubles. As a trainee nurse, she was self medicating with antibiotics as she was fearful of acne. She took antibiotics, which her GP's handed out without question, for years. Her gut brain axis would have been decimated. Today, I try to get her family to explore this to find a "next step" for a woman who's life is not yet over and could well have a new opportunity to heal. However, they are not yet open to this. I do look forward to more research being done on this vital issue. Thanks again for bringing this issue to light. Finally, I guess if the Scientologists have done any good in the world, their work fighting against psychiatry has been of great service.
Thanks for sharing John. 🙏
Bloody Big Pharma!
Beautifullly written, Maryanne, thank you.
Thanks Ditta
Years ago Thomas Szasz maintained that there is no such thing as mental illness, that it is only a "social construct" and that the practice of psychiatry was basically the medicalization of ordinary life. I think that Szasz had a point but that he went too far. A young woman who has been diagnosed with anorexia because she is literally starving herself to death in order to change her body image can be said to be mentally ill because her behaviour is extremely contrary to normal human instinct. On the other hand so called gender dysphoria really is a social construct and just a modern day version of the classic identity crisis so aptly described by Erik Erikson in the middle of the last century as a normal stage in human growth and development. I guess it depends in part on one's definition of "ordinary life." If you include bad patches that might be characterised by painful and unpleasant moods or some sort of dysfunction in the category of ordinary life then that certainly covers a lot of territory especially if these bad patches end up resolving themselves which with the right support--not including medication--they very often do. Part of the problem is that in our society many people cannot bear any pain or suffering and all too many professions want to rush in and "help" them. It is almost a predator and prey situation. But psychiatrists are the ultimate gatekeepers of medical interventions and there is now tons of evidence that these interventions can do irreparable harm.
In Canada where I live the government has been promoting medically assisted suicide including in the case of mental illness and just the other day a friend of mine who works as a psychiatric social worker mentioned that one of her patients had been so messed up by psychiatric drugs that she opted for that intervention. We learned during the Covid debacle how dangerous is the politicization of medicine and psychiatry is undoubtedly the most politicized of all of the medical specialties. And it must be remembered that prior to the politicization of medicine comes the medicalization of ordinary life which inevitably includes occasional pain and suffering and/or dysfunction during the course of everyone's life.
I wonder how we got to the point that occasional pain and sadness has to be medicalise. It’s ok to be sad sometimes. Taking the focus off oneself helps.
Back in the day, before anaesthetics pain was a part of life and people accepted and learned how to deal with it. I think that one of the things that helped most people deal with it was their faith. Since the West became mainly secular people now want to live a life that is not only painless but super safe. And many people have also become therapy junkies, they no longer know how to wait things out, to endure.
When I was a school principal parents would come to see me if their kid was having some difficulty. It was a small private elementary school and I knew all the kids and we talked about them at staff meetings and discussed how best to help such kids grow and develop so after advising the parents of this my best advice was usually in raising your kid you've got to play the long game, what is now called watchful waiting and its controversial with respect to so called gender dysphoria but back then it was basically the gold standard for all but a very small number of kids. Most took this advice but a few didn't, they were constantly in panic mode and if they took their kid to a psychologist or a psychiatrist they would inevitably come up with a diagnosis, ADHD, childhood bipolar or some such thing and if it was a psychaitrist they would immediately put them on drugs which messed with their brains and entirely distorted the picture. We never had any realy bad endings but I have read that some of these kids just get worse and worse and end up on disability pensions after they turn eighteen. Tragic.
Sometimes. Three of my children were diagnosed with ADHD. One has recently died of a lifetime of alcohol abuse. The other two are doing very well as wonderful adults. They all had medication and the alcoholic took it into adulthood. I was a teacher and couldn’t understand why three out of four found it difficult to learn to read. It was a long hard road.
I don’t know whether the ADHD came from Childhood vaccines or if it was hereditary. My Dad didn’t learn to read early and left school at 14. Everyone is different.
It is interesting that my girls( who had ADHD) are receiving counseling since their brother died. I am a Christian and lean on the Lord for comfort and strength.
Very sorry to hear about your loss, Jillian--thanks for sharing. Chserious ildren are born with different temperaments and there are also differences between the sexes. It is taboo in some circles to say so now but in the 1970s this was conventional wisdom and subject to much curiosity and research. As a Christian you will be well aware that even the Bible recounts such differences as in the story of Jacob and Esau. I should mention that ours was a Montessori school and that the Montessori method is designed for individualized instruction in which children learn at their own pace. In fact Maria Montessori developed her method and special materials specifically in order to be able to work with disadvantaged childr'sen many of which had all sorts of learning issues. We admitted a number of children with serious learning issues--florid Aspergers, Cerebral Palsy, that sort of thing--and mainstreamed them in the classroom as best we could but I would also take them out of the classroom and work with them personally in the library--you do the best you can. There's a lot of mystery in child rearing. Some people who end up having very difficult or troubled children say that having children is a crap shoot. But for most parents having and raising children is the most rewarding thing that they do in their lives. In the Jewish tradition it used to be that when you visit a home with a newborn baby you wish the parents an easy upbringing.
It was a challenge bringing our children up but they are wonderful people. My alcoholic son was a lovely guy too too till the alcohol took hold and he went to rehab. All he learned at rehab were the reasons why he drank. At one point he came home on a cocktail of Antabuse, Valium and dexamphetamine and continued to drink.
I ran individualised programs via a withdrawal system for children like mine at school as well as for the Asperger and ASD children. Our teachers were very good at teaching the different ones. It was a Christian school.
Thank you for notifying us of this book Maryanne.
Once again, a further illustration of the clear intent of BigPharma. That being purely and solely its intent to increase the dependency of the whole population across the Western World on the pills they produce.
The raison d'être of Big Pharma has NEVER been to produce products to improve the health of the populous, quite the reverse. Its sole function is dependency and profit.
How more obtuse can the state of BigPharma and the utility of drugs be than to end up with the result that the biggest single killer of humans in the Western World is prescribed medication?
How daft can it be, that the biggest killer is the one commodity, supposedly intended to reduce the deaths of all the other human conditions that we die from and that these commodities are produced to treat.
The facts of the matter seem somewhat Orwellian in nature, don't they?
And even after everything those “top” psychiatrists put her through while she was in their care, Laura doesn’t seem to carry animosity toward them. She’s a better human than I am.
And me too!
Interesting to see how the medicalisation of mood/ emotion/ personality, always with a drug cure, parallels the "normalisation" of diseases which do not have a drug treatment (e.g. autism becomes "neurodiversity" and the focus shifts to those who function well with the condition), but where the cause may include drugs. Yet another win for Big Pharma.
It is ok to feel sad. If we just start there then maybe this movement to medicalise everything especially our emotions, then perhaps we can generate change.
Thanks MD PS - Breaking News - LIVE. REINER SENTENCED. 3 YEARS, 9 MONTHS. 5 MONTHS OF TIME IN PRISON NOT TO BE COUNTED. https://truthsummit.substack.com/p/live-reiner-sentenced-3-years-9-months?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1565735&post_id=162060742&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=iqqyw&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email