A Darkness the Light cannot Master
A priming note for Secular and all non-Xtian readers – what Xtians call the New Testament has 4 Gospels. Three open with variations on what most folk from Hollywood to the Vatican would view as the conventional Xmas Nativity story – cold time of year, manger, donkeys, star.
The fourth, the Gospel according to John, is radically different. Its first paragraph tells you in 4 sentences that God made everything, especially life, and life is the light of man. The resonant fifth line describes the advent of the Christ in terms the other Gospels do not even hint at.
A light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot master it
There are many translations of an ambiguous Greek word in this sentence. Master, overcome, get control of, comprehend have all been used.
Two Thousand Years
Two thousand years later, many of us are grappling with questions about the birth of A.I. and how this birth might shape our futures. Can we master, get control of it. Do we comprehend what has come into our world?
From perhaps the advent of the printing press, but developing at an ever increasing pace since the industrial revolution, extraordinary technologies have miraculously transformed our lives. We are reassured that the light of science drives this transformation.
The light of science stems supposedly from its rationality. It is difficult to argue with rationality as a guiding light without being seen to embrace irrationality or misinformation. For today’s religion of secularism being Rational is the Way, the Truth and the Light.
The light of science will banish the darkness of superstition and in due course exorcise the demons lurking in our bosoms which, right up to the present day, have led to horrific acts beyond anything our primitive and superstitious ancestors could have comprehended or at least acted upon.
The intensity of this light can frighten us. We are alarmed at prospects of inevitable job-loss on a mass scale. What will happen to us then?
We are alarmed at prospects of machines as new masters, or the few who control the machines. Machines that are unlikely to terminate themselves, the way humans do, if they make a disastrous mistake.
The social media radiating from increasingly all-enveloping platforms alarm us. These once looked like they would open onto new forms of democracy, would shine a light in dark corners, enable us to mobilize and use boycotts or other means to restore decency to what was once called healthcare.
Now the platforms seem to be imprisoning us ever more comprehensively, seem ever more a tool of big corporations or oligopolists. Linked to this imprisonment we have a rising tide of suicides and infertility among younger people that is threatening our entire social fabric.
Healthcare is where our politics becomes personal, where economics translate into life expectancies. Our economies are in big trouble, but we are told on all sides the situation must be our fault because our ‘leaders’ are doing the only possible rational thing – they are following the numbers rather than letting prejudice cloud their vision.
Our Life Expectances are falling fast, nowhere more so than in the U.S.. Our doctors say they are doing the only rational thing – they are following the numbers of evidence based medicine and not letting what the ignorant might think was sensible cloud their vision.
Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs), an intensely algorithmic, averaging process, lie at the heart of this. RCTs transubstantiate risky chemicals from which we hope to bring benefits into sacraments that only do good and cannot harm. It has become blasphemous to suggest the sacraments could cause a problem.
Singularities
Despite what is happening, despite it being driven forward by an averaging tool, there is increasing talk of personalized, even precision medicine. Far from more personal our health contacts are ever more impersonally algorithmic. Far from being precise, everyone is on the same set of blockbusters.
Personalized medicine has a ‘Because You’re Worth It’ veneer, with variations stressing ‘Our X is as Unique as You’.
Marc Casanas recently drew my attention to Society of Singularities, a 2017 book by Andreas Reckwitz. Here is a Precis. Although written in 2017 it seems dated. Society apparently changed in the early 1980s. In the early 1980s, Ulrik Beck, another German, was announcing the birth of Risk Societies. Andreas doesn’t see the problems that worried Beck.
For him sophisticated technologies are leading to a new abundance of must have goods that enable companies to cater for singular tastes (tastes not needs). Not for Andreas the inevitable doom scenario linked to our embrace of technologies, outlined by yet another German, Martin Heidegger – The Creation Narrative and God Complex.
Andreas gives no hint that a focus on singularity might stem from increasingly sophisticated propaganda technologies that aim at installing in each of us beliefs that we are singular.
The Antidepressant Era, written 30 years ago, ends on the following notes:
As with many other aspects of the marketplace, therapeutics seem to be leading to an atomization of distress. The ‘ideal’ market arrangements would have everyone living in a single’s apartment, each complete with washing machine, dishwasher, fridge-freezer. So also treatment development in practice disconnects individuals from their social milieu.
In 1982, Jachuk and colleagues looked at the perceptions of doctors, patients and relatives of the effects of antihypertensive medication. All doctors reported it as working – blood pressure was reduced. The patients were mixed in their views, some reporting benefits and others reporting problems with the medication. Almost all relatives reported that treatment was having adverse effects – the patient was now complaining of side-effects and the diagnosis had made them hypochondriacal.
How rational is the treating the numbers game? If treatment of a disease which wasn’t affecting a family up till then has more effects on a family than the disease itself, who should be making the risk-benefit assessments and what should be put in the equation?
The Antidepressant Era chronicled who discovered what and when. It steered clear of issues like antidepressants and suicide. It was favorably viewed by the pharmaceutical industry despite snippets like the piece above.
Medicine, however, was changing fast. The changes were built into Let Them Eat Prozac, which came out in 2003.
A decade earlier I’d written up the cases of two men who became suicidal on Prozac. Despite this, companies were still using me as a speaker and between this and ghostwriting articles for me they revealed a lot about their modus operandi.
I ended up being an expert witness in two suicide-homicide cases for an almost unbelievable reason – American lawyers could find no other credible witness.
These Legal Cases made clear that pharmaceutical companies were using the assays (RCAs not RCTs) they had done to get licensed as the Gold Standard Way to hide Adverse Events. The Light that banished the Darkness. Courts were challenged to accept that sometimes fraudulent exercises offered a Science of Cause and Effect while the views of clinicians about what was happening right in front of them might be interesting but were essentially anecdotal.
Linked to the death this year of Thomas Kingston, this story has been told in Aunts, Ants and Regulators and in Probity Blockers and Trans Medicine. In 1991, thanks to Richard Smith and the BMJ, followed soon afterwards by most major journals, company efforts led to the creation of what is called Evidence Based Medicine but de facto is Trans Medicine.
RCTs were converted into Benefit-Risk assessment tools where the Benefit always outweighed the Hazards. This gave rise to a new science of Risk Communication, which aimed at dictating to people that the Benefits they might underestimate always outweighed their perception of Risk from any Hazards.
Company assays show there pretty well are no Hazards. People are neurotic and prone to misperception. Unlike Hazards Risk is a perception. Good Risk Communications aims at putting people straight. There really is no problem with having a nuclear power station next door or 10,000 vaccines in the the last few weeks of pregnancy.
Doctors, the clergy, who were Managing the Hazards, after they dished out what had been Chemicals but were now Sacraments, found their views dismissed as anecdotal. We who suffered actual Hazards that did not seem to be in our minds, found ourselves being gaslighted.
These Secular Clergy were becoming more Abusive – at least on a bigger scale – than religious clergy had ever been.
Those who suffered from serious Adverse Events, became lepers – more discriminated against than women, or the elderly, or people with a different skin color. Not even other lepers want the company of outcasts.
Bad luck is our most primitive fear. Fearing contagion, from time immemorial, we have stigmatized and shunned those with conditions – from leprosy to AIDS. Our new religions allow us to destigmatize sinners with conditions – those with leprosy, AIDS, epilepsy or madness can be one of us provided they are taking the sacraments.
We who are enlightened, however, shun anyone who is doubly unlucky enough to have a condition and a treatment induced Hazard. Someone for whom the sacraments don’t work. Someone whom the Light doesn’t want to know. Who Sins by claiming something that flies in the face of the Light.
This is the Stone the Builders Reject. It is also the way we profess to, but don’t in fact, do science – the Black Swan that makes us realize that our older idea about Swans was wrong.
This is the Darkness that the Light we have chosen to Guide Us is unable to comprehend. If we really want to engage with a science from which Light and Life comes, this is what we must engage with, especially with those we have made outcasts – See links below.
A Web of Our Own Making
Society of Singularities is not a great option for New Year reading, but even though I think he misses a trick – see below – Anton Barba Kay’s A Web of Our Own Making is worth getting acquainted with.
You don’t have to wait for an internet platform to get the book to you – the link above is to a video of a lecture unlike anything you are likely to see these days. With the exception of a movie clip to start, it is tech free. Just a guy talking. The surroundings are about as primitive as you can imagine for an invited lecture.
The introduction is not polished. The Q and A afterwards has more ‘Great question, I don’t have an answer’ answers than you expect from an expert brought in to enlighten us.
Even before you commit yourself to an hour’s retro viewing, there is something you can read immediately – before continuing with this post. [Do not opt for the sacrilegious voice processor version]. Read The Sound of My Own Voice.
The first six pages cover things about the Web that on separate levels we know and don’t know. The final four pages have a new way to view what we must all, since early November, regard as a phenomenon of our times.
Anton, like Andreas, places the emphasis on the technology that is the physical internet (even clouds are physical things), but he sees it as obliterating our singularity. Is he completely right here or just less wrong than Andreas?
Anyone who works with the stones healthcare builders reject can see that the loss of our voice began in the 1980s and flourished dramatically as of 1991. This was before we had an internet and soon after got a very primitive internet, with no Apps or social media, and no forums in which lepers could congregate.
We were in deep trouble once Eli Lilly and BMJ replaced The Sound of Our Voices with an algorithm. That is when the Singular got Shipwrecked.
I am black and beautiful,
Do not gaze at me because I am dark,
because the sun has gazed on me.
Why should I be like one who is veiled
The Year’s End
Often getting end of year dates wrong, DH and RxISK run ‘Religious’ posts. At this supposedly Xtian time of the year, the contrast between aspiration and reality can be grimly apparent instead. Here are some links:
- No Room at the Inn
- In Secula Seculorum
- Has Healthcare gone Mad
- Religion and Technology
- Tis the Season to Rebel
- The Snow Queen
- Rock, Stone, Crack and Disappear
- The Girl Who Cried Wolf
- Pandora Dos Centavos
- Dos Centavos
Some wonderful books also echo themes above.
- Franke James’ Freeing Teresa
- Jim Gottstein’s The Zyprexa Papers
- Patrick Hahn’s The Day the Science Died
- You’re Not Afraid: Freeing Teresa – Trailer #1
- Quit Wasting Time with Words: Trailer #2
- Freeing Teresa Wins Gold Again – Trailer #3
‘The Sound of my Own Voice’ –
‘ To know what’s funny, we say, you had to be there—and there is no there online.’
‘Where more is said, less gets heard.’
Singularity – a hypothetical moment in time when artificial intelligence and other technologies have become so advanced that humanity undergoes a dramatic and irreversible change:
“maybe the singularity just happened, and we didn’t notice”
Wilmore and fellow astronaut Suni Williams, both from Houston, blasted off on June 10 on Boeing’s first astronaut flight to the International Space Station for an eight-day mission which is now anticipated to be the end of March. Elon Musk to the rescue. NASA hesitated over this decision for weeks, weighing the question of the astronauts’ safety and the best alternative to Boeing—demonstrating just how much America’s space agency has come to depend on SpaceX, and, for better or worse, Musk. Right now, NASA has no other reliable way to send people to space from U.S. soil, and, with Boeing’s flop, no prospect of a second option for potentially years to come.
The Sound of his Own Voice
https://slaynews.com/news/bill-gates-calls-anti-vaxxers-censored-ai-warns-questioning-vaccines-inciting-violence/
Stranded in Space
“Another day, another sleigh,” wrote the research institute in Houston.
Merry Christmas, David.
For a few years there I thought it was edgy to say “Happy Winter Solstice,” but now I’m back to “Merry Christmas.” 🤣
Thank you for such a detailed and important post, received and read on Christmas Day.
Will be re-reading and following the links today.
‘The basic precepts of classic modernity were generalization and standardization,which were associated with the process of formal rationalization (see Wagner1994). The antithesis to modernist rationalization is culturalization, and the phe- nomena of singularization and culturalization are inextricably connected to one
another. ‘ Andreas Reckwitz
Andreas Reckwitz’s elegant sociological theorising translates rather well into the baser commercial world of consumer goods. (Sorry to lower the tone, Andreas). Not, however, the debased world of medicine.
Individualisation aka singularisation has been the cornerstone of added value consumer marketing and product development for decades. Nike sells over 700, price stratified trainer products – to enable consumers to find their individual style and psychological, (as well as affordable), best fit – and capture the market.
Culturisation – as added value – is expressed through the trend for personalised, ‘craft’ brands – microbreweries, microdistilleries, e.g. Sipsmiths, ‘artisanal’ bakeries, e.g. Gail’s (now snapped up by private equity so how long the artisanal gloss lasts is debatable). And brands that exude the zeitgeist of their creators – Chanel is the classic, and there are loads of ‘culturised’ brands in the beauty sector, the mirror of cultural projection – Gwinnie’s GOOP being another clear, rather narcissistic, example.
The fundamental difference between these commercial brands – and contemporary medicine – is that their success is driven primarily by consumer desire and satisfaction. Medicine, as you say, has become a largely impersonal, mass produced algorithmic process – still stuck in the dark ages Andreas defines as, ‘The basic precepts of classic modernity – generalization and standardization.’
Where are the personal needs and preferences of the individual patient in this algorithm-driven machine– who knows? The critical thinking, individual patient focussed doctor – mostly missing in action?
Social media can be a dangerously alienating, bullying space – especially for the vulnerable young. But, people also congregate in mutually supportive private communities and friendship groups, even on huge platforms like X. A good friend of mine from one such private group is a New Zealander ,suffering long term iatrogenic harm–and she posted an interview you gave to Rodney of NZ Reality Check Radio about a week ago.
One of your key messages, that resonated in my mind afterwards, was – (not your exact words) – ‘Tell your doctor what you want out of life’. A sort of -lift up thine eyes from the screen – and see and hear the individual human being in front of you, doc. Let’s start our relationship from here. I thought it was wonderful advice- and would be very curious to see what happens if we ‘test market’ it.
H
Let’s check your lipid levels, or bone densities and can you fill this checklist – is a Death Spiral.
Tell me about something good that happened lately or what gives you the most joy in life – or maybe better again tell me about what is most likely to give you a sense that you’re doing something useful
My job – all our jobs – should be to help you realize these things rather than give you a diagnosis that makes you neurotic or side effects that compromise your ability to do the things that matter or you and likely make others appreciate having you around.
Put like this a great deal of both religious observance and health services observance can look like a fear of death that interferes with the ability to live.
D
Possibly, one of the best minds in the ‘business’ – Mickey Nardo – was always, my go-to, every moment and every morning, that Mickey was alive
https://1boringoldman.com/index.php/2013/06/05/anecdotes/
Angell’s articles should have been a bomb on the medical establishment. She wrote:
“The industry-sponsored studies usually cited to support psychoactive drugs—and they are the ones that are selectively published—tend to be short-term, designed to favor the drug, and show benefits so small that they are unlikely to outweigh the long-term harms. … Both the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatry profession have strong financial interests in convincing the public that drug treatment is safe and the most effective treatment for mental illnesses, and they also have an interest in expanding the definitions of mental illness.”
But like Healy, Angell’s warnings have fallen on deaf ears.
But being the follow-your-nose type, I pulled down his 2004 book, Let Them Eat Prozac, and ended up rereading Chapter I – Take One [which is available on the Internet here as a Google Book preview]. If you haven’t read it, it is still more than worth the time. This is the terse PubMed version of the report Dr. Healy read back then [in 1990] reinforcing his own experiences with his cases:
Emergence of intense suicidal preoccupation during fluoxetine treatment
by Teicher MH, Glod C, and Cole JO
American Journal of Psychiatry. 1990 147[2]:207-210.
Six depressed patients free of recent serious suicidal ideation developed intense, violent suicidal preoccupation after 2-7 weeks of fluoxetine treatment. This state persisted for as little as 3 days to as long as 3 months after discontinuation of fluoxetine. None of these patients had ever experienced a similar state during treatment with any other psychotropic drug.
I sure didn’t know that in that year, Dr. Nemeroff was testifying for Eli Lilly in an FDA hearing on this very topic that Prozac® was absolutely safe [see an anatomy of a deceit 6…]:
FDA Hearing
September 20, 1991
I would suggest to you that I have as little confidence in these anecdotal reports as I do in the anecdotal report of Teicher, and that, in fact, there is no substitute for controlled prospective double-blind clinical trials…
In conclusion, there is simply no scientific evidence whatsoever, no placebo-controlled double-blind study that has established a cause-and-effect relationship between antidepressant pharmacotherapy of any class and suicidal acts or ideation. As Drs. Potter and Fawcett have suggested, limiting the availability of antidepressants could have a very profound adverse effect in terms of increasing the morbidity and, in fact, mortality associated with untreated depression.
Dr.CharlesNemeroff,
ProfessorandChair,DepartmentofPsychiatry,
Emory University, Atlanta Georgia
What is this post about with all of its old stories? It was so refreshing to me to read Dr. Healy’s case reports in Let Them Eat Prozac, Dr. Teicher’s case reports in the full text of Emergence of intense suicidal preoccupation during fluoxetine treatment, the case reports on the Rxisk site, and the case reports on the blog Dr. Healy started. And it was so infuriating to read Dr. Nemeroff’s pronouncement “I would suggest to you that I have as little confidence in these anecdotal reports as I do in the anecdotal report of Teicher, and that, in fact, there is no substitute for controlled prospective double-blind clinical trials…” It was the spirit of that quote that lead me to leave my job at Emory so long ago, a job I really loved. Back then, I had no idea that the depersonified clinical trial would replace the case focus that brought me to psychiatry in the first place. I thought it was just what was happening in the department I was leaving.
I’m not opposed to clinical trials per se. What I oppose is that they became the sine qua non of truth rather than ancillary information. And I am beyond outraged that they became such a regular conduit for manipulation and obscuring the truth as time went on. It was through those very depersonified and deified clinical trials that psychiatry handed over the reins to the Managed Care bean counters, the Pharmaceutical Companies, and the Dr. Nemeroffs in academia.
In clinical medicine, every single patient is a case report, an antecdote, not one nth of a clinical trial…
Who Cares in Sweden – these films were most important, they were fantastical, they aired the SSRIs, and they were powerful
https://www.whocaresinsweden.com/en/medverkande.php
For more information in English: rxisk.org – antidepressantrisks.org
whocaresinsweden.com
14h ·
Duration of 5 min.
The film describes how the launch of mental illness in Sweden went hand in hand with the marketing of SSRI. The scientists who have spread rumors that an imbalance in the brain is the cause of people getting depression, are still not questioned although the Swedes are getting worse the more medicines that are sold. Nobody writes about all the people who have taken their lives with antidepressants. No police reports are made automatically.
Researchers who have been paid by the pharmaceutical industry for decades are still interviewed in Swedish media as if they were “independent experts”. Healthy schoolchildren receive psychiatric diagnoses in order for them to receive more help. The principals are quiet. The parents’ ignorance that the diagnoses are the pharmaceutical company’s sales trick, makes no one really stands on the child’s side. They fall asleep every night alone with a weird feeling in their head due to chemicals affecting their brain. This is what is sick!
The environment must instead be adapted to the individual – both at school and in the working life. Only then can each individual do their best and society can develop with fewer sick leave and increased productivity. Medicines are not the problem though. It’s a lack of control. Intellectual disability and mental illness exist with great variation. Mental illness depends on your surroundings and how you manage to interact with it. It’s not your brain it’s wrong.
However, the pharmaceutical companies think differently and unfortunately have too much of an influence on what the doctors and politicians should say. As long as Swedish MPA is not funded by tax funds, corruption will continue. Everyone knows someone who has taken their life after being “mentally ill” or depressed. But, it’s being muted. You don’t question the medication because it is launched as an antidepressant.. No doctor wants to voluntarily accept that their prescription led to the patient taking his life.
Sweden’s radio had a fantastic program called the radio psychologist. Honor to Allan Linnér and Lasse Övling and the managers of that time at SR who realized that human mental health is about what happens in life and how to take care of yourself.
In 2021, SR did not manage to withstand the pressure from pharmaceutical companies, which obviously operate through senior doctors and researchers. Now it had to be enough. Now the launch of mental illness and the marketing of SSRI would take over.
One day this will be seen as a tragic period in history and the guilty will go to sleep with their guilty conscience unpunished, or they will take a pill to avoid it.
Help yourself, your friend or your relative!
But never stop the opposite with SSRI.
Seek help from doctors, family and friends.
For more information in English: rxisk.org – antidepressantrisks.org
TWO GOOD SWEDISH BOOKS:
The Pill, by Ingrid Carlberg, journalist and writer. Inducted into the Swedish Academy 2020.
In January 2010, Ingrid Carlberg was promoted to an honorary doctor of medicine at Uppsala University, for the book Pillret, which is a reportage book on antidepressant drugs.
Loved hated antideps, by André Marx who is a specialist in general medicine. In the years 2020-2023, he was a responsible doctor at the Nedtrappnings Reception in Stockholm, where he helped patients step down and stop using antidepressant medications.
FORUM https://madinsweden.org/
The web magazine Mad in Sweden has its aim and objectives to act as a catalyst to review and develop society’s efforts in the case of ‘mental illness’ in Sweden.
Keep it up, Sweden
‘The environment we find ourselves in is a complex one, not one that was ever designed by anybody,’ Witty, 60, said
‘It is this that has led my colleagues and I to think that at this early stage in the development process it would be worth contacting you to see whether it is possible to get GSK input to the process in the hope that a collaborative effort has something to offer both you and us.’
https://davidhealy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Sir-Andrew-Witty.pdf
UnitedHealthcare executive’s secret boast after CEO Brian Thompson’s assassination
By LAURA PARNABY FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
Published: 20:19, 30 December 2024 | Updated: 21:15, 30 December 2024
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14236321/unitedhealthcare-boast-clients-ceo-brian-thompson-murder-alleged-killer-luigi-mangione.html
The boss of UnitedHealthcare has bragged to executives that the insurer is on track for record profits after CEO Brian Thompson’s murder, it has been claimed.
Andrew Witty, who is CEO of parent group UnitedHealth, is said to have made the boast to his fellow bosses during a recent meeting, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Revenue for the year up to the end of September hit $299 billion, an increase of $22 million in a year, with an even larger number now forecast to round-off 2024.
‘The environment we find ourselves in is a complex one, not one that was ever designed by anybody,’ Witty, 60, said on a December 23 call for anxious staffers.
‘Right now, people continue to have strong feelings inside the organization, maybe nervous, maybe anxious, maybe worried about security,’ he added.
Former staff say they used to be proud of working for Witty.
Children of the Cure tells the story of the only Medical Study that has two publications in the academic literature—telling precisely the opposite story—and how no one is bothered by this. Study 329 was a clinical study that began in 1994 giving a new antidepressant to teenagers. It has become the most famous clinical trial ever, leading to a fraud charge, a $3 billion fine, and a Black Box Warning. Despite now knowing that all trials of antidepressants done in children are negative, sales of these drugs to children and adolescents continue to increase dramatically. This book is written by three members of the team—David Healy, Joanna Le Noury and Julie Wood—who have been behind writing the study and creating the website that hosts a set of documents pharmaceutical companies never expected you would get to see.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Children-Cure-Missing-Lives-Antidepressants/dp/177705656X
The invitation – GlaxoSmithKline & Rxisk.org
Dear Dr. Healey,
came across you, your journey m your books and all the tragic pervert things happening still in climical Psychatrie.
My young adult child, just hit the age when he slipped out from his Psychatrist and it was me bringing him to a doctor who now prescribed im Fluoxetin ( Prozac), with the information that he can stop easy. No more information at all,
My son diagnosed as ADHD ( non- hyperactive) as a child, had a blues this year, Homeschooling ( age 18-20), Coronalockdown,, the lack of healthy self- worth, the ruminating of thoughts , the biographies of a now neurodiverse young man, I medicated with Attentin in elementary school than stopped and did not reveive any coaching, or Cognitive Therapy, a lack of I guess Dopamine in all this terrifying world with crazy priorities sure made seem him depressed.But it was connected also to a stressor ( wrong chosen vocational training after school) all this lead to symptoms which showed symptoms of depression.
I knew that all this is also connected to the specific esperiencing life as a neurodiverse human in a neurotypical world.
Also plus stressors.
I tried my very best to do all I could as a single mum for him and his brother ( we all are neurodivergent).
When I had my first burnout in the mid 2000 I got prescribed a SSRI, Stopped soon never went back on it, Fortunately,
It is the hardest thing now seeing my son, possibly his brother too ( I am not sure) are on a medication which will not do him good at all, Possibly will make everything worse.
I do not want to to type down as it feel like painting the devil on the wall.
The worse thing of all is: He does not want to take all the information I have about the terrible risks ans harm about his medication.
To me it feels like he is in emotional blunting about everything ,about himself and so he takes it,
I plan to go to his doctor, saying stop poisoning my child , as this can ruin everything.
What can I do?
I was shocked to read, that especially Prozac is contra- indicated for people with adhd inanttentive presentation and SSRI in general no good for and adhd brain ( this is what I ve read before I came across all the topic about the terrible outcome taking Antidepressants).
I found two Psychatrists here in Germany showing the risks ans the slim to no benefits
Prof Dr Gonther ( Bremen), also Dr Ansari ( Berlin).
Also Prof Dr Gründer ( Mannheim) who wrote a good book about the topic especially the problem and all the problems around of coming off the medication and the impact of wrong linear and too fast tapering.
I am sitting here and feel broken into pieces, helpless, full of quite panic.
I ve read the Maussley ( Horowitz / Taylor) and it even made me more shattered.
The thing: You have no one helping you, if one have a heroine addicted family member every doc and the society says : Bad and we help you that your beloved will come off the drug.
But now, I do not know where to go, The peer my child is in a lot of friends take antidepressants believing ( like there parents) that it helps them, they need it,
Close family member, friends of me taking AD, some polypharmatic.
It feels like they all are in a sect which is legal, getting toxicated brainwash and I the woman of madness,
Even big journals state, all no problem, Even the Authors of the critical books get sh*t from their colleagues.
If I can make my child the reason why I try to cope will stop, I am full of panic, that he will get guidelines which make him stop in tapering scheme which leads to stay on it, Maudsley and Prof Gründer explain this all..
What can I do?
When I will go to a doctor and I told one, how I suffer because of the worries and how miserable my mental health is since I know my child takes this poison,, he kinda almost kicked me off his office. Why I am not trustful, why I worry and that he can t understand etc.
I think he would have loved to prescribe me AD and Benzos to bring me off my sick sate,
It is a living nightmare, to have all this information and not be able to do something.
I understand that people who on this drugs seem to be drugged not aware what it makes with them, also maybe self protection to look into the facts which are more than scaring.
What can I do? This is all so tragic and I see a lot of people around me closer and farer and I feel under sadness and shock trying to bring mission and awareness and it fails within a blink of an eye.
Thank you for your work, risking so much.
All the verybest,
Desperate Mum
My Daughter, 17 at the time, was on SSRI for less than a year, I managed to convince her to consult a naturopath, she was not any better on SSRI, why not try suppliments…. She agreed. She tapered off SSRI and onto 5HTP and a range of enzymes. Her problems continued because she was not reliable with maintaining her habits and reactive to me. But she would never get back on the SSRI’s they had made her far worse and she knew it. She finally had a total nervous breakdown and began building herself back up again. Diet, exercise and suppliments – it’s taken a few years – it was not till she took responsibility for herself that her life got on track and she has gradually got better and better.
This is a good place to start if you are interested in looking at this:
https://www.everywomanover29.com/blog/
She cites and discusses research thoroughly.
Dr Michael Nehls also has some research on helping ADHD people and has worked with mental health though his research is grounded in Alzheimers originally.
https://michael-nehls.com/mental-reset-2/
You can read it in German, as a start go to FAQ and search for ADHD to start thinking and getting your own thoughts clear. Maybe the place to start is to see what you can do for your health first to be strong for the support you would like to provide for your sons. There are no easy answers.
I really wish you well. It is a very difficult journey. May you find the strength you need along the way.
Great post! I find it so interesting how we develop things like AI without any care for the impact it has on society – we seem wired for progress no matter what the cost.