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Timeline of benzo advertisements


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This is a great historical link of how benzos have been marketed to the world. I don't know if it's been posted before. It's very interesting. It starts with Milhouse, before even Valium was "discovered" by Sternbach.

 

http://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline/latest/embed/index.html?source=0ApXkjxam7QBodGFGcmhWRTJ3UlBmRmxqWFh0azZTSmc&font=Bevan-PotanoSans&maptype=toner&lang=en&height=650

 

 

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[d0...]
wow, thanks for the link. In the beginning, it was marketed toward women. Not cool. I've read that marketing to women is done intentionally by Big Pharma because getting a mom medicated helps real in the husband and kids. Again, not cool.
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I was thinking the same thing, that these drugs were marketed to women. What a travesty, once again. I wonder how many of the 50 million prescriptions for Xanax are for the U.S. market. Extremely troubling since 80% of the world's pain pills are consumed in the U.S. 
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[d0...]
Not to mention the Ritalin that the US consumes. Getting kids on Ritalin (or Addarall, etc) is the first step to getting them on SSRI's since depression and anxiety are side effects. Sick sad world. . . . :-\
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Yes, MindSeeker. It's absolutely overwhelming and something I never thought I'd be involved with at all. I used to work at a school, and now I wonder how many of the kids were put on drugs. I know for a fact that a lot of them were on drugs.
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[d0...]

yeah, the last statistic I saw on that was 1 in 15 kids has ADHD. Don't know if they're all medicated, though.

 

I also saw something from NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness - lobbying group in the US that's largely funded by Big Pharma) that 1 in 5 kids has a mental illness and many are not being treated. Gets NAMI won't be happy till 20% of this country's children are on psyche drugs. What a world!

 

Working at a school must have been tough. With all of these kids drugged, isn't it like working at a psyche ward? Wow, this is sad.

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There were a lot of kids in the school, but it was the Special Ed kids who were on drugs the most I think. When you were talking about NAMI, I remember reading about it in Anatomy of an Epidemic. One thing I keep thinking about is that one of my friends keeps current with NAMI and believes in what they're doing. Her son was put on a number of drugs for depression. She didn't tell me which ones. Now she thinks that he's mentally ill even though I feel that what he's been going through is protracted w/d. He was put in a hospital and taken off all the drugs c/t, so of course he flipped out. It's really sad because I can't make her understand that I don't think he's mentally ill at all. I remember him being so happy when he was performing on stage in a play one time. And now he spends most of his time away from everyone, in his room. It sounds like a classic case of longstanding w/d to me. When I told her that it felt like I had a temporary mental illness, she sent me a bunch of info on NAMI. It really scares me that she can't understand and that she believes in NAMI. 
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[d0...]

Hi, Terry. I was a huge believer in NAMI for a long time - I even volunteered with them. My bipolar 1 diagnosis was created by treating a severe depression with medication which I now know caused mania. But at the time, I was told the AD "unmasked a mental illness that was already there and would get worse without meds."

 

That's still the medical explanation that's given out to almost everyone who's bipolar. And I believed it for over 20 years.

 

Has your friend read Anatomy of an Epidemic? It's hard to get people associated with NAMI to read anything outside of what NAMI considers authoritative information. It's unfortunate, but caretakers are doing much more harm than good. Not sure what the answer is here.

 

I agree with you on her child probably not being mentally ill but suffering from withdrawal. I believe that part of the problem with caretakers is they would rather blame a medical illness than the fact that their child is a victim of accidental addiction created in part by the caretaker and doctor's ignorance of how these medications affect the mind. Caretakers and doctors are human, too.

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Hi MindSeeker, I've thought a lot about telling her about the book, but I have a feeling that she'd think I was trying to get my point across, if she read it, because NAMI isn't looked at in a favorable light in Anatomy of an Epidemic. And she believes in NAMI. I think it's true that she sees her son as a victim. I know that his father has criticized and put him down for a long time, and that has to be another huge factor. The fact is that she's stopped communicating with me for the most part. What you were told, about the AD unmasking a mental illness that was already there - I think that's a bunch of baloney and is something that is also mentioned in Anatomy. When I think about my sister, I wonder if she was given Librium to start out with. It seems that I remember her saying something like that but that it was way too much for her. ssShe was in college, my younger brother was dying, and she tried to commit suicide. Maybe at that point she was also drinking too much as she was an alcoholic. My parents had to rush to her side. It was a very difficult time. Before college my sister seemed well-adjusted. She was a brilliant woman, but I think the alcohol and drugs in combination really took a toll. I'm so sorry that you had to go through all the pain and misery for over 20 years!!! It sounds as if you're a very bright woman who has her head in the right place!!! Now that I think of it, my sister told me that one time at 3 a.m. she was running through the streets in a manic phase, that faucets "talked" to her. I'm thinking that it was the result of a chemical imbalance in her brain set off by the drugs and alcohol. But I can't be certain about any of this because I don't have any idea how many pills she was taking.
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[d0...]

Terry, you and your family have been through a lot of pain. When I was 17, I attempted suicide due to growing up in an extremely toxic and abusive family. But instead of dealing with the trauma, my parents and social serves sent me to a psychiatrist. In just a few minutes, I was told I have a chemical imbalance and sent home with a prescription for an antidepressant.

 

A few weeks later, I was suicidal again, put into a mental hospital, and the meds changed and the diagnosis of manic depression.

 

I think family trauma plays a bigger role in mental illness. It especially seems so in schizophrenia where Finland is using Open Dialogue.

 

Sad to say it, but I'm not sure the US is ready for Open Dialogue. It's always a one-way conversation between doctor and patient and the patient is generally silenced with drugs. I hope this changes.

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Your experience is so similar to my sister's! We also grew up in an abusive household, and my sister, being the oldest, got the worst of it. My mother was like a general or something, not compassionate at all. It sounds like my sister's anger was silenced with pills and alcohol. I agree with you that family trauma does play a large role in mental illness, or at least diagnoses of mental illness. I also hope it changes!! I read somewhere that eating disorders result from family dysfunction. Although my sister didn't have that, I had an eating disorder for something like 15 years, something I hid because of shame. I finally was able to get through it, but a lot of my life was taken up with thinking of food constantly. There's more, also, but I don't want to get into that. I'm really happy that you understand what's happened to you and that you're doing everything in your power to right things. I know it's taken so long, and that there are a lot of strong feelings about that - rightfully!!! - but I'm thankful that you're a person who is not going to spend the rest of her life in a quagmire of drugs to treat a false diagnosis!!
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[d0...]

Wow, I'm glad you were able to over come an eating disorder. I knew several people with anorexia when I was in the hospital many years ago, and it's considered one of the more difficult illnesses to overcome. Glad you did it!  :thumbsup:

 

yeah, I definitely don't want to spend a lot of time ruminating about that misdiagnosis. I'm sorry about your sister. I wish we had better ways of handling our trauma, but so many resources are being spent on the "chemical imbalance" nonsense and nothing is really being done to fix us. I guess we have to do that.

 

And I think peer run groups like this website are a good start. It would be nice to have a place to go to be around folks recovering in person, but I'll take what I can get.  ;)

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This is a great historical link of how benzos have been marketed to the world. I don't know if it's been posted before. It's very interesting. It starts with Milhouse, before even Valium was "discovered" by Sternbach.

 

http://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline/latest/embed/index.html?source=0ApXkjxam7QBodGFGcmhWRTJ3UlBmRmxqWFh0azZTSmc&font=Bevan-PotanoSans&maptype=toner&lang=en&height=650

 

YIKES..thanks for finding this..

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Thanks, MindSeeker! But it wasn't anorexia. It was more like eating myself to such fullness that I couldn't do anything but lie on the couch for hours, feeling awful about what I'd done, then limit my calorie intake for three days, repeat. An awful process that led to hating myself. It seems that each of us has to get our own answers because the medical community is too mired in their own pill-addiction dispensing of drugs!

 

And Fliprain, thank you so much for the link! It certainly started a discussion, and it's a valuable piece of information!

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