"Why are we so willing to take bad advice from people with MD's"?

Tucker Carlson is one of the few journalists today who is willing to explore this issue.

 

Is everything we know about depression, addiction wrong?

 

Interesting, but they only talk about antidepressants. No mention of benzodiazepine tranquilizers and their dangers. I wonder why it is such a taboo to talk about benzodiazepines on national TV.

A very good question, Loraz!

Really good to see this was on a mainstream news channel, but yeah, I'm always wondering the same thing too.

Interesting, but they only talk about antidepressants. No mention of benzodiazepine tranquilizers and their dangers. I wonder why it is such a taboo to talk about benzodiazepines on national TV.

 

I don't think it is any more taboo to talk about benzos as it is any other class of psych drugs, there just seems to be a new consciousness developing about that class of drugs so more people are talking about it. Of course it would be better to hear benzos mentioned but as far as I am concerned AD victims are fellow travelers and the more attention they get the more likely people are to start to take a look at benzos as well.

Interesting, but they only talk about antidepressants. No mention of benzodiazepine tranquilizers and their dangers. I wonder why it is such a taboo to talk about benzodiazepines on national TV.

 

I don't think it is any more taboo to talk about benzos as it is any other class of psych drugs, there just seems to be a new consciousness developing about that class of drugs so more people are talking about it. Of course it would be better to hear benzos mentioned but as far as I am concerned AD victims are fellow travelers and the more attention they get the more likely people are to start to take a look at benzos as well.

 

While there are people that react very poorly to AD's (and usually, it is pretty obvious at the beginning of the treatment, making it easy to just stop taking them), it is much more common for trouble to occur when AD's are prescribed in combination with benzodiazepines or taken with other psychoactive drugs. Of course, there are many people struggling with AD's, but there are also many people who are on AD's alone, and they live decent, productive lives. A lot of times, the problem is polypharmacy, and being on multiple psychiatric drugs, or being switched from one AD to another, repeatedly, without a proper taper and without being given time to adjust. Or people cannot tolerate the AD, so they are given a benzo to dampen down the unwanted AD affects.

 

Basically, if a doctor prescribes Wellbutrin or Effexor or Paxil or Zoloft and there are badly tolerated, the solution is not to add a sedative. It's far more prudent to discontinue the AD and re-evaluate.  Can this person benefit from another AD (Celexa, Prozac, etc. etc?), or is this person contraindicated for any AD's and needs non-medication treatments (therapy, etc.)?

 

Bottom line, and I think, that falls in line with following MD advice that may not be good for us. If an AD is not helping/or is causing all kinds of adverse effects, it is best to perhaps not accept another psych drug that will mitigate the AD effects.

 

I would love to be able to ask the young man being interviewed if antidepressants were the only medicines he took, or if there was something else in the mix (anti-anxiety drugs, mood stabilizers, anti-psychotrics, etc. etc.). I would be really interested to find out.

The I reason I feel people are willing to take bad advice of any kind has lot to do with wishful thinking - people in situations of stress are looking for relief and if they find that from someone who has "expert" standing then they are more likely to question less. At least that is my personal experience.

 

I'm glad that FloridaGuy sees the AD victims as fellow travellers because that is exactly what we are. Antidepressant withdrawal, and I was on them for quite a few decades, brought me to benzodiazepines and loads more besides. But what I want to address is the idea that these drugs are beneficial in some way that people lead productive lives whilst on them.

 

If we look at the antidepressants more closely we see that they do cause tolerance, they actually use the term "poop out" to describe it. I myself was given the drug in higher doses. People are often switched from one antidepressant to another when the first appears to no longer work. Many are introduced to polypharmacy when their low mood despite the antidepressant is seen to be "treatment resistant". No one of course cares to consider that the drug might lie behind the problem least of all the patient, and I've seen the studies that suggest the longer you take an antidepressant the more likely you are to suffer relapse of depression. While more and more of us are taking psychotropic drugs long-term, and antidepressant prescribing in the Western world in particular is quite staggering, our rates for disability haven't decreased, the disabled mentally ill has in fact massively increased. All classes of psych drugs worsen long-term outcomes and antidepressants aren't any different.

 

The antidepressant side effect profile isn't too great either: cognitive impairment, suicidal ideation, digestive (upper GI bleeding) and urinary problems, weight gain, permanent sexual dysfunction, akathisia (an intense form of agitation), which can be a real problem when starting, adjusting, or stopping antidepressants, risk of type 2 diabetes, and risk of stroke and heart problems in older people. Makes you wonder why anyone sticks with these drugs. And this brings me to "medication spellbinding". This is a term used by Peter Breggin to describe what happens to us when we take any kind of brain and mind altering drug - we lack awareness of the harms they are causing us and overestimate their benefits. Some antidepressants are stimulating and have amphetamine like effects, all cause emotional blunting. For a long time I attributed my shut-down emotions and chronic exhaustion to depression and not my antidepressant. And I haven't even touched on withdrawal which can be as horrendous as a benzo and is often mistakenly attributed as a return of depression/anxiety. How many are persuaded they need the drug when they're actually suffering withdrawal? I am a case in point.

 

Whilst the benzo issue is still categorised under the "misuse" banner the antidepressant issue is barely on the radar - antidepressant withdrawal is seen as mild and short-lived - and that can't be a good deal for the victims. How I'd love the debate to focus on the harms of biological psychiatry full stop!           

 

 

 

 

 

Yes. I am so familiar with the AD  "poop out" term, where it just fails to be as effective after a while. Luckily, I didn't make AD changes, and stuck to Prozac, but yes, there were issues with some weight gain and some insomnia.

But I don't recall having any cognitive impairment on it, and was able to endure in high stress, high brain demand jobs, on an AD. But yes, I had a first taste of a cold turkey Prozac withdrawal and after 6 weeks, I went back on it. I wasn't agoraphobic and so scared and anxious and constantly panicky with nerve pain like I am with benzo withdrawal, but I remember going to work and feeling weepy and increasingly anxious and feeling betrayed by my coworkers in a place where we all stuck together for so many years. What I saw was actually true, but it took an abrupt stop of an AD to see what was really going on. I do feel I saw the world with a bit of rose colored glasses on an AD, especially during the first several years. And Prozac worked the best for me of them all. I had previously tried Venlafaxine but it made me extremely jittery and agitated, so I stopped. Zoloft gave me some strange head sensations, and I remember my mother having severe issues with Paxil, and she had to be slowly titrated down by a good doctor. I think Prozac agreed with me and I think it kept me from benzos for a long time. Not ideal, but I wasn't agoraphic until I'd been on ativan for a while.

 

What I did seem to like with AD's is that my body would either accept them or reject them right away. Either it felt ok or it didn't. Easier to stop early. Benzos, to me, are a much bigger problem because they're all made to be well tolerated from the start, and the problems are not noticed until much later, and then it becomes extremely difficult to get off of them.

 

But yes, once I started taking Ativan, I think Prozac played a bad role and it hid the CNS depression I was getting from ativan, and it was sort of making the ativan rebounds somehow less visible and more tolerable, and that was the real dangers of taking Prozac and Ativan together in my case.....

 

I remember I had to be very careful with my doctor in the early years, because he had a preference for Eli Lilly's products, and had bought into their idea that taking Prozac + Zyprexa is a great treatment for depression and anxiety. He was giving me Zyprexa, but I never took it.

 

But yes, SSRI discontinuation can be very, very serious. I think I am still sufferig from it. But, if I had done it right, it would have been a much easier discontinuation than the benzos. But back then, I had no idea that SSRI's had to be tapered slowly. I think both SSRI users and benzo users suffer because most are not aware of the risks of trying to stop too quickly, People become aware of the dangers, and then instinctively try to just get off at first, but do it much too quickly, and it's usually b/c a lot of doctors tend to think that all these psych drugs could be stopped quickly or just easily swapped, and it doesn't work that way.

I believe that there are a lot of people who feel exactly the same way about antidepressants LorazepamFree, quite a few feel they have tolerated antidepressants only to be caught out trying to stop them - that's if they are aware they're in withdrawal.

 

I'd like to quote David Healy here, "Part of the reason we don't buy the professional line is because withdrawal can be so severe and can endure for so long. If the discontinuation syndrome were quick and tolerable - as with rebound to beta-blockers or anticholinergics - there would be much less argument, but when ex-heroin users can say it's harder to get off SSRIs than off heroin, the professionals have lost the argument.

 

The problem that was the benzodiazepines deepened with the SSRIs, which were marketed as non-dependence producing antidepressants. One group were saying SSRIs don't do to you what the benzodiazepines do, while another group were still refusing to accept the benzodiazepines caused problems.

 

The truth is after only a few weeks exposure some healthy volunteers had significant difficulties stopping SSRIs".

 

But I doubt very much that this is apparent to the average user of SSRIs who are routinely put on the drugs for much longer, and the longer their exposure the more problems they will meet trying to come off. Dr Stuart Shipko believes it's risky after 5 years and not advisable after 10.

 

Yes, a gradual taper can mitigate the risks but even with a slow taper - and the recommended guidelines aren't fit for purpose - getting off antidepressants can be very difficult. Paxil, Effexor and Zoloft are some the harder ones to come off but even Prozac which is often seen as an answer to treating severe discontinuation can be tough going. I see so many parallels between the benzos and SSRI antidepressants, the wide spread denial is so very similar. I've even seen the argument on this forum that those of us suffering benzo withdrawal are in a minority. No question that there are people who can get off these drugs without too much hardship but that doesn't mean to say that the rest of us don't form a significant problem and if history is anything to go by they always underestimate the figures rather than the other way round.

 

One of the reasons I believe I won't make a full recovery is the length of time I spent on antidepressants, plus the polypharmacy I was exposed to in withdrawal - benzos and Pregabalin top of the list. Cognitive impairment is something that affected me on antidepressants and I've even discovered a FB support group for sufferers. It does happen LorazepamFree. I have no reason to disbelieve Peter Breggin when he says that prescribed psychotropic drugs are neurotoxic. For me benzo and antidepressant victims are on the same page.

 

   

Yes, you are so right how SSRI's actually deepended the bzd problem. I also do remember that school of thought that SSRI's were much safer then benzodiazepines and are also indicated for anxiety disorders, etc. However, I do imagine that there were people back then on long-term prescriptions of benzodiazepines, and it is very obvious that people in that position couldn't just be magically stripped off their bzd prescriptions and be put on an SSRI. Apparently, there are doctors who still attempt to do that, and that looking at various people's stories here, the SSRI's are being added to "help" wean people off of their bzds, and the problem with that is that a prolonged exposure to bzd's may make tolerating an SSRI impossible, and that SSRI's are so chemically different from bzd's that they are not interchangeable.

 

There was an excellent article in Psychology Today that many people apparently missed, but it does touch on that:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201011/brain-damage-benzodiazepines-the-troubling-facts-risks-and-history-minor

Concern about the adverse effects of this group of drugs dates to the 1970s, when vast numbers of people began taking them for stress and anxiety. Once the most-popular minor tranquilizers in Britain, the U.S., and much of Europe, benzodiazepines ("benzos" for short) include such household names as Valium, Xanax, Librium, Ativan, and Klonopin.

 

Between 2002 and 2007, the number of U.S. prescriptions for them grew from 69 million to 83 million. Their popularity trailed off in the 1980s and '90s, when Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and other SSRI antidepressants outsold them as "blockbuster" drugs—so-named because their annual revenues surpassed $1 billion. But benzos actually made a comeback earlier this decade, due in part to the highly successful marketing of Xanax for more than just Panic Disorder.

 

With SSRIs represented in the 1980s and ‘90s as well-tolerated and nonaddictive, as distinct from the extensive, well-documented side effects of benzodiazepines (including pronounced behavioral abnormalities and a serious risk of addiction), the resurgence of prescriptions for benzos in the early 2000s is not only striking, but a serious concern.

 

But yes, while I do believe that SSRI AD's can also produce very profound withdrawals, due to less stigma associated with them, it is natural that most critics of psychiatric drugs found it a lot easier to focus on SSRI AD's, as their perceived safety made them an easier subject to discuss. I do respect Dr. Breggin a lot, but on the other hand, writing "Talking Back to Prozac" is a much safer book to write than "Talking back to Xanax or Talking Back to Ativan, or Talking Back to Klonopin or Talking Back to Valium". Yes, he has addressed some of the issues with benzos in one of his books to some extent, and has also briefly talked about it, but that's about it

 

But yes, even the mental health professionals who are critics of psychiatry will often bypass the benzodiazepine issue, simply because of the dangers of discontinuations. There is a reason why the risks of benzodiazepine discontinuation are rarely discussed outside of survivor communites, and the biggest reason is liability. As bad as SSRI discontinuations can be, they are not downright life threatening as bzd discontinuations can be. Benzodiazepines (particularly the stronget ones) are anti-epileptic drugs (AED) at heart, and there is a lot of liability in discontinuing those. Easier to just write it off as addiction and all being patient's fault or just writing those prescriptions to avoid the potential perils of the potentially life-threatening benzo withdrawal.

I won't link to the video because it is only part of a larger discussion about gun control but Tucker knocks it out of the park again yesterday when he talked about the possible connection between psych drugs and mass shootings.

 

 

We don't always have a choice.

 

I was originally given diazepam because I was in aginy and couldn't stand up right due to spinal problems. The whole of my right side was in rigid spasm that went on for months.

 

All I could do was accept the drug at that point.

 

After surgery it came back again and nothing else helped at all.

 

Yesterday I saw a neurologist who now thinks I have segmental dystonia.

 

I will probably have to take baclofen for the severe muscle spasm.

 

The choice I have is to try the baclofen or live a life where I can't even lie in bed without my body being wracked with constant 24/7 writhing spasm across my whole torso, shoulders and neck.

 

If the baclofen doesn't work I will have to try other even scarier drugs.

 

That is so true, Ajusta. It is easy to go back and criticize all these psych drugs, but, I am pretty convinced that most people here were just not presented with a better choice to deal with whatever they were dealing with. If people felt there were better choices available to them, they would have probably taken them. Hindsight is 20/20, and it is easy to say "I wish I never took xyz", but the point is that people have taken xyz in the past, and that at that point, it seemed to be a logical solution at the time. Nobody just blindly starts taking medications. There are usually much deeper reasons for it.

I won't link to the video because it is only part of a larger discussion about gun control but Tucker knocks it out of the park again yesterday when he talked about the possible connection between psych drugs and mass shootings.

 

Glad to hear this FG.  No one else is talking about it.

 

They have posted the latest shooting on www.ssristories.org

We don't always have a choice.

 

I was originally given diazepam because I was in aginy and couldn't stand up right due to spinal problems. The whole of my right side was in rigid spasm that went on for months.

 

All I could do was accept the drug at that point.

 

After surgery it came back again and nothing else helped at all.

 

Yesterday I saw a neurologist who now thinks I have segmental dystonia.

 

I will probably have to take baclofen for the severe muscle spasm.

 

The choice I have is to try the baclofen or live a life where I can't even lie in bed without my body being wracked with constant 24/7 writhing spasm across my whole torso, shoulders and neck.

 

If the baclofen doesn't work I will have to try other even scarier drugs.

 

This is why the key to all of this is informed consent. Then it comes down to "do the potential benefits outweigh the potential drawbacks?". It's one thing to make the decision to take powerful psychoactive drugs to help you live a better life if you know the damage that they can do. But it's quite another thing to have no idea what the potential damage these drugs can do when you decide to take them for a "comfort" issue that could easily be addressed with CBT, exercise and diet or some other means.

Glad to hear this FG.  No one else is talking about it.

 

I have heard TC mention the dangers of psych drugs numerous times. I don't really watch any other news/commentary shows but I haven't heard of any other tv journalists or political commentators that are talking about this.

This is the book that was highly influential in my decision to take Prozac.

 

https://www.amazon.com/Worry-Hope-Help-Common-Condition/product-reviews/0345424581/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_hist_2?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=two_star&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=1#reviews-filter-bar

 

I found one of the old reviews, and it is really completely on point. Made me laugh in a very bittersweet way:

 

2.0 out of 5 stars. Don't look to this book to help you stop worrying

By A customer on March 15, 1999

Format: Paperback

Hallowell's book does a good job of classifying different types of worries/worriers, but a very poor job of helping you worry less if you already know you worry too much. If you suspect you waste too much time on worry and you want to figure out how to help yourself, this is definitely not the book to buy. I'll save you the cost of the book: (1) get professional help (especially Prozac); (2) eat healthy, cut out the drugs and alcohol, and get some exercise; and (3) stop worrying so much (if I knew how to do that, I wouldn't have bought the book). There's nothing wrong or inaccurate in his advice, it's just not helpful. All I can see this book doing for you is that it may (but only may) enable you to walk into a psychiatrist's office with a more technically accurate self-diagnosis (how much help that would be, I won't speculate).

 

 

Yes, you are so right how SSRI's actually deepended the bzd problem. I also do remember that school of thought that SSRI's were much safer then benzodiazepines and are also indicated for anxiety disorders, etc. However, I do imagine that there were people back then on long-term prescriptions of benzodiazepines, and it is very obvious that people in that position couldn't just be magically stripped off their bzd prescriptions and be put on an SSRI. Apparently, there are doctors who still attempt to do that, and that looking at various people's stories here, the SSRI's are being added to "help" wean people off of their bzds, and the problem with that is that a prolonged exposure to bzd's may make tolerating an SSRI impossible, and that SSRI's are so chemically different from bzd's that they are not interchangeable.

 

There was an excellent article in Psychology Today that many people apparently missed, but it does touch on that:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201011/brain-damage-benzodiazepines-the-troubling-facts-risks-and-history-minor

Concern about the adverse effects of this group of drugs dates to the 1970s, when vast numbers of people began taking them for stress and anxiety. Once the most-popular minor tranquilizers in Britain, the U.S., and much of Europe, benzodiazepines ("benzos" for short) include such household names as Valium, Xanax, Librium, Ativan, and Klonopin.

 

Between 2002 and 2007, the number of U.S. prescriptions for them grew from 69 million to 83 million. Their popularity trailed off in the 1980s and '90s, when Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil and other SSRI antidepressants outsold them as "blockbuster" drugs—so-named because their annual revenues surpassed $1 billion. But benzos actually made a comeback earlier this decade, due in part to the highly successful marketing of Xanax for more than just Panic Disorder.

 

With SSRIs represented in the 1980s and ‘90s as well-tolerated and nonaddictive, as distinct from the extensive, well-documented side effects of benzodiazepines (including pronounced behavioral abnormalities and a serious risk of addiction), the resurgence of prescriptions for benzos in the early 2000s is not only striking, but a serious concern.

 

But yes, while I do believe that SSRI AD's can also produce very profound withdrawals, due to less stigma associated with them, it is natural that most critics of psychiatric drugs found it a lot easier to focus on SSRI AD's, as their perceived safety made them an easier subject to discuss. I do respect Dr. Breggin a lot, but on the other hand, writing "Talking Back to Prozac" is a much safer book to write than "Talking back to Xanax or Talking Back to Ativan, or Talking Back to Klonopin or Talking Back to Valium". Yes, he has addressed some of the issues with benzos in one of his books to some extent, and has also briefly talked about it, but that's about it

 

But yes, even the mental health professionals who are critics of psychiatry will often bypass the benzodiazepine issue, simply because of the dangers of discontinuations. There is a reason why the risks of benzodiazepine discontinuation are rarely discussed outside of survivor communites, and the biggest reason is liability. As bad as SSRI discontinuations can be, they are not downright life threatening as bzd discontinuations can be. Benzodiazepines (particularly the stronget ones) are anti-epileptic drugs (AED) at heart, and there is a lot of liability in discontinuing those. Easier to just write it off as addiction and all being patient's fault or just writing those prescriptions to avoid the potential perils of the potentially life-threatening benzo withdrawal.

 

I certainly think that people are being offered an antidepressant in the way that they once might have been offered a benzodiazepine. Whether doctors are now using antidepressants to wean people off benzos I've no idea but as you say I wouldn't expect this to be successful given that they are so dissimilar in their chemical structure but I believe there are more  people experiencing polydrugging as a consequence of adverse side-effects and because of unrecognised withdrawal. I come at this from the other side of the coin, I now appreciate that being offered benzodiazepines and anticonvulsants among other psychotropic drugs when in antidepressant withdrawal was not a good idea. I had to cope with the down regulation of not only serotonin but also GABA so I was doubly compromised. You can see that because antidepressant withdrawal isn't regarded in the same way as the benzos it does make it just that bit easier for them to claim it's "all in your head".

 

I am aware of the article you quoted, it's very good. Hoffman La-Roche the makers of Librium and Valium actually knew in the early 1960s that their drugs caused dependence but it wasn't until 1980 that there was any formal recognition of this in the UK. They actually claimed there were only 28 people dependent on benzodiazepines in 1980, amazing! There is still a substantial amount of people taking benzos long-term on this side of the pond though in America the figure would be far greater, thankfully Xanax was never licenced over here. When in the 1990s reports of adverse withdrawal from the SSRIs started to appear the definition of withdrawal syndrome changed under pressure from pharma to discontinuation syndrome. The minimising of antidepressant withdrawal has probably persuaded countless people of the safety of SSRIs. We should have learnt more from the history of benzodiazepines. My argument is that patients cannot make informed judgements about the treatments they are offered if they are not apprised of all the facts especially when the cultural is one of ignorance or denial on the part of those doing the prescribing. The SSRIs work little better than placebo but big pharma is very good at keeping negative drug trial data away from public.... until they get caught out in fraud. 

 

I'm not sure you're right that critics of psychiatry are less inclined to tackle the benzo problem in favour of highlighting the problems of the SSRIs. As I've mentioned before antidepressant withdrawal is categorised as mild and short lasting therefore anyone who suggests otherwise is challenging a conventional wisdom and that doesn't go down very well in many quarters. It takes someone not only of integrity but with a fair bit of courage to go out on a limb against biological psychiatry. David Healy is seen as a maverick promoting his own agenda - he lost a prestigious job in Canada over his outspokenness -  but we need more like him just as we need more like Heather Ashton. Of course removing someone inappropriately fast from a high dose of benzos is life threatening for the reason you outlined, I wouldn't dispute that, but you shouldn't underestimate the potential for suicide in antidepressant withdrawal, it's as real a risk as it is in a benzo withdrawal. 

 

Whatever way they chose to invalidate our experiences, on the one hand one set of victims are branded as misusers, complicit in their own downfall, the others are barely acknowledged, likely to be seen as in relapse, the results are the same. A lot of us are being needlessly damaged by these drugs. I can't bring myself to have a benign view of antidepressants LorazepamFree because they made me chronically ill for over 30 years and brought me too close to suicide in withdrawal. The benzos just assured I spent longer in hell. I don't suppose I've convinced you to see antidepressants in a less favourable way so perhaps we will have to agree to differ but there are doctors willing to speak out against benzos and that has be encouraging.

 

https://youtu.be/1kIZ5vuEUA4  Good to see Malcolm Lader as well as Robert Whitaker and Shane Kenny. 

 

And consider this link where Ian Singleton a withdrawal adviser with the Bristol Tranquilliser Project talks about the similarities of benzo and SSRI withdrawal:  https://vimeo.com/84228687                 

 

 

   

I think there is one thing where we strongly agree, pris. And that is the polydrugging part and switching and changing antidepressants, benzos, other psych meds, stopping one, adding another, rapid dose reductions/increases, etc. Basically humans should not be treated like lab rats, no matter what their state of distress is. I have seen a few members here being given the same anti-depressants they previously tolerated while they were in benzo withdrawal, and their nervous systems just ended up being profoundly shocked. What may have worked in the past doesn't work anymore. I've seen it a common prescribing practice to put someone on an SSRI and a benzo at the same time from the get go. One treats depression, another treats anxiety. Pretty simple, eh? Unfortunately, our brains are not compatible with these treatment models. I am not anti psych drugs, but I like the idea of keeping things simple and prescribing just one Rx drug at any given time and making sure that it's prescribed in a responsible manner. While it's much better not to be on psych drugs, being on one for a reasonably determined amount of time, determined by both a doctor and a patient is not an end of the world, necessarily. But this would imply informed consent, and that doesn't always happen.