Posted by Willful on April 21, 2012, at 11:43:09
In reply to Re: Psychiatric drug induced Chronic Brain Impairment » Willful, posted by zazenducke on April 21, 2012, at 9:51:52
One reason Breggin is a bit of a flashpoint for me is that I was influenced by his book (among other things) to refuse to take ADs for a very long time, but I have found them to have made a huge change in my life.
Are they perfect? no. I do notice some lessening of my ability to focus and to work-- but my life was really unliveable before while now i can feel hopeful and able to breathe a little.
I never was particularly convinced by many of his arguments, but some of his sense that drugs will destroy your individuality and all that-- that they are more like poison than treatments-- held a lot of influence and made me even more intransigent than I would otherwise have been. I don't say that I'm not stubborn enough on my own-- but I do think he can rigidify people in their fear and aversion even to ~~trying~~ these drugs-- which I think is unfortunately harmful to many, even though it does protect some.
This book of his specifically addressed ADs--not antipsychotics, which I think are an entirely different issue.
In fact what you say, Zazen would specifically discourage people from even a trial of drugs-- and this is what most concerns me. I'm sure that these drugs don't help some people -- although I think combinations can help more people than individual drugs. But the merrygoround of trying one and trying another can be incredibly depressing and harmful on it own-- so I don't see the current situation as a panacea.
But I fear that telling people that even a Short Trial will give them brain damage is just such an extreme position-- and the concept of brain damage is such a subjective one in your metric-- based on some sort of self-observation, by people who are self-admittedly depressed-- and therefore prone to think the worst-- has the very very destructive possible result that people just won't take even the risk of trying an AD out-- for fear of irreversible damage. Damage for which there is absolutely no evidence.
If there is evidence, I'm just as open as anyone to knowing what it is-- I mean real evidence-- not studies where an unrevealed number of rats are force fed high-fat diet-- there are as we know all sorts of problems with even identifying depression in rats-- much less stressing them, giving them ADs (what dose? by the way), force feeding them fats, and then drawing conclusions.
But if there is evidence, I just as much as anyone would want to protect people from damage. I just don't think there is any --about ADs-- that can be cited. There are side effects-- and people can stop the drug. But on your argument, people shouldn't even start the drug at all-- because there's no return.
That just isn't right.
Emsam.
Abilify
Provigil
Rilutek
poster:Willful
thread:1016024
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120411/msgs/1016106.html