Jump to content
SurvivingAntidepressants.org is temporarily closed to new registrations until 1 April ×

Is Western medicine truly useless?


Lakelander82

Recommended Posts

It would be extremely difficult not to notice the anti drug sentiment on this forum, but I notice it also extends to other classes of drugs as well as psychiatric medications. From PPIs to Opoids, people are reporting horrific side effects and withdrawal effects, so I'm left asking the question - are all classes of Pharmaceutical drugs equally as useless in treating illnesses? Are their side effects worse than the original conditions?

 

What about the diagnoses themselves? I've lost count of the number of people misdiagnosed with relatively minor conditions only for those cases to turn out sinister (most frequently Cancer).

 

Is Western Medicine truly useless?

May 2007 - October 2007 Citalopram 20 mg od. 1st Antidepressant ever taken. No problem with fast taper and no withdrawal effects. No antidepressants for over 5 years.

 

January 2013 started Citalopram 20mg.

March 2014 Switched to Sertraline 50 mg od.

23rd June 2016 started taper 45mg

23.07.16 40.5mg 23.08.16 36.45mg 27.09.16 34.65mg 24.10.16 32.90mg 28.11.16 31.26mg 04.01.17 32mg 25.02.17 31mg 22.03.17 30mg 14.04.17 29mg 09.05.17 28mg 07.06.17 27mg 08.06.17 26mg 13.07.17 25mg 07.08.17 24mg 24.08.17 23mg 13.09.17 22mg 12.10.17 21mg 10.11.17 20mg 04.12.17 19mg 01.01.18 17mg 25.01.18 15mg 22.02.18 13.5mg 25.03.18 12.15mg 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

yes!!

 

you might like to listen to this and read Peters book.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIIQVll7DYY

Thought for the day: Lets stand up, and let’s speak out , together. G Olsen

We have until the 14th. Feb 2018. 

URGENT REQUEST Please consider submitting  for the petition on Prescribed Drug Dependence and Withdrawal currently awaiting its third consideration at the Scottish Parliament. You don't even have to be from Scotland. By clicking on the link below you can read some of the previous submissions but be warned many of them are quite harrowing.

http://www.parliament.scot/GettingInvolved/Petitions/PE01651   

Please tell them about your problems taking and withdrawing from antidepressants and/or benzos.

Send by email to petitions@parliament.scot and quote PE01651 in the subject heading. Keep to a maximum of 3 sides of A4 and you can't name for legal reasons any doctor you have consulted. Tell them if you wish to remain anonymous. We need the numbers to help convince the committee members we are not isolated cases. You have until mid February. Thank you

Recovering paxil addict

None of the published articles shed light on what ssri's ... actually do or what their hazards might be. Healy 2013. 

This is so true, with anything you get on these drugs, dependance, tapering, withdrawal symptoms, side effects, just silent. And if there is something mentioned then their is a serious disconnect between what is said and reality! 

  "Every time I read of a multi-person shooting, I always presume that person had just started a SSRI or had just stopped."  Dr Mosher. Me too! 

Over two decades later, the number of antidepressant prescriptions a year is slightly more than the number of people in the Western world. Most (nine out of 10) prescriptions are for patients who faced difficulties on stopping, equating to about a tenth of the population. These patients are often advised to continue treatment because their difficulties indicate they need ongoing treatment, just as a person with diabetes needs insulin. Healy 2015

I believe the ssri era will soon stand as one of the most shameful in the history of medicine. Healy 2015

Let people help people ... in a natural, kind, non-addictive (and non-big pharma) way. J Broadley 2017

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No... Like everything in life, medicine is complicated and full of nuance. Does western medicine need to evolve further to integrate a more holistic approach to wellness? Absolutely. Is modern psychiatry in particular a disaster? Without a doubt. But the last few hundreds years has brought humanity to a place of health that was previously unimaginable. If you doubt this, you only need to look to impoverished counties and cultures that rely on folk medicine.. Or read about "healthcare" in the 19th century. It's not a pretty sight.

 

Growing up with a physician father and studying neurobiology in college showed me just how far modern science has taken us, from something as routine but essential as antibiotics and vaccines, to highly sophisticated medication that treats horrible disorders.

The problem IMO arises when you attempt to use a reductionist model of the brain to treat psychological symptoms with medication -- to say nothing of the fact that most psychotropics weren't even intentionally designed, just experimental compounds which were found to have certain psychological effects. Perhaps someday modern neuroscience will be sophisticated enough to understand psychological disorders and lead to safe and effective treatments. But far too often the basic things like diet, exercise, intestinal flora, stress, meditation, nutritional supplementation, therapy, etc are ignored and the sole treatment focus is the all-too-common psychotropic drug merry-go-round.

 

If I were able to go back to my adolescent days and do it all over again, I would put all of my focus on diet, exercise, meditation and CBT for OCD/anxiety and never touch an SSRI or benzo.

 

That said, there is promising research with glutamate dysfunction for OCD/anxiety/depression. Perhaps one day there will actually be a safe and effective alternative to the cornucopia of dangerous pharmaceuticals currently being peddled for those who truly cannot function without medication.

Medication before problems: Took Paxil 60-100mg from 2003 to 2014 for OCD.
1) Last pill taken November 2014, horrendous withdrawal started six weeks later.

2) Re-instated successfully @ 20mg May 2015, but accompanied by severe anhedonia, loss of emotion, apathy, and fatigue

3) Switched to Prozac, Viibyrd, Zoloft, Nefazadone, Cymbalta, Nardil in attempt at abating WD symptoms while not re-introducing anhedonia. Each one either failed to relieve WD or brought back anhedonia. So re-stabilized on Paxil at 15mg

4) Tapered down to 7.5mg as of October 2016. More energy, anhedonia/loss of emotions remains apart from short windows.

5) May 2017 - down to 3.5mg of Paxil (no other meds)
6) Early 2018 - added 8mg of Prozac
7) January 2019 - down to 1.05 Paxil / 5mg Prozac and continuing

8) October 2019 - down to 0.2mg Paxil / 3mg Prozac

9) November 2019 - down to 0.1mg Paxil / 3mg Prozac 

10) March 2020 - done with Paxil, 2.5mg Prozac

11) April 2021 - 0.03mg Prozac

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderator Emeritus

Probably it's the certainty and absolutism "Doctor knows best" that some doctors hold that is the biggest problem.  And we as consumers/patients have bought into that and accepted it as truth. 

 

I recall reading an article that discussed M&M (mortality and morbidity) reviews in hospital. One of the doctors interviewed said something akin to "People don't realize that medicine is a learning profession."

 

It would be good for us all -- doctors and the people who consult them -- to remember that science hasn't discovered everything about the human body.  Who knows what common practice in 2016 will be viewed in 100 years as barbaric and ill-informed, "How could they think THAT would help?"

This is not medical advice. Discuss any decisions about your medical care with a knowledgeable medical practitioner.
1997-1999 Effexor; 2002-2005 Effexor XR 37.5 mg linear taper, dropping same #beads/week with bad results

Cymbalta 60 mg 2012 - 2015; 2016: 20 mg to 7 mg exact doses and dates in this post; 2017: 6.3 mg to  0.0 mg  Aug. 12; details here


scallywag's Introduction
Online spreadsheet for dose taper calculations and nz11's THE WORKS spreadsheet

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 months later...

YES .we all carry bagage and instead of trying to understand it ,we can bury it deep  down in our soul ,but it eventually seeps out ,then the doctors prescribe the drugs  and big pharma are laughing all the way to the bank.

check out DR gabor mate on youtube ,he is amazing at explaining trauma of any kind and how it affects us.

It will take a long time for the world to cop on .

Alcohol free since February 2015 

1MG diazepam

4.5MG PROZAC.

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Moderator Emeritus

I think the key word for me with this is:  Homeostasis.

 

You take a PPI, your body compensates for it.

 

Like with insulin, your body develops a tolerance, and requires more.  Additionally, there are flow on effects to other systems.  The PPI hampers your ability to metabolize B-vitamins, for example, which has more flow on effects.

 

This is true of opoids, psych drugs, and I might even hazard cholesterol drugs.  It's true of my hubby's CPAP machine - he has to adjust it up every few years, because his body adjusts to the pressure.

 

I think that drugs given for certain "markers" - like cholesterol - might be mistakes.

 

I think that drugs given for blood pressure - it's certainly scary - but that depends on the patient's willingness to take charge of themselves.  The patient is as responsible as the medical model.  People go to the doc's, with "feel crook, help me," and they just want the doc to intervene. 

 

They don't want the doc to tell them to leave a toxic relationship, or find a more sustainable job (that's a big ask), or manage their stress or system insults, or change their food, or when they watch TV, or how they sleep, or to turn off the cell phone.  If they would do this, they might not need the docs at all.

 

And in the absence of the ability to manage stress, diet, exercise (for a myriad of reasons) - the pill is given.  The docs are trained (by pharma) to believe that this is the best solution, given that the "patient" will not make the life changes necessary to address the root problem.

 

It's become systemic, now Western Medicine assumes that the patient is unwilling, and so the pill is the first port of call, instead of the last port of call.  I remember a number of times in the 70's, the doctors would tell my parents of their risk of heart disease (for example) and recommend more fresh veggies, and after a few months of that, come in and we'll check again.  That model is no longer there.

 

So until Western Medicine stops "squelching" symptoms to "shut the patient up," it is a bit of a hotbed of abuse.

 

I still haven't decided what I would do if the cancer word came up.  Do I believe that toxic chemo is the way to go?  More people are surviving cancer now than ever before - or so they tell us.  But they don't tell us that a course of toxic chemo might only add a short time onto your life, and then, only in a minority of the cases.  Is it worth it?  I don't know.

 

The vaccine question is another one.  I checked my baby book - I received something like 13 vaccines by the age of 5.  Now, children receive between 30-60, and some of the insults are bundled.  Surely, the decrease (if not elimination) of Tuberculosis and Polio are major accomplishments.  But if you scratch the surface and look deeper - 

 

and see that you don't have the right to sue a company for toxic reaction to a vaccine (as you would in malpractice) - you have to go to a special "vaccines court" which is run by the industry.  There's something amiss about that.

 

Kelly Brogan doesn't seem to think that vaccines - as they are presented today - should be automatic.  Again, I don't have a child, and I'm glad that I don't have to actually decide these things in the body of my child.  If I were, I would be agonizing over that punishing vaccine schedule, and fighting to stretch it out, and maybe even thin it out if I could.

 

I think that one of the main advances of Western Medicine is in trauma care.  Someone falls down a cliff and breaks a zillion bones, and yet they can be put back together again.  A gunshot or knife wound is not longer an automatic death sentence.  A car crash, internal injuries, and while the person may feel pain for the rest of their life - they will live through it.  Heart attacks, the heart can be repaired or replaced!

 

(though, as someone who has had a few too many surgeries, I'm in no hurry to go under the knife for "prevention and maintenance")

 

Western Medicine's skill does not seem to be focused on maintenance.  Right now, there are corporate interests involved, so that even the diet information given out by doctors is influenced by industry.  There was an Australian doctor suspended here for recommending a modest low carb diet to his patients - because he was a surgeon who did amputations for diabetics, and he wanted to save the limb instead of cutting it off.    As long as there is profit involved, there is conflict for me.  Corporate medicine focuses on share price, not "patients served" or better - "patients saved."

 

I like the Chinese model:  I pay the doctor to keep me well.  If I get sick, I do not pay the doctor.  The profits are on the wellness side of the equation, not on the disaster / trauma side of it.

 

I recently watched the Patch Adams movie.  In an opening scene, the head of the medical school tells the students that he will take all the humanity out of them and make doctors of them.  In a way, this does happen.  But what if - as Patch wants to do - the humanity was practiced right alongside the medicine?  He has a waiting list of doctors who want to practice in his facility - who want to do it for passion and caring - not for profit.

 

Here he is speaking at the Mayo Clinic:

"Easy, easy - just go easy and you'll finish." - Hawaiian Kapuna

 

Holding is hard work, holding is a blessing. Give your brain time to heal before you try again.

 

My suggestions are not medical advice, you are in charge of your own medical choices.

 

A lifetime of being prescribed antidepressants that caused problems (30 years in total). At age 35 flipped to "bipolar," but was not diagnosed for 5 years. Started my journey in Midwest United States. Crossed the Pacific for love and hope; currently living in Australia.   CT Seroquel 25 mg some time in 2013.   Tapered Reboxetine 4 mg Oct 2013 to Sept 2014 = GONE (3 years on Reboxetine).     Tapered Lithium 900 to 475 MG (alternating with the SNRI) Jan 2014 - Nov 2014, tapered Lithium 475 mg Jan 2015 -  Feb 2016 = GONE (10 years  on Lithium).  Many mistakes in dry cutting dosages were made.


The tedious thread (my intro):  JanCarol ☼ Reboxetine first, then Lithium

The happy thread (my success story):  JanCarol - Undiagnosed  Off all bipolar drugs

My own blog:  https://shamanexplorations.com/shamans-blog/

 

 

I have been psych drug FREE since 1 Feb 2016!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use Privacy Policy