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Re: My Experience Mirrors Yours

Posted by dewdropinn on August 2, 2007, at 17:16:02

In reply to Re: My Experience Mirrors Yours, posted by linkadge on August 2, 2007, at 15:30:16

There's a marvelous passage in the Wade Davis book "Serpent and the Rainbow" about Voodoo in Hati that sums up the dark and light side of pharmaceuticals -- the voodoo priest tells Wade that "poison saves, poison kills." I think all of the above applies to psychiatry -- it's dealing with psychoactive substances that can save lives, but they can also kill in various and sometimes brutal ways. It's just one of the realities of the current state of the quasi-science.

Psychiatry has struggled since it's inception with the fact that the main diagnostic tool is a guy in glasses sitting in an easy chair across from the patient -- it is influenced by science, but is based on highly subjective observations. There's has always been a need among psychiatrists to validate that the practice is indeed a true science, and some practitioners tend to overcompensate for the scientific shortcomings by treating by presenting theory and hypotheses as unassailable, objective, scientific facts.

Your posts are full of marvelous insights and you've clearly done a great deal of study and thinking about psychiatry and pharmacology. I do wonder if you may be looking for an ideal treatment that simply doesn't exist right now (which doesn't mean we shouldn't continue looking for better options and alternatives.) This may be part of the frustration, and it was something that frustrated me for years. You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't -- there's the reality of the illness, and there's the reality of the risks and side effects associated with the medications. I'm not sure these are separable right now. What do you think?

Drew

> One thing I don't think some people realize though, is that these are drugs.
>
> I mean, is not uncommon for amphetamines to cause euphoria in many normal people. Combining it with selegiline might cause more euphoria. (simultanious DAT and MAO-B inhibitition + dopamine release). When one is playing with drug combinations that mimic the activities of drugs of abuse, there is always the chance of inducing euphoria even in normal healthy individuals.
>
> There are people who have come on this board reporting on the euphoria inducing effects of celexa + ritalin for example.
>
> (celexa + ritalin = serotonin + dopamine uptake inhibiton + monoamine release = cocaine)
>
> I mean, regular people abuse drugs like amphetamines to get high. This does not mean they are bipolar, or even soft bipolar, they are just human beings reacting to some hardcore stimulation of the neucleus accumbens.
>
> There are schools of thought that state that bipolar disorder is only present when individuals have unprevoked, non drug induced manic highs.
>
> Psychiatry doesn't want to take the rap for making a whole bunch of people bipolar. They will not admit that their drugs can induce mood swings or euphoria. So, they twist things around (like psychiatry has a nack for), and rephrase it in terms of: "these drugs only unleashed an underlying latent bipolar disorder".
>
> Well that bias is certainly more in favor of psychiatry. You see, in psychiatry, there is never anything wrong with the drugs. If there is a problem, it is the patients problem. Thats the first rule of protecting the establishment.
>
>
>
> Linkadge


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poster:dewdropinn thread:772375
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20070730/msgs/773593.html