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Compelled to quote.... » Dinah

Posted by floatingbridge on August 12, 2011, at 1:11:18

In reply to Re: Risperdone » floatingbridge, posted by Dinah on August 11, 2011, at 19:03:16

From this link:
>
> http://simonsobo.com/a-reevaluation-of-the-relationship-between-psychiatric-diagnosis-and-chemical-imbalances

4) The chemical imbalance model is not an important part of the basic (animal) research being done to test new potential anxiolytics and anti-depressant agents. The chemical imbalance model might or might not stimulate a search for agents that effect given neurotransmitters, but while there is
some research on genetically predisposed strains of mice and
guinea pigs, who may be wired differently, or chemically different, most research is done on ordinary animals that are environmentally stressed and then relieved of this stress by potentially useful chemical agents. For example, the FST (forced swimming test) tests the ability of drugs to postpone
hopelessness in animals forced to swim and swim and swim to remain alive. SSRIs do this. So do noradrenergic agents (which interestingly enough, are more likely to cause the rats
to try to climb out of their test environment (Detke 1995)). More pointedly, for the purposes of my argument, rat pups that are isolated from their mother and litter mates produce ultrasonic sounds that are indicative of stress. SSRIs reduce these sounds. (Oliver, 1994) Recently, there was excitement
that substance P antagonists may be useful psychotropic agents because they were shown to reduce stress induced vocalizations in guinea pig pups (once again separated from their moms). A drug successfully screened in this manner will
certainly not be presented to patients as a drug that is so good at shutting off distress that it even works to subdue what might be considered the prototypical model of terror, a
helpless infant separated from its mother. A patient told he is being given a drug that will kill his reaction to what has been upsetting him will approach that treatment very differently than a patient given a different spin, one told that his medication is treating the chemical imbalance that is causing his ailment. *Similarly, primary care physicians and psychiatrists will be far
more enamored with the thought that an agent has been
tested (and even better, FDA approved) for a specific DSM-IV
disorder if the mindset is that the effectiveness is due to fixing faulty synapses, rather than that the patient is being drugged out of his suffering.*
-----------

At the end of the paragraph is the idea that the spin that correcting a scientifically backed chemical imbalance is more appealing providers than 'drugging' a patient out of suffering.
I still wonder at the impasse that occurred in my former treatment why I was literally labelled an addict, told that repeatedly that I was both physically and psychologically
dependent on medication (um, yeah, duh), and driven into a terrible withdrawal. A few months prior, I was getting pretty desperate. I said to my pdoc/therapist that I really needed something to 'hit me on the head' pharmaceutically speaking,
to just put me out of my misery was the occasion arose, and that I did not likembeing heavily medicated 24/7. He started when I said that. He was shaken, actually; I know because he would quote this back me every other session to convey his concern how unhealthy this impulse was, how wrong, how disturbed he was. I am given to colorful language, true, but it did speak of my absolute despair over my dysphoric peaks. How I had always been able to use Xanax (within the bounds
of my prescription) to provide what I tried to explain as my panic button.

But I had never abused or acted out these impulses. I had endured and endured, and I was trying express in my clearest voice that I was losing the ability and strength to endure. Yet my behavior had not changed. I kept accurate med records, took my meds as prescribed and admitted my to-go panic button, Xanax, was losing efficacy. Week after week, I soldiered into his office for more therapy of worsening quality and no medical treatment plan in sight.

I read the above paragraph and thiought that I unknowing crossed a very deep moral/ethical boundary with this doctor by becoming desperate enough to say, in other words, *yes, drug me, please!*. Not by any action other than the expression of my deperation and pain. Instead of mercy, I received no quarter. Within about two months, I was screaming my head off and at the ER with what I now realize
as a double withdrawal of Xanax and Emsam.

I feel as if I have been on a forced swim myself for a very long time. I have always found the practice of laboratory forced swims wincingly painful. It is odd that a science that talks so often of genetics actually uses a 'nurture' stressor often in their tests. I think the conditions of a forced swim are
a valuable corollary to real life for many folks, certainly for me. Some of us just break down. However, it may not be giving us the evidence of the kind genetics we are told or believing we are seeing.

There are still such moral underpinnings to science that remain for some unexamined. A Puritanicalism I had not seen before.... A squeamishness when encountering suffering.


I dig a pony.

 

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URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110809/msgs/993516.html