Posted by bleauberry on April 22, 2012, at 9:00:30
In reply to Psychiatric drug induced Chronic Brain Impairment, posted by zazenducke on April 20, 2012, at 11:13:25
This topic isn't as clear cut as it might be presented. I mean, I could sit here a write a chapter on this topic with a look from both sides of the fence.
I think the key word is "chronic". That usually results because people do not generally take on the mindset of finding and resisting disease, they instead generally just want a pill in a bottle and let the disease keep going.
How are we to know the supposed brain impairment wasn't from the undetered disease and not the meds? Or maybe both not one or the other?
I don't think the Breggin view is right, and I don't think the conventional medical wisdom is right. Both sides of the fence are wrong. As with most things in life, the truth may be somewhere in between, a complicated mix of both, or could be something unrelated to either of them. Breggin's theory has one flaw....it is not predictable or replicable. In other words, not everyone who has chronic psychiatric drug use will have negative consequences. Only some people will.
That's where all the theories fall short.....these issues depend on the individual person's biochemistry, genetics, life style choices, meds, time, the underlying disease, and the fact that all of us are in a state of degradation and death beginning the day we are born. Each patient is uniquely different than the next.
My own personal opinion is that yes most drugs are toxic to the nervous system in one way or another. The approach might be to use them at the lowest possible doses and to resist chronic indefinite usage of them. Their primary role, in my opinion, should be to help improve the patient's quality of life on a temporary finite basis so they can focus more on the things that will really make a long term difference.
At other forums, and here too actually, we sometimes see people who have been on zoloft for 12 years, prozac for 8 years, nardil for 20 years, parnate for 20 years....stuff like that. These people are doing fine in life and their meds are truly life changing and miraculous to them. Doesn't sound like any chronic psychiatric drug brain impairment is happening with them. They're doing awesome despite anyone else's claims.
Me, yes, I truly believe I have a version of the Breggin theory psych med induced brain impairment. But as I said, it aint that simple. There were so many meds. Which, if any, were the actual toxic ones? How how much of the blame goes to other things we didn't consider, such as genetics, toxicity from heavy metals, toxicity from infection. My instincts tell me it is primarily the SSRIs. To me there is just something unexplainable that is just not a good idea to block that reuptake pump because it somehow messes up a bunch of other stuff. In other words, when those pumps are blocked for a long time, other stuff in the brain changes to adapt to that, and then when that med is removed the brain no longer knows how to get back to where it was....the previous biochemistries which were fine are now messed up.
Complicated stuff. I do not believe humans have the wisdom at this time to explain very much in psychiatric and that includes Breggin.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1016024
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120411/msgs/1016170.html