Great post. I often think of the similarities between legal and illegal psych drugs. Perhaps it was first drawn to my attention when Joseph Glenmullen wrote that some of his patients described Prozac as an attenuated form of cocaine. Certainly there is a direct relationship too between stimulants such as Ritalin and Adderall and methamphetamine as well as cocaine again too. I think at one time maybe earlier in the 20th century cocaine was viewed as the same kind of miracle cure that psych drugs are today. Maybe sometime in the very distant future all these drugs currently in vogue will end up being illegal substances (as they probably should be) when they are no longer money makers for big industry. The point is doctors, perhaps unwittingly but perhaps not, are making us into a country of addicts. And big pharma encourages it because it makes them billions. It's a perfect storm of interests between consumers (patients who want an easy fix), doctors who want to be scientific rather than empathic, and big pharma that wants long term customers who have no choice but to keep buying the product.

Reminds me of a homeless woman I met with several times. She told me she would rather use meth than Seroquel, being that she had compared both. Also, this brings to mind the woman I met inside a psych ward who told me she had just got "clean" and was trying so hard not to go back on meth, and begged for them not to discharge her to the shelter. --They did.

P.S. Make that "scientific" in quotes or pseudoscientific.

Well, it was only a couple of years ago that somebody or other announced some success in treating depression with PCP! That's right, Angel Dust, the drug that was banned as an anaesthetic, owing to the agitation, delusion, and whatnot experienced by those coming out of anaesthesia.

And I can't help but have a dig at Eli for supplying LSD to the CIA for its mind control program. In fact, I was reading up on the effects of SSRIs, when I was still trying to make sense of the Chemical Imbalance theory. Apparently, more is known of their action through watching the effects of halucinogenic drugs, than by studying SSRIs themselves!

Matt

This Levine guy stole his collum idea from my blog! I'm joking, but it is similar to what I wrote.
psychsurvivor.wordpress.com/2007/12/15/stopping-the-cycle/
Drugs 1:The war on drugs (which is an offshoot of psychiatric philosophy of chemicals making decisions for people)AKA the war on poor people using drugs is a failure in terms of stopping illegal drug use, but successful in employing many police officers and building of prisons/success of the prison industry in the USA. Many people are now employed due to the war on drugs. Voters are happy the drug users are in prison (they voted the politicians into office). This is fine and well for the economy, until the economy can no longer pay for it.

Drugs 2: The working person , elite and maybe the wealthy need access to mind altering drugs and they prefer the legal kind that comes in pill form ( that the war on drugs doesn’t apply to) , rather than the dirty drugs addicts use. The normal person doesn’t get addicted, thats only for street scum and the mentally ill.(joke) This aspect of psychiatry is insidious, as people trust doctors to heal, and trust the meds prescribed to heal/sooth their non-physical mind.

As doctor Loren R. Mosher M. D. stated in his 1998 letter of resignation from the American Psychiatric Association:

"A Marxist would observe that being a good capitalist organization, APA likes only those drugs from which it can derive a profit--directly or indirectly."
Our current system of social control (what else could one call a system that drives people to madness and despair and then conceals its action by stigmatizing them as genetically tainted and diseased) has it all three ways:

1. People suffer directly from drugs (both illegal and prescribed) they choose to take.
Not only do people suffer personally, but the country being flooded with drugs inhibits the natural action of human misery as an inducement to social change. Remember the Chinese opium war (fought to force China to IMPORT opium) and the use of liquor to demoralize the Native Americans during the European conquest.

2. Illegal drugs are the perfect excuse for a government to persecute its own people.
It is an open secret in the USA that the main effect of the 'war on drugs' is to maintain the permanent underclass.

3. Coercing and forcing people to take psych drugs is a great way to keep everyone in line while maintaining the fictitious trappings of 'freedom' and 'liberty.'
Modern people are so disconnected from our own selves that we accept labels of 'disease' for our emotional and 'psychological' REACTIONS to the conditions of our lives. When a person is miserable ('depressed'), this is a powerful critique of the conditions of their life. When a person performs rituals ('OCD') to try to fell some modicum of control over turbulent fate or retreats from an unbearable reality ('manic', 'psychotic', 'schizophrenic'), these REACTIONS must be suppressed so that we will continue to be good workers and consumers, rather than fundamentally questioning the arrangement of a society that is so rich yet contains so much suffering. Pretending that the root problem lies within some individuals by using a 'medical model' (a 'doctor' giving a 'patient' a 'medication') props up the stigmatization of the 'patient' as 'diseased', and serves to invalidate their implicit critique.

Plus the drugs themselves are highly toxic (ask any veterinarian about giving neuroleptics to your dog), life-shortening, and brain/mind/spirit disabling. The next generation's Elizabeth Cady Stantons and Martin Luther Kings are probably all doped up on ritalin and prozac, if not powerful neuroleptics, and this serves only the interests of people who want to prevent positive social change.

Before everyone jumps on me for being insufficiently sympathetic to people who are 'sick' and 'need' to be on drugs, please note that I believe that every adult should have the right to do what they want with their own body, including take any drug (though doctors shouldn't push psych drugs anymore than they should prescribe malt liquor or heroin), and that my perspective is informed by personally being on the wrong end of things in all three ways.

Best of luck to everyone, in all of our struggles - UnderTheThresher@hotmail.com

I think you're right Thresher, the problem is in getting us to go there, and deal with power, class and hardball social and economic analysis. To criticize capitalism means letting the terrorists win. Why do you hate America, Thresher?

The softer model for getting these issues in the door is what they called the "bio-psycho-social" model and "vulnerability diathesis" model of mental illness; mumbo jumbo that did at least allow for an interplay of environmental triggers to activate despair and self-destruction in the constitutionally inclined, but even these bland, safe constructs are out of fashion, it's all bio-bio-bio, take your pills and resume your station.

Here in Atlanta two of the major news stories are Gary Hilton who tortured, murdered and decapatated a hiker while, according to the Atlanta Journal, high on psychiatric drugs, and of course Britany Spears who has missed numerous court hearing while, according to E, Entertainment News, and etc. is high on psychiatric drugs. If these two major stories had known cocaine, marijuana, goodness forbid meth, or even alcohol intoxication in common, I think the media would be putting a real spin on the dangerous addictive drug and bizzare behavior connection.