He's horrible off his medication! That shows that he needs it!

I think a lot of people who submit to psychiatric drugging are quite ignorant about withdrawal symptoms, especially those who are close to the 'afflicted', and thoroughly scared. To those who believe that the person is the problem, it fits neatly into their world view to attribute such break downs to someone being 'fucked up' because they have a mental illness that only being on the medication 'cures'.

The reality of this is very, very different. Sudden withdrawal, missing a dose, or in some cases even taking a dose at the wrong time has been shown to have moderate to severe side effects (beyond what may already be present), often a much worse version of the persons' previous behaviors that ended up with them on drugs and/or 'hospitalized' in the first place. Peter Breggin, in 'The anti-depressant fact book' details this quite well. One, when withdrawing from psychiatric drugs should always do such in a slow manner as to not create a system shock when a chemical is withdrawn from the body.

First off, 'scientists' don't even know the functions of chemicals such as Serotonin in their entirety. Second of all, the trials to justify the mass drugging of the public have been shown time and time again to be fatally flawed through splicing/pooling of data, renaming, and other treachery. In an area poorly understood and highly subjective, an accurate scientific perspective is virtually impossible, particularly when huge conflicts of interest are at work. The brain does compensate for these additional chemicals in often negative ways that go awry when usage is stopped suddenly. The reality is that these 'reputakes' are often biologically similar to 'illicit' street drugs at equivalent dosage, it is just that such street drugs are usually taken at much higher dosages, and have a shorter half life, thus more addictive potential. However, some psychiatric drugs have a very short half life, thus their addictive potential remains fairly high.

I would like to conclude this blog post with a bit of insight into the 'stigma' surrounding mental illness. Many people believe that the way to erase this stigma is through more 'bio-psychiatry' and understanding of the 'workings of the brain'. I find the opposite; that these types of beliefs actually increase the stigma surrounding the subject. The reasons? It should be obvious. When the person is blamed, others are absolved of responsibility (including institutional society itself), and the observer is free from having to relate to said person with empathy and understanding. They also conceive the notion that this cannot happen to them, and that such a person has no justification for the way they feel, rather is a 'chemical monster' or 'genetic mutant'. It's a tricky way to turn people against each other; to encourage those who seek guidance and solace to shoot themselves in the foot by subtly encouraging more labeling and drugging.