Who benefits when you take medications or psychiatrc drugs?

All drugs are potentially addictive, so suddenly stopping the use of any medication or psychiatric drug can be dangerous or even extremely dangerous.

The biggest trouble I see with medications or psychiatric drugs is that people are taking too much of these for too long. Unless you have really good evidence that your prescription is ideal for you, then please:

1. find out more about what the medication or psychiatric drug really does and not just what the manufacturer says it does.
2. talk to your doctor about whether you could have help in gradually reducing the dose.
3. whatever your doctor says about gradually reducing, ask others if this is going to be gradual enough – this is important because so many people accept medical advice to come off a drug too quickly resulting in terrible reactions.
4. Be aware that when you take less you may start to feel great and be tempted to take even less too soon. This is a huge risk, because medications and psychiatric drugs usually sedate and then being less sedated can feel too good! It takes time to adjust and learn to cope, especially when less sedation allows us to feel more normal anxieties and just normal anxieties can be overwhelming if we have not experienced these for a while.

I worked for ‘big pharma’ in the 1980’s. What Gwen Olsen says in these videos is true. She is brave to be saying such things as big businesses do not necessarily want everyone to know how they go about convincing doctors to prescribe some very toxic substances.

A personal note from Roger: When I used to teach about bipolar while believing I would need to take pharmaceuticals for life, my courses were popular and I had plenty of bookings. Now that I share about ‘low-med’ and even ‘med-free’ bipolar, there is very little paid work for me. Telling the truth about medications and psychiatric drugs can lead to reactions from organisations that see no alternative to pharmaceuticals. Overall though, finding a doctor who was supportive of my plan to reduce my intake of pharmaceutical drugs was the right thing to do.

If you are continuing to be unwell and your doctor is saying that you need to keep on taking the same drug at the same dose, or more drugs or higher doses then it is probably time to find a new doctor.