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> Not everyone is a fan of prescription anti-anxiety, antidepressant, or antipsychotic medication (or their side effects, especially). Lots of people go along with the "professional's" prescription, not knowing that these drugs are known to not work very well. They're only used because the professionals think that "they're the best we have at present time," (paraphrasing Harriet Hall MD's quote from skeptic magazine). The thinking is that if the first drugs don't work, they can always "try, try again". Benzodiazepines are great for anxiety, until they stop working after about 4 weeks. Then you're just addicted to them to keep from spiraling down into an anxious hell. SSRI's are the epitome of corporate science. Someone came up with the serotonin-deficiency theory of depression, Wall Street came up with a drug to sell, poof everyone got switched from anti-serotonin antidepressants to the new pro-serotonin patent drugs. There are some negative articles about Prozac in the Boston Globe's archives circa-2000, but their exposé wasn't enough to stop the juggernaut. There is now a page somewhere on Wikipedia that talks about why the SSRI's actually work for a small percentage of the people who take it... More often than not, SSRI's have a tendency to ruin people. Lexapro helped my girlfriend relapse, years ago. "Anti-psychotics" were originally sold as tranquilizers. These drugs are given to difficult patients so that the system can pretend it's helping people, but really these bad drugs make the patient more psychotic over time. Most psychotic patients recover with time and/or sobriety. See my comment history for references. |