On forgiveness

Forgive your enemies, but don't forget their names...

Tenderly - Billie Holiday

Sunday!

And I've received flowers!
These are Susan's roses and she was kind enough to send me this beautiful photo from her garden. My camera is out of order. I wanted to take some photos from my garden. Six tiny plants on tiny vases in an apartment.
But I love them! Every morning I put the three vases which need sun on the window. One of the plants is blossoming with tiny pink and purple flowers.
Have a nice week!

To the amazing person I met today and is depressed

Today I went to get prescriptions to buy the drugs I have to take due to withdrawal problems. I've met a wonderful person who is fighting depression since 2005.
This person shared with me some sorrows and there comes again that feeling of impotence. I wish I could be a therapist but I don't think I can because it's very hard for me to keep distance from people's sufferings. I feel like crying. Can you imagine your therapist starting to cry with you?
I told this person about my blog and the wonderful people I met because of this blog.
So my dear new friend, if you come here when you feel a little relief I want you to know that I care a lot about you and I have an idea about your feelings.
We all feel alone when depressed. There are many people like you blogging and finding support meeting other blogger buddies.
You know my real name and my face. You can see here that my identity is not revealed.
Many people do the same. This is part of the stigma we share.
If you feel like doing a blog you can write about whatever you want and not write whenever you want.
You told me that you're hating Brazilian's sun.
You can write about it... or not.
I just want to tell you that I know the wonderful person you are and I know all the power you have. And once again: don't feel guilty about being depressed. The person you are is trying hard to conquer but unfortunately depression wins. Cry and do what you can because you will find your way. Not tomorrow, not next week but little by little.
You'll be in my prayers.
Love
Ana

Evergreening - the FDA help on making old drug get new patent

"‘Evergreening’ is the term used to describe the process by which the innovator patents trivial modifications of already-existing drugs which, in turn, extends their monopolies beyond the 20-year period granted for the original patent. It is a common practice in the pharmaceutical industry."

This is from The Economic Times. On this article it's explained how Wyeth have received a new patent to their blockbuster antibiotic Zozin that will expire in 2023 just by adding a purifying agent to its molecule.
Three companies, one from India have taken legal action against Wyeth.

"According to USFDA rules, a company is allowed to withdraw a product from the market only for reasons related to safety and efficacy. In case the product is withdrawn from the market, it is subsequently removed from the approved drugs’ reference list, and therefore no pharmaceutical company can market a generic version of this same drug.

"Zosyn is a safe and efficient drug. This is just a move to extend the patent life of the drug and prevent the entry of generic players in the market," K Raghavendra Rao, managing director, Orchid Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals, told ET."

FDA response to the Citizen's Petition (CP) filed by Orchid Chemicals in response to accusations of 'evergreening' related to Wyeth's re-formulated Zosyn (piperacillin/tazobactam):

10/30/2006

2006P-0442

Orchid Healthcare/Determine that Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Inc. discontinued its previously-approved formulation of the Reference Listed Drug Zosyn (piperacillin and tazobactam for injection), 40.5 gram pharmacy bulk via

Interim Response 04/23/2007

It's amazing that FDA has so little concern in promoting health and a huge concern with pharmaceutical industries profit.

Gaughin and Cézanne

This is Gaughin homage to Cézanne.
On the wall behind the woman Gaughin painted Cézanne's "Still Life with a Compotier", 1882.
It's amazing that even the woman is painted in a posture and with a certain Cézanne's way of portraying women and he signed his painting on the "wall" on the right just below Cézanne's.













Haven't you just seen part of this painting?

The Bipolar Children

While Philip Dawdy is trying hard to raise awareness on pediatric bipolar diagnoses*, a disease that is not still recognized by DSM, and the blogosphere discuss the article "The Bipolar Puzzle" New York Times Sunday Magazine I've decided to search "bipolar children" in Portuguese and in English.
"Children Bipolar"= Results 433,000 and the "Criança Bipolar"= Results 97,900

In the Portuguese search the first answer that appears is a translation of this book review on "The Bipolar Child" : Demitri Papolos, MD and Janice Papalos.
.
It sounds strange to me that this book is the first result because it's not translated into Portuguese. I've also found an article on one of the two Sunday's Brazilians mags Veja where you can read:

"Recently a Harvard University study in US demonstrated that one out of three adults is bipolar."

Isn't it too much? When it comes from Harvard I don't know what to expect.

*"As I noted last week, the paper does not discuss or in any way delineate depression in pediatric cases of alleged bipolar disorder. I find that very strange, particular when it comes to discussing bipolar disorder in teens (still technically pediatric cases). The paper, and one assumes the FDA's definition, is almost entirely focused on what the authors call mania or manic-like symptoms. Despite that focus and a lengthy discussion of relevant literature, the authors never arrive at a firm description of the clinical features of "mania" in pediatric cases. In other words, they never trot out in DSM fashion the symptoms of the alleged disorder nor define its precise duration. If that's science, then the FDA also believes in cold fusion."

Arte y Pico Award - Brillant Weblog Award

Clinically Clueless has honored me with this award that was created this year by an art-lover. According to the explanation of it's creator on her blog Arte y Pico means:

"What is the meaning of the expression: And basically, ironically, it translates into a wonderful phrase in Mexico, “lo maximo.” LOL! It will never find its counterpart in English, but if it HAD to, it would be something like, Wow. The Best Art. Over the top."

Thank you Clueless! Arts unite people and I believe we all are united not only by art but by part of our lives.

According to the rules I have to pick 5 blogs and I also have to choose 7 for the Brillant Weblog Award that Stephany has given me,

I've picked 7 blogs. Some bloggers has already received one of the awards but not the other and I would like to share both awards with them:

Jane
Jazz
Jena
Mark Krusen
Naturalgal
PreciousRock
Stan

This is a way to show how much we care about each other.

Van Gogh and Toulouse Lautrec

Impressionists used to portrait their friends and it was usual to show something related to the artist's work.
This is Van Gogh portrait by Toulouse Lautrec.



This is a 1884 Van Gogh painting. Haven't you just seen this glass and the bottle somewhere else?

The Vioxx case - when the side effect is physically noticeable

The Withdrawal of Vioxx

"In September 2004, Merck announced a voluntary withdrawal of its blockbuster drug Vioxx (a cox2 inhibitor used to treat pain and inflammation) from the market due to concerns of an increased user risk of cardiovascular problems, including heart attack and stroke. As a result, over 6,000 lawsuits were filed in the US and elsewhere by people claiming that they or their family members had suffered heart attacks as a result of taking Vioxx. Subsequently, it was revealed that Merck had known about the risks associated with Vioxx as early as 2000.
Furthermore, the company was accused of manipulating a study in The New England Journal of Medicines, whereby researchers who were sponsored by Merck deliberately erased a table with information about cardiovascular effects before sending it for publication. During the lawsuits two medical professionals testified that they were pressured by Merck not to publish test results that showed increased rates of cardiovascular disease. In early 2005 a study calculated that Vioxx caused between 88.000 and 140.000 cases of heart disease in the US.
In the first US lawsuit, which Merck lost, the jury demanded US$ 229 million in punitive damages. The amount was based on an internal document of Merck that estimated that the company could make US$ 229 million in profits if the publication of warnings on the product could be delayed for four months. Merck did spend about US$ 160 million on marketing for Vioxx annually." p. 11

Source: "Branding the Cure A consumer perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility, Drug Promotion and the Pharmaceutical Industry in Europe"
Published by Consumers International in June 2006.
© Consumers International, June 2006.
This study is available on the site and shows how pharmaceutic industry works. The companies studied included: Abbott, AstraZeneca, Admirall Prodesfarma, Bayer, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson) (J&J), Lilly (Eli), Lundbeck, Menarini, Merck Sharp Dohme, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Nycomed, Orion Pharma,
Pfizer, Roche, Sanofi-Aventi, Schering AG, Schering-Plough and Wyeth.

To Susan

Van Gogh's Paris's roofs

















A photography taken decades after Vincent's painting. Ops... a century after.

"I still become out of control angry living in a world where only a select group of people on the internet even understand the harm done to me."

"A world prepared to let somalia fester for 20 years, and let africa starve, can hardly be expected to suddenly dawn an age of reason in mental health. I don't know."

"When harm lasts thousands of days and grows in intensity, its hard to land again."
by Poe

Whenever I read this comment that Poe left in Furious Seasons I cannot help myself from feeling touched.
I'm fine but I cannot live behind this issue. I don't even think about what has happened to me but... perhaps I'm lying to myself. Why do I get so touched and angry?
Yesterday when I've received the newspaper with the story of the drug-dealer that was arrested in a mental institution I was infuriated. I go to this institute and talk to some patients or family. There's always a story, a sad story.
I think a lot about some of my blog buddies and seeing people suffering without knowing that they are taking drugs that are causing them harm and I cannot do anything...
I don't know. I really don't know. I feel like crying, I get angry... I don't know.

Sunday!!!!!!!

(imagine your beautiful landscape)

I have to breath and be at a quiet and beautiful place keeping my mind in peace. I hope you can do the same.

Drug-dealer was arrested as patient in UFRJ Psychiatric Institute

This is the the news on a Brazilian newspaper published yesterday. The photo is the drug-dealer using the Institute's uniform with it's name on the shirt "IPUB" while taking photos back in jail.
I would really like to know why on earth a drug-dealer was transfered from the penitentiary to a mental institution. For the last three weeks he was being treated as a patient on the Institute of Psychiatry of Rio de Janeiro's University - IPUB. What diagnoses did he receive? Drug addiction? I wonder why a patient have to carry a gun and receive visits to bring him drugs and high amounts of money.
There are people on this hospital being treated for drug addiction and I believe it's harder to quit when having access to drugs on the very place you're receiving psychotropics like Zyprexa to cope with withdrawal symptoms.
Unfortunately I'll have no answer because whatever happens in Brazilian mental institutions have no explanations whatsoever!
This is a very serious case that put in danger patients. People who belong to jail being treated as mental health patients is beyond comprehension and I would really like to receive some explanations from Dr. Marcio Versiani who is the director of IPUB, member of APA, Collegium Internationale Neuro-Psychopharmacolicum (CINP) and of Psycho-pharmacology Commission of the WPA and others.
As I don't think that a director has time to give these explanations any person from the Institute could explain how can it be that a drug-dealer was being treated as a patient in IPUB and when the police went there to arrest him he tried to get his gun.

Brillant Weblog Award

Stephany, you all know her blog Soulful Sepulcher and for her constant work trying to raise awareness on mental health problems, has honored me with this award.
This is a very special award to me because I admire Stephany not only as the brilliant advocate she is but for many of her qualities and character: a woman, a friend, a mother, a writer, the way she finds poetry in simple things, the way she is.
I thank you very much Stephany and I'll take it as a huge encouragement to keep on trying to help you and others to bring to public attention the problems of mental health treatments.

Now it's time to face the hard job of thinking about seven bloggers among so many amazing people.

Thank you Stephany.

Bukowsky - Chinasky and medicine

In the novel "Ham on Rye" Chinasky, Bukovisky alter-ego, receives a treatment for a very serious acne vulgaris that was spread over his back, face and neck.
I've read the Portuguese translation and I wish I had the English version to copy this and other quotations that sometimes I read.
Anyway, during a treatment he was receiving he thought that: "they don't know what to do with me." - I've translated it back.
It didn't matter what physicians would do. They had to do something because doing nothing would be considered as antiprofissional. They experienced on poor people and if it worked they would use the treatment in rich people. If the experiment failed they would have other poor people to use as guinea-pigs.

Irving Wallace - The Seven Minutes and Pharmaceutical Industry

"By comparison with the reality, my story [is] as tame as a holiday postcard." wrote John le Carré in the afterword of his novel "The Constant Gardener" that was turned into a movie by the Brazilian film-maker Fernando Meirelles.
In 1969 "The Seven Minutes" was published. At the beginning of the novel Irving Wallace, in the voice of his narrator, raises the issue of lethal side effects and the power of pharmaceutical industry in covering it all.
The personage Barret lost her mother because she took a drug that caused aplastic anemia and he found out that other people had also died of the same cause but he could not make justice because the laboratory was one of the sponsors of the Institute Barret was working.
These are literary examples but there are many sitcoms, series, movies, songs and others that raises the medication problems.
People don't trust medicine or have many tips to start getting suspicious.

I've stop staring...

...at the wall.

Experiments on Children in America

You can find more here. I've just copied and said nothing for the article speaks for itself.

"Most notable was the MIT and Quaker Oats-sponsored testing at the Fernald School in Waltham, Mass., in which mentally retarded students were fed cereal containing radioactive iron in order to trace iron absorption."

"As recently as 1989-1991, Kaiser Permanente of Southern California and the Centers for Disease Control treated 1,500 poor black and Latino inner-city children in Los Angeles with experimental measles vaccines. The same vaccination was given to infants in Mexico, Haiti and Africa by the World Health Organization. It was discontinued after a large number of those tested died."

"And with the demise of investigative reporting, these human rights violations are rarely published and gain little public notice."

Mengele’s Legacy Lives On: Inhumane Experiments on Children in America
by John W. Whitehead
4/18/2005

"Inevitably, when we hear about humans being experimented on, our minds turn to the Auschwitz concentration camp and the infamous Nazi Angel of Death, Josef Mengele. Seen as immoral and scientifically dubious, Mengele’s work included placing human beings in pressure chambers, freezing them to death, testing drugs on them and castrating them. He also injected children with lethal germs, removed their organs and limbs and performed sex change operations on them. His primary interest was twins. The Nuremberg Code, created as a reaction to the horrors of Mengele’s work, provided directives for human experimentation to protect the experimental subject from even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death. Above all else, the Code stressed that it is necessary to obtain voluntary, informed consent from the patient.

Despite the existence of this code and subsequent medical ethics codes, Mengele’s legacy lives on. This time, the culprit is none other than the United States government through its involvement in numerous questionable and immoral human research programs. Lest you think that the scientific community and government agencies would not carry out immoral experiments on humans, particularly children, think again. For example, the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s forays into human experimentation recently came to light after the Washington Post reported that the EPA had approved a two-year study in which families who use pesticides in Duval County, Fla., would be paid to continue using them and to monitor their children’s exposure. Each family would be paid $970 in order that scientists might discover how children’s bodies absorb hazardous chemicals. Although scientists may not know the full effects of these poisonous chemicals, they do know that children are at greater risk than adults. Yet rather than advising parents to keep children away from pesticides, the government is paying them to poison their children. Thankfully, after U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer (CA) and Bill Nelson (FL) threatened to block the full-time confirmation of Stephen Johnson, the EPA’s acting administrator, if the experiment were not cancelled, Johnson ended the Florida pesticide program on April 8, 2005.

However, the pesticide study is not the only unethical experimentation in U.S. history. It is simply the most recent case. At a prenatal clinic at Vanderbilt University Hospital from 1945-49, nearly 830 poor, pregnant Caucasian women were given a drink containing radioactive iron. They were told the drink would be good for their fetuses. Within an hour, the radioactive material was circulating in the blood of the unborn babies.

The list of criminal experiments does not stop at endangering the unborn. During the 1940s and 1950s, the U.S. government was involved in many radioactivity tests in which humans, especially young children, were used as guinea pigs. Most notable was the MIT and Quaker Oats-sponsored testing at the Fernald School in Waltham, Mass., in which mentally retarded students were fed cereal containing radioactive iron in order to trace iron absorption. However, neither the students nor their parents were informed of the use of radioactive materials or the possible health risks.

From 1948 to 1954, Johns Hopkins conducted an experiment on 582 third graders, testing the effects of Nasal Radium Irradiation. Although it is now known that this procedure places the participant at greater risk for cancer, the government still has not contacted the participants to warn them of this risk. During the 1950s and 1960s, mentally retarded children between the ages of 3 and 11 at Willowbrook State School were intentionally infected with hepatitis. The early test subjects were fed extracts of the feces of an infected patient, and later subjects were injected with the virus in order for researchers to be able to study the hepatitis virus. In the 1960s, the D.C. Children’s Center in Laurel, Md., used mentally retarded children as test subjects. They were given a diet pill called NeoBazine, which contains thyroxin, a drug that causes tremors, nervousness, insomnia and tachycardia. The FDA later found that this drug was not safe for use.

As recently as 1989-1991, Kaiser Permanente of Southern California and the Centers for Disease Control treated 1,500 poor black and Latino inner-city children in Los Angeles with experimental measles vaccines. The same vaccination was given to infants in Mexico, Haiti and Africa by the World Health Organization. It was discontinued after a large number of those tested died.

In a series of articles written for the New York Press in July 2004, Liam Scheff reported on experiments at Incarnation Children’s Center in New York, where AIDS drugs were being tested on HIV-positive children, the majority of whom are orphans. Although the HIV test is not always accurate, once the children test positive, they are considered terminal patients and subjected to debilitating and experimental drugs. Despite the fact that these drugs can be torturous for the children, those carrying out the experiments seem to feel justified in doing so because the children will most likely die anyhow.

For some reason, people are more apt to allow cruelty in the name of medical research. Yet human experimentation makes a mockery of the Hippocratic Oath, which doctors swear to uphold. There is obviously no true moral viewpoint here. The Golden Rule of treating others with the concern and kindness you would like them to show you seems to have fallen on deaf ears in certain sectors of the medical industry. And one can only wonder, “What kind of mind operates on this level?”

When the world learned the truth about Josef Mengele’s horrific experiments, he was immediately branded a monster. However, a few years later, similar experimentation was being sanctioned by the powers that be in America and carried out on unsuspecting American citizens. As the Alliance for Human Research Protection points out, these barbaric practices continue even today, “while government agencies maneuver to weaken legal protections prohibiting the exposure of human beings to experimental drugs, vaccines and procedures without their voluntary informed consent.” And with the demise of investigative reporting, these human rights violations are rarely published and gain little public notice.

Unless we reaffirm our commitment to the dignity and rights of all human beings—and teach this principle in our homes and schools and continue into the highest levels of our public institutions and government, such experiments will continue. And we will have little right to condemn or object to the inhumane practices of other countries.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute and author of the award-winning Grasping for the Wind. He can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

Pfizer's Clinical Trials on Nigerians children without consent

This and other inhumane clinical trials can be found here.

"I think it borders on the criminal that the large pharmaceutical companies, both here and in Europe, are using these poor, illiterate and uninformed people as guinea pigs."
Congressman Tom Lantos of the International Relations Committee

Pfizer Faulted-1996 Clinical Trials In Nigeria: Unapproved Drug Tested On Kids_WashPos
Tuesday, 09 May 2006
"The Washington Post reveals that a shocking secret investigative report by a Nigerian government panel of medical experts concluded that Pfizer Pharmaceuticals conducted an unethical drug experiment in Nigeria in 1996.
For those who thought the film, The Constant Gardner, based on the book by John LeCarre, overstated the criminal conduct engaged in by pharmaceutical companies, a front page report by Joe Stephens of The Washington Post (below) should disabuse them of their innocence.

The secret report (obtained by The Post through a whistleblower) stated that:
"Pfizer never obtained authorization from the Nigerian government to give the unproven drug [Trovan] to nearly 100 children and infants."

According to the report, "five children died after being treated with the experimental antibiotic and others showed signs of arthritis, although there is no evidence the drug played a part. Six children died while taking a comparison drug."

At the time of the experiment, Doctors Without Borders was dispensing approved antibiotics at the hospital; parents were not informed their children were given an experimental antibiotic rather than an approved drug; and the report determined that Pfizer later “concocted and backdated” an approval letter from a Nigerian ethics committee.

The Post reports: “The report said the treatment of two children during the experiment represented unspecified "serious deviations" from the trial's protocol and concluded that those deviations compromised their care. One was a 10-year-old girl identified only as Patient No. 0069, who was given the experimental antibiotic for three days as her condition deteriorated. She died without receiving any other antibiotic.”

Congressman Tom Lantos of the International Relations Committee, said: "I think it borders on the criminal that the large pharmaceutical companies, both here and in Europe, are using these poor, illiterate and uninformed people as guinea pigs."

Until now, a group of 30 Nigerian parents, represented by a U.S. law firm, Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman, failed to obtain justice in a U.S. court. They were rebuffed by a federal court that inconceivably denied it had jurisdiction over a U.S. company that is required by U.S. law to comply with federal research regulations here and abroad.

The Post reports: “Pfizer had told authorities that a Nigerian doctor directed the experiment. The committee, however, found that researchers from Pfizer's U.S. office controlled the trial, and the inexperienced Kano doctor, Abdulhamid Isa Dutse, was the principal investigator "only by name."’
This report has been concealed for five years—a demonstration that pharmaceutical company giants like Pfizer can buy silence and burry their crimes. Indeed, a report in the Baltimore Sun (excerpt below) reveals that industry wide corruption has cost pharmaceutical companies $3.5 billion in fines since 2001. The evidence was brought to public light by whistleblowers who are protected under the False Claims Act of 1863.

The Pfizer-Nigeria case—with its international ramifications--should move Congress to put legal brakes on the despicable activities engaged in by U.S. pharmaceutical companies—both in the U.S. and offshore. The Nigerian report state that Pfizer: “violated Nigerian law, the international Declaration of Helsinki that governs ethical medical research and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.”

In 2005, Constitutional lawyer, John Whitehead, of the Rutherford Institute, put such unethical experiments in their appropriate context:

“Inevitably, when we hear about humans being experimented on, our minds turn to the Auschwitz concentration camp and the infamous Nazi Angel of Death, Josef Mengele. Seen as immoral and scientifically dubious, Mengele’s work included placing human beings in pressure chambers, freezing them to death, testing drugs on them and castrating them. He also injected children with lethal germs, removed their organs and limbs and performed sex change operations on them. His primary interest was twins. The Nuremberg Code, created as a reaction to the horrors of Mengele’s work, provided directives for human experimentation to protect the experimental subject from even remote possibilities of injury, disability, or death. Above all else, the Code stressed that it is necessary to obtain voluntary, informed consent from the patient.

Despite the existence of this code and subsequent medical ethics codes, Mengele’s legacy lives on. This time, the culprit is none other than the United States government through its involvement in numerous questionable and immoral human research programs. Lest you think that the scientific community and government agencies would not carry out immoral experiments on humans, particularly children, think again.”"

Philip Dawdy's work is journalism!

We have to say the obvious sometimes. Furious Seasons has already made history on mental health news but it seems that people forget that it's a journalistic job.
Perhaps the blog format with space for comments makes some people forget it.
I've put on my blog list the description of Furious Seasons - Mental Health News by Philip Dawdy.
My blog is nothing but I believe that you bloggers in US should start making people see the importance of Philip's work as a journalist.
Wikipedia, the site that appears first on any search on diseases, should have an article on Furious Seasons and Philip Dawdy.
Peter Bregguin, David Healy and others have their articles. Ok, they are psychiatrists. But don't journalists deserve an article?

Sunday -

This is the sunrising back on 2003 while I was in a friend's house.
The sun is rising and there are the cat's eyes as a bonus.










Have a nice Sunday.

Do you remember Poe?

For those who visit FuriousSeasons on a regular basis Poe must be in some people's memory. He wrote some long comments and I've saved one of them that he wrote on the post Europe, Seroquel Wants You! for I believe it says a lot about the loneness, social status, family relationship, work and many issues that we, after being under psychiatry care, have to face. He also raises many questions that I also ask myself from time to time and I see other people asking themselves.

"I don't know, life after psychiatry is never the same. It's like a sharp stinking cheese. You can't just pick up your former life dreams because you've seen the dark side."

"I may not be crazy, but I am not an all or nothing kind of guy. At the moment I'm doing nothing. Well actually i'm training in a career separate from mental health so I can work part time on this issue and retire young and do full time activism.

If I wanted to live my label and draw disability for the rest of my life no one could stop me. I'm just sick of the indignity of it all though. In all likelihood I'm gonna work hard in this other sector of the economy and heavily invest 50% of my salary for ten years and then live off an amount similar to disability from my own investments. Kind of like a manufactured endowment to sit at home and write books and do websites or something. Maybe a holiday here and there. I've decided to rent for the rest of my life. The only reason I am even going to get this job and degree is so that none of my money is dependent on me identifying as having a disease.

It will also shut my family up when I go and 'interact' in the 'real world' for some years. And again, when someone renders you disabled, and you continue to act disabled forever, you'll be seen as disabled. Especially when you are completely well apart from psychiatry induced trauma, people will call you a malingerer.

I don't know it's hard to keep the faith for so long. I've got no problem having the courage to stand alone, but when no one who you see face to face understands your radical positions, it is lonely. I've been fine being lonely for many years, as introspection saves your life in mental health, but maybe I'm reaching the end of that loneliness tether.

Maybe I should get a girlfriend. Gotta lose the penchant I have for self abuse first. You see when the state and psychiatry don't care what goes into your body, you end up not caring and you get in habits. I smoke and I've gotta lose my zyprexa weight yet. And more than that I've got to be a nice person to be around for said girlfriend. I'm an angry traumatized dude at the moment. No one wants to hear my crap as they say.

It's so far reaching... I never thought I'd have to watch grandparents die with them in tacit disagreement with me on the issue so close to my heart. And I know all their opinions are formed with nothing but media spin, folklore and myth. So I'm left wishing someone who is dead could have understood my life. The cascade effects never end with this issue. I'll probably be thinking about the day I pass away. Yet no one will ever pay for it but me.

Tom Szasz and others talked me down from training as a psychologist. There is no money in antipsychiatry unless you write books. I plan on doing a book.

There's no scope for autonomous psychotherapy anymore. Psychology is just the talking branch of psychiatry. All the training is DSM focused, true believers in the notion the distressed human beings have inferior minds, brains you name it. It seemed like a hostile working environment for someone like me. And even if I did start a private practice, which is the only thing I would ever consider doing because managed care is a controlled joke, the people I want to help wouldn't be able to afford to pay me. I'm not about to spend three days marriage counselling to do two days pro bono 'labeled schizophrenic' work. How can you even get access to someone on court ordered forced meds anyway? They are always in control.

I don't know. I'm sort of able to do all my college work over a rapid period of intensity every semester and then cruise round online the rest of the time, when I should be starting my book. I've got most of the research done. Christ I should be getting fit and giving myself the best shot against what the meds have probably done to my heart. My liver is in terrible shape. I have fatty liver. I have ultrasounds and levels done regularly. It's a worry. All from the atypicals. I should stop smoking. But all I see is a negligent silent consenting public content to hang me out to dry for life. And I wouldn't even be alive or have organic neurology to enjoy life if it hadn't been for my own actions... so I kind of am going through a process of 'forgiving' my fellow man in a way. I'm not a total hermit by any means. I do harbor resentment though.

I don't know. I'm actually seeing a psychologist to clean up psychiatry's mess. I still suffer from the problem of deciding how to get over obscene harm done to me that I will never get justice for. I don't know that he is helping. What i'd really like to do is go and meet those freedom center guys but I don't have the cash. I need to actually some guys who have done what I have done.

You can't sue for malpractice when they will just hide behind the subjectivity of diagnoses. You see diagnoses are 'objective' everywhere but in a court room, make that a civil case tort law court room actually.

I still become out of control angry living in a world where only a select group of people on the internet even understand the harm done to me. No validation from family, friends, the law, the state that violated me, it's a tough thing to face and begin your adult life with. All anyone else cares about is 'when are you going to productive in the economy and stop being a slacker'

I've got the potential to do some good things. Things I would actually enjoy. This is the only game in town as far as I am concerned. But alas I will be forced to endure at least a decade of working primarily for money. Hopefully I invest and save extraordinarily well so I can be free to throw into this issue in a big way. I've chosen the most amiable wage slavery I could think of rest assured. But it won't be my labor of love. Mental health activism will always be my labor of love.

I don't know, life after psychiatry is never the same. It's like a sharp stinking cheese. You can't just pick up your former life dreams because you've seen the dark side. I barely know how to enjoy going for a walk in the sun knowing all the harm that is going on around the world to the kids etc..

I really don't know. Mainly I find solace looking at a bird outside, or the sky, and knowing the things I see are coming into my brain unadulterated by a chemical haze. The human world kind of disgusts me.

A world prepared to let somalia fester for 20 years, and let africa starve, can hardly be expected to suddenly dawn an age of reason in mental health. I don't know. I'm having a very weak day today. Very weak. It's good to hear some positive comments from you.

I don't know I can handle it if I see another person get a huge payout for being burned with a hot coffee. As a matter of fact I wish my childhood was spent some other way than being told by the society that those wronged could expect a right to justice. The only reason I 'feel' entitled is because it was drummed into me all my life that people do have a right to free from harm.

When harm lasts thousands of days and grows in intensity, its hard to land again."

Posted by Poe at June 10, 2008 09:58 PM

Philip Dawdy and Zyprexa Chronicles

Philip Dawdy, who has been an activist on bringing public on his site Zyprexa dirty little secrets documents, has just announced that Elli-Lilly will have to unseal more confidential documents.
Philip should consider it as an award because his work makes a difference.
In times when the mainstream media is doing a terrible job it's a relief having someone doing what is being done in Furious Seasons.
In his shy way he has been doing a lot. I said shy? Yes. It's because he's not very good on self-marketing and his writing is not full of anger, bitterness or vindication appeal what makes him more special.
He could be working as a journalist for any newspaper but he rather lives dangerously and is even asking for those who like his job to donate.
I would like to ask for those who are profiting with Zyprexa's but still have a heart to...
donate!
Why not?

Depression as major factor for assisted suicide request

I've just came across with the site Euthanasia Prevention Coalition. I'm for euthanasia and assisted suicide in terminal cases but I've just read this on the site:

• Depression is the most common factor in requests for assisted suicide. Depression can be diagnosed and treated successfully. Requests for assisted suicide is a call for help.

Now I will have to rethink it all not only on assisted suicide but what does it mean depression can be treated successfully. If they've found the treatment I didn't receive the memo.
I'm deeply concerned that the most common factor is depression because there is not only one kind of suicidal ideation and not only one reason why people who are depressed want to die.
Its a very complex issue.
Request for assisted suicide from a depressed person is not a call for help and can be the expression of a desire that vanishes when the person gets better or a decision after years of fight with no relief of ups and downs usually more downs than up.
I'm also thinking about people who are suicidal because of SSRIs that I've talked about here.
According to my experience I had drug induced suicidal ideation, a condition that is still not officially recognized, when I was tapering off Effexor as I have reported on this post. I thought about assisted suicide.
What if I had found it?


I also will have to check this data:

• Sanctioning of euthanasia and assisted suicide (as in the Netherlands) has led to increased use of euthanasia without consent, circumvention of the law, and abuse of the vulnerable.

As I said I'm for euthanasia but this discussion is another topic but as far I'm concerned under some circumstances I want the right not to keep on surviving. I wish this right was respected.

"If after I am free a friend of mine gave a feast, and did not invite me to it, I should not mind a bit. I can be perfectly happy by myself. With freedom, flowers, books, and the moon, who could not be perfectly happy? Besides, feasts are not for me any more. I have given too many to care about them. That side of life is over for me, very fortunately, I dare say. But if after I am free a friend of mine had a sorrow and refused to allow me to share it, I should feel it most bitterly. If he shut the doors of the house of mourning against me, I would come back again and again and beg to be admitted, so that I might share in what I was entitled to share in. If he thought me unworthy, unfit to weep with him, I should feel it as the most poignant humiliation, as the most terrible mode in which disgrace could be inflicted on me."

Oscar Wilde
De profundis

Peter Breggin - Traci Johnson - Drugging children

This is from Independent on October, 2006 when Peter Breggin was in Ireland and I've copied it all because he raises many issues related with drugging children that are still not unfold.
I didn't know that Cymbalta, the antidepressant that Traci Johnson was taking in the clinical trial, was being tested for "stress urinary incontinence" and she was not informed that it was also being tested as an antidepressant.

'The greatest child abuse of our time is the mass drugging of our children'

By Gareth O'Callaghan
Sunday October 15 2006

TRACI Johnson wanted with all her heart to go back to college. She was a tall 19-year-old brunette with stunning good looks, and a spirited, determined young woman.

She was healthy, with no history of physical or emotional difficulties, such as depression. Those closest to her described her as upbeat, an active volunteer and someone who loved life.

She had enrolled as a voluntary participant in a trial to test a new drug for "stress urinary incontinence" for which she was paid US$750 a day - the money she intended to put towards her college fees.

She commenced taking the drug in January 2004. Four weeks later, Traci Johnson hanged herself using a scarf in the shower room.

By local state laws, she was not old enough to legally drink a beer; she could not even rent a car. Yet she was deemed mature enough to decide to take an experimental drug on a daily basis.

The drug she was testing is now a widely prescribed antidepressant.

I am talking to the world-renowned psychiatrist Peter Breggin, who is visiting Ireland this week.

"The real child abusers are my colleagues in psychiatry who have led the way," were his exact words. Then he slowly repeats it.

"They are child abusers. The greatest child abuse of our time is the mass drugging of our children."

Having reflected on the words he chooses to describe doctors who prescribe harmful psychiatric drugs to young children and teenagers in order to "cure" depression or Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder(ADHD), I find he makes sense.

His time in court over many years has honed his ability for instant dramatic effect. He has acted as a witness in defence of individuals who took cases against the giant drug companies they claimed ruined their lives and almost stole their sanity and their will to live.

Many of them were awarded large fortunes in what became highly publicised landmark cases in the States. But, more important than money, they got back their dignity and their identity.

"I've had dozens of cases of anti-depressant-induced violence, suicide, psychosis, mania. In one extreme case, a man knocked down a policeman with his car in order to grab the policeman's gun to shoot himself; in another case, a man drove his car into a barrier in an attempt to kill his wife, whom he thought had an alien lurking inside her; in both cases these were clearly caused by the drugs.

"People become victims of the 'Spellbinding Effect', as I call it, leaving them at the mercy of these drugs because they don't realise they're being harmed; and they can even get a false impression that they're doing better than ever before, when in fact they 'The FDA gave a legal rationale for its silence: "Some clinical trial data are considered 'trade secrets', or commercially protected information, and thus are exempted from release under the Freedom of Information Act"'

have an unrealistic euphoria."

Breggin walks his own talk. It would be difficult to contradict the statements that are flying like a professional boxer's jabs and hooks, because everything he says is based on almost 50 years of well-practised research. But is depression not all about common sense?

"The problem is that the common sense approach, which is also the most profound approach to depression, leaves biological psychiatry high and dry, because [psychiatry] treats people as if they're broken mechanical devices that can be tinkered with by a person who knows much less about the brain than the average mechanic knows about your car.

"They take the most complex subtle human problems - how to find meaningful work, how to find love, how to live in a world full of violence and disappointments, how to overcome childhood experiences of abuse and oppression - all of these subtle difficult problems that are human problems can be resolved through a whole range of human alternatives from counselling to philosophy and religion, and they treat them in the most ignorant way as mechanical issues."

Pharmaceutical companies and many of his erstwhile colleagues have not disguised their contempt for him since the day he stepped out from the elite ranks of his closely guarded profession.

He says that new pharmaceuticals are branded as wonder drugs with certain beneficial properties. When rivals catch up and start making the same claims for their brands, the PR changes and even greater claims are made.

"So it's all games with words, played to influence the public," Breggin claims.

Breggin, who turned 70 recently, has spent much of his professional life criticising what his own profession stands for, namely the trigger-happy tendency on the part of many doctors and psychiatrists to prescribe harmful, addictive drugs for depression - a condition that is far more receptive to a loving, expressive, empathic relationship.

"We know now, and it's shown in scientific research that these drugs do cause addiction, and they predispose youngsters when they get into their 20s to use cocaine because their brains have become conditioned by [named brand drugs] which are in the same class of stimulant as cocaine.

"These drugs, for the first few weeks, usually have a flattening effect on the child's behaviour. They replace spontaneous behaviour with compulsive behaviour. It is the suppression of normal brain function."

HE IS the author of 20 bestselling books; one of them, Toxic Psychiatry (1991), made for tough reading. It was the first time we were told head-on about the dangers of some anti-depressants possibly leading to suicide. It took until 2004 for some manufacturers to accept this and include such a warning on the drug's accompanying instructions leaflet.

He says that some drug companies have "led the way in suppressing critics and research. They control the drug market - they've led the way in that regard. I'm not sure what the answer's going to be, because the battle is so lopsided, but then David did bring down Goliath".

So what's all this scientific stuff about chemical imbalances in the brain? I ask.

"There is no evidence whatsoever that depression is caused by a biochemical imbalance. There is none!" He says it is an idea promoted by certain drug companies.

"The only biochemical imbalances that we know of in the brains of people labelled 'mental patients' are the ones caused by psychiatric drugs and electric shock."

Some anti-depressants, he says, have been dubbed "the magic pills". In the States it was hip and trendy to be "popping" these pills and attending "a shrink".

One in five Irish adults takes Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) anti-depressants (CSO statistics, 2006). That's over half a million people. Are you surprised by such a high figure? I ask.

He sighs. "I was hoping that the Irish had more sense than the Americans - but in this regard it sounds a lot like America. It's a great misfortune, because there's actually very little valid scientific evidence for the effectiveness of these drugs. The way they have gotten approval in the United States is by ignoring all the ways they are no better than a sugar pill, while focusing on the small number of very limited studies that show they are only little better than a sugar pill!

"On the other hand, they cause a lot of harm. They call this the Risk Benefit Ratio. The risk of taking these drugs is rather large; all kinds of physical and psychiatric problems result from taking the drugs, while the benefit is usually small "

Drug companies in the US have paid out millions insettlements.

Breggin was one of the medical experts who evaluated cases on behalf of the claimants, including cases in which individuals died of acute diabetic coma or pancreatitis while being treated with a drug. There have also been lawsuits from people who claimed they suffered severe mental and behavioral abnormalities, including mania, suicidal tendencies, violence, and the onset of a condition called Tardive Dyskinesia (permanent drug-induced abnormal physical behaviour, as a result of taking certain prescribed drugs, characterised by involuntary jerky movements of the face, tongue, jaws, trunk, and limbs).

The drug industry says there is a legitimate concern that the fear surrounding their drugs could mean some patients are not prescribed them. They say it is important that necessary anti-depressant treatments are available to all patients who need them, including children and adolescents, and they say: "Information about the safe use of these products is made publicly available."

Is it really? I don't think so. Seven months prior to the international launch of the drug she was testing, the news of Traci Johnson's suicide started to leak out into small local newspapers around the States. Eventually, it made national headlines. Four others, each diagnosed with depression, also died by suicide while participating in the same trials.

According to an investigation by the London Independent newspaper, all five deaths were "hidden" by the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA gave a legal rationale for its silence: "Some clinical trial data are considered 'trade secrets', or commercially protected information, and thus are exempted from release under the Freedom of Information Act."

The FDA has directed the manufacturers of all anti-depressant medications to add a "black box warning" that describes the increased risk of suicidal ideas and fixations in children and adolescents given anti-depressant medications.

Traci Johnson wasn't suffering from depression. She was part of a clinical test into a drug for stress urinary incontinence. Unknown to her, this drug was also being tested as an anti-depressant. I doubt she might have partaken in such tests if she'd known that nine months later the tablets she'd swallowed would carry a "black box" suicide warning.

Peter Breggin, MD, will speak at a day-long conference entitled 'Healing Depression without Drugs or Electric Shocks', next Saturday, October 21, at the Burlington Hotel, Dublin. Contact Ticketmaster.ie for details

- Gareth O'Callaghan

Another day in paradise

This is not the way I wanted to start September but we are not master of our thoughts. I'm watching Vanessa Redgrave in "The Fever" and I remembered how early I came across with the ugliness of the world.
Many ideas are back in my mind but nothing remarkable so I just stare at the wall hopeless.
From my twenties, time when I thought many changes were about to happen, till now I've seen things get worse and nobody seems to care anymore. I believe that some people don't even pretend not to see, they really don't see.
I will stare for a while not searching for answers, just staring...
to gain strength.