Email to Melvyn Sterling I've send on 2005 on SSRIs harms

I've just found an e-mail I wrote to Melvyn Sterling on 7/2 2005 during the Effexor withdrawal. It took me 18 months to withdraw and this is the month 12 of the withdrawal process. Jesus! I was very angry and was searching everywhere.

I first left this comment on SocialAudit:

"As Charles Medawar has alerted the House of Commons Health Committee have published The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry.

I believe everybody should take a look at this report for it has important contribution on withdrawal symptons. Among other informations there is:

"The suicidality problem was first investigated in 1990/1; withdrawal reactions were investigated in 1993, 1996 and 1998. In 2002, the MCA organised a further intensive review of both problems. This review was abandoned in April 2003, following criticism about conflicts of interest involving key figures on the review team."

This is a clear proof that our suffering is not only the result of the insane medicine. It is also a political issue and we have to do something about it.

Reuters, the American agency supports that:

"Aggressive efforts are now underway by a powerful consortium of medical-pharmaceutical self-interest groups among them, the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) to overturn the hard won ‘Black Box’ suicidality warning label on antidepressant drugs." (www.ssricitizen.org)*.

The chairman of AMA is Melvyn Sterling from the University of California. Almost every month the Reuters Health site reports what is being done by these Associations and the University of California. They are always claiming that there is no problem whatsoever. It’s safe for children, teenagers and for us too.

Writing to these Associations, and people like this Melvyn Sterling, is not a very big task. At least it gives us some relief."

*It was an amazing site that is no longer online.

This is the e-mail to Melvyn Sterling:

"One day your whole world falls apart due to a lot of problems you had. You search for help and the psychiatrist prescribes you clonazepam. Years go by and you. as your therapy is doing you good, search for help to get rid of the clonazepam. Due to the difficulty of withdrawal effects, he prescribes an antidepressant. You feel terrible and change the psychiatrist. He tries different antidepressants. You stay on one although you feel terrible and the side effects are tremendous. So another psychiatrist prescribe another one. Side effects are almost the same. But you keep on believing that you have a disease. You stay in bed, get really depressed like never before in your life. Feel like a zombie. Your family can’t stand you no longer. You loose your friends, job, money, have no more bank account. And you are feeling so miserable and does not feel your body no longer. Than you start thinking that maybe the problem is due to the antidepressant. Start to take the drug away. You enter in a state of complete anguish, despair and you start searching in the Internet. Then you find out that there are many people suffering just like you and that it will takes a long time to get rid off a drug called antidepressant that ironically brought you into depression. The withdrawal effects are unbearable. And you find out that these drugs are powerful and are on the market not because they are good for your mental health. You find out that the USA Pharmacological Industry and some Associations like, oh my God, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, American Medical Association's Council on Scientific Affairs, the University of California, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, even Mr. Bush father who was once on the Elli-Lilly board, take part on a powerful consortium of medical-pharmaceutical self-interest groups.

These Associations, that are supposed to take care at least of American citizens, don’t even care if children are committing suicide. Even when the evidences are everywhere even when the UK House of Parliament have published a report The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry where you can read: "The suicidality problem was first investigated in 1990/1; withdrawal reactions were investigated in 1993, 1996 and 1998. In 2002, the MCA organised a further intensive review of both problems. This review was abandoned in April 2003, following criticism about conflicts of interest involving key figures on the review team." but fortunately they had the guts to go on and publish this crucial report where you can read among other things: “… SSRIs Prozac and Seroxat are the best-known examples of SSRI and related antidepressants, but others are widely used. The introduction of SSRIs led to a threefold increase in antidepressant prescriptions between 1990 and 2000. Prescriptions for antidepressants now match those of the benzodiazepine tranquillisers at their peak, 25 years ago. Almost from the outset, there was concern about two main problems with SSRIs. First, there was suspicion (initially centered on Prozac) that these drugs could induce suicidal and violent behaviour – infrequently, but independently of the suicidal thoughts that are linked to depression itself. There was also concern (centred on Seroxat) about a risk of dependence; some users found it impossible to stop taking SSRIs because of severe withdrawal symptoms. The MCA/CSM formally reviewed these problems on several occasions.”

Fortunately some countries, in this globalized world have some common sense left.

But you who are in the high position in USA insists in its policy of spreading horrors around the world even at the expenses of others people heath, as long as the billions of dollars goes to your country. Only when you loose health you know that this is the most important thing in the life of any human being. Without it, whether physical or mental, you are unable to do anything. Some of you, for I truly believe you are human beings, must have a disease of any kind. Imagine if you cannot find help or even paying for the best physician of your problem you receive a wrong treatment.

I said I truly believe you are human beings because the rationality of this species is the only one I know that can inflict pain in others without any guilty and without any reason threat to it’s life. You have Aushwitz, Gulag, Abbu Graibb, Guantanamo Bay as an example of my point.

What you are inflicting with the so-called antidepressants is not different from physical torture. It’s mental torture. And it aches, it aches like hell. You have affected me and many others in my body, you know very well what it does with our bodies, my mind, my dignity and morality in the eyes of others. For to some people. I cannot work. I’m no more reliable. You know about the stigma mental problems suffer. Unfortunately, due to your work, WHO is not able to launch it’s campaign about mental diseases.
I’ll stay here, in Brazil after one year and two months tapering the antidepressant and still have to get rid of the last pill. Completely stigmatized by my family, incapable of working for it’s impossible to work when you are taking away these drugs, that costs absurdly for American citizen and you can imagine having to pay these fortune due to the impossibility of getting out of these drugs in a country like Brazil. But “God Bless America” and I wish you all good mental and physical health. I hope you never have a friend or relative who shot someone due to the effect of triazolam, or any SSRI, SSNI. I wish you will never know anybody who had a relative who committed suicide. I wish you all a great deal of happiness although and a good use of the money you are profiting. Unfortunately money, when becomes not a mean but an end causes more distress than happiness for those who possesses. Can you say you are a happy person? Unfortunately it make lives like mine more difficult but for nothing in this world I would trade my dignity, my honor, my self-respect for any amount of money. You can laugh. Words like ethics, even mercy has no sense and will never make part of your dictionary.

PS Please do not answer me trying to say that you are right that what I’m saying has not been proved or that the University of California made experiments that are undeniable. My IQ still have three digits. You are fooled me once and it is enough. Now you are fooling yourselves and the average narrow-minded media class that does not search for answers by their own. Some people have to be told about everything. But the truth will be uncovered. I assure you.

I don't have a clue why I've got no reply! :)