I never thought that I care that much for this blog but during this period I thought I would never be able to login I realized how important it is for me.
I have to thank Google for doing the job.
My g-mail account has nothing but the source that Google left of the person who did it.
I don't care. All I wanted was my blog back. Yesterday I went to bed so sad and first thing in the morning was being online to see if it was recovered.
Here I am. Even though I'm not publishing as much as I did during the first two years this is a very important part of me.
I love seeing light showing it's true colors and we can see it the Newton's way, using a prism, or when all of a sudden a rainbow appears where we are and time seems to stop a little because it is unexpected and very beautiful.
Daniel Fisher from National Empowerment Center went to Mexico to rest a little witnessed one of this moments and had a camera in his hands. He was kind enough to give me the left photo. The right one is at his profile at Facebook.
I first got in touch with him long after starting this blog because I was writing a book and found the article "Reclaiming your power during medication appointments with your psychiatrist" by Patricia Deegan, Ph.D. that I translated to Portuguese and as Patricia Deegan approval I included it at the book - no, never published because there is nothing in Portuguese to give an idea about psych-drugs and pharmaceutical industry is powerful enough to make any effort disappears.
I remember having problems translating the word "advocate". We don't have mental health advocates in Brazil. This is one of the reasons this blog is in English. I would never find people to share ideas and all the research I have is in English. Here I am a self-proclaimed mental health advocate.
To start the week I hope that looking at these rainbows empowers us all.
I know many people with different diseases that got help from marijuana. If you are one of them please, leave a comment telling a little about your story.
Whenever I say it some people think I'm out of the planet.
One family member, 70 years-old, used marijuana to stand pain after having a malign tumor removed. Even taking legal medicines her only relief was marijuana.
Some events of our lives, good or bad, will always be remembered with the same emotion.
I was trying to rest a little and I remembered the time I spent as an inmate for half an hour in a mental institution. I felt like crying.
I have already post and repost it. I'm posting it one more time.
Because of this experience, and also by seeing other people in mental institutions, I have an idea about what does it mean to be in a hospital for mentally ill destitute of any relation with a human being.
But I'm sure it is much more worse than can imagine.
Even asking for prescription puts patients in a inferior condition to those who work at a mental hospital.
It has to stop. For those who are in any mental institution I will pray even if my prayers are not considered strong because I don't go to any church or any spiritual institution.
God Bless you ALL!
"I’ve remembered this “story” yesterday and now I have to tell. I went to a psychiatrist of a mental institution that is in front of my house. He changed all my prescription. I looked at it and said to myself “-This is not a good idea!” But we trust physicians more than our instincts. Now I know I have to trust my instincts more than physicians.
He took away 200 mg of Seroquel and reduced the Efexor dose and changed something I cannot remember. I’ve spent three days without sleeping. On the third day I felt terrible. If I spend 1 day without sleeping I feel as if I was drunk. I don’t function normally and with all my energy. So I went to see the psychiatrist. I was crying and feeling terrible. He looked at me and said “-You have to be hospitalized. I’ll try to find a bed for you.” He didn’t say why I had to be on that place. He just said I had to spend 3 days there. I’ve said I had a dog… lol as if he cares. He finally found the bed and I was taken to the ward by a nurse. I don’t mind and have good relations with people who are in mental institutions. They talked to me with respect and asked “-What are you doing here? What’s your disease?” I don’t know. I smoke and after 20 minutes I felt like having coffee. I went to the door that separates normal people from crazy ones and it was half opened. I asked with a calm voice: “-I would like to have a coffee.” There were two people who were sat with their back towards me. They didn’t reply. I asked again, and again. They didn’t even look back. I started to feel nervous and angry. I said in a louder voice: “-I want to have some coffee.” No reply.
They talked to each other and it seems to me that they were saying something like “-These crazy people are such a bore!” I started to hit the steal door with my ring and I said that I wanted to have a coffee…
It was when one of them said; “-You cannot go out. You’re an intern now.”
I beg your pardon! ?
I hadn’t signed anything claiming I wanted volunteered psychiatrist treatment. I started screaming that I wanted to have the coffee.
All of a sudden a woman appeared. She was a giant for me. She restrained me from my back. I said: “-Wait! I’m not crazy and I’m here…” not a good sentence when you’re on a mental institution ward. A patient said: “-They want to use her as a guinea-pig!” I remember it quite clearly, even the voice. She saved me! Also my dog for I kept remembering she was alone. So I said I wanted to talk to the psychiatrist that had made a questionnaire after I was put on this ward. She had asked me if I… heard voices. That was the first and only time a psychiatrist asked me this question and it gave me the exact measure on how these psychiatrists knowsnothing about anything. You can tell by a person way of expressing and so many other signs whether the person is a psychotic or a neurotic. I can tell! How can it be that a psychiatrist cannot distinguish after years working with these diseases? I can even tell when someone is playing crazy. Yep! There are people on this street that behaves as if they were crazy because of the two mental hospitals we have here. They do it to ask for money.
After the giant finally stopped restraining me – I can tell you that it’s one of the most invasive ways to treat anyone and you feel terrible, you feel as if you are nothing - I’ve got my cell phone and said I was going to call my lawyer. After three minutes the psychiatrist who asked me if I hear voices appeared and I told her I wanted to get out of that place. She said supper was on the way and I don’t remember what else for the door was opened and I went straight home.
I’ve cried, and I’ve cried and I’ve cried… This is such a terrible experience to be restrained. Jesus! If they did it to me because I asked to have a coffee I cannot imagine how they treat people who are passing trough a crisis.
The psychiatrist who told me I had to stay there didn’t appear. I met him for a second time after being put on the ward.
He told me: “-you’ll have to stay here for 2 months.”
I beg your pardon! ? Wasn’t it 3 days?
I took my old prescription and things got back to normal. I slept and felt fine again.
I still see this psychiatrist and I never asked him about it all. I’ve just talked to him when I was feeling fine and went to talk to the psychiatrist who asked me if I hear voices.
I acted like a lunatic. I told her I hadn’t signed anything; and the whole thing was a bad use of power;… I don’t remember…; told the parent with a daughter to be careful with that hospital because… I was very angry to be in a mental institution…. and she got nervous because she knew that it was a huge… mistake? Can we say it is a mistake?
The next section I reported the psychiatrist who had the brilliant idea to put me there. He apologized. At least he apologized.
But I have no idea why all this has happened and it makes me wonder what happen to those people I use to visit on this ward when they are not having sun.
I’ve reported it to the government.
Of course I’ve got no reply."
Image: Street art by Vinchen
Update:
Sorry about the grammar errors. It is very difficult for me to write about these events even in my own language although I'm a good writer and have already published reviews at newspapers. But these events are too hard for me to write. I still didn't write about something I must since the beginning of this blog. I prefer to talk about them aloud but nobody wants to listen. Therapy is done orally and because when writing one has to think differently.
I also made some comments in blogs that are disastrous. I only use "and"... and"... or write one sentence after another. I'm sure it is the source of some smiles... A good effect!
This is the Live Terror Alert widget that you can get at the National Terror Alert. to put at your blog and prepare to take the measures. Please, be in panic and constant fear and buy the products here at Amazon.com
There are other links and brochure to be downloaded here and at other places. I don't have time to write it now because I will prepare myself. PANIC and FEAR is life-saving. See you when the.... arf.. arf...
It is perfect for me. I always thought that living too long is not a very nice idea. So 67 is perfect.
We have to congratulate the anti-smoke propaganda. They did a very good job indoctrinating people to believe that cigarettes is the origin of all diseases and made those who smoke being discriminated and hated as if we were criminals.
The second-hand smoke theory was one of the most amazing ideas to spread the panic and fear and the arguments are incredible. A friend of mine said that lung cancer didn't exist before smoking. I could not believe what I was listening...
If they did the same effort to something that is really dangerous and lethal it would be good.
Please, if you are planning to comment saying that smoking is really a threat and blah blah...
spare your time. I don't buy it. I rather buy my daily pack of cigarettes.
If you smoke you can calculate when you will die. :)
Gianna Kali published the last post of her blog Beyond Meds. After blogging for three years Gianna have approached all important issues related to the psych-drugs harms not only by sharing her story, searching for the truth and also by gathering many people that for a period commented at her blog. It is quite a work Gianna has done quitting all spych-drugs she was taking, she still experiences withdrawal symptoms even after months out of them, and leaving such a research she did to heal herself. I'm glad she is closing the blog and I really hope that Google doesn't put this valuable lessons to the last pages. I really hope she finds peace after all she has been through and have her voice heard. This is how she ended this phase of her life:
Thank you to all my readers for being part of this transformative journey with me. It’s time for me to move on and do other things.
This blog, depending on which ranking system you look at, is between number 1 and number 5 or so of non-pharma funded mental health blogs. I feel good about leaving and that the work has been a success.
The blog will remain online as a resource. I will come and do a post that helps orient new comers to the blog in general and to the navigation of the archives sometime in the not too distant future.
For now simply go to the tabs above for some navigation. I will try to improve access to more parts of the blog as I have time.
A flower from our yard -- HUGE! That is my finger for scale
It did cost a lot of work and last week I wrote several messages at the discussion of Bloggers Unite asking them either to put the event at the list or deleting it. They finally deleted. Hope next time they pay attention in the events they are approving. Great! I'm honored not to have this day there because I changed my mind about Bloggers Unite after paying a close attention at their site. Nothing left to say. I will celebrate publishing this video I just found out at Bob Fiddaman's blog. I still didn't see it till the end. The reason I decided to see this one is because it was at Charles Medawar site, Social Audit, that I found many testimonies of people in hell withdrawing Effexor, Paxil/Seroxat, and others. Unfortunately this forum is not open for the public now. I did read it en 2005 and went till 2006. My withdrawal story is there. I have already published it here. I'm moved seeing Charles Medawar for the first time. He did a great work not only at Social Audit but he was the only "layman" that was part of the review of the UK Parliament: ""The Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry" published in 2005. I have already published some of the topics they raise. Maybe I will republish them. I will watch the entire video now. It's about the responsibility of physicians telling their patients the at SSRIs are addictive when they prescribe. The hell of withdrawal is not told to anybody. Hiding it is addictive is no longer acceptable. There are videos at Youtube of patients that tell their experiences. But although they do it to help others... they are... anecdotal evidence. I will never understand a science that consider the object that it's studying as anecdotal evidence. Why do they trust people when they are answering a form to join a clinical trial and not when they report that they felt, let's say, dizzy? No idea! No idea whatsoever.
I believe that many bloggers have received this e-mail:
2010/8/25 Brian Rubin <> Dear Ana,
Congratulations! On behalf of Health Insurance Online -- a leading provider of health insurance resources and information -- we would like to present you with our Inspiration Award. You can find the code to place the award onto your website below:
http://www.online-health-insurance.com/images/ia/icon_ia_2_340x390.jpg This award was created for people we feel have an inspiring story of recovery and survival, whether physically, mentally or emotionally. After reviewing your website and reading your inspirational story, we feel your story instills a feeling of hope in us all. Therefore, we want to recognize your story so that others may also feel inspired and hopeful in their own recovery and survival. As a recipient of this award, you can place our included badge anywhere on your website. You can also read more about the award and how it was created on our website:
As a courtesy, we would be delighted if you would please place a short blurb about us on your website in the hopes that we can educate more people about health insurance and health care reform. Please use the code included below:
Health Insurance Online
A dedicated and comprehensive health insurance portal offering a variety of ways to learn about and acquire cheap health insurance. Offers a wealth of information on health insurance from books and articles.
Thank you for your time, congratulations on your award, and please don't hesitate to write me if you have any questions. Have a great day, and we wish you the best.
Sincerely,
Brian Rubin (emphasis mine)
I don't think that these people understand the whole significance of corruption or bribery: Wikipedia:
Bribery, a form of corruption, is an act implying money or gift given that alters the behavior of the recipient. Bribery constitutes a crime and is defined by Black's Law Dictionary as the offering, giving, receiving, or soliciting of any item of value to influence the actions of an official or other person in charge of a public or legalduty. The bribe is the gift bestowed to influence the recipient's conduct. It may be any money, good, right in action, property, preferment, privilege, emolument, object of value, advantage, or merely a promise or undertaking to induce or influence the action, vote, or influence of a person in an official or public capacity.
Okay, they claim they will only be delighted if I put an ad at the blog and corruption is not associated with citizens. But if you want to recognize the work of others do it without soliciting anything in return. It seems to me that people are so used to "give and take" that they forget that some people don't like it. Or I'm very susceptible. But this badge awardhas logo of the company. This is another subliminal propaganda!
PS: At their site they ask:
"If you know someone who has an inspiring story of recovery please send us an email @ rubin@online-health-insurance.com. Tell us where we can read the recovery story online and why you think the person deserves an award. Thanks for your help.
Please don't give the names of your friends. Foes? No...
My e-mail Inbox is a complete mess because I don't delete what I don't open and, I have to confess I don't like e-mails.
So I have to apologize to Erin Brokovich for not publishing her answer one month ago. This is the first important e-mail I didn't see because I always check the names. Now I realized that her e-mail is in the middle of a bunch of spams. I will have to change my method and delete one by one.
Anyway, I wrote this post about her and Cymbalta and this is her answer to a comment I left at her site, yes I'm not blogging but I'm always working on this subject and will never stop. Well this is what she wrote:
RE: Fan Feedback | Website Message From Ana
Caixa de entrada
X
Responder
Erin Brockovich
para mim
mostrar detalhes28 Jul
Hi Ann,
Thank you for writing. I am getting your emails and yes, I am watching and looking at cymbalta. I have had hundreds write to me and when that happens it is a flag that something is going on with the drug. I am working with several folks as to how we can address this issue outside of litigation, which none is pending now, but running everyone through the court system can take years and doesn’t always help. I am familiar with many of these medications on the market and watch closely as problems develop. We are trying to ascertain more information and see what it is that can be done.
Please look to my site in the future, many great things in regards to information, drugs, networking, advice column, resources, etc., are being built now for the site. It is lengthy and time consuming but we hope will provide more information to those seeking it.
I will keep you informed as we know more. I still do my work for causes today as I always have and just for your information, being a celebrity is the last thing on my mind, it does no one any good. I am still trying to help many and can’t always answer their questions or have information available as soon as they need it.
Funny, I can send it as a fan but not as answering the medicines Watch list. Fan? Do you want fans? Dear Lord! Hi Erin, Do you still have doubts about Cymbalta? All the SSRIs are poison. I was making a research about you my blog Hella Heaven but Ill not do it now. Please, google SSRIs side effects or withdrawal symptom or go to my by blog justAna and look at the blog list. Furious Seasons is the best blog about it all. Books by psychiatrists were already written and as you claimed you had suffered panic attacks I believe you know at lest side effects and withdrawal from a benzodiazepine. I dont know but the way this drugs are being put at your side looks like propaganda if the person dont read the blurred and tiny letters. Accutane? everybody knows about its problem. Not even physicians hide them. Hope you didnt become one celebrity without a cause. Im quite disappointed and will share it with my friends. Im sure it is not you who will read it. Thank you for your attention. Ana
Ana from Brazil
Phone: No phone entered
We know what Erin can do with data she collect from people.
I will go back, surely!
Who will be the next actress? :)
Erin,
Sorry about the celebrity provocation but we have to be sure about the intentions of people today. Those who are in this war of raising awareness, I do nothing compared to what other bloggers are doing, have been casted so many stones that many end up not believing many people.
Still, your story is an inspiration for many and Erin Brokovich is at the list of movies of many mental health advocates.
I just found this post at my drafts. I saved it in June 2008 and didn't publish. It's amazing but it could have been written today:
don't feel sad. don't cry... it's not normal feeling sad you are in pain or perhaps sad because you have cancer or diabetes... don't cry!
Please, there's some help for you right here. I hope it helps.
The link is to Philip Dawdy's post: Depression Linked To Absolutely Everything and the list in long: "heart disease, cancer, obesity, chronic pain, racism, poverty, smoking and so on have all been tied in with depression,..." Don't these people have any idea of the mess they are creating? This banalization of depression will affect people who are really depressed. Those people who suffers from Major Depression or Bipolar Depression. It's hard hearing those famous advices: "-You don't want face your problems and is using this disease as an excuse to be in bed all day." "-You're lazy." "-Take a walk and you'll feel fine." When we are waiting for a "campaign" to explain people who are around a depressed person that it's not a question of wanting to feel this way they only gives more and more reasons for a total lack of comprehension about what depression really is. Shame on you! I wonder what Einstein would say. We have to remember that despite being a pacifist he witnessed, and was even advised to write the letter that led to Manhattan Project, with great distress his theory being used in the wrong way. If he saw all of what is being done under the name of science(?) he probably would stop his work and use his name fighting these people who are using his field in the most infamous way. Science is wonderful! But what these people are doing has nothing to do with science. Real science would never ever put on the market drugs based on hypotheses. Would never say "-It works this way" when they are far from understanding what the problem really is. Stigma and more stigma. And there it goes more and more loneliness and depressed people will have to keep on hiding their feelings and cry themselves till sleep alone. Thank you JAMA, NIHM and all of you!
I have expressed here my fear that Bloggers Unite would not accept the event "International Day in Memory of SSRI Fatalities" created last February since NIDA is one of their sponsors.
They accept but a very strange situation is happening: the event is visible but is not at the list of events of Bloggers Unite.
I went to the discussion of Bloggers Unite and this is the answer:
Objective: Raise Awareness about SSRIs violent behavior that has already killed many people and changed some people's lives that took these medicines.
SSRIs are being prescribed not only for those who are suffering Major Depression but also for people who are in distress because of life problems. These antidepressants such as Prozac, Effexor, Paxil/Seroxat, Zoloft, Cymbalta and many others promote serious side effects, are very hard to withdraw and many people have already reported the hell they have to go through while tapering them. One of the most terrible side effects, also a withdrawal symptom, is suicidal ideation that is not triggered by the disease that has led physicians to prescribe them but it's drug-induced. Traci Johnson, a 19 years-old healthy volunteer hanged herself during Cymbalta clinical trials and was found dead in 7th February 2004 That is why this is the date for the International Day in Memory of SSRI Fatalities. Violent behavior also leads people who are taking SSRIs, lost dosages or are withdrawing to harm other people as is demonstrated by reports of people who have killed induced by antidepressants. Patients are not informed of these problems and many others like the teratogenic effects that has already been reported by some women who took SSRIs during pregnancy. Although there are many testimonies at the Web FDA, physicians and laboratories do not consider them as a source to Post Marketing Surveillance Trial which is the 4th phase of clinical trials. They just claim that these testimonies are only anecdotal evidence and not scientific data. These are some of the aspects of this serious problem mental healthy and all the population of the world are facing: medicines that can make you kill yourself or others among other side effects. It has already gone too far. People have the right to be informed about all of these harms and also that the theory that SSRI's antidepressants were done is an hypothesis that is questioned by serious psychiatrists. I hope we can make people know what kind of problems they are facing when prescribed a SSRI antidepressant.
This International Day in Memory of SSRI Fatalities is an idea whose time has arrived. Almost every family in every country in the world has been touched by the horrors of these drugs.
At www.SSRIstories.com there are over 3,600 cases from the media which mention a tragedy that occurred while taking an SSRI or SNRI.
Thank you to all those who are willing to join in for this "International Day".
Thank you for joining and raising awareness. I hope that together we can make a difference and make more and more people know about side effects and withdrawal problems related to antidepressants SSRIs. It is a very hard job but I believe we can do it.
Yes, you did read it correctly. Mourning a relative or loved one who just died? You will not be considered normal. You will be a person who suffers major Depressive Disorder. In other words: you will be prescribed all antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, benzodiazepines... all the cocktails people with major depression try.
It is at The New York Times in an article by Allen Frances former emeritus professor at Duke University:
"Turning bereavement into major depression would substitute a shallow, Johnny-come-lately medical ritual for the sacred mourning rites that have survived for millenniums. To slap on a diagnosis and prescribe a pill would be to reduce the dignity of the life lost and the broken heart left behind. Psychiatry should instead tread lightly and only when it is on solid footing.
There is still time to keep the suggested change from entering the D.S.M. 5, which will not be published until May 2013. The task force preparing the new manual could adopt a more cautious and modest estimation of the reach of psychiatry and its appropriate grasp."
January, 31, 2009 I did a post where they wanted to diagnose caffeine withdrawal and in December, 2009 another post about psychiatrists, including eminent retired Robert Spitzer and Allen Frances, that proposed an end to the DSM:
"Some of the harshest criticisms have come from those who led previous revisions of the DSM, in 1980 and 1994. In July, Robert Spitzer and Allen Frances, both now retired, wrote a stinging letter to the APA, accusing it of planning unworkable changes and making grandiose claims. In a separate editorial in the magazine Psychiatric Times, Frances complained that most of the authors are university-based researchers who are cut off from typical doctors and patients.
Spitzer and Frances also criticise the fact that members of the various DSM-V work groups have had to sign confidentiality agreements. "The main problem is that we don't know what they're doing," says Spitzer. The APA says the confidentiality agreements are to stop the manual's authors writing their own diagnostic handbooks alongside the official manual. Kupfer points out that discussion does go on: work groups proposing major changes debate their ideas in papers and at meetings. "We've done everything we can to encourage it," he says."
It seems that they have been silenced and I have no idea why there are so many good psychiatrists that are very aware of the harms their patients are experiencing under these drugs don't unite and say NO to all these absurds. I don't think they will ever listen to their patients and only their peers seems to have the power to make any difference. Psychiatrists of the world, unite and try to make some sense to your field.
One of the problems with blogs is that when the person stops it seems that all that was done disappear and the subject is not on the bloggers' mind any longer.
Not my case. I'm still talking to people telling about all I had to learn about psych-drugs and their harms and quite often I talk about one of my blogger friends and address to their blogs.
It is a subject that will always be part of my agenda because what is happening is something so serious that it can be considered crime against humanity - search SSRIs crime against humanity and you will find answers.
I miss my blog friends and once again I apologize for not visiting you all. For the moment I have to take care of myself and if I blog about this issue I always get very sad and angry.
But I'm here, will never forget and try to do my best to advice people about all this scandal that medicine, not only psychiatry, has become. But, yes, psychiatry is causing the most appalling harms.
Thank you all that are there daily blogging about these horrors. You are all heroes.
I know many people with different diseases that got help from marijuana. If you are one of them please, leave a comment telling a little about your story.
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