Antidepressants

As the year 2022 draws to a close, it looks like the grand total of my posts for the year will reach only nine, a marked decline from my record number of posts (38) in 2021. I've written about the reasons for this decline in a post titled Heading Where? on October 24th. The future looks bleak and inevitably many people will turn to medication to assuage the reality of their bleak lives. 

In this regard, I came across several articles that concern antidepressant medication. The headline for one article screams: Scientists Find No Evidence That Depression Is Caused by “Chemical Imbalance” or Low Serotonin Levels. The article goes on to say that:

After decades of research, there remains no clear evidence that serotonin levels or serotonin activity are responsible for depression, according to a comprehensive review of prior research led by University College London (UCL) scientists ...  

“The popularity of the ‘chemical imbalance’ theory of depression has coincided with a huge increase in the use of antidepressants. Prescriptions for antidepressants have risen dramatically since the 1990s, with one in six adults in England and 2% of teenagers now being prescribed an antidepressant in a given year. “Many people take antidepressants because they have been led to believe their depression has a biochemical cause, but this new research suggests this belief is not grounded in evidence.”

... Professor Moncrieff said: “Our view is that patients should not be told that depression is caused by low serotonin or by a chemical imbalance, and they should not be led to believe that antidepressants work by targeting these unproven abnormalities. We do not understand what antidepressants are doing to the brain exactly, and giving people this sort of misinformation prevents them from making an informed decision about whether to take antidepressants or not.”

Such articles will be ignored by the majority of GPs who go on happily prescribing the same old medication. Even if, improbably, the general public lost faith in Serotonin-based antidepressants, BIG PHARMA will come up with new varieties of drugs to treat depression. For example, a recent article's headline touts "Scientists Have Developed a New, Better Antidepressant". It goes on to say that:

According to a recent study, a new small-molecule compound that regulates the firing of serotonergic neurons has a fast-acting antidepressant effect. The results pave the way for the development of a new class of treatments for major depressive disorder (MDD) and other difficult-to-treat mood disorders. MDD is one of the most common mental disorders, affecting hundreds of millions of individuals globally.

The majority of today’s antidepressants target the serotonin transporter (SERT). These drugs, however, are limited. SERT-targeted antidepressants not only take up to 4 weeks to take effect, but they may also have serious side effects, including suicide, and only a percentage of individuals who take them recover from depression following treatment. While ketamine has been considered as an alternative, its potentially addictive properties as well as the danger of schizophrenia have aroused concerns.

The compound is being tested on hapless mice at the moment but humans trials will surely follow. In the meantime, another article warns of the dangers of current medication:  "Researchers Warn Antidepressant Use Creates Physical Dependence – “Notoriously Difficult to Quit” ". The article says:

Patients who have taken antidepressants for years should consider coming off the medication. However, researchers say they will likely face difficult and even dangerous withdrawal symptoms due to a physical dependence.

Patients who stop taking their medication often experience Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome (ADS), which includes flu-like symptoms, insomnia, nausea, imbalance, sensory disturbances often described as electric shocks or “brain zaps,” and hyperarousal.

Older, first-generation antidepressants often come with additional risks for more severe symptoms, including aggressiveness, catatonia, cognitive impairment, and psychosis. Discontinuing any antidepressant also carries a risk for gradual worsening or relapsing of depression and anxiety, as well as suicidal thoughts. 

Meanwhile Hugo of Hugo Talks just uploaded a video about the use of Ayahuasca in pill form to treat depression. Micro-dosing with LSD is gaining popularity and legalisation. Clearly our reptilian overlords do not want us drug-free and clear-headed as the coming dystopia envelops us. A few will be but probably not enough to turn the tide.

Rudolph Steiner was prescient when he wrote:

“I have told you that the spirits of darkness are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination toward spirituality out of people’s souls when they are still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way through the living body. Today, bodies are vaccinated against one thing and another; in future, children will be vaccinated with a substance which it will certainly be possible to produce, and this will make them immune, so that they do not develop foolish inclinations connected with spiritual life – ‘foolish’ here, or course, in the eyes of materialists. . . . “. . . a way will finally be found to vaccinate bodies so that these bodies will not allow the inclination toward spiritual ideas to develop and all their lives people will believe only in the physical world they perceive with the senses. Out of impulses which the medical profession gained from presumption – oh, I beg your pardon, from the consumption [tuberculosis] they themselves suffered – people are now vaccinated against consumption, and in the same way they will be vaccinated against any inclination toward spirituality. This is merely to give you a particularly striking example of many things which will come in the near and more distant future in this field – the aim being to bring confusion into the impulses which want to stream down to earth after the victory of the [Michaelic] spirits of light [in 1879].” ~Rudolf Steiner

The Polypill

Wonderful name and another potential triumph of modern medicine. What is the polypill? Well let this October 13th 2022 article from https://medicalxpress.com/ explain.

Global health has paid a deadly price for not using simple, low-cost blood pressure lowering drugs, statins and aspirin widely in the form of a single pill, also known as the polypill, say two leading cardiologists in a commentary published in The Lancet. Widespread availability of polypills would substantially reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and be affordable for most people globally, says their call-to-action.

"Despite substantial scientific evidence of the high effectiveness, safety and affordability of the polypill, few such combined products are available, and in the few countries where they are available, use is low," says Prof Fausto Pinto, President of the World Heart Federation.

"This systemic failure is a global tragedy, as many premature deaths from CVD could be avoided," says Prof Salim Yusuf, Executive Director of the Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) and Professor Emeritus of Medicine at McMaster University.

About 54 million people suffer from cardiovascular disease every year—a third of them die from CVD—with 80 percent of them living in low-income and middle-income countries.

Most heart attacks and strokes afflict people who have no prior CVD, meaning that primary prevention of the first heart attack or stroke is essential. Secondary prevention for people who already have CVD is also important but does not have the same impact.

"The current strategy for primary and secondary prevention of CVD has only been modestly successful in most countries, including high-income countries. Even in these countries, fewer than half of patients with prior CVD, and fewer than 20% without prior CVD, receive effective preventive treatments," says Prof Yusuf.

The polypill, also known as fixed-dose combination (FDC) therapy—with the combination of blood pressure lowering agents, a statin for lowering LDL cholesterol, and low-dose aspirin—was proposed in the early 2000s as a means to reduce CVD substantially and at low cost.

"The answer is now clear and resounding, with data from three independent, large, and long-term trials in primary prevention and one in secondary prevention showing its life-saving significance," says Yusuf, whose various publications have shown that heart attacks and strokes were cut by 35 to 50 percent by using a polypill.

"It is time to use the polypill widely to save millions of lives each year," says Prof Pinto. He and Prof Yusuf recommend the following new strategies:

Encourage large pharmaceutical companies to invest in developing and testing polypills—in particular, newer polypills with larger blood pressure lower effects (such as combining low doses of 3 or 4 classes of drugs with statins and low doses of aspirin). Manufacturing with generic components, and marketing polypills at locally sensitive prices, would ensure affordability while maintaining profitability for the companies, thereby enhancing use by the majority of people around the world.

Include polypills in the WHO's Essential Medicines List, and in guidelines for both primary and secondary prevention of CVD is an important next step. "This would encourage governments and insurance companies, especially in low-income and middle-income countries to include in their formularies, and clinicians to recommend its use," Pinto and Yusuf write.

Combine the polypill with lifestyle advice for CVD prevention delivered by trained non-physician health workers (NPHWs)—not meant as a replacement for physicians who can use their advanced skills on managing individuals with more complex conditions—thus a combined strategy that would help many more people.

Clearly the time has never been more opportune to push these polypills given the "fallout" from the Covid vaccinations. The time-worn trick is being played again, exacerbate an existing problem via pharmaceuticals and then propose a pharmacological solution. To quote from the article:

Encourage large pharmaceutical companies to invest in developing and testing polypills ...

Let's not forget the WHO. To quote again:

Include polypills in the WHO's Essential Medicines List

These are the sorts of solutions that one would expect from the medical establishment.  No investigation into the reasons for the uptick in CVD, just a new pill. Stay healthy and cheat death (for a while at least) with the help of BIG PHARMA.

The Fuster-CNIC-Ferrer cardiovascular polypill combines three drugs into one pill to make it easier
for patients to comply with secondary cardiovascular prevention therapy. Link.

I think we'll be seeing more of polypills in the future. Here's an October 13th 2022 headline from CNN Health:

Combination ‘polypills’ can help solve world’s heart problems, experts say, if more people can get them

Well, the "experts" are saying so you'd better listen. The pharmaceutical companies will need to come up with new patented drugs to pack into these polypills so as to make them as expensive as possible. As usual, third world countries will need to spend money allocated to their health care budgets to buy these new medications along with all the other crap that the WHO is foisting on them. Even if you're feeling well and are young and seemingly healthy, you'll be encouraged to take them as a prophylactic. The more young people that keep dropping dead on sporting fields or dying in their sleep, the more people will opt to take them. Most of the elderly are already dependent on several medications and will need no persuasion to use them.

Psychedelic Soma

After decades of being demonised, psychedelics are making a comeback with possibly the help of Big Pharma and of course the tacit approval of the Global Elite. The following text was attached to a video that I just watched titled "Psychedelics Are Fuelling a Mental Health Revolution" (23rd November 2020):

Once deemed dangerous and illegal, psychedelic compounds have been rediscovered by the scientific, medical and psychiatric communities as research reveals their capacity to help patients with a range of maladies. With investors beginning to flood this new market with capital, will Big Pharma join in, or try to squash a nascent revolution of the mind?

Naturally Big Pharma will join in as the Global Elite are giving psychedelics the green light. Our overlords realise that, if global citizens are to submit to the looming dystopia, they will need their daily dose of soma. Once ingested, they just won't care. 

Significant numbers of citizens were already on antidepressants or anti-anxiety medication but the pandemic-related job losses and business failures have swelled these numbers significantly. Masses that are medicated, fluoridated and vaccinated are far less likely to push back against the looming dystopia that is unfolding.

The social engineering is so obvious. Today's already cowed and gender-confused adolescents have been vaccinated, fluoridated, medicated, miseducated and welded to their smartphones. As they enter a world in which they are unlikely to find employment, the psychedelics will keep them subdued and less likely to cause trouble. 

While drawing their Universal Basic Income, they can space out in their little urban boxes, listen to music, play games, watch movies, immerse themselves in virtual reality, enjoy an AI for companionship and maybe buy a sex bot to assuage their carnal needs. Indeed, a brave new world is upon us.

Medication Madness

Thailand featured in the news yesterday when a Thai soldier ran amok in a shopping mall and started shooting, killing twenty people and injuring many more. I was interested in trying to discover if he had taken any medication recently for depression or anxiety. So far I've not been able to find any information to confirm this but my search did throw up this interesting news about ketamine and its recently approved use as an antidepressant. This post is about antidepressants and other mood-altering drugs so I've included it below:

I reason I'm looking into these types of drugs is that I'm currently reading a book by Dr. Peter Breggin called MEDICATION MADNESS: A PSYCHIATRIST EXPOSES THE DANGERS OF MOOD-ALTERING MEDICATIONS. See Figure 1.

Figure 1: front cover of Medication Madness

In the passage I'm going to quote below, Dr. Breggin describes his thoughts about why bipolar diagnoses have soared in recent years:

WHAT’S THE CAUSE OF THE INCREASED RATES of severe cases of mania? Antidepressant medications, and to a lesser extent stimulants and tranquilisers, especially Xanax, are causing the upsurge of manic episodes. In almost all the adult cases that I have evaluated in the last decade, and in every child and teenage case I have seen in my office, the manic symptoms had begun after starting antidepressants and, more occasionally, stimulants or Xanax. 

In the cases in this book, none of the children and their parents, and none of the adults who were driven into mania by prescription drugs, was told by the treating doctors that he or she had a medication-induced disorder. When occasionally the drug was implicated in any way, it was portrayed as a benign agent that happened to “unmask” a preexisting, underlying bipolar disorder—a theory based not on science but on the physician’s impulse to avoid blame for the disaster. 

The two men mentioned earlier in this chapter, and many others in stories to come, fit nicely into the official DSM criteria for a diagnosis of manic episode with one big exception—their reactions were drug-induced. According to the official diagnostic manual, when a drug causes a manic-like episode, it is improper to make a diagnosis of manic episode or bipolar disorder. As emphasised earlier, when a drug is the suspected cause of manic-like symptoms, the proper diagnosis is substance-induced mood disorder. 

Unfortunately, this common sense and officially approved diagnostic standard is largely ignored in the practice of psychiatry. In almost every case I have evaluated, and perhaps every case in this book, the substance-induced mood disorder has been mistakenly diagnosed as bipolar disorder, laying the blame on the patient’s “mental illness” rather than on the doctor’s prescription. Like the proverbial elephant in the living room, the drug’s obvious role in producing the mania will go unmentioned in the medical record. 

It is very prejudicial to the patient to be labeled with bipolar disorder rather than with a substance-induced mood disorder. A diagnosis of bipolar disorder stigmatises the victim for life as suffering from a serious and potentially recurrent “mental illness” or “psychiatric disorder.” Without any scientific basis, the diagnosis is used to push lifetime medication, and in criminal cases, it becomes a justification for lengthy incarcerations in institutions for the criminally insane. The bipolar diagnosis makes it more difficult or impossible to get health insurance or long-term care insurance. 

In contrast, a proper diagnosis of substance-induced mood disorder identifies an acute neurological disorder that typically goes away after the medication is discontinued. Instead of lifetime medication, the proper diagnosis discourages further use of the offending drug. None of the dozens of individuals described in this book went on to repeat their criminal or dangerous behaviours after they were removed from the drugs.

This psychiatric approach is certainly the case for a person I know quite well who at age 37 was diagnosed as schizophrenic following his first psychotic episode. The fact that he had been drinking heavily for some time, smoking marijuana and taking (or possibly not taking) antidepressant medication prior this episode was ignored. He has remained on psychotropic medication to this day and firmly believes he is a schizophrenic. However, having worked as a psychiatric nurse for eight years and being familiar with schizophrenic behaviour, I know the diagnosis was unjustified. The long-term side-effects of the psychotropic medication have caused glaucoma and osteoporosis in this person (these possible side-effects are listed on the label of the medication he takes).

It may be of interest to recount how I stumbled upon Dr. Breggin. It was via an article on the Truthsteam Media website run by Aaron and Melissa Dykes. The article was titled "Then They Came For Your Mind: The Untold Story of Psychosurgery" and is accompanied by the following video:

It was a riveting video and so I was prompted to find out more about him. He has a YouTube channel and has written many books and published many scientific articles.

"Medication Madness" makes for disturbing reading as the unintended effects of antidepressants, hypnotics and tranquillisers becomes apparent. Statistics such as three million Australians using antidepressants defies belief (source):

Three million Australians are now reliant on antidepressants.

24/04/2019 

New data from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme shows one in every eight Australians are using the drugs, including 100,000 children. 

The data has prompted concerns Australia is over-diagnosing and over-treating depression. 

Psychiatrist Dr Jon Jureidini, from the University of Adelaide, tells Ben Fordham too many doctors are prescribing the drug. 

“The marketing of antidepressants has been extremely successful, and lots of people have been led to believe they’re better off taking the drugs. 

“The safety of these drugs is often overestimated, the risks are underestimated.”

The figure of 100,000 children on antidepressants is disturbing but there are probably more children on stimulant drugs for ADHD. It's a mad, mad world when children are assaulted from an early age with vaccines, the water they drink is poisoned by fluoridation and they are zombified with medications.

A further interesting point in "Medication Madness" is the following:

Up to 10 percent of the population have a genetic lack of liver enzymes necessary for the effective breakdown of many medications, including the newer antidepressant drugs such as Prozac. These people are called “poor metabolisers.” They are more likely to suffer adverse drug reactions because the drug concentration builds up in the bloodstream when it cannot be destroyed or eliminated efficiently. If medicine were conducted on a more rational basis, all patients would be tested when possible in advance of taking psychiatric drugs—or any drugs—where there is a risk of abnormal liver metabolism affecting the treatment result. The drug companies have been reluctant to recognise this problem or to make laboratories available to perform tests for these liver enzymes. 

 I'll finish this post with another quote from the book which pretty much sums up everthing:

Meanwhile, it should be no surprise that the brain is not well suited to receive drugs. It lives in a delicate harmony with itself, an organ with complexity far beyond our current understanding and imagination that provides the biological basis of our humanity. It contains approximately one hundred billion neurones—nerve cells that send the chemical messages that run our brains and influence our bodies. There are more neurones in our brain than there are stars in the universe. Some of these individual neurones make ten thousand or more individual connections with other neurones. These neurones and their connections are ignited by a couple of hundred different neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine. The neurotransmitters we know best we nonetheless know little about; most of the others we know nothing about and haven’t even as yet identified. 

Beyond the neurotransmitters, our brain functions are affected by assorted other kinds of support cells, many chemicals such as sodium and potassium, and various hormones. The overall brain activity generates electrical fields that reflect and influence brain function in ways no one can yet grasp. We don’t even understand the operating system of the brain—how it organises and runs itself.

Each brain is more complex than the entire physical universe of stars, galaxies, black holes, gravity, and electromagnetic fields. That is the nature of life and especially of the mammalian brain—it is complex far beyond our current understanding and far beyond anything in the inanimate physical universe. 

So the next time some “expert” tries to explain a subtle manifestation of human behaviour in terms of brain function—or tries to convince you that a biochemical imbalance is at the root of your problems—you should wonder about his pecuniary motives. You should suspect that it’s in the expert’s interest to convince you that you’re a much simpler biological organism than you are. 

A principle to remember: Tampering with the human brain to influence human emotions and actions is not a good idea.the