About the pharmaceutical industry...

[Kassandra]

Good video about the excessive side of the pharmaceutical industry. At one point in the video Gwen looks through a file for a kid who's been prescribed 6 different psychotropic medications to take at once, "a chemical straight jacket" she called it.

What's your story? In your opinion, have prescription drugs helped or harmed your life?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4bYng7X7Kk

Gwen Olsen Exposes the Pharmaceutical Industry

[Firebird]

Thanks for posting Kassandra

[Starwitch]

Thanks Kassandra.

Oddly enough, the same day I saw your post here, Ron shared a couple of videos with me that were about pharmaceuticals and how they relate to school shootings. I haven't watched them all, but what I saw was interesting and disturbing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAeABmVOS0s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSZ9YTnSkLc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9S-7aNPf33A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdDGzrAs66Y

[Kassandra]

Yeah, I've been seeing these types of related reports, as well ...very disturbing.

[WhisperShadowsong]

I have a very extreme view on "medications." I believe that everything can be healed supernaturally. I don't like therapy, medications, psychiatry, support groups, or anything like that. I believe everybody possesses the ability to heal themselves, and that relying on outside sources can make you dependent on them. I used to go to NA and AA meetings. The good thing about them is that it connects you with your higher power. But the evil is that it tries to place the group itself as the higher power. You don't need a middle man between you and the supernatural.

[Firebird]

I used to go to NA and AA meetings.

so...what was your drug of choice?

[p3nathan]

I have a very extreme view on "medications." I believe that everything can be healed supernaturally. I don't like therapy, medications, psychiatry, support groups, or anything like that. I believe everybody possesses the ability to heal themselves, and that relying on outside sources can make you dependent on them. I used to go to NA and AA meetings. The good thing about them is that it connects you with your higher power. But the evil is that it tries to place the group itself as the higher power. You don't need a middle man between you and the supernatural.

Frankly WhisperingShadowsong, I wonder why you would be against support groups, therapies, psychiatry and medication in their entirety. As you admit yourself, that's very extreme. For starters, the word therapy is incredibly broad, as is psychiatry. Both of these practices involve working towards developing better ways to help people with physical and mental illness and I have a hard time understanding how that could be perceived as a bad thing.
I'll admit I have only a little experience with group work, but as for one to one therapy, I work with people to find their own inner resources. I do not claim to be an expert who will fix all their problems on command or a wizard who will make them disappear with a wand... and I certainly do not impose any religious or spiritual views on them, as that would be entirely against my ethical code.
If supernatural healing works for you, that's great, but not everyone believes in it... and I'm afraid I won't stand by and let people suffer when I have the training to help them if they ask for it.

I'm sorry to hear you had a bad experience with NA/AA, but I hardly think it's fair to judge all support groups on that, let alone all therapeutic practice.

[Kassandra]

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I think a good balance of both the natural (including Western medicine, when necessary) and the supernatural (a little energy work behind the scenes) is the ideal, in most cases. It's only the gross abuses that I find kinda' creepy and take exception to, really.

Like anything else, it's always the worst cases involving pharmaceuticals are the ones that make news headlines. It's like how we always hear about the occasional plane crash, but we never hear about the gajillion airline flights that take off and land safely every minute all over the world.

Same goes for the healthcare industry...the abuses make the 60 Minutes special reports. But, the caring health professionals and the helpful drugs they prescribe that save lives on a daily basis go unnoticed and unacknowledged, unfortunately.


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[Xiao Rong]

There probably are lots of times when I think sometimes we (as a society) tend to go overboard on using pharmaceutical drugs, but if a medical condition (especially a mental illness) is sufficiently serious, sometimes there is no substitute besides a real, medicinal solution. Magic is always a complement, NOT a replacement for medicine.

[RowanWindsong]

As someone who has been on nearly all of the drugs shown at the beginning of that video at one time or another, I can say that I am not a huge fan of medicating everything. On the other hand, I am on meds to control panic attacks currently. I was able to control them before, but with the stresses of school and my mothers increasingly worsening illness, I lost the ability to cope. I was having at least 10 panic attacks a day and I just couldn't function. I would love to be off the meds, I hate taking any of them (especially Effexor, that was like an acid trip! Not that I have ever tried acid, but it was really crazy). I know that right now I am not mentally prepared enough to control or even deal with the panic attacks on a regular basis. I still have some, maybe one or two every couple of weeks, but until I am able to handle far more than that, I know that the only support I have is the meds that block them.

This is from someone who hates taking meds for anything. My knee is currently swollen and so sore from over doing it this past weekend that I am having trouble sleeping. I am still having an argument in my head over whether or not I should give in and take some Motrin.

Oh, another example from my life. When I was a kid I was put on Ritalin because I apparently had ADD. Yeah, turns out that I was depressed, but at that point it was believed that children didn't get depressed. I was treated wrongly by a shrink who eventually lost her medical license, and because of that I spent several months in a foggy, messed up, drug induced state. It sucked! I hate that there are so many kids on that type of medicine. IMO there should be a lot more parents learning to say no and teach their child about consequences and fewer kids being medicated for having behavioural issues. I know there are kids who really should be on those drugs, but not nearly as many as there are.

Basically what it comes down to is that I believe that if you need them, take them but be aware of side effects and aware of what you are doing. If you don't need them, don't take them.

[Kassandra]

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Agreed.

[MOTHERofDRAGONS]

A chilling wonderful movie to watch is called. "The East" ...

I take medication, have to. (bipolar, PTSD, disassociative amnesia, ect,ect) I literally can't function in society without it.

HOWEVER, I was a guinea pig for a while. The worst medication I took was Abilify.
I highly reccomend watching this movie. It may frighten you, but it's like a "must watch" for people who take regulatory meds.

)0(
MOTHERofDRAGONS

[Kassandra]

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Thanks for sharing your story, MotherofDragons. I don't think the drugs are the problem. What burns me up is the way the industry behaves, the gross, blatant commoditization of the human body. The body has become a battlefield for those corporate parasites. But yes, I know the meds themselves help countless people, like yourself, in so many ways.



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[shatteredsouls]

I think medications are necessary for some people because when our brain chemical/neurotransmitter may be inadequate or something. But sometimes, medications are overprescribed. Too easy for a doctor/psychiatrist to diagnose the person and prescribe medication. For instance, for ADHD, they may just be naughty or more active but they can be prescribed Ritalin. Is there really so many children who has ADHD now??

[SnowCat]

The pharmaceutical industry is about making money. Hospitals have begun doing away with allowing drug reps access to the docs on staff. Conflict of interest.

I take Synthroid for my hypothyroidism, and muscle relaxants for my fibromyalgia. I don't function otherwise. My grandson takes medication for ADHD. He doesn't function without it. On the flip side, I've seen plenty of elderly and disable people addicted to narcotic pain medication. Pain is what the patient ways it is, so the docs write for more and more opiates just to shut them up. My nephew died of an accidental overdose three years ago. His doctor just kept giving him more drugs, instead of actually trying to address the problem. Chronic pain is an actual problem, but throwing more and more narcotics at it doesn't help.

Nurse's point of view.

Frosty