Date: Tue Aug 29, 2000 00:03am I've just read all the stories on Charles' website. Reading the descriptions of his ordeal, as well as those of the other survivors, literally made me ill. All the horrific side effects I had with Paxil came flooding back. I had forgotten so many of the nuances of that nightmare. I had forgotten about the vivid dreams of people running around with no heads and blood spurting out, about dead dogs and cats hanging from trees like Spanish moss. I had forgotten how I lay in bed not wanting to breathe because if I did pain would shoot through my brain. I think what really pisses me off is that first we are victimized by these horrible drugs, then victimized again by the doctors who don't believe what is happening to us, and if that isn't enough, we are victimized all over again when Eli Lilly and SmithKlineBeecham spew their lies about how safe and effective these drugs are. I know from reading these stories that I still have a long way to go in my recovery from this experience. Trisha Date: Wed Aug 30, 2000 4:42pm The nightmares for me were the worst. I became too terrified to even go to sleep. They were something out of a Fellini movie, very vivid, very violent, very gorey. When I described them to a friend of mine who had taken LSD in the 60's, he said his experiences were similar. Basically, these SSRI drugs elevate your serotonin levels much in the way LSD does, so I guess all these nighttime hallucinations makes sense. I am so sorry for your loss. Over the last ten years, I've lost no less than a half dozen friends to Prozac, and until recently nobody believed that their suicides were drug-related. I remember describing these dreams to the doctor who put me on Paxil. Her only explanation was that I was schizophrenic, especially when I complained about sensitivity to light and sound. She refused to believe that I perceived a gentle breeze to be as loud as a freight train. This is what annoys me the most -- that the doctors don't believe us. That they tag these side effects as yet another symptom of mental illness. No wonder so many people suffer in silence, until it's too late. Peace be with you and your family. Have you thought about joining the legions of people filing lawsuits against Eli Lilly? There is one law firm in particular who specializes in these kinds of suits. I have their website bookmarked somewhere if you want it. Trisha Date: Wed Aug 30, 2000 00:30am All of these cases are very typical of SSRI- induced violence. After I had my Paxil experience, I finally understood how these people snapped and committed irrational acts. It was at that time that there seemed to be a plethora of weird murders -- some of them in the city where I live. One was a mother who drugged her newborn and her toddler (presumably with her medication -- Paxil) and then put plastic bags over their heads, killing them. The first thing I said when I heard the story was, "I'll bet she was on Paxil." I called the local news station and inquired of the reporter covering the story if he knew which SSRI she was on. He said it wasn't an issue, that these meds didn't cause people to do such things. I told him that they did, and four weeks later it was released in the press that she had been placed on Paxil for post-partum depression. These crimes are happening everywhere -- anytime you read about a murder-suicide, or a mother killing her children, you can bet that the perp was on an SSRI. One woman who shot her children and then herself was on at least 12 different psych meds -- Paxil included. Yet the drug companies still contend that there is no connection between their product and violence. However, Eli Lilly got caught paying a settlement to the victims of the mass shooting in the Wesbecker trial before the jury brought in a verdict. All those school shootings and workplace shootings? There was not ONE perp who was NOT on psych meds, most often Prozac. And as the numbers of people who are taking these meds increases, so will the violence. The Surgeon General added 25 new symptoms of mental illness to the list, stating that 40% of our population is mentally ill and needs to be medicated. Exactly when did our entire society go insane?? Ten years ago I knew no one who would think of taking these drugs. Now most everyone I know has taken one of the SSRIs at one time or another, some with serious side effects. If our gov't could have it their way, ALL of us would be on these drugs. It's more about subduing the masses into the planetary corral than curing mental illness. Trisha Date: Sat Dec 2, 2000 12:03pm Subject: Reply to Joey's Message "What This Site Means" Dear Joey: My heart goes out to both you and Bob as you try to put your lives back together again after his foray into the world of psychiatric drugs. This must be so hard on you to see the person you once knew and loved undergo a transformation into someone you barely recognize. This, in my opinion, is the saddest outcome possible. There was a time when I could not have imagined the "dark side" of psychiatry and its medications. And then I took Paxil. Like Bob, I went for help to deal with a problem, which in my case was caused by my insurance company. I needed surgery on my shoulder, and my insurance company stonewalled on the treatment causing me to live in pain and anxiety for three years. When I finally realized that my life was spiraling out of control, I went to a therapist, thinking that she would HELP me get treatment, that she would rally behind me and make this insurance company see how this ordeal was adversely affecting my life. Boy, was I wrong! I would cry, plead, beg for her to help me get treatment, but instead she told me point blank "I don't believe that you need surgery. I believe that you are suffering from a mental illness and need medication." I was so distraught by that time that I took the damn pills -- Paxil. When I landed in the psych ward after a severe reaction to this drug, they tried to have me committed -- stating in the notes that "patient believes all her problems are caused by her pain. Patient has little insight (psychiatric lingo for the patient failing to admit they are mentally ill) and needs to be committed for three months." If my husband had not kidnapped me from this hell, I would still be there -- three years later. It was then that I realized that the purpose of psychiatric treatment was not to help me solve my problem, but to quell my complaints and symptoms. My husband warned me, but I would not listen. I still believed, prior to taking Paxil, that psychiatry was useful and beneficial. I had no idea of the changes that had taken place in this field of medicine -- I didn't know that their theory was that no matter what the patient complains about, or how severe the external problem may be, there is a med that will rid of the patient of his symptoms and his perception of what they believe to be wrong with them. In a nut shell, it boiled down to this: Give the patient enough medication and they won't care about their problems. The end result of this ordeal is that I've now been permanently damaged by taking Paxil, and when I did finally have surgery, I had to spend TWO full years in physical therapy. In the process, I acquired a psych record that will forever and a day preclude me from working in certain sectors of society. When I finally read all my psych records, I could not believe some of the things they wrote. They stated I was suffering from "delusions of grandeur" when I talked about my husband's heritage. No matter what I said about my past life, my career, my accomplishments, it was deemed to be "delusions." Of course, they never verified any of what I told them. They made a judgment call based on their own limited world and experience. I am still considering filing a lawsuit against the woman who originally prescribed me Paxil and the hospital that tried to have me committed under the most fraudulent and bogus of claims. Basically, they held me against my will and their trumped up and contrived diagnoses paved the way for even stronger drugs, possibly ECT, and god only knows what else. Until I started doing research for my book, I had no idea that there were very organized anti-psychiatry groups speaking out against the abuses of this field. It never occurred to me that any field of medicine could do more harm than good, but I've since changed my tune. The average person is probably never going to come in contact with this segment of medicine, so their perceptions are based on their internal beliefs, just as mine were. But when you see the outcome of their philosophy, you just have to wonder who is really helped by this profession. Certainly not me. Certainly not Bob. Certainly not anyone on this board, nor any of the thousands of other people who have been permanently damaged by medication, ECT, or the other procedures that are committed in the name of medicine. In the last three years, I have come in contact with approximately 3000 people whose lives have been destroyed by psychiatry. That doesn't even include the survivors who watched a loved one spiral into insantity in the name of the cure. For the last year, I've had the benefit of watching some very good doctors deal with my husband's head injury. They have no answers except medication. I've made it very clear to all of these doctors that up to a point I will respect their opinions and protocol, but if they even hint at prescribing certain medications (SSRIs), it will be over my dead body. One doctor was shocked when I told him that I didn't want to be hacked to death in the middle of the night because my husband went psycho on certain drugs. I also made it very clear to them that I had no intentions of living with someone whose personality is controlled by medication. At one point early on after his accident, they had him on SIX different medications and when I saw the change in his personality, we slowly eliminated four of those drugs. He was on the road to being a zombie, and this was totally unacceptable to me. I was appalled by all the "guesswork." What I learned from this experience is that most of it IS guesswork. All that funding for research, new technology, medication, etc. has done little except fatten the bottomline of the pharmaceutical companies. We are all guinea pigs in the name of science, since there has been no sufficient longterm clinical trials of any of these medications. WE are the longterm test subjects. And what is the pharmaceutical industry's response to those of us who've had severe reactions? "We can't believe what any of those people say because, after all, THEY were on psychiatric medications." Never mind that the SSRIs are prescribed for just about everything EXCEPT psychiatric problems. I feel bad that those two people chose to leave the group, particularly after I talked about the underbelly of psychiatry to which they fell victim. I simply cannot defend a segment of medicine that believes we are nothing more than biochemical by-products, and that our personalities and our problems can be changed or eradicated with the proper drug cocktail. Are we not the sum of our experiences and beliefs? Not in psychiatry. We are just test subjects who have not yet been prescribed the proper medication to change our point of view. There is something exceedingly deceptive and dangerous about this philosophy. It took me a long time to arrive at this juncture. And everytime I am willing to entertain that I may be wrong, I only have to hear a story such as Bob's to know that I am right. I don't expect that everyone will share this viewpoint. . . arriving at this point was a real learning curve for me. All of us on this board and others like it reached out for help, but help isn't what we got. We were betrayed and manipulated, and that to me, is the most grievous of outcomes. I'm sorry if anything that I said upset you, especially since you are going through such a trying time. But sometimes the truth is shocking and everyday there comes to light a new element that even I find outlandish -- like the fact that the clinical trials for Paxil were conducted in Yugoslavia where the ethnic cleansing programs were orchestrated by -- what else -- psychiatrists. The most frightening prophecy I heard during my research was a biblical scholar telling me that these drugs and the wreckage left in their wake was foretold in the bible. Unfortunately, I can't remember the passage, but somewhere it says that the devil will bring peace (Pax in Latin) in the form of a pharmaceutical. And with that, I close my rant for the day. Wishing each and everyone of you all the best in your recovery. Trisha