Customer Reviews

Your Drug May Be Your Problem, Revised Edition: How and Why to Stop Taking Psychiatric Medications

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I am a licensed clinical social worker who supervises other clinical social workers in a well-respected Treatment Foster Care program. I know for a fact that psychiatrists often prescribe Ritalin, anti-psychotic drugs and powerful anti-depressants to seven and eight year old children. Once the prescribing begins, it often escalates and rarely does a child get taken off meds. These are not "occasional" psychiatric practices - they are the rule, not the exception, with this population.

Before reviewers claim Breggin and Cohen are "narrow minded" or "extreme," they need to read eight or ten other source books (among them:From Placebo to Panacea, by Fisher and Greenberg; Blaming the Brain, by Valenstein; Talking Back to Prozac, by Breggin and Breggin; The Tripple Helix, by Lewontin). These are writers of substance, with well-documented arguments. They present clear pictures of the gaping holes in the biopsychiatric model and the shoddy, self-serving research that allegedly supports that model.

Several of these books present detailed indictments of the degree to which huge financial interests dominate psychiatry and drug research; they present clear and verifiable information (of which most psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers seem unaware) about the questionable effectiveness and all-too-common dangers of these drugs.

I don't doubt that a number of people have felt their lives saved by these drugs. But there is much research to support psycho-social interventions which do at least as well as psychiatric meds, without the dangers and side effects. This research is hard to find in the U.S., largely because of the huge amount of money the pharmaceutical companies spend supporting the American Psychiatric Association, NAMI, CHADD, the medical journals, and academic researchers. Studies which don't reinforce drug companies' vested interests are very hard to fund, and harder to publish. The latest figure I've seen: the drug companies in a recent year spent over 13 billion dollars on promotion alone. Dr. Martin Keller, a lead researcher in a major study supporting the use of anti-depressant medication was reported by Glenmullen and the Boston Globe to have received income of over $500,000 dollars from drug companies in a single year.

The efficacy of psychiatric drugs is way overstated. Their damage is vastly minimized by the drug companies, the researchers and the FDA. Read Breggin's Talking Back to Prozac, and Glenmullen's Prozac Backlash. See if you can find, anywhere, a point by point refutation of their specific charges about fudged drug studies and naked economic influence on "scientific" research. You won't find the drug companies, the FDA or the psychiatric establishment addressing these issues head on, fact for fact, because they know they have no response.

Don't just read this one book by Breggin and Cohen. Keep looking. No psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker or counsellor should consider themselves prepared to engage in ethical and informed practice until they have read and seriously considered the other books cited above, as well as several other books by Breggin (e.g., Toxic Psychiatry, Talking Back to Ritalin, The War Against Children of Color).

First of all, this book is good because it gives an alternative perspective, and many people who have taken psychiatric medication know how damaging it can be, that it is a quick fix, not a solution. At the same time, this book is bad because it advocates complete withdrawal from medication, which just might not be realistically feasible. There isn't always going to be the ideal social climate within which to emotionally heal. We need to CREATE that climate ourselves, which troubled people cannot do. It can be worked towards, but medication might be part of the journey in getting there. Only through a gradual process such as this can all people collectively wean themselves off of psychiatric medication.

We don't know enough about brain chemistry to routinely prescribe medications to alter it. One reader here commented on this as if it was concrete knowledge. It is NOT. Our brain chemistry is changing all the time, and the brain is plastic, which means it changes as a result of experience. (Note: Daily, the brain generates more electrical impulses then all the telephones in the world put together. With all that activity, how can we single out a few supposedly faulty actions of neurotransmitters, which might occur in everyone, and justify medication because they coincide with emotional troubles? After all, only the people with psychiatric problems get tested, not everyone else.) We can work from two ends: help the brain and the person may be helped, or help the person and the brain is restored. The latter lasts longer, has no bad side effects, and a little help never hurt anyone seriously, whereas a little Prozac could theoretically worsen the situation. The brain does not create our experience. Even a damaged brain only changes our experience, rather than limiting it. When we are looking at chemicals, we are looking at a system which is constantly in flux. Psychiatric drugs attempt to control the behavior of specific neurotransmitters, but: a) They will stop doing so after a period of time and b) They can hinder other important functions.

Every day, we all have a time when our serotonin is low. Serotonin is the neurotransmitter associated with "depression". Some people's drop is worse than others. But we don't see everyone taking pills for their serotonin drop. Is that what's next? Sometimes, figuring out a person's "mental" problems is just a matter of untangling the behaviors and activities in their lives which cause "emotional" pain. Sometimes it's a matter of getting feelings out and expressing oneself, sometimes it's a matter of changing a few everyday habits, such as what a person eats. But people see these changes as threats to themselves. Psychologists tell people their behaviors define them. The sad thing is, is that because people are unaware of the inner self controlling the whole show--dreams, behaviors, activities, etc.--they then feel threatened when told to change a behavior because they feel that is all there is.

Someone who is already depressed could have a fight with a friend, eat too much food and get sick, spend the night curled in a ball which causes their knee to lock, and wake up in the middle of their next serotonin drop ready to stick their head in the oven. And, realistically, most people are not immediately aware of all the factors leading to this potentially suicidal feeling and cannot make the decision to ignore it because it is a short activity in their brains which they CAN choose to ignore, but only if they are INFORMED.

What Breggin is saying is that people should have control over their "treatment". Many of these drugs are robbing people of their lives because they never get off them. Doctors help you get on medication, not off. Which means you have to know, either in the midst of emotional crisis or the relief period afterwards-both being points of vulnerability, what is best for your health, the types of drugs, what they are doing to your brain, how they are affecting you short-term, how they could affect you long-term. What person with emotional crisis knows that?? If you want long term help in therapy, then you have to stop medication. You can take it through a crisis period, but even this isn't often necessary.

When people think certain conditions, such as schizophrenia, require medication, they are looking at the situation in context of what we see today as treatment. Most people are unaware that there are centers which treat "mental illness" without drugs, but with information about exercise, nutrition, expression of emotions through art, dance, music; through understanding and expanding their thinking. Or they simply allow refuge for the person to go through whatever experience they need to go through in a safe, protected environment.

The ideal social climate doesn't always exist for the transformation through illness to occur, but there have been centers which have, WITHOUT medication, allowed people to work through their crises in a supportive environment, rather than one where they are being ordered around. These people deserve control of their lives. And control is the crux of the problem. When people get older and their control is minimized, they die sooner. When they are allowed more control over their lives, they live longer. Successful experiences cure depression. A therapist can point out successes to a client who sees only failures. A client can create more successes which help them to weather inevitable failures. The balance which is being restored is not chemical, it is human. And there are many other ways to restore balance aside from drugs. People deserve to be responsible for themselves and their healing, not victims of what other people think they should do to be healed.

As for Andrea Yates: The ploy of using mental problems as an excuse for one's conscious actions is as old as time. And a woman using these excuses to avoid responsibility is even older than time. And I am a woman myself, so don't bother.

My nursing training (Philadelphia) left me with a bad taste in my mouth for Psychiatry. I was apalled at the number of medications many of my psychiatric patients were taking, and the control these physicians had over those patients lives. Since the day I abandoned my wild, recreational drug-abusing ways, I have always resisted the idea of "medication for stress" with everything I had. Then came 1999, and a series of events that left me shredded. I gave in to the counsel of a medicated friend, and accepted Paxil from my M.D. What (at first) seemed like a miracle has become a nightmare. I have been having severe health problems (including sudden, unexplained obesity). After observing the effects of sudden Paxil withdrawl (behaviors and physical effects) in a dear friend, I started looking into Paxil and other related drugs. My search led me to this book. I am in those pages...so is my friend, my elderly mom, and several others I know. Dr. Breggin and Dr. Cohen's work is sound and extensively documented. Not only do they expose the problem, but they are committed to showing professionals - and their patients - a better way. They are advocates for much needed education and reform in the political and medical arenas. And most importantly, they know that medication is not man's greatest need when he is hurting. If you are a professional that prescribes these meds, a person who takes these meds, or if someone you know is on these meds, READ THIS BOOK! PLEASE DO NOT ATTEMPT TO WITHDRAW THESE DRUGS WITHOUT (INFORMED!) PROFESSIONAL GUIDANCE AND A LOT OF SUPPORT! See also their work relating to the mass-medicating of our nations hurting children (Ritalin, etc.).

If you take prescription medication, this book should be in your personal library. If you are considering medication, this book will save you possibly years of wasted time and pain. I highly recommend it to anyone, more than i can put into words.

As a former consumer of mental health services and a mental health professional I believe Dr. Breggins book is a timely and necessary read for all mental health professionals and for anyone taking psychiatric drugs as well as family members who may be caregvers. During my brief career in mental health (I was driven away by my revulsion at the abuse by the drug industry against a vulnerable population) I witnessed a madness of prescription writing by unethical psychiatrists who unwittingly participate in a new form of medical care...the legacy of the pharmacheuital salesman. Do not believe for a moment it is a doctor who prescribes these medications. The real doctor has a degree in salesmanship. The pharmacheutical sales representative who peddles his wares to doctors who have neither the time nor the desire to research all the new drugs coming out in this market. What about the FDA you might ask? It no longer functions as the watchdog it once was. Today's rapid paced technology has left our food and drug administration's ability to test new drugs far behind. It has been said this ability was lost by 1984. Drugs that have come to market since this time have never been fully tested. It is what one scientist called "a disaster waiting to happen". During my brief career I witnessed clients being given two, three, four, up to ten or more drugs each month only to be followed by a discontinuation the next month of one or more at random. This was always followed by a trial with new drugs to replace the old drugs. This merry-go-round of care ALWAYS caused a decline in health in my experience. Only when I saw a client begin to take control and refuse to ride the medication merry-go-round and begin to seek alternaives did I see any improvement. All of this is highlighted in Dr. Breggins book. If you care for anyone who has to endure the abuse being mediated by our drug industry you owe it to yourself to read and to heed the words of Dr. Breggin.

My brother in law, 20 years on schizophrenia medication, decided to take himself off his drugs after coming under the influence of a nurse in New Zealand. She advocates patients to read this book, and go off their medication. She's very proud of the fact that some 100 people have taken her advice.
His behavior over a year became increasingly strange and paranoid. We were fearful for his mental well being. Last month his behavior was so 'psychotic', he'd lost so much weight, wasn't sleeping, that we took him , forceably, to a hospital.
Now he is back on medication, working again, sleeping, back with his wife, logical, relaxed and feeling better.

Perhaps many people taking anti-depressants can be helped by this book but for my relative it was the worst possible solution.

in this badly written book, you'll only find the obvious and already well known information presented in a very superficial and incomplete way. furthermore, it is very difficult to take it seriously, because it presents psychiatric drugs as terrible and absolute evils, without acknowledging their possible benefits. it portraits doctors as ignorant people that have been manipulated by marketing campaigns and patients as lazy, weak people. i don't like psychiatric drugs, but i found it impossible to give much credit to the incomplete and oversimplistic arguments presented by this book. psychiatric ailments are their treatment are a very complex issue, the authors of this book don't even come close to explaining it.

Having spent the better part of the last 12 years on a virtual A(tenolol)to Z(oloft) tour of drugs prescribed to treat my symptoms of low self-esteem, generalized and social anxiety, and depression, I began to suspect these pretty, candy-like pills--so quickly prescribed interchangeably by psychiatrists and GP's alike--were not only affecting me in the short-term, but also manifesting long-term (if not permanent!) changes in my body--most notably a reduction in sex drive and function and excessive sweating--all without an appreciable, lasting reduction in my original symptoms. Therefore, when I stumbled across this book on Amazon.com, I was intrigued; what I found in it's pages left me with mixed feelings of horror, relief, knowing, and suspicion. Not only did I recognize the myriad of side-effects and withdrawal symptoms from my own experience, but Drs. Breggin and Cohen portrayed with uncanny accuracy my attempts at enlisting the help of practitioners unwilling to comply with my wishes to de-medicate. Too many times I have entered my psychiatrist's office ready to reduce, if not eliminate, the amount of medications I take, only to emerge twenty minutes later with a prescription for an ADDITIONAL drug, often with the intent to treat the side-effects of the first! This book has given me additional tools and strategies with which to broach the subject at my next appointment. Am I afraid of the probable return of the original emotional difficulties that brought me there in the first place? Absolutely. Am I dreading the all-too-familiar onslaught of dizziness, nausea, restless legs, headaches, depression, and intense emotional suffering that accompanies withdrawal? No question. But I am tired of the endless stream of side-effects and general numbing I experience on each successive drug, which inevitably stops working within a few months only to be replaced by something "better". I'm tired of being afraid of my doctor's disapproval, my mental "illness", and of living.

All this having been said, it's only fair to point out some of the obvious flaws of this book. As mentioned in previous reviews, it is repetitive in places, oddly devoid of any sense of actual experience with emotional suffering, and conspicuously one-sided. To claim that "the degree to which we suffer indicates the degree to which we are alive" is laughably new-agey and useless in a real-world context. Try sharing that bit of fluff with the person so deep in a depression that they can't get out of bed, can't care for themselves or their kids--indeed, can't even cry--and see how it is received. Also, the section on reducing your medications is a bit difficult (even dangerous) to follow if your medication comes in capsule form. Their suggestion that a capsule be opened and its contents separated into smaller doses isn't very helpful--how do you administer the smaller dosages? Couldn't it be risky? All in all, the weakest section of the book is Chapter 13, entitled "Psychological Principles for Helping Yourself and Others Without Resort to Psychiatric Medications". It's rife with mindless psychobabble, offering far too many pat fortune-cookie suggestions without any substantive plan for action. Most disburbingly, Breggin & Cohen tread a dangerous line by zealously condemning ALL use of psychiatric medications (all the while assuring the reader that they don't blame the user). Surely every schizophrenic or bipolar (and their loved ones) won't find solace in the simple realization "that emotional crises and suffering are opportunities for accelerated personal growth" (p210), nor by focusing "on finding a rational, loving, and confident center in yourself that can rise above your emotional crisis or suffering" (p205). Common sense would suggest that sometimes, for some people, a medication can be the sanest, if not the only answer.

At any rate, this book provides a welcome counterpoint to a nation blindly medicating their children into conformity, eagerly requesting prescriptions for psychotropic drugs they see advertised during "Survivor", and assigning a convenient DSM label (with the inevitable, corresponding "miracle" pill) for every emotional fluctuation. In itself, "Your Drug May Be Your Problem" is best regarded as a jumping-off place for further research rather than the end of the line.

Having been the victim of a mis-diagnosis by a well-meaning teaching hospital back in the 80's, I was thrust into the revolving door of mental health. Instead of being diagnosed with post-partum depression and post traumatic stress from a very dysfunctional childhood, I was labeled 'Bipolar'. Talk about a life defeating blow. That mis-diagnosis lead me to being on Lithium for over a decade, then, after it caused Lithium Induced Nephrogenic Diabetes Insipidus, a permanent condition that mimics Diabetes Mellitus, I was switched to Depakote. That lasted until I accidentally ran into this book here on Amazon.com three years ago. After being educated as to the dangers of long term use of both of these toxic medications, I began, with my cooperative psychiatrist's guidance, to slowly wean off the Depakote. (I did it over 20 months as Dr. Breggin advises.) I have been completely off medications for 5 months. I am sane, intelligent and self-respecting. I have my life back.

I have also discovered the benefits of a relatively new therapeutic technique called Emotional Freedom Technique (see www.emofree.com) With the help of a professional therapist trained in this technique, I became aware of some disturbing events in my toddler years. EFT treatment totally healed me of the residual memories and their long term effects. Had EFT been around 18 years ago, I would still have healthy kidneys and could have avoided many years of shame, disillusionment and hiding being a 'recipient' of mental 'health' care. Thank you, Dr. Breggin, for saving my life. I am indebted.

Everyone who works in the mental health field or traditional healthcare, needs to read this book. The medical model is not the only answer.

Great information.Sure did make me think before taking any medication.