I'm just curious and looking to have a discussion on this topic and see what others have to say about this.
I was pharma harmed and that's what brought me here.
I completely trusted doctors in the beginning, and it's not just psychiatric medications that screw you up, regular doctors do it too. I've had 3 sheets worth of medications altogether for various problems over a timespan of 13 years. Many of them are psychiatric drugs, because they'll try one, then another, then another then another. Each with their own side effects, and if you complain, they're going to be doubling that dose and telling you that "everything has side effects, even aspirin" and not to read the side effects or I'll cause a nocebo effect. Heck, sometimes my side effects didn't show up on the list of possibles until a few years have gone by. New drugs are pushed harder, and old drugs don't pay doctors as well to prescribe them.
Unfortunately, the side effects then cause non-psychiatric problems that need their own medications. They degrade your bones and joints, screw up your vision in serious permanent ways, cause muscle twitches, on and on.
Then when they don't work, they decide they must have diagnosed you wrong and try other medications that also don't work and have terrible side effects. Never guess the drugs might not actually work. Used to have to catch rides with other people to get to my appointments, and heard all sorts of people say "just pretend you're taking them, that's what I do. You've got to play the game". Didn't. Now living with the permanent consequences.
Don't take the drugs because they're horrible? You're "not complying" or "must not actually have a disability" or "would be cured if you took them". That means if you're disabled from your conditions (some of which are from past effects of taking other meds) and need social security to live in any sort of home, they can actively enforce drugs while saying to your face, "You have a choice..." (a choice between going homeless and dying on the street or taking whatever drug they force you on next).
If you take it in spite of side effects, even that's not a safety factor. You can end up with something like Xanax prescribed for years (or how about the people who took their pain meds?) and then you're treated like a druggie, even though you take it as directed and always have.
And some states decide if you're not taking drugs for a thing, the problem doesn't exist so they'll refuse non drug treatment and remove the diagnosis. They make you turn in your personal private information and even then may turn you down.
Once you've been hurt badly enough and try to stop, Social security pushes drugs, medicaid pushes drugs, and medicaid doctors push drugs. I'd love to know if it's because the billionaire owners of big press and politicians have stock in this stuff.
And as someone who has both seizures and a TBI, neurologists are often faking "science" that's actually guesswork, too. They can tell you how much blood-flow goes to certain parts of the brain if they bother to check, and whether or not you've got spots where brain should be and aren't -- if they want to. Hey, maybe you'll get to see some of the brain damage caused by other drugs? Two doctors can look at the same exact Cat scan, MRI or EEG and have completely different takes on it. That's too subjective to be hard science. They can see the brain damage, but have no idea what that causes. They'll even say the brain will rewire around the damage and dismiss symptoms related directly to the part of the brain damaged.
Often neurologist's correlation/causation needs a little tweaking. Some happy people have more serotonin in their bloodstream? Put more of that in people and damn the consequences!
Just the history of pharmaceutical companies is awful how they use their funding to change the DSM (as do political groups and other lobbyists/special interests) but it keeps going. Mengele was paid by pharmaceutical companies to do his awful stuff. How about how they stopped doing lobotomies because they called drugs "chemical lobotomies" and sold them as more palatable to the public than the surgery?
Thank you for this thread.
I suspect this is also behind why so many people don't believe in booster shots. When you've been hurt to this degree, or seen others hurt this badly, had doctors "doctor" records, been involved in it or had a relative or friend talk about it as a nurse witnessing it (and hushing up), and the third leading cause of death in the US are medical mistakes, is it really a mystery why people aren't trusting the profession?
I'm surprised, but pleasantly so. I was starting to believe pharma only hurt everyone.
Thank you for posting.