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FDA Updates Warning on Stimulants Prescribed for ADHD, Now Lists Risks of Misuse, Addiction, Diversion and Overdose

Monday, May 22nd, 2023

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Citizens Commission on Human Rights, National Affairs Office

WASHINGTON, DC, May 18, 2023 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is requiring new warnings in the prescribing information for stimulant drugs used to treat so-called attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) “to address continuing concerns of misuse, abuse, addiction, and overdose of the prescription drugs,” according to the FDA’s statement on the change. The “boxed warning” being updated is the most prominent warning the FDA can require for drugs.

Stimulants commonly prescribed for ADHD that will now carry the elevated warning include Adderall, Concerta, Dexedrine, and Ritalin. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) classifies these drugs as Schedule II controlled substances – the same drug classification as for cocaine, morphine, oxycodone, and fentanyl. The DEA warns that use of stimulant drugs can lead to “severe psychological or physical dependence” and that “these drugs are also considered dangerous.” Diversion of the drugs is illegal.

In explaining its reason for the heightened warning, the FDA states, “The current prescribing information for some prescription stimulants does not provide up to date warnings about the harms of misuse and abuse, and particularly that most individuals who misuse prescription stimulants get their drugs from other family members or peers.”

Diversion of prescribed stimulant drugs from patients to others is a longstanding problem, particularly among children and young adults. Research has found that a range of 16% to 29% of students from grade school through college who have stimulant prescriptions are asked to give, sell, or trade their medications.

The FDA’s new warning for stimulants reads, in part: “WARNING: ABUSE, MISUSE, AND ADDICTION. [Name of drug] has a high potential for abuse and misuse, which can lead to the development of a substance use disorder, including addiction. Misuse and abuse of CNS [central nervous system] stimulants, including [Name of drug], can result in overdose and death.”

The latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that overdose deaths from stimulant drugs have tripled from 10,255 deaths in 2017 to 32,478 in 2022. This increase is occurring in the context of a national overdose crisis, in which stimulants are increasingly involved, according to the CDC.

The FDA’s communication lists some of the serious side effects of stimulant drugs that require emergency treatment, including fast heart rate, fast breathing, increased blood pressure, restlessness, tremors, loss of coordination, nausea and vomiting, aggressive behavior, panic, confusion, and hallucinations. Stimulants are also linked to stunted growth in children.

Some 9.6 million Americans are prescribed stimulant drugs for so-called ADHD. However, there is no objective, scientific basis for “diagnoses” of mental disorders, as acknowledged by Thomas Insel, M.D., former director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), in his blog on the NIMH website in 2013. This means it is far too easy to “diagnose” ADHD.

The late psychologist Keith Conners conducted the first formal trials on the now-widely prescribed ADHD stimulant methylphenidate, commonly sold under the brand names Ritalin and Concerta. He later realized that ADHD diagnoses were out of control and called ADHD misdiagnoses “a national disaster of dangerous proportions.”

One in three Americans taking ADHD drugs is under the age of 18, but research has raised concerns over prescribing stimulants to children. Beyond the risks of serious adverse effects, a recent study found no convincing evidence of any long-term benefit to children from treatment for ADHD with stimulant drugs.

Another recent study found that children started on ADHD treatment with the stimulant methylphenidate were 18 times more likely to experience depression than before starting, and when the drug was discontinued, the higher risk dropped back to starting levels. [1]

Children who were first prescribed methylphenidate between the ages of 6 and 8 and continued to take the drugs had a 50% higher risk of being prescribed antidepressants for depression during their teen years, another study found. [2]

CCHR continues to raise public awareness of the risks of serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms from psychostimulants and other psychiatric drugs, so consumers and their physicians can make fully informed decisions about starting or stopping the drugs. CCHR supports safe and science-based non-drug approaches to mental health.

WARNING: Anyone wishing to discontinue or change the dose of an ADHD drug or any other psychiatric drug is cautioned to do so only under the supervision of a physician because of potentially dangerous withdrawal symptoms.

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights was co-founded in 1969 by members of the Church of Scientology and the late psychiatrist and humanitarian Thomas Szasz, M.D., recognized by many academics as modern psychiatry’s most authoritative critic, to eradicate abuses and restore human rights and dignity to the field of mental health. CCHR has been instrumental in obtaining 228 laws against psychiatric abuse and violations of human rights worldwide.

The CCHR National Affairs Office in Washington, DC, has advocated for mental health rights and protections at the state and federal level. The CCHR traveling exhibit, which has toured 441 major cities worldwide and educated over 800,000 people on the history to the present day of abusive and racist psychiatric practices, has been displayed at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, DC, and at other locations.

[1] https://www.cpn.or.kr/journal/view.html?volume=20&number=2&spage=320#B19
[2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30828744/

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Is Social Media Turning Us All Into Zombies?

Monday, October 18th, 2021

The debate continues to rage about whether smartphones and their attendant social media are addictive, or even whether they are good or bad for you and your children.

This quote from the November 2021 edition of Reason magazine puts the debate more into perspective:

“In 1936, the government of St. Louis, Missouri, tried to ban car radios because a ‘determined movement’ had become convinced that the radio distracted drivers and caused car accidents. The car radio was widely feared by newspapers, which were competitors and had every incentive to sensationalize the product’s dangers.”

We’re not going to come down on one side or the other, it isn’t our fight; but we can certainly remark on the psychiatric connection.

The psychiatric Connection

Psychiatry assumes any so-called addiction is a medical disease. This is patently false; any such media addiction, real or imagined, is an educational or moral failing. It cannot be usefully addressed with drugs or other harmful psychiatric treatments.

Other forms of addiction currently promoted for treatment by psychiatry and psychology are gaming, substance abuse, gambling, and other impulse control issues such as pyromania, kleptomania and promiscuity. Yes, physical addiction may occur with substance abuse; but there are valid non-psychiatric programs for that.

So what are these various behaviors if they are not mental illnesses? They’re called lapses in education, ethics and morals, and when treated as such there is hope that they can be corrected. Unfortunately, calling them “mental illness” and treating them with psychotropic drugs precludes any possibility of finding out the true root causes and effectively addressing those.

The entirety of psychological and psychiatric addiction programs are founded on the tacit assumptions that mental health “experts” know all about the mind and mental phenomena, know a better way of life, a better value system and how to improve lives beyond the understanding and capability of everyone else in society.

The reality is that these mental health programs are designed to control people towards specific ideological objectives at the expense of the person’s sanity and well-being. Do we really want to institutionalize mandatory psychiatric counseling and screening, which is where all this is heading?

We think the whole thing comes back to what the late Professor Thomas Szasz, co-founder of Citizens Commission on Human Rights, originally had to say about this:
• “The term ‘mental illness’ refers to the undesirable thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of persons. Classifying thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as diseases is a logical and semantic error, like classifying the whale as a fish.”
• “If we recognize that ‘mental illness’ is a metaphor for disapproved thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, we are compelled to recognize as well that the primary function of Psychiatry is to control thought, mood, and behavior.”

These so-called mental disorders are just what psychiatry and psychology have inappropriately labeled as “undesirable behavior.”

The Reason article proposes a reasonable solution: “…can anything be done to combat some of the actual problems with tech addiction? Yes, but the answer isn’t easy or flashy: It’s for parents to exercise greater responsibility, talk to their kids about how much they rely on their phones, and set reasonable limits on screen time.”

What You Can Do

We’d like to encourage our readers to help us fund our efforts to bring sanity to the world of mental health care. The psychs haven’t backed off; they are busy exaggerating any mental health concerns raised by the Covid outbreak, and of course why you should see a psychiatrist and take some harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs.

Click here to send us some love.

“‘Insanity’ isn’t an illness. It’s an injury. When more injuries called ‘treatments’ are piled on top of it, it becomes very hard to treat just because the person is now desperately injured. He hurts.“

— L. Ron Hubbard, 12/15/1968

WHO Declares “Video Game Addiction” a Mental Health Disorder

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Antipsychotic Antics

Wednesday, September 15th, 2021

Paliperidone, sold under the trade name Invega among others, is an atypical antipsychotic. Paliperidone is the primary active metabolite of the older antipsychotic risperidone, although its specific mechanism of action with respect to any psychiatric diagnosis is unknown. It blocks the action of dopamine and serotonin in the brain, which as we’ve previously observed is playing Russian Roulette with the brain.

On September 1, 2021 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a 6-month injection form of the long-acting atypical antipsychotic paliperidone palmitate (Invega Hafyera, manufactured by Janssen Pharmaceuticals) for the treatment of what is fraudulently diagnosed as schizophrenia in adults.

Adverse reactions, or side effects, can include upper respiratory tract infection, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, seizures, high blood sugar, diabetes, decreased blood pressure, fainting, falls, low white blood cell count, headache, tachycardia, somnolence, insomnia, sexual dysfunction, cough, dystonia, akathisia, muscle rigidity, parkinsonism, weight gain, anxiety, indigestion, constipation, and an increased risk of death in elderly people with dementia-related psychosis.

It can be addictive and have acute withdrawal symptoms (euphemistically called “discontinuation syndrome”), including rapid relapse, nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, restlessness, increased sweating, trouble sleeping, a feeling of the world spinning, numbness, muscle pains, tardive dyskinesia, and psychosis.

The primary reason for prescribing a drug that has only two doses per year is to handle the situation where a patient stops taking their daily prescribed drugs because of their unpleasant side effects.

Psychiatric Fraud

Psychiatrists remain committed to calling “schizophrenia” a mental disorder despite, after a century of research, the complete absence of objective proof that it exists as a physical brain abnormality.

Psychiatry clings tenaciously to antipsychotics as the treatment for “schizophrenia,” despite their proven risks and studies which show that when patients stop taking these drugs, they improve.

The late Professor Thomas Szasz stated that “schizophrenia is defined so vaguely that, in actuality, it is a term often applied to almost any kind of behavior of which the speaker disapproves.”

These are normal people with medical, disciplinary, educational, or spiritual problems that can and must be resolved without recourse to drugs. Deceiving and drugging is not the practice of medicine. It is criminal.

Bear in mind that the drug “treatments” being prescribed are for “disorders” that are not physical illnesses—essentially, they are being prescribed for something that does not exist.

Any medical doctor who takes the time to conduct a thorough physical examination of a child or adult exhibiting signs of what a psychiatrist calls Schizophrenia can find undiagnosed, untreated physical conditions. Any person labeled with so-called Schizophrenia needs to receive a thorough physical examination by a competent medical—not psychiatric—doctor to first determine what underlying physical condition is causing the manifestation.

Any person falsely diagnosed as mentally disordered which results in treatment that harms them should file a complaint with the police and professional licensing bodies and have this investigated. They should seek legal advice about filing a civil suit against any offending psychiatrist and his or her hospital, associations and teaching institutions seeking compensation.

No one denies that people can have difficult problems in their lives, that at times they can be mentally unstable, subject to unreasonable depression, anxiety or panic. Mental health care is therefore both valid and necessary. However, the emphasis must be on workable mental healing methods that improve and strengthen individuals and thereby society by restoring people to personal strength, ability, competence, confidence, stability, responsibility and spiritual well–being. Psychiatric drugs and psychiatric treatments are not workable.

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Psychiatric Mind Games

Wednesday, September 25th, 2019

Today we are going to discuss games.

English definitions of a game (this word has more than one meaning in English, as is common for many English words): activity engaged in for diversion or amusement; a procedure or strategy for gaining an end; an illegal or shady scheme; a physical or mental competition; an activity regarded as a contest; wild animals hunted for sport or food.
[Traced back to Old Norse gaman “sport, amusement”.]

Technical definition of a game: A game consists of freedoms, barriers and purposes; plus control and uncontrol. An opponent must be uncontrolled, otherwise it wouldn’t be a game.

Freedom: Something one is allowed to do.
Barrier: Something one is not allowed to do, or an obstacle.
Purpose: The “why” of the activity.

These are often shortened to “the rules.”

Games also have a wienie, meaning a prize or result.

The physical universe is a game consisting of barriers.
Life in general is a set of games. A motto of Life is “Any game is better than no game.”

There are many conditions which either contribute to a game or which hinder a game. Examples of conditions which contribute to a game are attention and motion. Examples of conditions which hinder a game are no attention and no motion.

Ideally a player would know that he or she is playing a game. All too often, a player (in this case a pawn) may not know or understand that he or she is being played in a game. Thus one must have the power of choice to play or not to play in a game.

Psychiatric Abuse of Games

The psychiatric industry is attempting to make games the subject of mental disorders, so they can prescribe harmful psychotropic drugs and make some money off of it. The International Classification of Diseases Revision 11 (ICD-11) has a category called “Gaming disorder”, in which a person is labeled mentally ill for persistently playing digital or video games.

The late professor Thomas Szasz said, “If we recognize that ‘mental illness’ is a metaphor for disapproved thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, we are compelled to recognize as well that the primary function of Psychiatry is to control thought, mood, and behavior.”

In other words, psychiatry wants to regulate your games because they disapprove of your power of choice in selecting which games you want to play and when you want to play them.

ICD-11 also categorizes two conditions of games as mental illnesses. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is diagnosed by persistent inattention (a no-games condition) or hyperactivity (a high degree of motion, or a games condition.) Again, an attempt to put the kibosh on a person’s natural game behavior because a psychiatrist cannot tolerate and disapproves of either the motion or the motionlessness.

The High Stakes Psychiatric Drug Money Game

The game that psychiatry is playing, to everyone else’s disadvantage, is the high stakes drug money game. Billions of dollars are riding on harmful psychiatric drugs. Medicaid spends more than $6 billion per year on psychiatric drugs, paid for by taxpayers. The annual revenue for ADHD drugs in the United States is $13 billion. Annual sales of antipsychotics in the U.S. is expected to reach $18.5 billion by 2022. And drugs are just the tip of the psychiatric money game; The United States loses approximately $100 billion to healthcare fraud each year, and up to $40 billion of this is due to fraudulent practices in the mental health industry.

Psychiatric Mind Games

“Mind Game” is an idiom which means “an act of calculated psychological manipulation, done especially to confuse or intimidate.” Psychiatry continually plays these mind games by redefining words and using misleading advertising to make one think they are helping when actually they are harming.

For example, the psychiatric drug Addyi is advertised as the “female viagra” when in reality it is an antidepressant.

Chantix is advertised as a smoking cessation drug when in reality it is a benzodiazepine-based anti-anxiety drug.

Electroshock (electroconvulsive therapy or ECT) is blatantly advertised as safe and effective when in fact it destroys brain cells and memory and is a gross violation of human rights.

Ketamine and Spravato are being relentlessly touted as new antidepressants when in fact they are just anesthetics which knock you out so you don’t feel much of anything.

The Bottom Line

So basically, psychiatric games are all barriers, no freedoms, and a purpose to harm and defraud.

And if you play their game, you are a pawn and not a player.

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Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. [Buddhist proverb]

Sunday, September 8th, 2019

The subject of pain is often in the news. This week (23 August 2019) we notice the St. Louis Business Journal carrying an article about the National Institutes of Health giving a $2.1 million grant to a St. Louis University pain researcher “to help open up a new avenue for pain medication research.”

We have a suspicion that the whole subject of pain is not understood very well by many people, so we thought we’d discuss it here.

What is Pain?

The first order of business should be a useful definition of pain. As is usual with many English words, there are multiple definitions of the word. Pain is a perception available to living beings.

English definitions: punishment; an unpleasant bodily sensation; physical discomfort; mental or emotional distress or suffering; something troublesome; a result of loss; a result of causing bad acts.
[Middle English, from Anglo-French peine, from Latin poena, from Greek poin? “payment, penalty”]

Technical definitions: Pain is the randomity (misalignment) produced by sudden or strong counter-efforts (i.e. efforts opposing optimum survival); the ultimate penalty of destructive activity; the warning of loss; the threat of non-survival; the punishment for errors in trying to survive.

Memories of pain can be just as damaging as the actual pain itself. Unconsciousness to greater or lesser degree is a symptom of pain. Unfortunately for humans, any sensation is better than no sensation; so in the absence of any sensation one desires pain.

Pain can be synthesized as an electronic flow. Psychiatrists use the pain of electroshock and other harmful psychiatric treatments as a coercive control mechanism — a means of getting someone to behave as they have decided one should behave. A person can be so overwhelmed by pain that they become addicted to it.

Painkillers

Doctors prescribe pain killers to relieve pain. However, it has never been known exactly how or why these “work.” Research into pain killers generally occurs by accidental discoveries, and the results often have undesirable side effects. The actions of pain killers include impeding the electrical conductivity of nerve channels, rendering a person unfeeling. Pain drugs block wanted sensations as well as unwanted ones.

Psychiatric Drugs

Psychiatric drugs are prescribed for various types of physical pain and mental trauma. Read the manufacturer’s fine print for any psychiatric drug and it will say in so many words that “we don’t really know how this drug works,” and they all have bad side effects; although one could say that there are no “side effects” since these are the actual effects of the drugs, albeit unwanted. It could be dangerous to immediately cease taking psychiatric drugs because of potential significant withdrawal side effects. No one should abruptly stop taking any psychiatric drug without the advice and assistance of a competent medical doctor.

Because of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), psychiatrists have deceived millions into thinking that the best answer to life’s many pains lies with the “latest and greatest” psychiatric drug. The DSM has led to the unnecessary drugging of millions of Americans who could be diagnosed, treated, and cured by non-psychiatric health care providers without the use of toxic and potentially lethal drugs.

Since psychiatric drugs do not actually cure conditions, but merely suppress symptoms, the patient may be lulled into a temporary sense of wellness; whatever condition has caused the symptom is still present and often growing worse.

A person in chronic physical pain may be misdiagnosed with a so-called mental disorder, labeled neurotic, and given a psychiatric drug which only makes the condition worse.

Authors Richard Hughes and Robert Brewin, in their book, The Tranquilizing of America, warned that although psychotropic drugs may appear “to ‘take the edge off’ anxiety, pain, and stress, they also take the edge off life itself … these pills not only numb the pain but numb the whole mind.”

Did we mention that the three Sackler brothers of Purdue Pharma, major enablers of the opioid addiction crisis, were all psychiatrists? A June 26, 2017 article on Kaiser Health News by Vickie Connor presents the information that, “Adults with a mental illness receive more than 50 percent of the 115 million opioid prescriptions in the United States annually.” We don’t really know which came first — the mental trauma or the physical pain; but it doesn’t really matter which comes first. The bottom line is that neither opioids nor psychiatric drugs are workable treatments.

What About the Suffering?

So how does one in pain overcome the suffering, as the ancient Buddhist proverb goes? Basically, understanding relieves suffering. We want you to understand that psychiatry kills. Find Out! Fight Back!

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The Psychiatric Opioid Connection

Monday, June 24th, 2019

Current media abounds about the opioid addiction and overdose crisis, and often points to the Sackler brothers of Purdue Pharma as major enablers of this horrific epidemic.

Rarely, however, does the media point out that Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond Sackler, pushing OxyContin for profit, were each practicing psychiatrists.

Psychiatrists have a history of pushing addictive drugs as “treatments.” LSD, heroin, psilocybin, mescaline, peyote, cannabis, ecstacy, and other hallucinogens have all been pushed by various psychiatrists as treatments for mental symptoms. Today, drug regulatory agencies all over the world approve clinical trials for the use of hallucinogenic drugs to handle anything from anxiety to alcoholism, despite the drugs being known to cause psychosis.

Now that psychiatrists have been exposed as perpetrators of drug addiction, we find that the opioid crisis has been claimed by the psychiatric industry as a behavioral health problem, because psychiatry claims that addiction is now a mental illness. Unfortunately there is no science to support this.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) and the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10) euphemistically call addiction a “use disorder.” To cement its control of addiction “treatments”, the DSM lists hundreds of “use disorders” for a wide range of substances (alcohol, amphetamines, caffeine, cannabis, cocaine, inhalants, opioids, hallucinogens, phencyclidines, sedatives, hypnotics, anxiolytics, stimulants, tobacco, and other, unknown, or unspecified substances or stimulants.) Not to mention other types of impulsive or compulsive behaviors such as anorexia, gambling, gaming, pyromania, kleptomania and promiscuity.

Then, to confuse the situation even more, psychiatrists recommend treating drug addictions with more addictive drugs; this is called “medication-assisted treatment,” an increasingly influential and controversial paradigm in the world of medicine that, among other things, considers addiction a chronic “brain disease” treated by more drugs, rather than a condition that can be treated by addressing the social and spiritual aspects underlying addiction.

The late Professor Thomas Szasz said, “If we recognize that ‘mental illness’ is a metaphor for disapproved thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, we are compelled to recognize as well that the primary function of Psychiatry is to control thought, mood, and behavior.” Coercive psychiatry is not about curing mental disorders; it’s about controlling behavior and “we know best what’s good for you.”

By the way, you can also become addicted to common psychiatric drugs such as antidepressants, psychostimulants, anti-anxiety drugs, and barbiturates. Addictive drugs should never be discontinued abruptly, since the withdrawal side effects can be severe. For more information about how to safely withdraw from these harmful and addictive drugs, download and read the booklet Coming Off Psych Drugs Harm Reduction Guide.

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Chanting the Chantix Mantra

Monday, May 6th, 2019

Recently there has been a gross increase in the TV ad campaign for Chantix, promoting this deadly drug for smoking cessation.

We’ve written about Chantix before, but we thought a repeat was in order due to this massive ad campaign.

In 2008 the Federal Aviation Administration banned Chantix for pilots and air traffic controllers, and reissued that decision in 2013.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) slapped a “Black Box” warning on Chantix (varenicline tartrate, made by Pfizer) in 2009 after receiving thousands of reports linking the drug to mental health issues, including suicidal thoughts, hostility and agitation.

In 2015, the FDA expanded the warning to note that the drug had also been linked to reduced alcohol tolerance leading to seizures.

However, in 2016 the FDA removed the Black Box warning, after heavy lobbying from Pfizer claiming that additional data showed that the benefits of Chantix outweighed its adverse side effects (oh, and since its sales had significantly dropped.)

But the adverse side effects did not go away; only the Black Box warning went away. One study found that Chantix had more cases of suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and homicidal thoughts than any other drug, by a more than three-fold margin. Pfizer’s prescribing information still warns about new or worsening mental health problems such as changes in behavior or thinking, aggression, hostility, agitation, depressed mood, or suicidal thoughts or actions while taking or after stopping Chantix.

We suspect that the recent spate of TV ads is related to the removal of the Black Box warning and the prior drop in sales. Also, the price of Chantix more than doubled between 2013 and 2018. In 2013, Pfizer paid out $273 million to settle a majority of the 2,700 state and federal lawsuits that had been filed over adverse side effects. Now the company is trying to grow the market with clinical studies for smokers age 12 to 19.

What is Chantix?

Chantix is a psychiatric drug — a benzodiazepine-based anti-anxiety drug, also called a minor tranquilizer or sedative hypnotic. Daily use of therapeutic doses of benzodiazepines are associated with physical dependence, and addiction can occur after 14 days of regular use. Typical consequences of withdrawal are anxiety, depression, sweating, cramps, nausea, psychotic reactions and seizures. There is also a “rebound effect” where the individual experiences even worse symptoms than they started with as a result of chemical dependency.

The exact mechanism of action of benzodiazepines is not known, but they affect neurotransmitters in the brain and suppress the activity of nerves, under the unproven theory that excessive activity of nerves may be the cause of anxiety. Chantix was developed to specifically affect nicotinic receptors in the brain, under the theory that this would reduce nicotine craving and block the rewarding effects of smoking. Messing with neurotransmitters in the brain is playing Russian Roulette with your mind.

Benzodiazepines are metabolized by cytochrome P450 enzymes, so a genetic lack of these enzymes can cause a buildup of harmful toxins and increase the severity of adverse side effects.

Psychiatric “best practices” consider that smoking is an addiction and recommend that psychiatrists assess tobacco use at every patient visit, since tobacco addiction is covered in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) as a “mental illness” under eight separate items, and disorders related to inhalant use have 33 entries. Smoking is not a mental illness and addiction cannot be fixed with psychiatric drugs.

The psychiatric industry considers that smoking cessation therapies are their territory, however this drug masks the real cause of problems in life and debilitates the individual, thus denying one the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future. Treating substance abuse with drugs is a major policy blunder; contact your state and federal representatives and let them know you disapprove of this trend.

Recognize that the real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior like smoking as a “disease.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax — unscientific, fraudulent and harmful. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

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1 in 4 Elderly Americans Hooked on Xanax

Saturday, February 9th, 2019

One in four older Americans who use prescribed benzodiazepine drugs such as Xanax (generic alprazolam) for sleep issues, anxiety and depression end up becoming addicted, according to a recent study.

The study, published 10 September 2018 in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that for every 10 additional days of prescribed drugs, the patient’s risk for long-term usage nearly doubled over the next year.
[doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2018.2413]

This abusive assault on the elderly is the result of psychiatry maneuvering itself into an authoritative position over aged care. From there, psychiatry has broadly perpetrated the tragic but lucrative hoax that aging is a mental disorder requiring extensive and expensive psychiatric services.

Long-term benzodiazepine users are more likely to develop anxiety or have sleep problems, the very things the drug was supposed to treat. The FDA recommends reporting adverse psychiatric drug reactions to the MedWatch program. It could be dangerous to immediately cease taking psychiatric drugs because of potential significant withdrawal side effects. No one should stop taking any psychiatric drug without the advice and assistance of a competent medical doctor.

The exact mechanism of action of benzodiazepines is not known, but they play Russian Roulette with neurotransmitters in the brain.

Daily use of benzodiazepines has always been associated with physical dependence. Addiction can occur after just 14 days of regular use. Withdrawal and addiction to benzodiazepines can be as traumatic as with heroin.

The typical consequences of withdrawal are anxiety, depression, sweating, cramps, nausea, psychotic reactions and seizures. There is also a “rebound effect” where the individual experiences even worse symptoms than they started with as a result of this chemical dependency.

Xanax is particularly obnoxious. After a patient stops taking Xanax, it takes the brain six to eighteen months to recover. Extreme anger, hostile behavior, violence and suicide are potential side effects.

Once they are taking the drug and have side effects they can be diagnosed with a fraudulent mental illness called “Sedative-, hypnotic-, or anxiolytic-induced anxiety disorder” and prescribed additional psychiatric drugs for the side effects. [Anxiolytic just means anti-anxiety drug.]

Then, once they are addicted and try to withdraw from the drug, they can be diagnosed with a fraudulent mental illness called “Sedative, hypnotic, or anxiolytic withdrawal” and prescribed additional psychiatric drugs for the withdrawal symptoms.

The real problem is that psychiatrists fraudulently diagnose life’s problems as an “illness”, and stigmatize unwanted behavior as  “diseases.” Psychiatry’s stigmatizing labels, programs and treatments are harmful junk science; their diagnoses of “mental disorders” are a hoax – unscientific, fraudulent and harmful.

CCHR recommends that everyone watch the video documentary “Making A Killing – The Untold Story of Psychotropic Drugging“. Containing more than 175 interviews with lawyers, mental health experts, the families of psychiatric abuse victims and the survivors themselves, this riveting documentary rips the mask off psychotropic drugging and exposes a brutal but well-entrenched money-making machine. The facts are hard to believe, but fatal to ignore. Watch the video online here.

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Buds Worth Billions – Blinded by the Buds

Monday, February 4th, 2019

The January 18-24 2019 edition of the St. Louis Business Journal extolled the virtues of making lots of money from medical marijuana.

Yes, we know that medical marijuana is now legal in Missouri; and yes, we know that the Business Journal‘s interest in local businesses motivates its attention.

On the other hand, a convincing argument can be made that, while legal and profitable, promoting marijuana is decidedly unethical.

“The Missouri Medical Cannabis Trade Association estimates $500 million in total economic benefit for the first year of the program.”

There are countless arguments for “medical benefits”; but those arguments seem to take second place after the arguments for how much money can be made.

There are also arguments for medical harm. Let’s take a look at the medical disadvantages, to get a sense of how promoting marijuana could be unethical.

Marijuana is a Drug

Make no mistake, marijuana (often called cannabis in an attempt to avoid the negative connotations of weed) is a drug.

Regardless of the name, this drug is a hallucinogen — a substance which distorts how the mind perceives the world.

THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the principal psychoactive component of marijuana, stays in the body for weeks, possibly months, depending on the length and intensity of usage. THC damages the immune system. In 2005, 242,200 emergency room visits in the U.S. involved marijuana. Nationwide, 40% of adult males tested positive for marijuana at the time of their arrest for a crime. Multiple studies have linked years of heavy marijuana use to brain abnormalities and psychosis. Cannabis is one of the few drugs which causes abnormal cell division which leads to severe hereditary defects.

Because a tolerance builds up, marijuana can lead users to consume stronger drugs to achieve the same effects.

People take drugs to get rid of unwanted situations or feelings. The drug masks the problem for a time, but when the “high” fades, the problem, unwanted condition or situation returns more intensely than before. Marijuana can harm a person’s memory — and this impact can last for days or weeks. Marijuana smoke also has all of the detrimental effects previously attributed to tobacco.

The use of marijuana is not only harmful to the person himself; he can also become a risk to society. Research clearly shows that marijuana has the potential to seriously diminish attention, memory, and learning. Users have more accidents, more injuries, and absenteeism than non-users.

Some will tell you that CBD (cannabidiol) is harmless because it does not contain THC. However, note that CBD and THC are structural isomers, which means they share the same chemical composition but their atomic arrangements differ. The proponents of CBD ignore the fact that it messes with the neurotransmitter serotonin when making claims for its safety and usefulness. There are very little long-term safety data available, but there is a lot of money riding on making this legal and ubiquitous; any bad effects are not going to be advertised or promoted. At higher dosages, CBD will deactivate cytochrome P450 enzymes, making it harder to metabolize certain drugs and toxins, particularly psychiatric drugs, leading to a toxic build-up of drugs and their subsequent adverse side effects.

How Drugs Work in the Body

Drugs are essentially poisons. The amount taken determines the effect. A small amount acts as a stimulant. A greater amount acts as a sedative. An even larger amount poisons and can kill. This is true of any drug.

Drugs block off all sensations, the desirable ones along with the unwanted ones. While providing short-term help in the relief of pain, they also wipe out ability and alertness and muddy one’s thinking.

Drugs affect the mind and destroy creativity. Drug residues lodge in the fatty tissues of the body and stay there, continuing to adversely affect the individual long after the effect of the drug has apparently worn off.

The Psychiatric Connection

In 2013 the American Psychiatric Association said, “There is no current scientific evidence that marijuana is in any way beneficial for the treatment of any psychiatric disorder.” The research was starting to show significant harm from cannabis use.

However, the psychiatric industry today has jumped on the cannabis bandwagon for several reasons. Psychiatrists are embracing all things marijuana because they are getting so many patients with marijuana-related problems such as addiction and psychosis. Marijuana addiction is such a significant problem that there are 31 entries in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) related to this addiction. Unfortunately, the last thing any psychiatric treatment has achieved is rehabilitation from addiction.

Since the 1950’s, psychiatry has monopolized the field of drug rehabilitation research and treatments. Its long list of failed cures has included lobotomies, insulin shock, psychoanalysis and LSD.

To the psychiatric industry, when they are not prescribing it as a “treatment”, cannabis use merely represents another pool of potential patients for other coercive and harmful treatments.

The history of psychiatry makes it clear that over many, many years they have been pushing dangerous drugs as “medicines.” We didn’t originally know about the long-term destructive effects of LSD, heroin, ecstasy, benzodiazepines, ritalin, and so on when psychiatrists first pushed them onto an unsuspecting society. Cannabis is no exception, as more and more psychiatrists are prescribing “medical” cannabis in spite of (or because of) the addiction problem. We think it’s the latter; the pool of potential psychiatric patients is increased by increasing cannabis use.

The Ethics of Promoting Marijuana Use

Ethics consists simply of the actions an individual takes on himself. A high level of ethics enhances one’s survival across all areas of life; it embodies rationality towards the greatest good for the greatest number. A low level of ethics, on the other hand, would be one’s irrationality toward bringing minimal survival, maximum harm or destruction, across all areas of life — or the least good for the fewest. An individual whose actions are harmful in society becomes subject to Justice. We leave it to each individual to observe for themselves the degree to which they and their associates are surviving well or poorly, and how marijuana may contribute to or obstruct the quality of their life.

In a statement issued January 13, 2019, the Cleveland Clinic announced that it will not be recommending medical marijuana to its patients. Dr. Paul Terpeluk, medical director of employee health services at the Cleveland Clinic, said, “There is little verified, published research that supports marijuana…as a medical treatment. … However, there is a significant amount of scientific literature that unequivocally shows that marijuana use has both short- and long-term deleterious effects on physical health.”

There are alternatives. We urge everyone embarking on some course of treatment to do their due diligence and undertake full informed consent.

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More About Dopamine

Sunday, November 11th, 2018

Since we discussed Serotonin in a previous newsletter, we should also discuss Dopamine.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays several important roles in the brain and body. A neurotransmitter is a chemical released by neurons (nerve cells) to send signals to other nerve cells. Its chemical formula is C8H11NO2. It belongs to a family of chemicals with high psychoactive properties.

Dopamine was first synthesized in 1910, first identified in the human brain in 1957, and its function as a neurotransmitter was first recognized in 1958. The name comes from a contraction of chemicals in its synthesis.

The anticipation of rewards increases the level of dopamine in the brain, and many addictive drugs increase dopamine release or block its reuptake into neurons following release.

Dopamine has other effects around the body:

  • helps widen blood vessels
  • helps increase urine output
  • helps regulate insulin production
  • helps to protect the gastrointestinal tract
  • helps control motor function
  • helps regulate aggression

Because it seems to be involved in the anticipation of rewards, it is seen as a chemical of pleasure or happiness. Most antipsychotic drugs are dopamine antagonists which reduce dopamine activity. Decreased levels of dopamine have also been associated with painful symptoms. Like serotonin, dopamine levels must be strictly regulated since both an excess and a deficiency can be problematic.

Side effects of dopamine include lowered kidney function and irregular heartbeats, addiction, and an overdose can be fatal. Cocaine, methamphetamine, Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta, MDMA (ecstasy) and other psychostimulants generally increase dopamine levels in the brain by a variety of mechanisms.

Dopamine and serotonin are both neurotransmitters; an imbalance of either one can have disastrous effects on health, mental health, digestion, sleep cycle, and so on. The serotonergic system has strong anatomical and functional interactions with the dopaminergic system. While they both affect a lot of the same parts of the body, they do so in distinct ways which are still not fully understood. In the brain in general, dopamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter and serotonin is an inhibitory neurotransmitter. The imbalance of these two chemicals can cause a number of disorders; thus, drugs which mess with either of these play Russian roulette with your brain.

Because both serotonin and dopamine are involved in regulating aggression in different ways, one can see that imbalances can lead to suicidal thoughts and behaviors, which is a common side effect of drugs which mess with these neurotransmitters.

Researchers still only conjecture about any relationship between mental symptoms and dopamine, and they are coming to understand that the results do not support the hype.

Psychiatrists have known since the beginning of psychopharmacology that their drugs do not cure any disease. Further, there is no credible evidence that mental health is genetic or linked to dopamine transport; these are just public relations theories to support the marketing and sale of drugs. The manufacturers of every such drug state in the fine print that they don’t really understand how it works. Psychiatric drugs are fraudulently marketed as safe and effective for the sole purpose of earning billions for the psycho-pharmaceutical industry.

These drugs mask the real cause of problems in life and debilitate the individual, so denying him or her the opportunity for real recovery and hope for the future. This is the real reason why psychiatry is a violation of human rights. Psychiatric treatment is not just a failure — it is routinely destructive to the individual and one’s mental health.

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