Posts Tagged ‘Serotonin’

World Psychiatric Group Must Tell Its Members To Expunge Chemical Imbalance Myth

Monday, August 29th, 2022

CCHR, a global mental health industry watchdog, has demanded the World Psychiatric Association advise its 180 members to remove all references to a chemical imbalance causing mental disorders from their websites and literature.

By CCHR International Mental Health Industry Watchdog August 9, 2022

Citizens Commission on Human Rights International, a 53-year mental health industry watchdog, has demanded the World Psychiatric Association issue a Positioning Statement urging all of its members to remove any reference or suggestion that a chemical imbalance in the brain causes mental disorders from their websites. In a letter sent to Dr. Afzal Javed, president of the WPA, CCHR called on the organization to condemn the theory and now wants the organization to also send an advisory to national psychiatric associations to inform their members to remove references to the disproved chemical imbalance theory from their websites, literature and any patient informed consent forms.

WPA has 145 member societies, mostly national psychiatric associations, including the American Psychiatric Association, and 36 affiliate member associations, representing some 250,000 psychiatrists worldwide.[1] As the association says it emphasizes the need for “the highest possible standards of clinical practice and ethical behavior in psychiatry,” CCHR says a priority must be that psychiatric groups to stop misleading consumers that a chemical imbalance underlies their mental health issues.[2]

The letter to Dr. Javed at the WPA Congress held in Bangkok, Thailand, pointed out that the chemical imbalance theory was a myth that has been exploited in the mental health field for over 30 years to fuel antidepressant sales, but was recently thoroughly debunked by researchers from University College London (UCL) in a study published in Molecular Psychiatry. The researchers reviewed major studies published over several decades and found no convincing evidence to support the theory that a chemical imbalance causes a mental disorder. The letter said the WPA should formally condemn the debunked theory because to do otherwise constitutes consumer fraud and violates patient informed consent rights.

In 2019, the Royal College of Psychiatrists in the UK had already responded to research that found no proof of low serotonin levels causing depression, and issued a position statement dismissing the idea that antidepressants “correct a chemical imbalance in the brain.”[3] However, the American Psychiatric Association website continued to promote mental health issues as “brain disorders,” without evidence to prove this, and its patient leaflets declared “antidepressants may be prescribed to correct imbalances in the levels of chemicals in the brain.”

As one of the UCL researchers stated, this misleading situation has arisen because it serves the interests of the psychiatric profession and the pharmaceutical industry. “Our view is that patients should not be told that depression is caused by low serotonin or by a chemical imbalance, and they should not be led to believe that antidepressants work by targeting these unproven abnormalities,” the lead researcher said.

CCHR says the WPA must take immediate action to ensure this view is conveyed to its members. Giving patients misinformation prevents their making an informed decision and has already resulted in many millions of people taking antidepressants or other psychotropic drugs with harmful side effects, erroneously believing these would “correct” something that simply never existed, CCHR wrote to Dr. Javed.

In 2020, WPA issued a Position Statement, “Implementing Alternatives to Coercion” which acknowledged that coercion in psychiatry has long been subject to controversy and contravenes patients’ rights, including violation of “rights to liberty; autonomy; freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment….”

The WPA admitted that coercion in psychiatry is “over-used,” contravening patients’ rights—although CCHR says it should never be used.

It pointed out that practices that constitute coercion include, “treatment without consent (or ‘compulsory treatment’), any form of treatment including the use of psychotropic medication; seclusion locking or confining a person to a space or room alone; restraint actions aimed at controlling a person’s physical movement, including prolonged or unsafe holding by other person(s), the use of any physical devices (‘mechanical restraint’, chaining, etc.) and the use of psychotropic drugs for the primary purpose of controlling movement (‘chemical restraint’).”

It warned that the use of coercive practices “carries the risk of harmful consequences, including trauma” and individuals subject to physical coercion are susceptible to harms that include physical pain, injury and death.”

CCHR wants this statement expanded so that WPA tells its members that to purport, in any way, that a chemical imbalance may be a source of people’s mental travails, harms patients, and could constitute consumer fraud. Troubled patients being misled about what causes their problems and being told that they need to take a psychotropic drug to “correct” this, is a form of coercion and contradicts the WPA 2020 Position Statement and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that the statement is based upon.

References:

[1] https://www.wpanet.org/
https://www.wpanet.org/members-affiliates
[2] https://www.wpanet.org/what-we-do
[3] Royal College of Psychiatrists, “Position statement on antidepressants and depression,” May 2019

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The Serotonin Theory Of Depression Is In The News Again

Monday, August 1st, 2022

While the fraudulent psychiatric “brain chemical imbalance” theory has been debunked for many years, it has been held firmly in place by the psycho-pharma public relations machine in order to sell more harmful and addictive psychiatric drugs. These drugs make patients for life since the drugs do not cure anything and have devastating side effects.

We discuss serotonin because many psychiatric drugs deliberately alter the levels of serotonin in the brain, in the mistaken belief that this is the cause of depression.

July 20, 2022 marks the publication of another study debunking the serotonin theory of depression, the so-called brain chemical imbalance theory.

To quote the study, “Our comprehensive review of the major strands of research on serotonin shows there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with, or caused by, lower serotonin concentrations or activity. … This review suggests that the huge research effort based on the serotonin hypothesis has not produced convincing evidence of a biochemical basis to depression. … We suggest it is time to acknowledge that the serotonin theory of depression is not empirically substantiated.”

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter hormone synthesized in the adrenal glands and elsewhere in the body from the essential amino acid tryptophan, found in the brain, blood, and mostly the digestive tract, which allows nerve cells throughout the body to communicate and interact with each other.

Since serotonin impacts every part of the body, messing with it can cause unwanted and dangerous side effects. Obviously, the body must closely regulate and balance the level of serotonin, since both a deficiency or an excess can be extremely harmful.

Psychiatrists have known since the beginning of psychopharmacology that their drugs do not cure any disease. Further, there is no credible evidence that depression is genetic or linked to serotonin 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.

Messing with neurotransmitters in the brain without totally understanding how they work is serious business, essentially one is playing Russian Roulette with one’s brain.

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.

Contact your local, state and federal officials and insist they stop funding this insanity.

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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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Erectile dysfunction drug mistakenly packaged with antidepressant

Monday, December 28th, 2020

Reference: “Erectile dysfunction drug packaged with antidepressant in ‘product mix-up’” [12/10/2020]

“Pharmaceutical distributor AvKare issued a voluntary recall of 100 mg tablets of both sildenafil, an erectile disfunction medication [the active ingredient in Viagra], and trazodone, an antidepressant [such as Desyrel], after a mix-up led to some of the prescription drugs being packaged together.“

We can think of some lewd suggestions of how this combination might work as an antidepressant, but our better judgment prevails.

Sildenafil is also prescribed for pulmonary arterial hypertension (high blood pressure in the lungs) because it relaxes blood vessels to increase blood flow.

If this goof isn’t bad enough, try putting your mind around the horrific side effects of trazodone, should anyone goof by actually taking it.

Trazodone is what’s known as a “newer antidepressant”. Some of its side effects are: flushing, chest pain, abnormal bleeding, ringing in the ears, dizzyness, fainting, changes in sexual ability, and painful erections.

Some of the side effects of sildenafil are: flushing, chest pain, nosebleeds, ringing in the ears, dizzyness, fainting, painful erections.

Gee, it might be difficult to tell which pill you’ve taken since both were in the same bottle and have the same side effects!

We make fun of it because we think it’s too good of a joke to let be; but the fact is, trazodone is not really a joking matter. Its side effects also include suicidal thoughts or behavior, violent behavior, psychotic episodes, deeper depression (which is ironic for an “antidepressant”), and many more serious adverse reactions.

Trazodone, like other such psychiatric drugs, raises the level of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the brain. Since it is not known exactly how this drug is supposed to work, taking it is playing Russian Roulette with your brain.

Trazodone is also routinely prescribed off-label for insomnia. Care must be used when stopping it, since it can have withdrawal symptoms. Psychiatrists euphemistically call this “discontinuation syndrome.”

We now know that Aaron Alexis, the 34-year-old man accused of killing 12 people in a gun rampage at the Washington Navy Yard September 16, 2013, was taking trazodone.

Adverse reactions should be reported to the FDA’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program.

Recognize that the real problem is not even this awful drug, but 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. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

It is vital that you, your family and friends 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.

Making A Killing

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Cap It Off With Caplyta

Monday, September 21st, 2020

Emerging from a cloud of regulatory questions and mixed clinical results, Caplyta (generic lumateperone) an atypical antipsychotic from Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc. was given FDA approval 20 December 2019, and is now being heavily marketed. There are over a dozen of these second-generation antipsychotics, with varying activity at the brain receptors for various neurotransmitters.

It is hardly clear whether lumateperone has any advantages over other antipsychotic drugs. The primary reason for researching and releasing another atypical antipsychotic is to try to reduce the side effects, rather than to actually eliminate the symptoms, since no one really knows what causes these symptoms. The manipulation of neurotransmitters in the brain is just a guess, unfounded by any real understanding, just as the actual causes of so-called schizophrenia (psychiatry’s “For Profit Disease”) are not understood.

Side Effects of this dangerous drug include: stroke, neuroleptic malignant syndrome, tardive dyskinesia, diabetes, low white blood cell count, low blood pressure, falls, seizures, sleepiness, trouble concentrating, high temperature, difficulty swallowing, withdrawal symptoms in newborn babies exposed to Caplyta during the third trimester, pruritus (itchy skin), rash, urticaria (hives), increased mortality in elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis.

Patients are urged to avoid Cytochrome P450 (CYP3A4) inducers or inhibitors, since these may exacerbate the adverse reactions, causing violence and suicide.

List Price: $44 per 42mg capsule, with a peak sales estimate of $60 million in 2020 and $400 million by 2024. There may be conditions for insurance approval; for example, UnitedHealthcare may require the failure, contraindication, or intolerance to three other atypical antipsychotics before giving approval to pay for the use of Caplyta.

The antipsychotic activity of Caplyta is thought to be mediated through a combination of antagonism of serotonin receptors and antagonism of dopamine receptors in the brain, however the actual mechanism of action of Caplyta in schizophrenia is unknown.

Clinical trial results were measured by the opinion of a clinician observing or asking the patient about their feelings. The results require cautious interpretation and could represent chance findings. One phase III trial showed some symptomatic improvement and another phase III trial failed to show any improvement over placebo.

Obviously use this drug at your own serious risk, and insist on Full Informed Consent.

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. All psychiatric treatments, not just psychiatric drugs, are dangerous.

It is vital that patients 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.

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Fraud & Abuse in the Name of Help

Monday, May 25th, 2020

Psychologists and psychiatrists way overthink the ways that a natural human tendency or attribute can be compromised, which leaks into common thought and over-complicates one’s responses.

“Help” is a built-in attribute of spiritual beings. Because individuals have unique experiences, the ways in which help can be aberrated is likely limitless.

However, there are many aberrations which are common to a lot of people, and can thus be categorized.

The basic way Help is aberrated is pretty simple. It’s called “failed help.” That is, one tries to help another and fails; or another tries to help oneself and it fails.

From this we get all the obsessive, compulsive, repressive, and other designations of what is really just failed help, which ultimately end up as fraudulent diagnoses in the psychiatric billing bible, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders” (DSM).

The DSM even has a diagnostic category involving help itself: “Unavailability or inaccessibility of other helping agencies“; meaning that a person is considered to have a mental disorder if he is unable to access help — the implication being that psychiatry helps when all other avenues fail, clearly a false claim since psychiatry is harm and fraud in the name of help.

Because psychiatrists do not really understand this fundamental attribute nor its aberrative aspects, nor indeed how to fix it, they try to find a biological or neurological description for which they can prescribe a drug, which is how they earn a living. Unfortunately, these drugs do not cure anything, and they are addictive and have harmful side effects.

One current neurological model involves disruptions in the body’s serotonergic functions. Serotonergic means “denoting a nerve ending that releases and is stimulated by serotonin”, which is why so many psychiatric drugs play Russian Roulette with serotonin.

Since serotonin impacts every part of the body, messing with it can cause unwanted and dangerous side effects. Obviously, the body must closely regulate and balance the level of serotonin, since both a deficiency or an excess can be harmful. Psychiatric drugs which change the level of serotonin in the body and brain are thus playing with fire. It doesn’t really help at all.

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.

What is help, really? It is the willingness to assist. When help fails, it becomes destruction. Thus psychiatry, which cannot help, becomes bent on destruction instead.

Find Out! Fight Back!

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Schizo Christmas Present from the FDA

Sunday, December 29th, 2019
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally approved the new antipsychotic drug lumateperone (Caplyta, from Intra-Cellular Therapies, Inc) on December 23, 2019 for treatment of schizophrenia in adults, in spite of previously canceling its review because of mixed results in testing, which were blamed on positive responses to placebos.

As with other antipsychotics, lumateperone includes a boxed warning that elderly patients with dementia-related psychosis are at an increased risk for death.

Also as with other antipsychotics, the mechanism of action is unknown — they’re just guessing about how it is supposed to “work.” It plays Russian Roulette with serotonin, dopamine and glutamate (another neurotransmitter) in the brain.

It has all the usual possible side effects – neuroleptic malignant syndrome, tardive dyskinesia, hyperglycemia, diabetes, weight gain, sedation, increased risk of falls, seizures, infertility, etc.  Newborns exposed to antipsychotic drugs during the third trimester of pregnancy may suffer withdrawal symptoms.

Since cytochrome P450 enzymes such as CYP3A4 are involved in its metabolism in the liver, a person’s genetic abnormality with these can lead to the drug or its metabolites reaching a toxic level in hours or days, correlating with the onset of severe side effects. One is also ill-advised to drink grapefruit juice with this drug because it strongly inhibits the CYP3A4 enzyme, again increasing the risk of serious adverse reactions.

Of course, psychiatrists attribute any attempts at suicide to the underlying diagnosis and not to the drugs.

Speaking of the Underlying Diagnosis

Today, 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, ethical 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.

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.

For more information, click here to download and read the full CCHR report “Schizophrenia—Psychiatry’s For Profit ‘Disease’“.
Calvin and Hobbes

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More About Serotonin

Saturday, October 13th, 2018

We often remark on serotonin when discussing psychiatric drugs, so we thought we’d describe it in more depth.

The word comes from the combination of sero- (serum) + tonic (from Greek tonos string or stretching) + -in (from Latin -ina a term used to form words). It was first named in 1948, although its effects had likely been observed since 1868.

Serotonin is a neurotransmitter hormone synthesized in the adrenal glands and elsewhere in the body from the essential amino acid tryptophan (chemical formula C10H12N2O, also called 5-hydroxytryptamine), found in the brain, blood, and mostly the digestive tract, which allows nerve cells throughout the body to communicate and interact with each other.

Some of its effects include:
— helping smooth muscles to contract, such as the abdominal muscles that aid digestion,
— helping to regulate expansion and contraction of blood vessels,
— assisting the clotting of blood to close a wound,
— helping to regulate mood, aggression, appetite, and sleep.

It helps to create a sense of well-being or comfort in the body, which is the starting point for the theory of using it as an antidepressant.

Since serotonin impacts every part of your body, messing with it can cause unwanted and dangerous side effects. Obviously, the body must closely regulate and balance the level of serotonin, since both a deficiency or an excess can be harmful.

It is mainly metabolized in the liver and the resulting products are excreted by the kidneys.

It is also found in animals, insects, fungi and plants.

Extremely high levels of serotonin can cause a condition known as serotonin syndrome, with toxic and potentially fatal effects. It can be caused by an overdose of drugs or interactions between drugs which increase the concentration of serotonin in the central nervous system, the most common of which are the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), whose purpose is to raise the level of serotonin in the brain.

A toxic level of serotonin can occur by taking two or more of these types of drugs, even if each is only a normal therapeutic dose. Many drugs, both legal and illegal, influence the level of serotonin in the brain — including some antidepressants, appetite suppressants, analgesics (pain drugs), sedatives, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety drugs, antimigraine drugs, antiemetics (for relief of nausea and vomiting), antiepileptics, cannabis (marijuana), LSD, MDMA (Ecstasy), psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms), and cannabidiol (CBD).

There aren’t any tests that can diagnose serotonin syndrome. Instead, one has to observe the extent and severity of the various adverse reactions. Some side effects of serotonin syndrome can be altered mental status, muscle twitching, confusion, high blood pressure, fever, restlessness, sweating, tremors, shivering, or death.

Some people have a genetic defect with cytochrome P450 enzymes which influences serotonin metabolism. Some research also suggests that the interactions of psychotropic drugs with cytochrome P450 in the brain may also influence serotonin metabolism. Basically, these interactions can be extremely complex, and the results are unpredictable — meaning that wild variations in serotonin concentration, both lower and higher than optimum, may occur, with the attendant adverse reactions.

The proponents of all these drugs basically ignore the fact that they mess with serotonin when making claims for safety and usefulness. Messing with neurotransmitters in the brain without totally understanding how they work is serious business. Researchers know that 60 to 70 percent of patients diagnosed with depression continue to feel depressed even while taking such drugs. There is still a lot unknown about such interactions and long term safety, so caution is definitely advised.

An article in the October, 2018 print issue of Scientific American (“Postpartum Relief” on page 22) makes an interesting point, saying, “Many women who suffer from postpartum depression receive standard antidepressants, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as Prozac. It is unclear how well these drugs work, however, because the neurotransmitter serotonin may play only a secondary role in the condition or may not be involved at all.” (Emphasis ours.)

Researchers still only conjecture about any relationship between depression and serotonin, 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 depression is genetic or linked to serotonin 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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Cannabidiol (CBD) – Can We Be Sure It’s Safe?

Sunday, June 10th, 2018

Every time we say “CBD” out loud we think Bidi Bidi and picture Buck Rogers’ Twiki the Robot.

But really, what is CBD, and is it harmful or helpful?

Derived from Cannabis (marijuana), CBD is one of many cannabinoids which are chemical compounds capable of binding to specific biological receptors in the brain or other sites in the body.

The theory is that when CBD binds to these brain receptors it seems to suppress or limit the immune system’s inflammatory signals.

Another cannabinoid, THC (tetrahydrocannabinol, also called “The High Causer”), is the principal psychoactive component of marijuana, and when it binds to receptors in the brain it gets you high. We also know that THC damages the immune system, yet proponents of cannabis call it a “medicinal herb.” Click here for more information about the harmful effects of this “herb.”

CBD and THC are structural isomers, which means they share the same chemical composition but their atomic arrangements differ.

The claim is that CBD, unlike THC, is not hallucinogenic. Much of the research information so far available about CBD comes from animal studies.

Although it is a cannabinoid, CBD apparently does not directly interact with the principal receptors in the brain to which THC binds, and binds to many other non-cannabinoid receptors in the brain.

Basically, the research to date is unclear on exactly how CBD works, except that we know it affects the brain. We’d call these observations mostly anecdotal — that is, people have reported on their observations and feelings, but the double-blind human clinical trials are sparse.

Animal studies have demonstrated that CBD directly activates multiple serotonin receptors in the brain, and we know that in humans at least, psychiatric drugs which mess with serotonin levels in the brain are addictive and have some disastrous side effects. The manufacturers of every psychiatric drug so far which messes with serotonin in the brain say they don’t really know how it works.

CBD, LSD, mescaline, and other hallucinogenic drugs bind to the same serotonin receptors in the brain, so calling CBD totally non-intoxicating is a bit of a stretch. We think the insistence on calling CBD “non-intoxicating” or “non-hallucinogenic” is Public Relations for “Bidi bidi, gee, we can make a bundle with this.” While the anecdotal evidence claims no hallucinogenic effect for CBD, the fact that it affects serotonin in the brain makes it less attractive as a healthy alternative. Its long-term effects are simply unknown.

Some proponents promote taking THC and CBD together. We think this is a short path to becoming a bidi bidi robot.

At higher dosages, CBD will deactivate cytochrome P450 enzymes, making it harder to metabolize certain drugs and toxins, particularly psychiatric drugs.

What about CBD oil or cream (hemp extract) applied to the skin? Is there a difference between CBD derived from hemp and CBD derived from marijuana?

CBD is legally available in the United States, but it must be derived from imported high-CBD, low-THC hemp. CBD itself is not listed under the Controlled Substances Act, so it’s legal in all 50 states provided it’s not extracted from marijuana.

A huge amount of fiber hemp is required to extract a small amount of CBD, so researchers are focused on breeding plants with more CBD and less THC just for this purpose. It is important to note that all cannabidiol products are not approved by the FDA for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of any disease.

CBD and THC both interact with the body through a vital nerve signaling system which regulates a wide array of functions, some of which include: pain, appetite, mood, memory, immune response, and sleep. There are still very little long-term safety data available. The proponents of CBD, whether for internal or external use, ignore the fact that it messes with serotonin when making claims for its safety and usefulness, so caution is advised. There is a lot of money riding on making these substances legal and ubiquitous; any bad effects are not going to be advertised or promoted.

At present, we’d prefer not to experiment with substances that tweak the brain in ways that are not fully understood, lest we become like bidi bidi Twiki. As always, your fully informed consent for any treatment is of paramount importance.

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