may take him to the hospital and put them all in there. i mean, if you really wanted to commit suicide, there's nothing i could do about it, but it wasn't gonna make it easy. this all started off with a bad relationship and some tests, things in stress and grad school. and now i am a totally dysfunctional, highly suicidal individual. and the only thing that's happened between then and now is i've been exposed to a series of very strong psychiatric medications. right now, medicines are giving patients the same doctors for 5 minutes and they're given a pill. it's my belief that many of the medications that doctors are giving to patients today are more harmful than helpful to those patients. they want that pill that they hope will take care of their problem thoroughly and rapidly. and most of these medications will actually do that very well in the short term. in the short term, they really work. the problem is, in the long term, they're mostly disastrous. i'm not sick,

it's nothing wrong with me. this is just the damage to my nervous system. cause from a properly taken prescribed drug that a doctor told me, i was sick. there's nothing safe about this drug. this is crazy. it's very clear to me. after having started the science that the way we use, i catch it. drugs do vastly more harm than good. i remember my nice to school and i was like kids are going to be murdered and then like that thoughts created adrenalin. so then when the german kids i was like, oh my god, am i going to be the one that does it? and then it's like, yeah, age you're going to kill these kids. and then i'm like, i'm like you're looking at my knees like i can't in the thoughts are so bad that like your teeth chatter like, oh my god, i'm capable of that. are you kidding me? never like the scary part because i don't know is this my normal like did effects reduce to me did symbolic to do this to me. did g and on vilify which

one, which one did it? oh, i was very successful academically. i got accepted into the naval academy annapolis, maryland after annapolis. i did

a few years on the destroyer base out of port florida. and then when you're, i see your training to be the guy directing this ship where to navigate where to go . it's great fun, but it's also extremely high stress. but i loved it. i was pre selected for satellite systems engineering part of that was going to grad school. when i got the acceptance letter from him, i t is one of those moments were just like, this is not happening. you know, must be a mistake. but then you know, stars have aligned and i was really happy fall semester went off without a hitch. i had started a romantic relationship earlier that summer. the early spring is when things started to fall apart. my romantic relationship kind of took a turn, you know, became toxic. you know, i was in distress. i was overwhelmed. we were taken upwards of $4.00 to $5.00 graduate level courses a semester. and so i thought out care from the mental health clinic at mit,

the campus clinic presented solution to my problems. was a prescription for the been that i had to pick out a van, which i never previously known about or taken and zoloft, they work as advertised. i mean it's, it's very immediate effect. it's very calming. they've told me probably on our 3rd or 4th date that he was on medication for depression and adhd. i have a d. c myself and take medication for that. i had issues with depression and thought out hope and medication in counseling. it's kind of fairly normal now and met the goal, my dreams engage, that period. work was great, loved it, back to my normal what i thought was my normal self, somewhere in the 8 month time range, a sort of emotional flatness, some sexual dysfunction, difficulty remembering what st. we lived on. that whole period is just

a blur of like ours is omby has its big wedding planned. i remember talking to my mom prior to it as mom, i just, i feel nothing. i feel emotionally void of anything. and that's when i went to psychiatrist. and so, you know, this is the stuff isn't for me, you know, i need to get off that. i think the drug is my problem. that that's really when i hit the fan me, i've always been very close with my parents and i was a child. i love school, i like the base my friends a lot. i feel very comforted just being around other people. when i was 11 years old, i moved from nashville to milwaukee wisconscin. we moved a lot for my parents, various jobs, which is very hard in terms of keeping like lifelong friends. i heard oftentimes just like sit in my room and listen to music and just like i so i can mope,

move her around. i started having linings idea about school and i was so anxious i got these stomach aches where i didn't want to eat. i wouldn't eat breakfast with the stomach ache. i wouldn't eat much lunch because i had a stomach ache. i notice how that you've gotten kind of then i just kind of blurted out, you know, or do you think you might be interact 6. he went got on the scale and she said, you know, i think it was 20 pounds. and so i just totally freaked out and got an appointment same day. and then toward the end, the therapist asked me to come into the room. she said, i think what would really be best to kick start this treatment is for her to get on anti depressants. why does i can we came here for the talk therapy, right within the come here to kick started was indication as the whole point of going to a therapist. i thought rebecca was prescribed zoloft for the 1st medication. she said it didn't really make a difference. she didn't feel any better. she also didn't really feel any worse at that time. so when we saw her doctor again,

the doctor switched her to prozac. shortly after i had a business trip and i got a phone call from rebecca and she said, you know, i've been, i've been seeing this little girl. and i'm like, what do you mean? you've been seeing a little girl. yeah. like, you know, she's not really there but like i can see her and i named her alice like i genuinely thought that there are people here in the room that weren't there, that people could also see. but they were very real for me. she came into our bedroom late at night and she was shaking. she said, you know, the hello, hello, hello, the nation touched me and asked me to come into the kitchen. so i could hurt myself and they said me enough. oh, thus she needs. she needs help me

. i was a waitress in new york city. pretty normal girl doing normal things. nothing exceptional, nothing, not exceptional. just normal. my mind was clear and happy. the only little issue i had was i couldn't sleep. i get out and choose to be in the morning so i knew that my sleep issues were related to working night time. so i went to my doctor, just my regular doctor. i see him maybe twice a year. when i asked him for something for sleep. he gave me a referral. i took the referral and i called a bunch of psychiatry than this. one doctor in brooklyn said you were seeing patients come on and gave me prescription for lorazepam. he told me to take 2 in the day and 2 at night. i then said, why would i need to take a sleeping pill during the day? i don't want to sleep during the day. and he said that is how it works. i said ok.

i didn't even know people could have sleep issues because i was sleeping normal all my life. so it's not something i thought about. so, but i had a feeling, it was my job. i just didn't think i could quit my job. i thought i could get help for that. how come i went to a psychiatrist and he prescribed me distraught. lorazepam, i took it for 6 years then when you took it as a painful 6 year and 6 and a half years. unfortunately, that's the problem that most pharmacists see will lorazepam lorazepam. again, if they, if the doctor takes the time out to read the packages, to clearly not read it, that i don't know, i can only tell you a hurry. the use of benzodiazepine has increase tremendously over the years since they've been around for such a long time. a lot of doctors have forgotten about the side effects and the possible dangers of these medications. none of them were mental long term use. but everybody know somebody who's been ticket best with that to be for years. ah,

i started thinking like okay, when did the start? how did this start? what led up to like me falling apart? like i was the go to person in my unit always. if they needed the job done, they needed done, right? they would ask me, i was physically fit, knew my job. i got promoted to sergeant after work. i was like a lot of fun. i like to travel, go to the beach. spontaneous i was just like the happy person, like the happy go lucky friends like hey, let's go shop and look, a little bakery lets you know. never had a 2nd thought about anything crazy. that's who i was before this. so when the war started, i think most of it was stressful situations every day, like being shot and convoys just driving around and dangerous areas of baghdad. your head was like, constantly scanning for something dangerous. be a strong sergeant. i don't take no. that's just the way i was. but like the 1st 2

months i was in baghdad like i'm really, really sick, had nosebleeds fainting dizziness. i lost like 40 pounds. so they met of x me out of iraq. then my conway got hit the day after i got met of act and so i saw the kid come back in and he was one of my soldiers and i felt horrible. and like that was a day that i sought psychiatry with the arrow and i walk straight there because that's what you do. i don't know. and they put me on convent right. that's how this all started. they're trained while they're on active duty, very, very systematically that if you come back and you have problems, you need to go to the doctor a 100 years ago if they had this kind of a trauma would talk to their fellow soldiers talk to their parents, talk to their friends talk to their pastor, and instead they're going to their doctor and getting medicated. and i think the classroom was starting to make me worse, but they just kept telling me that's what p t s d is. you have p t s d now, and then i remember he looked at me. he said, we're going to start the proceedings for medical retirement. you are not able to be

around soldiers and no weapons. and i remember feeling like, how was i like super soldier and now i'm disabled at 25. you kidding? the only one main thing is important. not as an internationally speaking, that is a nation's pickups. are allowed to do anything, all the master races, and then you have the minor nation. so the slave, the americans, brock obama, and others have had a concept of american exceptionalism. international law exist as long as it serves the american interest. if it doesn't, it doesn't exist. like turning those russians enter this dangerous volume man that

wants to take over the world. that was a conscious strategy. so i'm going to noon i v i b, i not leashed to austin one tablet block. nato could, it's our, we move east. the reason us here, jimmy is dangerous, is the lie. the sovereignty of the countries, the exceptionalism that america uses and it's international. war planning is one of the greatest threats to the populations of different nations. if nature, what is founded, shareholders in the united states and elsewhere in large companies would lose millions and millions or is business and businesses good. and that is the reality of what we're facing, which is fascist. join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guests in the world, the politic sport business and show business. i'll see you then me

the media a reflection of reality in a world transformed what will make you feel safer. type relation for community you going the right way or are you being that somewhere? which direction? what is true? what is faith? in the world corrupted. you need to defend the join us in the depths or remain in the shallows, use in

the the news there is a, a, a post traumatic stress, and it's a problem. so we would never argue with you that it's not a problem. it is a problem. the big problem for you, it's not a mental illness. like i'm feel like i'm waking up from a nightmare. like what the just happened to my life, the last years of your life, you lost your career. there's just so many things that are losses in here. that's part of the situation that we're in right now as a culture is if you run to the doctor and cry about this, they're going to say, oh, you have major depression. you're going to stick in the next pill. instead of saying, hey, you know what? suffering is the only normal response. there's a grief process. yeah. yeah, you have to go through this. wow. normals endanger. the definition is used in psychiatry and even more the way they're applied have become so wide

that a far too large percentage of the population would be defined as having a mental disorder. now we have patients come in and if there's, you know, they're anxious or they can't sleep or they have kind of physical paints like, oh my gosh, you know, let's get rid of that. we have really vilified pain, and i'm talking emotional pain, physical pain, like it is now become the responsibility, the doctor to eliminate all suffering at all costs. there is a cultural context and the context that goes back to the rival vampire by optics and 9th, late 1940 and then the polio vaccine, they really do change life. bacterial infections are no longer a problem. and now we have this magic care for polio. so now we believe in magic bullets pretty soon we're going to be having magic boats for everything. ah ah

ah ah ah, what you find in psychiatry if you trace its history that is in the 1900 seventy's, american psychiatry was in competition with other therapists for talk therapy, counselors, social workers. what do they say themselves? they say we need to present ourselves as doctors, as medical doctors. we need to put on a white coat. they adopt a disease model for categorizing psychiatric disorder. going to say these are diseases of the brain illnesses of the brain that are drugs, therefore treat the symptoms of those illnesses centers on this chemical imbalance . 3 of mental disorders. while the causes unknown, depression may be related to an imbalance of natural chemicals between nerve cells

in the brain. prescriptions zoloft works to correct this imbalance. when you know more about what's wrong, you can help make it right. it hasn't been possible to demonstrate that 1st you have a chemical imbalance, and then because of that, you become depressed or psychotic. but what we have shown is that the drugs create a chemical imbalance. nobody has a clue. what happens when you push this system somewhere? you have all sorts of reactions elsewhere. it's a very naive thought that a psychiatric disorder is based on $11.00 single thing, chemically that went wrong. and then we have a quick fix for that. it's totally totally naive in 1980 american psychiatric association adopted a disease model and began to tell that story to the american public, you know,

who was so happy with that story. the pharmaceutical industry. they were thrilled with his story because now they could see markets expanding, depression, anxiety, all these things that we used to think of as sort of normal fluctuations in human experience could now be seen as illnesses. therefore, you could treat with drugs and they said, well, then eating disorder or b, e d isn't just over eating, it's a real medical condition. certain chemicals in the brain may play a role. b, e d is also the most common eating disorder in u. s. adults ah, i never really thought that the medication was a bad thing. i was like, this is gonna make me feel better. awesome. okay. if this other ones can make me feel better, awesome. these 4 are going to feel better. great will to do it. i will try anything . there was never any notion that the medication was causing the symptoms. there

was more like the the disease was developing, the only warning she sort of gave, but she was very dismissive about it was you might hear mr. greene, that in some instances, people who are on the presence might have suicidal thoughts. but this really is something you should be concerned about. she had kind of almost flippantly, like, oh, you might want to lock up your knives. so we went out and bought it in the lock box and put anything you know dangerous in there. and that's really want to kind of get even more like, wow, this is various. so i was hospitalized that 1st time when i was 13, over the course of the year, i think i was hospitalized 77 times, 78 times leaving the hosp, chattered hospital. i mean, this is, you know, this was not our life, this is not our daughter. we knew our daughter, we knew, i mean, you know, a few months before she had been sort of a little impressed,

knowing holly, but just with a far lead from that. and once in the hospital there, they added an anti psychotic because she was now experiencing psychotic behaviors. in addition, they had to prescribe another medication to take care of the known side effects of the anti psychotic. we didn't really know what else to do when we were in the system. we wanted to trust the experts. so, you know, we went that route my mind filled with horrible sites like about me and about how horrible it was and how much i hated myself in. what is even the point of me being here anymore? many, many people are getting an anti depressant, an anti chicago benzodiazepine, and a sleep medicine without any rhyme or reason. and instead of the beneficial effects of these different medicines ending up to something wonderful, very often they're harmful effects. add up to something terrible. when i got out of

the army and went to the v a system, it was like whole nother ball game. it turned until i cocktails of anti card anti depressant. benzo. i would say the clinician like, i don't have good feelings. i just feel as nom, or anxious or depressed. i don't ever feel happier, grateful or like loving. and then we'll just add another medicine. maybe that one's not working and then we'll switch to different one. so basically my medication history is just a succession of, oh, this doesn't work. let's go into the highest dose and see what happens. ok. didn't work. okay. come back down. okay, that didn't work. let's switch it and try another one. it's like a hamster wheel that i never got off of until now. what happens to someone like angie is that when they get on these medications and they begin to, to, to, to deteriorate. the attribution is to their mental condition as opposed to, to the medication. and so when they go in and they say,

well you gave me an antidepressant and i'm really depressed. then they say, well i see your depression is worsening. and so they up it or add a medication. next thing on there and uppers and downers, and i mean, you just see this pattern and every time they go in, it's their deteriorating mental condition. instead of somebody saying your drug may be your problem. me or you know, you should see her coming. awesome to be here. i'm so nervous because i can't talk like this at my own school. the so i want to just run through my story quickly and then just talk because i'm sure you have like really cool questions. i was on a cocktail of 17 medications at once. and then basically from 2006 to 2016,

it took me all that time till i get off of everything else. so every time you went in and you were prescribed some of these medications, what were you told about the side effects? how much information are you given before you prescribe this medicaid in the office? you have 10 minutes with a psychiatry. that's it. so then they're like, how are you feeling today? and then you're like, well, i'm still really anxious and i didn't sleep last week. and, and then the, like, well, i want you to take this little quiz, you know, do you feel jumpy in public, you know, do you spend time with friends like it was just one of those psychological assessments, right? so i'm just filling out a little test and they take the test and i see employee d s m, and then he's like, oh yeah, you have generalized anxiety disorder. and i'm like, what is another label going to do for me now? like really another label. thank you. now i have addicts, p t s d, generalizing diety, panic disorder with phobia, major depression. like for what, what does any of those label do for me? nothing. i'm doing everything that you told me to do, and i'm not getting better. so the most hurtful part of all of this that i want you

to listen to is that i did all the therapy. i saw social workers, therapist psychiatrists, psychologist not once. did somebody say it could be your meds not once in 13 years? that is what hurts me the most. and now i'm in social work school. i have all a my brain is coming back. i can write a mean a p, a paper you're talking about, you know, a lot of the meds that are being prescribed for 46 years should only be taken for a few me getting an ever a place for medication. would you ever ultima pan for that decision process? at the beginning, i was like in time ed like no way. how know? because i'm lucky that i didn't kill myself or someone else. so like how can i like say, oh go ahead, take those minutes. you know, and like there is times when some people and when i say some, i mean like very few. so i'm not anti minute, i'm pro informed consent. so if you as a social order,

want to talk to them about informed consent, that is like, well within our boundaries, we get it for surgery. why are we getting it from? you share that you're comfortable with the labels you've been given. if you could change that label to something, what would you i just think i was in like i was just scared. i was just scare a little girl was 24. and like, it didn't have to be so complicated. you know, me? oh, i. so i was 1st diagnosed with age when i was 15, i think i remember being a relief to get the diagnosis. oh my gosh. okay, that's. that's why everything so hard. if not that i'm stupid. it's not that i'm lazy. i was pretty severely depressed. i mean,

i couldn't go to school or just cried all the time and kind of a mess. i'm at that point. then i was put on decks a dream. i felt a time better and was able to go to school on a regular basis. i felt some hope, again, i hear anecdotes that very anecdotes of the great effects of drugs and i would say that's about 2025 percent of valid notes. i hear this is really been great for me. this is helped me through a very difficult time about 40 percent saying it may have helped some. it's hard to tell what exactly it was doing. i can't say it hurt me. can't say to help me. i seem kind of indifferent to what did they have done, and then i get the other 30 percent a 35 percent thing that hurt me. this damaged me a standing dose i've been hearing. and i think that details a little bit what you find in the literature out there. the reason that i kind of

changed the way i practice was the realization that i was actually harming my patients. it is very clear that there is a cohort of patients. for whom getting off of these drugs, it with li, painful, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah ah,

the families with mark just mark your function. you go with a lot of good way to check the number. the whole do, john got caught up and i wanted them off your the b schedule back to do the work for me about the run, the less about i get up there for us. let me know what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have. it's crazy. even

for cation let it be an arms race is often very dramatic, development. only personally, i'm going to resist. i don't see how that strategy will be successful, very political time. time to sit down and talk to the taliban. celebrate taking the last area as i scanned to stan, nor thunderous control resistance. however, claims is still hoenstein shape. also this joe biden approval ratings dropped to the lowest of his presidency. off the chaos. withdrew from us, get this done, but the ministration is sticking to the belief that some good p r can still shift public opinion away from the object failure. i mean, i've got a son, kale test brookings relations with the united states. the questions joe biden.