By Robert Whitaker Check out the story that appeared on August 30 on CNN.com titled “Growing Up Bipolar,” and the one on August 31 in the New York Times’s science section, titled “Lasting Pleasures, Robbed by Drug Abuse.” Both reveal a lot about the selective story-telling that forms our societal beliefs about mental disorders and psychotropic drugs.... Continue Reading →
Befriending ourselves…not so easy
Pema Chödrön reveals the time-tested Buddhist antidote to suffering—and shows how to apply it in your own life. The simple and elegant meditation practice known as tonglen, she teaches, is the perfect medicine for "ordinary people like ourselves." Through tonglen, we can use life's difficulties as a way to befriend ourselves, accept the past we... Continue Reading →
Robert Whitaker “Anatomy of an Epidemic” at Powell’s Books (video and audio) and Whitaker, Will Hall, and Myriam Rahman at the MedicationEthics seminar
Robert Whitaker "Anatomy Of An Epidemic" At Powells Aug 2010 - Video + Audio Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, spoke in Portland Oregon August 19 2010, at events sponsored by Portland Hearing Voices and co-sponsored by the Mental Health... Continue Reading →
Another brief twitter piece of prose
I have put the three tweets this was into one brief paragraph: Let's all stop pretending we know...The most offensive quality of someone who purports to "know" is assuming their personal experience can be generalized to all people. That is the biggest lie the ego tells...we do not know the secrets of others and we... Continue Reading →
The aftermath: from windows to open door
An excerpt from Benzo-Wise: A recovery companion -- by Baylissa Frederick who operates the website Recovery Road that has many resources for successful withdrawal and recovery from benzos. Baylissa has been fully recovered since this excerpt was written. She is one of my greatest inspirations and has written other inspiring and healing posts on this blog... Continue Reading →
A popular tweet (or two)
This tweet I came up with was very popular the other day...got retweeted a whole bunch, so I'll share: Remember we never know what another person has lived. Ever. Even if they are our neighbor/best friend/sibling. And here is another that I also liked: Some people are inflexible and imagine insults when there are none...I'm... Continue Reading →
Deadly cocktail being given to soldiers: Paxil, Seroquel, Klonopin — all drugs I was on, it’s routine in psychiatry
From an email sent to me from Vince Boehm, he makes the below comments from having communicated with the family of Andrew White, the soldier the below article is about: Stan and Shirley White lost two sons to war. Robert White, a staff sergeant, was killed in Afghanistan in 2005, when his Humvee was hit... Continue Reading →
Scary vintage benzo ads…
and For the reality which is benzodiazepines should you be at all influenced by the ads see here. They aren't all happy and mystically transforming. Not in a good way. No. This is the propaganda campaign that began our journey into better living through chemistry. Mother's little helpers too, were benzodiazepines.
The STAR*D Scandal: A New Paper Sums It All Up – New article by Robert Whitaker
By Robert Whitaker (printed with his permission, he retains copyright) The story of how the STAR*D results were misreported has been coming together for some time now, step by step, and a paper recently published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, along with a review of that paper published by Medscape Medical News on August 24, leads... Continue Reading →
Bipolar Medication Myths — Joanna Moncrieff MD
New show at Madness Radio. Bipolar Medication Myths -- Joanna Moncrieff Is bipolar disorder a disease? Can medications like lithium correct chemical imbalances and stabilize mood? Do psychiatric drugs act completely differently on the brain than recreational drugs? UK psychiatrist Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, author of The Myth Of The Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric... Continue Reading →
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