Before I speak on this BBC Panorama documentary that aired in 2023, I need to explain my bias. Depression runs in my family. I have experienced bouts of depression in my life, and I may experience it again. I have never sought out pharmaceutical treatment for it. I have also been diagnosed with anxiety, and offered meds for that. I declined.
The best thing I ever did to remedy the anxiety and depression I experienced was to stop drinking alcohol. Since I got sober 5 years ago, I haven’t experienced depression, and my anxious episodes are gone. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Both alcohol and pharmaceuticals are big money makers in this world.
Antidepressant sales are projected to reach $17.32B in 2024. That’s actually pretty small compared to the cancer drug market, which is sitting at over $140B and projected to reach $311B in 2032. Our friends and family (and ourselves) getting sick is a huge, profitable business.
And while I understand and have experienced these mental health conditions, my refusal to use medication to treat them is rooted in life experience—it’s not that I think no one should ever take medication. I have taken many types of hormonal birth control, and all of them destroyed my sex drive and massively amplified my depression and anxiety. My mom died a painful death from pancreatic cancer, which was a (rare) side effect of the medication she was on to treat Crohn’s disease, called Remicade. Her Chrohn’s was brought on by chemotherapy after she was treated for breast cancer. Too often, the medications we’re prescribed treat one area of our body, but in the process throw off our entire system, causing literally deadly side effects.
We lost one of our closest friends to suicide, and his suicidal ideations were brought on by the cocktail of antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds his psychiatrist had him on. These meds made him paranoid, terrified, and desperate for a way out. Before he began these medications, he was one of the most positive, motivated, motivational people I had ever known. When things in life were going badly for him, and he was understandably anxious and depressed about it, his psychiatrist prescribed him drugs as a solution. The drugs made him a new, sick, sad person. And the world is so much worse off for losing him.
In THE ANTIDEPRESSANT STORY, medical practitioners from Harvard Medical School, the NHS, and major psychiatric associations from around the world speak out on how antidepressants aren’t actually making us mentally healthy. They discuss the manipulation pharmaceutical companies have used to downplay serious side effects and withdrawal symptoms, and how our understanding of depression and how SSRIs treat it is sometimes more propaganda than science. Any valid criticism of antidepressants has been shut down on by the medical community, who seem to be big fans of playing god and experimenting on sick people (again, my opinion).
With 1 in 7 people taking antidepressants, looking at what these drugs are actually doing to our mental health—and the mental health of our society—is vital. Watch THE ANTIDEPRESSANT STORY here:
via ThoughtMaybe
