Posted by gracey on September 25, 2001, at 10:59:13
Sorry if I offend anyone here, but prescription drug use in this country is of epidemic proportions. Pharmacutical companies seem to have a pill to squelch every human emotion,with the implication that what we feel is somehow not normal, and must be "cured" with medication. In reality, we are not being cured, but "chemically subdued". What follows next is that the meds will start to work against the body, creating a whole new host of behaviours or oddities, which must be treated with even more meds. A vicious circle created, meds to come up, meds to come down, meds to treat the aggression caused by one drug, another to treat the drowsiness caused by the one to treat the aggression, and so on and so on. We all know how it works. Now if you are an adult, and you feel that this route has helped to improve your life, I commend you for getting the help that you needed. NOW, try to put yourself in a child's place. A basically normal child, but Dx with ADD/ADHD. Placed on stimulants....Soon the meds are working against the body and there are new behaviours; aggression, anxiety, compulsiveness or impulsiveness....Drs. diagnose these new behaviours with fancy labels, OCD and ODD, and new meds are added to the mix. Nothing is taken away, so now the kid is on 3-4 diff meds, and is convinced that he/she is not normal and cannot be normal without these pills. The kid lives with nausea, constipation, ect...every day. He does not know that this is NOT normal, because his awareness of his body has been clouded by drugs for as long as he can remember. Finally, the combination of all of the meds wreak havoc on the poor kid and his bodily functions until the kid finally has a breakdown. His 3 week stay in the psych ward earns him some new labels, intermittent explosive disorder or bipolar, and some fancy new meds to try, with an admonishment to the parents for letting the kid get the upper hand...And so it begins again.....
This was my child, and 3 weeks after that hospital stay, I finally realized that she had been suffering for years with the damage caused by those drugs, and by what is referred to as drug-induced dementia. She was not crazy or psychotic, but the drugs made her seem that way. Not a single Dr. ever told me, or would admit it today, that they and their drugs did this to my kid. For those of you who say I should have known, my child was already developmentally handicapped, something I had no previous experience with. I trusted the docs and shrinks to have her best interests in mind. Never again......She had been on Mellaril, Risperdal, Tenex, Zoloft, Depakote, Pamelor, and others.All along, I thought SHE was getting worse, when it was the meds doing this to her. I was never told that this could happen, BUT THEY KNEW.
poster:gracey
thread:79542
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010917/msgs/79542.html