Below is an hour 34 minute documentary with factual evidence and interviews with actual doctors and others in the field--former or current--who have been exposed to the truths that society as a whole is NOT privy too regarding the dangers, ineffectiveness, long term damage and fatalities in a majority of cases prescribed even ONE medication, and in many cases unnecessarily or for misdiagnosed conditions. People are killing themselves, or others, after only days or a week on some medications, and informed consent is almost never provided. This may be the most important 94 minutes one can spend on educating oneself and loved ones, as well as your doctors.
Personally, I was prescribed over 23 different medications for over 10 years, and it turned out that nearly all of them were creating the disability, sickness & symptoms the drugs were being prescribed to treat! I was home bound, bed bound, for 10 years because of the medications, NOT any illness or disability! Not once did any doctor suggest going off these medications & in fact many pressured & threatened me if I refused to take them, to the point of being discharged as a patient because I refused to take medications that were CONTRA-indicated & would cause MY CERTAIN DEATH if taken! Repeatedly I was prescribed drugs that had interactions with all my other drugs, despite the doctors having all of my medical & medication history, often it was my pharmacist who saved my life, or after I smartened up & started reading the patient info packets, I'd then refuse to take the medication that was often worse or more dangerous than the condition supposedly being treated.
When each drug causes at least 3-5 side effects, multiplied by 23 different drugs per day, that's a possible 110 side effects daily from the medication alone, to treat a handful (5 or less) of actual problems! Every side effect had another drug prescribed for it, that then had another side effect that then had another drug prescribed, on into infinity. No wonder I was so ill and lost a decade of my life to trusting these doctors to have my best interests in mind as a trusted doctor who swore the Hippocratic oath to never cause harm.
I went off 23+ different medications between Jan. 2011 and March 2011, broke 5 major bones (compound breaks, not mere fractures) from falls caused by the seizures of going through withdrawals that the doctors refused to treat me safely for, and have the hospital records to prove it, and worse, I was refused treatment all 3 times I went to the emergency room, including when I broke two ribs on each side, my sternum and my back all in one weekend! When I had seizures, they locked me in a room with the door closed, and no monitoring equipment on me to measure the seizures and nothing to protect me, for over 3 & 1/2 hours, before coming in to say I was being discharged without treatment! When I protested, they called me combative & sent me out with no transportation home, knowing I was seizing and could have been relieved easily with the most basic of treatment. When I began having heart trouble as a result of these multiple effects, I was terrified of going to that hospital again, because I was convinced I would die there with no one being held responsible then or to this day, for what they did & failed to do for me as a patient.
Instead, without any medical training at all, I had to be my own doctor, wean myself off the medications as best I could with what limited amount I had left, meaning much too fast, which directly caused my severe injuries & repeat ambulance delivered hospital visits, but I survived out of sheer orneriness if nothing else. I had not been able to eat for 10 years without taking medications--four different RXs--for controlling nausea & creating an appetite, for which they never really worked or I would not have needed 4 of them! When I went off my meds & had severe stomach pains one afternoon, I had no idea what was going on, fearing an ulcer from all the stress. It had been over a decade since I had felt any hunger for food, so I did not recognize the feelings of starvation, or hunger pains. I ate some crackers and the pain eased, putting two & two together I realized I'd been feeling what normal hunger was like when ignored for an entire day (which had been my norm before). I celebrated the return of hunger, and the more I ate, the more weight I lost, because my metabolism started working again, my stomach could depend on regular meals, so my body no longer needed to store fat for reserves.
It seems incredible not to have known what was happening as it was happening. I could and probably should write an entire book on the ten years & this year since going off my meds. I live in a 2nd floor apt. now, no home health aide, no cane or hospital bed, no handful of pills every four hours, no living in a fugue of pills anymore. Each small victory I've celebrated, the biggest being when I moved with only 2 days notice, and NO HELP to pack an entire apt. of belongings, where I was not allowed to do the kind of lifting & movements required to pack, yet I had no choice. Movers did the physical moving of those boxes between locations, but I did all the work of packing & unpacking, alone. I'm still not fully unpacked yet nearly 7 months later, yet the day after the move I had expected to be crippled for a week, and instead I worked another two days before I needed a full day of rest and some motrin took care of the pain. Impossible to imagine even two months or two weeks before that date.
I still take two medications regularly and I am definitely decreasing the dose over the next 4 weeks until I am off the one for sleep, because it has caused some severe side effects & I don't want to start this whole circus all over again, nor am I willing to take this drug for the rest of my life, for insomnia I've had since childhood. Worse, the medication does NOT give me sleep, not reliably and not quality rest, so why bother taking something that does not work, yet causes serious side effects as well as long term physical harm, which I have already went through surgeries for this same drug's results over 20 years ago? My body needs to recover on its own and rebalance after a decade of these meds for sleep, eating, pain, you name it, my chemistry is more unbalanced because of the meds, and my body will heal itself if given the chance. I never gave it that chance and after seeing this documentary I realize I've been victimized by the medical & psychiatric community for decades, and if I continue taking these drugs knowing all I know now, I am also victimizing myself. I can't in good conscience continue a regimen I KNOW will, and has in past, cause me great harm, much greater than the discomfort of lack of sleep could ever justify.
I'm not suggesting anyone else follow my example, or treat themselves without medical consultation, I'm only knowledgeable about my own experiences, conditions and motivational drive. Instead, I suggest one begin by requiring informed consent immediately from every doctor prescribing one any medication for any purpose. Educate oneself starting NOW by watching this documentary, FREE, in your own home, in comfort, paying total attention. Follow up by doing your own research, as I have done, looking into the actual studies done on the medications you take, the side effects known & common as well as those that are not as common yet still happen to enough people to be mentioned--then imagine the ones the corrupt studies are NOT reporting, are hiding behind falsified data and agenda driven studies. If one's been on a medication for many years, or has been told one needs a medication for life, look into the facts on the condition & the medication, demand the proof, read the studies, ask your pharmacist for the free printing of information for any medication you are taking now, have ever taken or before taking anything newly prescribed.
There's so much more I can say from experience, so much more I have learned, but this is enough to get one started on the path to enlightenment on one's own path to wellness. I could be bitter and angry that I lost ten years of my life for no medical reason, or I can choose to celebrate that I am given a second chance to live after expecting to be home bound for life & to die without ever having lived again. I can be grateful I took the initiative to educate myself & go through all I did to free myself of those prescriptions that were in fact killing me, some faster than others, and I may never know how much harm was caused by them. I'm getting healthier in mind & body every day, as long as I continue to educate myself & trust my own instincts, to listen to what my body is telling me.
Learn from my experience, don't repeat it. Let my suffering be enough to veer you off that similar path, don't learn the hard way as I did (and seem to do on everything, learn the hard way that is). Children are now being killed by these medications given under false diagnoses so psychiatrists and drug companies can get rich at the innocent's loss of life and health & function. Educate yourself, read the fine print, ask questions & demand INFORMED CONSENT. Start by watching this film, and by sharing it with your loved ones and medical professionals.
GMJ 1-18-2012
[To view in full screen, click bottom right corner of video box & press escape to exit at any time]
Further Reading:
- Under-age and Over-medicated? http://www.foundhealth.com/blog/2011/12/under-age-and-over-medicated/
- What Are Psychotropic Drugs? http://www.healthnot.com/what-are-psychotropic-drugs-2~403
