Psychiatric drugs are a serious fucking issue

[Carl-Richard]

So many people got their lives literally destroyed by these things. And we're supposed to trust the doctors, the "experts". Nothing saves you from being diligent and cautious and looking at things thoroughly from many angles before deciding on something that might change your life forever, "doing your own research", no matter how hijacked that notion has become. If you blindly trust a machine that treats incredibly serious side effects as business as usual, you can ultimately only blame yourself and your own ignorance.

 

(NOTE, VERY IMPORTANT: I'm not saying you should stop taking psychiatric medication if you're currently on them or that you should reject them if you're in a truly urgent medical situation. But you should sure as hell think twice about starting them if you have the choice and you're not in a truly urgent medical situation. And if you are currently on them, you should consider looking for legitimate medical options for tapering off them safely).

Edited 19 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Michal__]

Thankfully the ones I am on are pretty mild.

But I have seen people turn into vegetables during my stay at the psych ward.

[Yimpa]

I officially stopped taking any psychiatric meds on October 30, 2025 (a day before Halloween). Psychedelics and intensive therapy all helped wean me off of them. 

[Leo Gura]

Yup

Big Pharma has poisoned mental healthcare.

[Ero]

11 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

(NOTE, VERY IMPORTANT: I'm not saying you should stop taking psychiatric medication if you're currently on them or that you should reject them if you're in a truly urgent medical situation. 

It's precisely these disclaimers that make it so difficult. There are people who are genuinely a danger to themselves and others without them. I have family members and close friends on them, so it is a topic on which I generally have to be careful. 

Edited 8 hours ago by Ero

[Hojo]

I went on anti depressant for 1 month after a massive meltdown and I was like naw this aint it.

My problem wasnt anything to do with depression it was other people.

The same thing that is happening with science is happening with healthcare. Its devilry.

Its blatantly ignoring that they are wrong but doing it anyway.

Edited 7 hours ago by Hojo

[Carl-Richard]

And just for reference, I asked my mother who is a general practicioner whether she has heard about benzodiazepine cessation causing severe neurological damage that takes years to heal, and she said "that's new to me".

Edited 5 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Jirh]

26 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

And just for reference, I asked my mother who is a general practicioner whether she has heard about benzodiazepine cessation causing severe neurological damage that takes years to heal, and she said "that's new for me".

GPs are not required to know everything, especially about specific subfield drugs like benzodiazepine. It's outside of their scope.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Jirh said:

GPs are not required to know everything, especially about specific subfield drugs like benzodiazepine. It's outside of their scope.

Yet they can prescribe them.

[Jirh]

16 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

Yet they can prescribe them.

Yes, but typically a GP will prescribe benzos to help the patient sleep through a temporary disease. Not for permanent use.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

My stepdad had a permanent benzo script.

Violent bpd and schizophrenia.

Sometimes meds are needed, but they are over prescribed imo.

The ICA wards I did work on.... Those poor souls. Without medication the nurses would be assaulted a lot more.

[Carl-Richard]

2 hours ago, Jirh said:

Yes, but typically a GP will prescribe benzos to help the patient sleep through a temporary disease. Not for permanent use.

Jordan Peterson was prescribed a benzodiazepine from his GP and was on them for 3 years until he asked his GP to increase the dosages due to life circumstances, and that is when the paradoxical reactions started and then he went cold turkey (??) and it all went downhill from there.

Edited 2 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Leo Gura]

It is very odd how JP didn't know the side-effects of benzos as a therapist himself.

How did he not hear about this through the grapevine with so many clients?

This would be like me not hearing about LSD by now.

Edited 1 hour ago by Leo Gura

[Natasha Tori Maru]

15 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

It is very odd how JP didn't know the side-effects of benzos as a therapist himself.

How did he not hear about this through the grapevine with so many clients?

This would be like me not hearing about LSD by now.

My inference is that he knew, but wants to avoid responsibility for not attending to potential downsides of the drugs.

I suspect to cover for potential physical and emotional addiction to them. 

Essentially, shame. He is a strong proponent of hard work, integrity and cultivating strong beneficial habits. Peterson built much of his public reputation around personal responsibility, self-discipline, and confronting suffering consciously. Being addicted to a substance is a form of cope he may be unwilling to reconcile with his worldview. So to avoid the cognitive dissonance, he professes innocence regarding knowing how bad the drugs are. The whole 'demons' or 'devils' after him is another cognitive dissonance cope narrative in my reading.

Just my guesses, not founded on anything other that piecemeal data. Armchair psychological hypothesis.

Edited 1 hour ago by Natasha Tori Maru

[Leo Gura]

Looks to me like he was in such misery and pain that he decided to just roll the dice, but they came up snake eyes.

I had to roll the dice on antibiotics and they also came up bad for me. I knew there could be negative side-effects but I was out of other options so I had to roll. So I can see where he's coming from.

When your health gets bad enough, you get so desperate you will even play Russian roulette for a cure.

Edited 48 minutes ago by Leo Gura

[Natasha Tori Maru]

@Leo Gura That is also a solid possibility.

Not enough data to avoid simple speculation - could be both explanations.

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

It is very odd how JP didn't know the side-effects of benzos as a therapist himself.

How did he not hear about this through the grapevine with so many clients?

This would be like me not hearing about LSD by now.

Was he supposed to know that benzodiazepine withdrawal can cause literal brain damage? Because if so, very weird that his GP did not inform him on that, just like it's very weird that my mother who is a GP still didn't know about it 10 years later.

He did PhD work on alcoholism. Of course he knows how withdrawal effects from depressants work. What is seemingly not widely known is that withdrawal can lead to serious brain damage and so-called "Benzodiazepine-Induced Neurologic Dysfunction".

[Leo Gura]

11 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

benzodiazepine withdrawal can cause literal brain damage?

It's still unclear to me how true this is. "Brain damage" is a very loaded phrase. But even if it is true, how common is it? Probably very rare. There is a chance some meds can give you a stroke, yet people still take them because that's so rare.

But he should have known about how addictive and dependent benzos are. That's like common knowledge.

Edited 16 minutes ago by Leo Gura

[Carl-Richard]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

It's still unclear to me how true this is. "Brain damage" is a very loaded phrase.

I can see a likely core mechanism, and it's usually involved in understanding responses to trauma, but I didn't draw the connections that it could present as a consistent "syndrome" with various strong symptoms (e.g. akathisia, severe anxiety, suicidality).

It's likely the overactivation of the HPA axis leading to a shrinking of the hippocampus, and when the hippocampus gets smaller, the HPA gets more overactivated, etc. That it presents as a strong syndrome like this suggests the hippocampus is severely compromised and the recovery taking years would suggest that's the time it takes to regenerate the hippocampus.

Had the issue simply been about regaining receptor sensitivity (like in normal withdrawal), you would see a normalization after weeks, as is usually the case, not years.