The article stated that there are many doctors up in arms over the UK’s decision, claiming this law basically says ‘quacks’ are okay.  A conflicting viewpoint was put across that really it ought to be the patient’s choice which sort of treatment they take, either herbal or pharmaceutical.  The article also noted that one such herbal remedy under contention is St John’s Wort, as used in the treatment of depression.

I think the key here is ‘choice’.  Last I checked, the US and UK supposedly invaded the Middle East under the pretense of bringing ‘democracy’, yes?  And I appreciate that a little government intervention is necessary from time to time, but when it comes to our health, shouldn’t it be up to us what we put in our bodies?

Example 1:

Many of my good friends have neurological conditions.  One such friend was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder a couple years ago.  He tried prescribed medications for a while, but they only seemed to make him worse, so he stopped, and started exploring his options.  He struck upon a vitamin regime that did not cure his symptoms, but it did improve things greatly for him.  Unfortunately, by that point so much damage had already been done at his job, due to his condition going undiagnosed for so long and due to his colleagues being small-minded and not accepting / understanding him once the diagnosis was made.  My friend has been severely bullied at work for a long time now, and the abuse built up to a point where he just couldn’t handle it anymore.  He felt so low, he went back to the doctor, and in his vulnerable state, he agreed to try a new prescription.

He went on a course of Sertroline (Zoloft in the States) – something I took myself, many years ago, and which had greatly detrimental affects on my mental health.  In my experience, I was a guinea pig for this ‘miracle drug’, and when things went wrong, the doctors were suddenly uncontactable.  In my friend’s case,  he sank lower and lower over a period of six weeks, until one morning his partner found him slicing open his own wrists.  Thank God my friend does not live alone, else he would have died.  Instead, though, he was rushed to hospital and saved.

One could argue he was depressed anyway, so how can you say this was caused by the drug?  Except my friend has never been suicidal before – and if you look around the internet, you will see there are several class action suits being filed in connection with this and other such drugs due to unprecedented violent acts on the part of patients taking these prescriptions – and when I was taking the drug myself, after sinking into a suicidal state unlike anything I’d ever experienced before (not to mention developing schizophrenic symptoms), I read in the list of side effects contained in the medication box that this ‘anti-depressant’ and ‘anti-anxiety’ tablet could, in fact, cause ‘anxiety’ and ‘suicidal ideation’.

The day before my friend started self-harming, he had gone to see his doctor again and told him how depressed he was feeling since taking the drug.  The doctor’s reply was to increase the dosage!  And might I add that never was there any suggestion to see a psychologist who could help him work through his pain, even alongside the medication.  This, too, has been my own experience: unless I begged for a psychologist and absolutely insisted upon it, it was not given to me.

I’m not saying the drugs don’t work for everyone.  But I have spoken to many fellow diagnosees (if there is such a word!), read many books on these subjects, and have tried a variety of medications myself.  The general consensus seems to be that for some people these medications work – for others, it is helpful to take the drugs on a short-term basis alongside some other form of psychological therapy, so that they feel a boost in spirits and clarity to enable them to focus on the therapy and learn the long-term techniques to help themselves.  For others still (myself included), the drugs do not have any affect on the actual condition, but they do induce a lot of nasty side effects.

Another point to mention is that I believe we focus so much on the diagnosis, we forget about the ‘little’ things, like sleep and diet.  For instance, I have started on a vitamin regime (similar to my friend’s) that has meant at long last, I sleep at night and I wake up refreshed.  This has in no way cured my symptoms – but just getting that sleep has de-stressed my body and mind so much, my symptoms have become much more bearable.  I also tried a year of talking therapy and discovered that much of the pain and volatility within me was due to experience, not the diagnosed conditions themselves.  Through this therapy, much of my frustration and unhappiness was healed.

The point is: it should be our choice.  I don’t know about you, but I do not want to live in a nation governed by people who decide what we’re allowed to put into our bodies in the name of health.  There is a reason these chemical compounds are called ‘drugs’ – they have the potential to be dangerous, depending on who takes them and for how long.

I think people often view doctors as all-knowing, but it’s so important that we step back and remember the human body is not a machine.  You can’t call up Tech Support when something goes wrong, have them run a few diagnostic checks and come out with a foolproof solution.

Example:

Just last year I developed some kind of infection that required antibiotics.  I was given a basic prescription, and within 15 minutes of taking the drug as prescribed, my temperature shot up to 105F, I lost feeling in the right side of my body and my chest started seizing up.  I was in absolute terror.  My husband threw warm wet flannels over me to bring down the temperature, and slowly I came back to health.  We spoke to a nurse who said it was a result of the drug, because apparently you shouldn’t take that particular pill if you have neurological conditions – which no one bothered to check when giving the prescription.  I spoke to a doctor who prescribed a new drug and his response was, ‘There’s nothing wrong with the antibiotic – that should not have happened to you.’  Yes, but it did happen.  But he just kept saying, ‘It shouldn’t have.’

Doctors do not have all the answers, despite how advanced they are.  They particularly do not have all the answers when it comes to the brain.  I would also argue there is a huge issue of spirit involved, when delving into matters of the psyche, i.e. some scientists believe everything is down to chemical reactions, and others believe there’s something more to it, something beyond the body.  There’s no way to prove it either way.

So do I think the UK government has just said it’s okay for ‘quacks’ to practise in our nation?  No.  I believe they just reaffirmed our right to choose – which is just how things should be in a so-called democracy.

I just pray we keep it that way.

Vrinda Pendred

Editor & Founder

]]> http://conditionalpublications.com/2011/02/23/herbal-or-pharmaceutical-your-choice/feed/ 1 http://conditionalpublications.com/2011/02/13/%e2%80%98bipolar-soldier-my-story%e2%80%99-by-tracy-mellor/ http://conditionalpublications.com/2011/02/13/%e2%80%98bipolar-soldier-my-story%e2%80%99-by-tracy-mellor/#comments Sun, 13 Feb 2011 14:00:00 +0000 http://conditionalpublications.com/?p=660 BIPOLAR SOLDIER – MY STORY
BY TRACY MELLOR

I was always a moody child. My mother would diplomatically explain it away as having an “artistic temperament”, as I used to enjoy drawing, painting, and music. When I became a teenager prone to extremely depressed moods and suicidal thoughts, they were blamed on the ups and downs of adolescence. No one ever thought to take me to a psychiatrist, and all was swept under the rug. You see, I grew up in a household where the “stiff upper lip” was the norm, and mental illness was certainly nothing that was ever discussed.

When I was 20 years old, I was a junior transfer student at the University of California at Davis (UC Davis). It was my first time away from home, and initially I thought I was just swept away in the excitement of it all. Then my thoughts began to race, I started talking so fast no one could understand me, and I didn’t need sleep. It escalated to a point where the school basically gave me an ultimatum: go see the psychiatrist at the Student Health Center, or risk getting kicked out of school. I had worked very hard to get into UC Davis, so I complied. The psychiatrist took one look at me in my manic state, grabbed a book from the bookshelf, and started reading symptoms to me, asking me if I had them. When we were done, I had a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder and a prescription for medication. I had side effects from the medication and told the doctor about them, but he seemed rather dismissive of me. So in anger and denial tha there was anything wrong with me, I threw my medication in the trash.

Fast forward to when I was 26 years old. I had just moved to a new town and taken on a new job when I fell into a manic high. I began thinking I was a prophet, and that it was the end of the world. I wandered the streets of San Francisco, started hearing and seeing things, and giving my personal possessions away. I took out a restraining order on my parents because I was sure they were trying to kill me. It came to a head with my being arrested by the airport police at the Air France counter at the San Francisco International Airport for making a shrine to John Lennon. I was involuntarily hospitalized for 2 weeks, and dosed with so much anti-psychotic medication I was immobilized in my bed, drooling with my eyes rolling back into my head. When I was discharged from the hospital, I lost most of the “friends” I thought I had; lost my place to live; had to go bankrupt due to my manic spending sprees, and stay with my parents for some time to recuperate.

When I was 33, I lost my job and was going through a painful divorce. I had a depression that was so paralyzing, getting out of bed was a major effort, and I almost successfully ended my own life. I checked into a hospital in California that didn’t really do me any favors: I checked in depressed and checked out manic. When I became manic, once again I thought I was a prophet and the world was ending, and I heard and saw things. I went to stay with my parents in Oregon, where they were living at the time, and was in and out of the hospital until an outstanding psychiatrist managed to stabilize me. Again, I had to file bankruptcy due to my spending sprees when I was manic.

At age 38, I moved from my native California to Washington State for a relationship and job opportunity. I lost the job unexpectedly within 3 months, and the loss of that job, along with other pressures, caused me to slip headlong into another severe depression. This time, I was able to find an excellent psychiatrist, group and individual counseling and also was able to put some other behavioral pieces into place. In addition to Bipolar Disorder, I was diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Panic Disorder, and Social Phobia. It has taken a lot of hard work, but things have improved dramatically thanks to an early treatment intervention.

These days, I am waiting on a Social Security Disability hearing in front of a judge. After working in the corporate world for 20 years, I have finally realized I can no longer function in the capacity I once did, and need assistance. But it’s not a dead end being a disabled person. I have written 2 books of poetry and am very active in advocacy with NAMI (National Alliance on the Mentally Ill) by being a speaker in their “In Our Own Voice” program. No, it’s not a dead end – just pursuing life down a different road to the one I’d anticipated.

As a young child (around 4-5 years old), I suffered from my “illness”. I would hear voices, and I never slept. Often I would ask my mother why it was that I heard things nobody else heard, and her explanation was that God was trying to talk to me. So when the voices called out my name, I was at my wit’s end, calling to God, telling him I really was listening, and that He could just tell me already!

Growing up was extremely hard for me. School was the worst, because I never had any friends. I wanted friends, but when I had them, I never truly felt happy. I was also verbally abused by my step-father. He was bipolar, and the medication he was on never worked for him.

My mother worked at a convalescent hospital and was always at work, so my step-father would watch my brother and me. He laid in bed all day, sleeping, only waking up for an hour or so to eat. My brother and I were expected to take care of ourselves, and if we  made even a bit of noise, he would come out and beat us. Eventually, as I approached my teen years, my mother left him, and he would never hear from us again. But another problem arose, and it was one that shaped my life forever.

On my mother’s side, I have two cousins, brother and sister. Let’s call them Amy and James. Amy and I had always been close. And James, while he was almost four years older than me, had always been more of an older brother figure. Well, they were…molesting me. Both at the same time, but neither of the two knew about the other’s actions. This abuse plunged me deeper into my insomnia and depression. Some nights, I would stay up the entire night, just sobbing uncontrollably. I felt so helpless and alone. It was then that I started to hurt myself.

My freshman year in high school, I met the most amazing person. Let’s call him Ryan. He was gorgeous, tall, with somewhat Aryan features. He was a nerd, and we would spend hours just talking about video games, cartoons, etc. We started dating, and all was well. But when he graduated, another side of him arose. I was transferred to a school that had just been built, and made new friends. All of them were guys. Ryan was suspicious of them, and forced me to break off the friendship. But I didn’t. Countless times he accused me of cheating on him. And yes, while I thought some guys were cute, I never thought of leaving him. I was so much in love with him, and I knew he was the one for me. But these accusations caused an on-and-off relationship for us. One day, we would be fine, and the next, he would find something wrong with me and break it off.

During this time, the voices came back, louder than ever. I couldn’t go a day without hearing them. And it made me feel even crazier. I would hear voices, and then I would cut myself, which made Ryan angry, and it was just a vicious cycle. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I beat myself up, because all I wanted to do was please Ryan. He was my entire world, and I loved him. He enlisted in the Air Force, and he said he would make a life for us. We began to plan our future together, and the reality was setting in that, even though we had our fights and troubles, he was still in love with me, and that we were going to be together for the rest of our lives.

Before he left, he proposed to me. There was no ring, but it didn’t matter to me. All that mattered was that we promised ourselves to each other, and that we were going to stick it out and make the relationship work. Time went by, and I was so helplessly in love with him. But somehow he didn’t feel the same. So I fell deeper into my depression, and began to have suicidal thoughts. I started taking huge amounts of pills and going to sleep, hoping I would never wake up.

I talked to people on the internet, hoping to find someone who would love me. I wanted to leave Ryan, but every time I tried, he would suck me back in. I hate to admit it, but I began to make relationships with random guys on the internet, even going so far as having phone sex with them, trying to feel something close to love. Those relationships never lasted, and it left me with the feeling of being so dirty. I hated myself so much for what I was doing, but I was so addicted. I would take a shower after every time I was on the phone with a guy, and I would bleach myself, and then cut myself all over my thighs. I wanted to die so bad.

So one day, I took a bunch of pills, I got a scarf, and I tried to hang myself. Right as I was blacking out, the hat rack I was using broke and fell, hitting me on the head. I crawled into bed and cried myself to sleep. A couple weeks later, I had my mom check me into the mental hospital, because I was so scared of myself. I didn’t feel safe. I wanted to die so very badly, but at the same time, I didn’t want to give up on life. So I spent a week in the hospital, and it’s really a week that I vaguely remember, because I was so drugged up. My speech was slurred, and I couldn’t even walk straight. I really feel that if I wasn’t so drugged, and if my roommate hadn’t molested me, I could have made some progress. However, it plunged me deeper, and the doctors suddenly called me “manic depressive.”

And so here I am today, 17, on the edge of becoming a legal adult, and wondering where I’m going to go from here. The thing that gives me hope is song writing. I hope one day someone will hear my music and be encouraged.

‘Ellie’

In a nutshell: the authorities have discovered a new drug to ‘cure’ the mutants of their ‘abnormalities’.  Mutants queue up in the thousands to receive this ‘cure’, but Magneto does everything in his power to sabotage it.  Magneto believes the mutants are special for their ‘unnatural’ abilities.  He thinks they should revel in their differences.  He takes this view to the extremes, sadly…but each time I’ve watched the film, I couldn’t help thinking how much it was like the struggle of living with a neurological condition.

There are ‘cures’ out there, and they are unarguably a godsend for people who can’t function in life without them…but for those of us who – if properly motivated – could find alternative means of dealing with these conditions…do we need a ‘cure’?  Are we that damaged, or do we just have different types of brains that lead to different thinking styles, different ways of feeling and responding, different abilities (just like everyone in the world, really)?

They called it ‘The Last Stand’ – I know where I stand on these issues, but where do you?

I suppose I’m a bit more like Professor Xavier: I believe in allowing the ‘mutants’ to make up their own minds on this subject, rather than tricking and bludgeoning them into agreeing with my perspective, as Magneto did.  But for what it’s worth, I like to think that there are darker sides to these conditions that we should fight.  It’s wrong to sink into them until they consume us and we lose ourselves.  That is illness.  Some people can’t help falling prey to this illness, because their brains won’t allow it, and I appreciate they need the drugs.

But for the rest of us, perhaps we’re overmedicating – and not just with prescriptions.  Perhaps we spend too much time feeling shameful about our brains being a little bit different, and we forget that all brains are different, that there is no such thing as a normal brain.  Perhaps we forget that our brains have made us who we are, through chemicals, neurons and the life experience they have given to us.  Do we really hate ourselves so much that we’d risk losing our personalities (those drugs are definitely mind-altering – I speak from experience) just to remove symptoms that are often only so bad because others around us don’t accept them?

I have said for years that if the world accepted our differences, we could find a way to live comfortably enough with a vast proportion of our symptoms.  This was the inspiration behind my story The Royal Bank of Scotland.  To add to that story, perhaps in such an acceptant world, we would also feel less afraid to seek help for the symptoms that aren’t so easy to manage, because there would be less stigma involved.

What do you think? Vrinda Pendred Editor & Founder

The Royal Bank of Scotland can be found in Check Mates: A Collection of Fiction, Poetry & Artwork about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, by People with OCD, available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Click below to order Check Mates now

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as well as ‘OCD – Everyone Relates to It and It Can Be Overcome’, with relationship coach Geoff Laughton, which can be found here – as well as OCD, this interview touches on bipolar disorder.

Click below to order Check Mates, the first ever collection of fiction poetry and artwork about OCD

amazon.com amazon.co.uk amazon.ca

The best day of my life was the morning I woke up, having taken medication for my symptoms for the first time the night before.  For the past year, I had awakened and instantly burst into tears upon recognizing I hadn’t died in my sleep.  That morning, I woke up, shut off my alarm clock, and made it all the way downstairs before I realized I didn’t mind being alive.  For the first time, I wondered if things just might get a little better.

I have been on 7 medications in various combinations and doses.  I have contamination fears and cleansing rituals, compulsive checking, intrusive images that appear in front of me, and voices in my head.  Medication doesn’t cure a mental health patient, but it helps clear my head, so I can focus on working to make myself better.  It’s exhausting and terrifying work, but I know someday I’ll leave my house and show myself as me, and not through the lens of a diagnosis.

When I work through therapy, I have a mantra that helps me through it.  I repeat to myself, “I will not die under a diagnosis.”  When I’m finally done living, hopefully to a ripe old age, I want to die having lived at least one day in perfect freedom.  I can’t wait for that day when OCD will be a distant memory, and I know if I keep working, I’ll get there.  But for now, there are exactly 300 words in this text.

‘Kristen’

Click below to order Check Mates, the first ever collection of fiction poetry and artwork about OCD

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You can also listen to further episodes of the show with this player:

It’s obvious why this is fascinating, but it also demonstrates the likelihood that the old ‘nature vs nurture’ debate is irrelevant – instead, the body interacts with the environment and we are shaped by the combination.

It’s also encouraging news to those of us who suffer from mood disorders.  Perhaps it really is within our power to get some element of control over ourselves by first getting control of our physical aspect – next time we feel ourselves sinking into depression, for instance, maybe the physical act of smiling would slowly affect us on the inside.  Could be nonsense, but it also could be a real possibility – anyone ready to try the ‘fake it until you make it’ experiment with me?

Vrinda Pendred
Editor & Founder of Conditional Publications

Included in the proposal is the combination of all autistic disorders into one single entry for Autistic Spectrum Disorders – as well as the consolidation of certain psychotic conditions, and a new category for Psychosis Risk, intended to help treat patients earlier rather than once the problems have overtaken them.  There will be rules enstated in order to prevent overdiagnosis…so they say.

I happen to think in some ways this is a step in the right direction, because the DSM was becoming cluttered with 1,001 different disorders when many of them seem to be aspects of the same few things.  Having a risk category could possibly be useful, too – particularly for people who are trying to understand extra symptoms they may have without having a full-blown condition.

The obvious worry, though,  is that doctors may distort this and start prescribing drugs to people who really don’t need them and can get on fine in life without them.  It’s possible that we don’t need a new diagnosis for such things, but rather more public awareness of the truth that most people probably share some of these symptoms without even thinking about it.

They are also proposing to revamp the whole personality disorders section.  Reading their suggested amendments, it seems a good move.  It feels clearer and less extreme, allowing room for the notion that people with such conditions are human, like anyone else – fancy that!

You can read more about the changes in the Scientific American article, and whatever your view on the matter, please do get involved here.

Vrinda Pendred
Editor & Founder of Conditional Publications

I proudly present ‘Our Daily Meds’ by Melody Peterson.  This book exposes all the pharmaceutical industry horror stories I’m sure many of us are aware of, but in graphic detail we often turn a blind eye to because, well, it’s terrifying.

I heard about this on Madness Radio, when they interviewed the author – it seems an invluable book to look at, if we ever hope to overcome the pharmaceutical grip on today’s Western approach to health.  For more information, view the book on Amazon, or try listening to the interview on Madness Radio – a free podcast accessible via iTunes.

Vrinda Pendred
Editor & Founder of Conditional Publications