I spent half an hour on the phone with a mother last night talking about finding drug-free treatment for her 19 yr old daughter who was on heroin. She seemingly agreed with everything I was talking about until she told me her daughter needed to stay on her anti-psychotic medication, Seroquel, for some “BS” bipolar diagnosis. I asked her if she knew how bad of a drug that it was, and that there were currently lawsuits being filed against its makers and those of similar drugs. I asked her if she knew that these drugs can cause diabetes. She didn’t seem to care. “I can’t deal with her when she stops taking her meds,” the mother explained. I told her about the withdrawal effects and the other side effects, and she agreed that they were dangerous, but couldn’t personally handle her daughter when she stopped taking it. I told her about the trained professionals and doctors that can help her daughter get off that drug safely, and she was still hesitant. However, knowing that it was damaging, she then shifted the blame to her daughter, saying, “I tried to get her to stop, but she wants to keep taking it.”
She asked me if I had any proof to back up what I was saying, and I said of course. All she had to do was read the packaging of the drug itslef. The psychiatrists and other doctors who prescribe these drugs pass off theory as being truth and blindly believe what the drug makers tell them, with little evidence from the fictitious studies they’re shown. Instead they’ll listen to a drug company-paid “expert” doctor, even though right there on the packaging the company has to plainly (but in small print) write that they don’t know what causes the disorder, that they don’t know if the drug works, but that they believe it could help and a study showed that not too many people were hurt by it.
The underlying element here is that too many parents have given up on finding out for themselves. They listen to their doctor, who is really no more educated on how damaging these drugs are than you or me, and would rather find a pill that keeps them managable for a short period of time than find a permanent solution to the problem.
