Drugs

Is bipolar disorder a disease? Can medications like lithium correct chemical imbalances and stabilize mood? Do psychiatric drugs act completely differently on the brain than recreational drugs?

UK psychiatrist Dr. Joanna Moncrieff, author of The Myth Of The Chemical Cure: A Critique of Psychiatric Drug Treatment, discusses how seeing psychiatric medications as treatments for disease misleads the public about how they actually work, and obscures their potential for abuse as tools of social control.

http://www.critpsynet.freeuk.com
http://www.academyanalyticarts.org/moncrieff.htm
http://www.mentalhealth.freeuk.com/howwork.pdf

Can recreational drugs be an opening to genuine spiritual awakening? Brian Hartnett’s passion for rave dance music — as well as alcohol and ecstasy — cost him his career.

Doctors labeled his paranoia, telepathy, and voices symptoms of schizophrenia. But Brian went on to become one of the founders of Hearing Voices Ireland, and discover a new, heightened spirituality.

http://www.voicesireland.com

What do modern psychiatric drug treatments have in common with lobotomy? Is informed consent possible when patients’ judgment is impaired by medication? Should psych drugs be banned?

For more than 50 years Dr. Peter Breggin has been a leading crusader against psychiatric abuse, Big Pharma, and medication dangers. His latest book is The Conscience of Psychiatry: The Reform Work of Peter R. Breggin, MD.

http://www.breggin.com

When GlaxoSmithKline was caught lying about the risks of its blockbuster anti-depressant Paxil, it set off ongoing investigations. How did New York state take on one of the world’s most powerful companies? Was NY Governor Eliot Spitzer driven out by his corporate enemies?

Pulitzer-nominated Boston Globe journalist Alison Bass, author of Side Effects: A Prosecutor, A Whistleblower, And A Bestselling Antidepressant On Trial, discusses legal battles to clean up drug company corruption, including pay-offs to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

http://www.alison-bass.com/

More than 100,000 people die in the US each year from prescription drugs — used as directed by their doctor. How did aggressive marketing make our health care system a cause of widespread sickness? Why haven’t government regulation or medical research been able to protect the public?

New York Times health reporter Melody Petersen discusses her new book, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs.

http://www.ourdailymedsthebook.com

Has society’s embrace of psychiatric medications led to recovery — or chronic disability? What would honest medical policy and treatment standards be if they were free of pharmaceutical company corruption?

Pulitzer Prize finalist Robert Whitaker, author of Mad In America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill, discusses medications as a failed paradigm of care, and imagines what a sane alternative would look like.

http://www.madinamerica.com

Blogger and former social worker Gianna Kali discusses her experience going into the mental health system after taking psychedelic drugs, spiritual emergence, decades of treatment with more than 30 different psychiatric medications, and the difficult process of coming off meds, drug withdrawal, and regaining her life.

Gianna is the creator of the Beyond Meds blog about mental health and coming off medications.

http://www.beyondmeds.com

Editor Sabrina Chapadjiev discusses the new Seven Stories Press anthology Live Through This: On Creativity and Self Destruction, a rich collection of women artists sharing intimate accounts of cutting, alcoholism, suicide, abuse, madness and other self harm and how it relates to their creativity.

Authors include bell hooks, Bonfire Madigan Shive, Patricia Smith, Annie Sprinkle, Inga Muscio, Kate Bornstein, and Nicole Blackman.

http://sabrinachap.com/LTT

Award-winning journalist Philip Dawdy, formerly a writer with the Seattle Weekly newspaper, discusses how forced psychiatric treatment and drugging are ineffective responses to violent crime and the so-called “dangerous mentally ill.” Philip is the writer of the excellent blog about Big Pharma profiteering and mental health policy

http://www.FuriousSeasons.com

Author Charles Barber talks about his new book Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation, a history of the rise of psychiatric drug marketing from “mother’s little helper” to today’s 200 million plus anti-depressant prescriptions.

http://www.charlesbarberwriting.com

Psychologist and advocate with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and the Marijuana Policy project, Mitch Earleywine discusses medical marijuana, dangers and uses, and the relationship between marijuana and psychosis.

NORML http://www.norml.org
the Norml podcast http://www.normlaudiostash.com
the Marijuana Policy Project http://www.mpp.org

Two topics: A Northampton, Massachusetts woman talks about her near-fatal drug reaction to an off label prescription of Lamictal, and Brooklynne Michelle discusses the Mosh Knit podcast — about knitting and bipolar.

John Horgan, who has written for Scientific American, Discover, and the New York Times, talks about neuroscience, genetics, the placebo effect psychedelic drugs, and more.

John is the author of The Undiscovered Mind: How The Human Brain Defies Replication, Medication, and Explanation, Rational Mysticism, and The End of Science. He also hosts a video blog at http://www.bloggingheads.tv

http://www.johnhorgan.org

Richard DeGrandpre, former editor of Adbusters magazine and author of Ritalin Nation, discusses his new book, The Cult of Pharmacology, and how the popular conception of “addiction” behind the War On Drugs is scientifically inaccurate: social context, learning, morality and meaning determine how drugs affect us, not simple addiction chemistry.

http://www.anxiousmind.com

A harrowing film of six families devastated by the dangerous violence-causing effects of anti-depressant drugs.

http://www.prescriptionsuicide.com