Take your pills...
Introduction by Mike Smith
Take your pills they will make you feel better, he should be medicated, mentally ill people should be encouraged to take their medication and if they stop should be forced to take it! How often have we heard this argument, even the UK government are trying to develop policies about it, but it is all based on a belief system that the drugs help, what if they were actually part of or all of the problem?
The evidence for the benefits of drugs is massively biased in favour of the people who profit from them directly (drug companies) and indirectly (doctors). Drug companies aim to get significant returns on their undoubted research and development costs, doctors get social power, nice meals, conferences, and sickeningly high speakers fees for endorsing the products (through their “research”), all of this well known (se J Moncrieff and L Moshers work in this area).
For anyone who is active in the psychiatric field as a worker or a carer or even as a patient you hear yourself thinking or saying take a pill it will make it better, but in my research and practise in recovery and thriving there is a little nagging argument against this.
Those people who recover and go on to thrive, to grab life by the handles and have an energy and vitality above “not relapsing” one common factor emerges, those who really move on seem to do so when they stop taking meds . Everyone knows the stories wheeled out about someone who went back to work or their families after taking a particular pill but who ever listens or looks for the others who move on because they stop or don’t take psych meds? We aim to collect testimonies from people for whom stopping taking their meds was a part of their recovery and ask
- Why was this so?
- If drugs helped at all how?
- If drugs were unhelpful why, and who listened?
- Why was stopping important?
- What were the effects of stopping in the short and long term?
- How did you do it?
- Who helped?
- Did you get advice on stopping?
- Did mental health workers know and what were there reactions?
- And anything else you want to tell us?
Below are three testimonies of people associated with crazydiamond who stopped (or never started) taking drugs. Please email your testimony to Mike at mikesvoice@aol.com ; you don’t have to include personal details indeed we prefer it if you do not and you can leave them anonymously. We may publish extracts for a research proposal, or here on the website to develop ideas.
They are still in the process of writing there testimonies...!
From this work we aim to develop some more specific questions to answer and gather stories. You can send them anonymously
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