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Why Antidepressants Hurt You

(and How to Turn the Tables on the Drug Makers!)

This video reveals:

"What Drug Companies Aren't Telling You About Antidepressants"



Did you watch the whole video? If not, here's the highlights:

  • Antidepressants don't help as much as we think (or we're led to believe!)
  • The effectiveness of antidepressants is greatly exaggerated - from The Wall Street Journal
  • While they often don't do what's promised, they often DO harm many patients
  • Antidepressants increase the risk of suicide and violence
  • Some patients have antidepressant withdrawal symptoms so severe, they can never stop taking them

Bottom line:

We're not getting accurate, truthful information from the pharmaceutical companies because they only publish the positive results and bury the numerous negative studies.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

You May As Well Be Snorting Cocaine

According to medical expert Peter R. Breggin, M.D. -

More than a third of patients taking depression medications experience a 'stimulant effect' (comparable to PCP, meth, or cocaine - drugs known to cause aggression and violent behavior).

These symptoms include:

  • anxiety
  • agitation
  • panic attacks
  • insomnia
  • irritability
  • hostility
  • impulsivity
  • severe restlessness
  • hypomania
  • mania

...and it all leads to out of control behavior - as if you were on speed or coke or PCP!

And let's don't forget the other hundreds of side effects or the crippling withdrawal symptoms either.

Antidepressant Withdrawal Much Worse Than Heroin Withdrawal


Here's a short list of withdrawal symptoms from the December 2007 issue of a prominent medical journal:

  • agitation,
  • anxiety,
  • akathisia, (like being tortured on the inside)
  • panic attacks,
  • irritability,
  • hostility,
  • aggressiveness,
  • worsening of mood,
  • dysphoria, (extreme uncomfortability)
  • crying spells or mood lability, (pathologically laughing and crying)
  • overactivity or hyperactivity,
  • depersonalization,
  • decreased concentration,
  • slowed thinking,
  • confusion
  • memory/concentration difficulties


Warning: Discontinuing antidepressants requires medical supervision.

Even Eli Lilly, the maker of Cymbalta - warns not to suddenly stop taking this medicine, as it may cause withdrawal symptoms such as:

  • dizziness,
  • pins and needles sensations, (more about this below)
  • nausea,
  • difficulty sleeping,
  • intense dreams,
  • headache,
  • tremor,
  • agitation,
  • anxiety.
And "the sexual problems can last for months, years, or sometimes indefinitely after the discontinuation of SSRIs..." according to a 2006 article in The American Society for the Advancement of Pharmacotherapy. (By comparison, heroin withdrawal lasts only about two weeks.)

So how common are these withdrawal symptoms?

Up To 80% Suffer

Under increasing pressure, Eli Lilly in 1996 sponsored a research symposium to deal with the issue. The shocking conclusion (from researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital): ...anywhere from 20 to 80 percent of patients suffered what was then called antidepressant withdrawal. (But after the symposium it was renamed "discontinuation syndrome".)

And what about the 'brain zaps'? These are blinding electric shock-like sensations causing -

  • dizziness,
  • sweating,
  • nausea,
  • insomnia,
  • tremor,
  • confusion,
  • vertigo.
Oh, but the preferred term for coding these types of symptoms in adverse drug reaction reports is paresthesia (a 'pins-and-needles' sensation - which in no way sums up the pain involved).

Ex-Insider Reveals All!

One noted psychiatrist, David Healy (a drug-industry darling until he dared to speak out about the dangers of over-prescribing depression medications) describes a multinational industry now made up of "the most profitable corporations on the planet"... in its manic pursuit of profit. (And this from a man who still prescribes antidepressants and has impeccable credentials.)

He says 'Big Pharma' has captured almost total control over the research process, bought up academic experts, and turned them into marketing shills.

The Drug Makers assemble, pay for, and manage large-scale clinical trials.

Since they own the data, they can manipulate it for their own purposes, -

  • suppressing damaging information,
  • twisting the outcomes of the trials, and even
  • manufacturing new "diseases" whose primary function is to serve as marketing vehicles for new varieties of psychotropic pills.

Big Pharma controls the trials, and thus controls the reporting of the trial results.

Drug Makers Dirty Tricks

For example, did you know that drug trials start with a 'wash-out' period, where ALL participants are given a placebo? When half the patients are magically healed after one week (which isn't even possible from any antidepressant) those people are eliminated from the study.

THEN they start the real trial, and STILL the placebo is neck-and-neck with the real drug in terms of effectiveness. (It's not uncommon for the placebo to win, even though the race is fixed!)

Another dirty trick Healy mentions:

The PR departments of drug companies secretly write articles and attach the names of some of the eminent scientists they've 'bought'. Since this unethical ghostwriting has been exposed, one would hope this practice is now less prevalent. (I wonder what dirty tricks they're up to now, that we don't yet know about?)

One final undisputed fact: the epidemic of depression and manic depression did not even begin until drug companies began to market the disease in the 1960's.

The Crutch That Numbs

After decades of front-line experience, Healy concludes:

"Antidepressants cause emotional anesthesia and numbing or sometimes euphoria, providing a fleeting, artificial relief from emotional suffering.

"In the long run, all psychiatric drugs tend to disrupt the normal processes of feeling and thinking, rendering the individual less able to deal effectively with personal problems and with life’s challenges. They worsen the individual’s overall mental condition and produce potentially irreversible harm to the brain.

"The supposed therapeutic effects of psychiatric drugs are in fact the result of drug-induced mental disabilities..."

In other words, antidepressants often become a crutch that numb you out, just like so-called 'street drugs'.

Well what's a person to do?! If you can't trust the drug companies or their products...?

Here's a little bright news:

Four Decades of Research Provides Solution

Studies have shown exercise improves the serotonin system as much as antidepressants. In fact, after four decades of research, the Center for Neural Science of New York University concluded the following four activities increase serotonin levels:
  • Exercise
  • Sleep
  • Light (such as natural sunlight)
  • Good nutrition

In fact, anything that relieves severe stress helps the serotonin system.

It’s why therapy might work just as well as medication. The stress is relieved, and your system recovers. And it may explain why placebos work so well.

But that's not all that helps. I found a way to turn the source of my pain into the source of my healing. I discovered true emotional healing comes from establishing a whole new relationship with my emotions.

I stopped seeing them as the enemy. Through practice, I learned what it means to truly FEEL your feelings, rather than manipulate them.

The difference is like night and day.

Life becomes EXCTING! You can't wait to get up in the morning. You learn to LOVE your feelings - ALL of them. Even the 'yucky' ones.

Because you feel them, and let them go, and then you become 'more'.

More powerful, more clear, and more of yourself. You become more of who you really are, once you develop a new relationship with your emotions.

And if I can do it, so can you.

First, stop seeing emotions as the enemy.

Second, start feeling anything that comes up. Anything.

Third, stop trying to manipulate your feelings. Don't try to justify, or rationalize, or blame them on anyone or anything. Don't think about what you're feeling - just feel.

And own the fact that they're YOU'RE feelings!

Next, start processing out whatever's inside of you right now. Get out paper and pen and just WRITE. Write out whatever comes up for as long as you can. Write and write and write.

That's how I started.

all the best,

Mark Ivar Myhre
The Emotional Healing Wizard

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