THE RISING FIREFLY EXCERPTS: Antidepressants: Chemical Annihilation of the Mind
RF69: Science & Reason
Antidepressants: Chemical Annihilation of the Mind
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In 1999 comedian Phil Hartman’s wife shot and killed him and then she killed herself. Around the time of the suicide/murder, Mrs. Hartman was taking Zoloft and complained to her friends that she felt as though she was going to jump out of her skin.
In 2000, Christopher DeAngelo was acquitted for bank robbery after the judge found that DeAngelo’s state of mind was due to the Prozac he had been taking at the time of the robbery. Among the warnings associated with Prozac is akathisia, mental restlessness that can result in a loss of all inhibitions about one’s actions.
Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, Luvox, and Celexa are among the most commonly prescribed antidepressants. When they were first introduced to the marketplace in the late 80s and early 90s, they were prescribed to treat moderate to severe depression and anxiety disorders, but have become the drug prescriptions of choice among doctors. They are very liberally prescribed for things like basic anxiety, obsessions, substance abuse, chronic pain, shyness, and even to just feel better than average. How liberally prescribed? One in ten Americans takes antidepressants, and among women in their 40s to 50s, one in four. Antidepressants are the third most widely used prescription medication for those between the ages of 18-44.
Modern Medicine’s Claims about Brain Chemistry
According to modern medicine a few particular chemical messengers in the brain are affected by antidepressants. Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are now the most commonly prescribed antidepressants. According to medical science, SSRIs alleviate depression by affecting neurotransmitters, chemical messengers, which are used to communicate information between our brain and body. The brain uses neurotransmitters to tell the heart to beat, the lungs to breathe and the stomach to digest food. There are over a hundred different kinds of neurotransmitters that serve different functions, three specifically: serotonin, dopamine and adrenaline which modern medicine commonly refers to as the brain’s “feel good” neurotransmitters.
Modern medicine claims that among humans, roughly 5% of serotonin is found in the brain and the other 95% is found throughout the rest of the body, primarily in the gastrointestinal tract where it aids the digestive process. Serotonin helps to regulate blood flow within the cardiovascular system and is found in blood cells where it serves an important role in clotting. It also regulates hormones within the reproductive system. Serotonin controls the emission of neurons (brain cells that regulate how we think, feel and behave). It influences mood, appetite, body temperature and blood pressure. Mood is said to be boosted by changing the balance of serotonin.
What do Neuroscientists really Know about the Brain?
One may be led to believe that modern medicine has a comprehensive understanding of how the brain functions based on their research about neurotransmitters and their roles within the brain. But how much does modern medicine really know about the brain?
In an attempt to influence modern society’s understanding of the brain, neuroscientists convinced Congress to name the ‘90s the Decade of the Brain. The goal, as President George Bush put it, was to garner support for research and enhance public awareness on the “three-pound mass of interwoven nerve cells” that serves as “the seat of human intelligence, interpreter of senses and controller of movement.” Even Nobel Prize winners for brain science balked at the decade dedicated to understanding the brain, claiming that much more time would be needed, a century or even a millennium.
The National Institutes of Health spend $4.5 billion a year on brain research. In January of 2013, the European Union announced that it would spend over $1 billion in the next decade on the Human Brain Project in an attempt to create a computer simulation of the brain. Just following this announcement, in April of 2013 Obama announced that he will commit $3 billion over a decade to the Brain Activity Map project. In the midst of the exorbitant amounts of taxpayer dollars being invested in trying to understand the brain, neuroscientists themselves are unclear on the goals of this project and how to attain them. One of the fundamental limitations outlined by scientists themselves is an ignorance of how the brain is circuited or wired. They recognize that understanding the brain will be unattainable without this information.
Scientists are relying on computer simulations in order to understand the brain and vast efforts and monies are being expended towards this. However, critics say that computers are obviously incapable of performing cognitive functions such as seeing, hearing, remembering and deciding. These simulations cannot properly capture the way the brain functions in order to provide scientists with an in depth understanding of the inner workings of the brain. Many neuroscientists admit that many questions remain unanswered, like What is consciousness? Why do we sleep and dream? How do we store and access memories? How does perception work? Do we have free will? Decades pass and the holes remain open yet progress is claimed towards how the brain works. So, what else do we know about antidepressants?
Side Effects of Antidepressants
Antidepressants are known to bring side effects that include agitation, anxiety, lack of motivation, low energy, memory loss, decreased libido, reduced appetite, muscle spasms, akathisia (movement disorder), increased risk of violent behavior, increased frequency of depression, increased mania and suicide. These symptoms are not only evident during use of the drugs but persist even after discontinuation of use. Clearly, these drugs impair normal brain function, leaving individuals worse off than before using them.
For example, it is common for users of SSRIs to develop anxiety and agitation. There are various forms and degrees (mild, moderate and severe) of anxiety including, panic attacks, obsessions, compulsions, phobias of varying kinds, etc. So when doctors prescribe Prozac, they often prescribe a sedative at the same time. Drug companies are known to hide this very common side effect by prescribing a sedative or tranquilizer to clinical trial participants. We can see the inherent contradiction in the prescriptions of these medications, while the SSRI stimulates and over-stimulates the central nervous system, the sedative or tranquilizer depresses the nervous system. One has to wonder about the risks of taking a stimulant and sedative at the same time and about the confusion presented to the body. Psychosis due to extreme amounts of overstimulation can result in paranoia, extreme depression, and suicide.
A psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, Anthony Rothschild, conducted a study where he re-prescribed Prozac to three patients who previously attempted suicide on this drug. His first experiment was conducted on a patient who, two weeks after first being prescribed Prozac, became extremely agitated and anxious. In her attempt to seek relief, she jumped off the roof of a building. She suffered a brain hemorrhage and multiple fractures in her limbs. When Rothschild restarted her on Prozac after this tragic incident, she again experienced severe anxiety. She said that this was the exact feeling she experienced when she attempted suicide some days ago. Noting that it was the anxiety symptoms not the depression that pushed her to take action. Within 72 hours of discontinuing Prozac the agitation ceased.
Perhaps at this point you may be wondering why the public isn’t more aware of these serious side effects. That is because, in general, public health policies for monitoring long term side effects of prescription drugs do not exist. The Food and Drug Administration works to assure the public of short term safety. Clinical studies conducted by the pharmaceutical industry generally last a maximum of eight weeks. Long term side effects can take years and even decades to reveal themselves. Based on this practice, prescribing new drugs to the public is a continuous experiment where human beings are the rats in the lab called life. Additionally, drugs are designed on computers to target the brain, tested on animals under limited conditions and then prescribed to humans. How can we know the real effects on the human system, long or short term? The FDA’s stamp of approval gives people a false sense of safety, meanwhile serious problems could be developing within the body.
History of Antidepressants
For more on the dangers of antidepressants, we can look back at the first potent antidepressants prescribed in the modern era: cocaine elixirs or mixtures. These were introduced in the late 1800s. By the 20th Century, cocaine elixirs had become the most popular prescription medication. Like SSRIs, they too allowed users to feel better than normal. Following the elixir craze, Amphetamines, barbiturates, and tranquilizers were all promoted as miracle drugs until their deadly side effects surfaced.
Like these previous drugs, SSRIs were initially marketed as ground breaking with scientific advances unlike their predecessors. It is Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, Luvox, and Celexa, that served as the breakthrough drugs with remarkable scientific advances in the 1990s. As they gain popularity, they are prescribed by general health care practitioners, not just psychiatrists. They are prescribed as mood elevators, quick fixes and for everyday human challenges. After being on the market for about a decade, their side effects began to emerge, and pharmaceutical companies vehemently denied any such claims. Since there are no policies to regulate the long term side effects and reporting of these side effects is on a case by case basis, it is only after about twenty years that enough evidence was accrued to make a case against the drugs’ advocates. To date, with the data collected, the misleading perception of these drugs is fading but slowly.
What our Ancestral Traditions say about the Brain
Our Ancestors and traditional Kemetic culture pushed the limits of investigation and understanding far beyond where modern society and colonial thinking has brought us. Tradition investigated existence thoroughly, but did so by staying within the bounds of reality. One thing that allowed them to do this is their incorporation of the non-physical or non-material dimensions of reality which plays an integral part within human existence. Once reality presented limitations to the human, our ancestors didn’t overstep these bounds. They understood human beings’ limitations and as a result also understood how we fit within existence.
Our Ancestors were able to humble themselves to one key limitation: the brain doesn’t invent. The brain is not capable of discovering or creating something that is not based on previous exposures and understandings. If a human being from the infant stage, never observes another human standing, he will not grow to know that he can use his two feet to stand and walk. Something as basic as walking is not instinctive behavior as claimed by scientists. We learn to eat, sit, stand and even think. This reality of the human brain is a hard pill for modern society to swallow given that they thrive on new “inventions.” Billions of dollars are invested, and modern science hasn’t exposed some basic realities that our Ancestors have long been aware of like the brain’s inability to invent, why we sleep and dream, and how perception works.
According to Prophet Naba Lamoussa Morodenibig (master healer, Kemetic priest and one of the world’s authorities in psychology, sociology, metaphysics, and philosophy, among other sciences) the discrepancy between what really exists and what a human being is aware of is a key element that contributes to the instability of the human mind which leads to depression. In coping with or denying what reality presents, humans develop their own perceptions, unique to each individual. Because of the fast pace in which things transform around us, we are forced to adapt to our environments and in trying to hold on to our perceptions, most lose touch with reality. Then, instead of trying to understand and come closer to reality, most choose to rely on illusion instead.
Modern society provides countless opportunities to feed one’s illusions. Higher educational institutions, for instance, act as perception franchises that provide various avenues through which we can take our minds closer to craziness and further away from the realities of existence. We are raised to believe that life should be comfortable, and that happiness is the goal. However, suffering and challenges are an integral part of life that open the way for truth seekers to exhibit perseverance in order to build their qualities in accordance with being good. We can’t use drugs like antidepressants to make us feel better about the reality that we face. Whether we face it now or after the prescription ends, our reality is that we will have to face it.
When we consider that disconnection from reality is a primary factor in the onset of varying degrees of depression and other mental disorders, the modern system stands out as most culpable. Its denial of all the knowledge, traditions and practices from Kemetic culture, that sustained human civilization for thousands of years is in itself a fundamental contributor to modern man’s disconnection from reality and so to depression and mental disorders. One method for getting out of depression and mental instabilities is to align one’s perspective closer with reality. Antidepressants will not help you to do this; instead they will continue to feed the illusory state of mind that led to the depression in the first place place; in many cases, antidepressants will even exacerbate the mental illusions, to the point of suicide.