For me prescribed harm has indeed been a life sentence. Since the age of 20 I have not enjoyed a single day of normal life. No one should have to serve a life sentence just because they decided to visit a doctor. I do not accept that pharmaceutical companies have the right to bring drugs to market or that doctors are trained and paid to prescribe them to millions of trusting patients with very limited knowledge of the harm those drugs can cause. My life has more value than this, I do not deserve to have this type of harm inflicted upon me by any medical doctor. It was bad enough being prescribed a benzodiazepine in 1975 with no warnings given to me about the risks of drug dependence and severe withdrawal effects, it was even worse being prescribed antidepressants which made the situation considerably worse and again with no informed consent. I have every right to be angry. And so has every other patient whose life has been blighted by pharmaceutical products not adequately tested prior to being launched onto the general population.
I did not choose to go to a street drug dealer to get a drug which would ultimately ruin my life. I did not choose to smoke and cause serious harm to my health. I did not drink alcohol to excess. We were all warned about the dangers of those particular activities, we were not warned that it was just as dangerous to visit the local GP. Perhaps there are many people much wiser than me, but prescribed drugs was not a subject that I ever heard anyone discuss as I was growing up. My family was generally healthy and a visit to the doctor a rare event. My parents obviously had no idea that the drugs I was consuming were such awful drugs and harmful to health. Clearly my doctors thought it was a wise idea to prescribe them to me and to keep prescribing year after year. They will say I agreed to take them. Of course I agreed to the initial prescription but when you find you are dependent on them your life choices vanish in a flash. What to do? Risk everything trying to get off them, risk losing job and home or keep on taking them? No one is going to come along and magically pay the bills. I did not want to be unemployed or dependent on welfare benefits. I did that for a few years intermittently but I was always trying to find the next job and I had many of them as I tried to battle my way to work against the disabling effects of these prescribed drugs. Some jobs lasted a few weeks, some a few months, others a year or more. It is absolutely galling that doctor after doctor said nothing about drug dependence or gradual tapering, it is even more galling that they actually thought antidepressants were keeping me stable, that old chestnut about the chemical imbalance and risk of relapse if drugs are stopped. What a pile of nonsense it was.
Psychiatrists thought I was too dependent on other people. Really? Were they going to work every day like a drugged zombie? How would they have fared if they had tried? They wouldn’t have lasted long in the job of psychiatrist, I can guarantee that. How dare they sit in judgement over me when they aren’t even aware of their own massive ignorance. They don’t even know the harms these drugs can cause. They have filled our heads with nonsense about chemical imbalances and drugs to fix this problem. What chemical imbalance? They never test us for anything. They have no idea what is wrong with us.
I respect a doctor who is blunt and honest. Dr Des Spence, Glasgow GP, took an interest in the fact that I and many other harmed patients had gone to such effort to contribute to a petition to the Scottish Parliament. Anyone who cares to read the multiple accounts of harm submitted by patients will soon understand just how terrible these drugs can be. Two of the young women who submitted subsequently died by suicide. Neither of them deserved that, their suffering was horrific and unsustainable.
https://archive2021.parliament.scot/gettinginvolved/Petitions/PE01651
Dr Spence wrote in the BJGP:
“In any other industry there would be howls for a public inquiry, a criminal investigation, and corporate manslaughter charges. The irony is there is a whole criminal justice system seeking to control illegal drugs with thousands of the poor imprisoned for decades for involvement in the drug trade. Yet, the professional architects of this medical mayhem walk away with their reputations intact and with bags of Pharma cash. I struggle to put into words the sense of shame this has brought our profession. It is a disgrace, a scandal, and the biggest public health issue of our time, an iatrogenic infection harming millions. What is happening is wrong and wholly preventable. There is a need for a public inquiry and an urgent need to stem the relentless rise of dependence-forming medications in the UK.”
https://bjgp.org/content/67/661/363
Will there ever be a public apology to all the patients like me whose lives have been blighted? I very much doubt it. Will there ever be any compensation? We know what happened with the class action on benzos in the UK, it was thrown out and the victims did not get a penny. Perhaps a class action on SSRI antidepressants will have a better chance of success. There has to be severe penalties for those who cause widespread harm, death and disability in the patient population.
Don’t tell me antidepressants “work” or “save lives”, that is of little interest to me, what matters most to me is that all of us who have been harmed see some sort of justice. I won’t get it for myself but I hope others can fight to get it for themselves.
nevertrustadoctor 