I have chosen the word “evil” deliberately. I have chosen it not for dramatic effect or to get attention, I have chosen it because of the reality for so many psych survivors. What psychiatry does to vulnerable people is in fact EVIL. Those of us who are the victims will never have a voice. Psychiatry is the dominant force in this narrative and its victims are just that, victims, people who will always be suppressed and silenced. Psychiatrists see themselves as the saviours of their patients, helping them to achieve a better life, their self-image is incompatible with the reality that they destroy people’s lives, not only their patients but also their patients’ families. They will never understand what they do to people, why should they? If they did, they would never do it, but they will do it and they will continue to do it until the end of time until something or someone stops them.
My introduction to psychiatry came about after being prescribed a benzodiazepine by a neurologist. My health rapidly deteriorated. Neither I nor my family knew that the drug was the cause of this. I then took an overdose. I was in a state of extreme destress, not only because of my rapid decline in health but by the fact that I had just tried to kill myself. It was no cry for help, I intended to bring my life to an end that night, in the bedroom next to my parents’ bedroom. Such was the effect of this drug on me, the decision was made within minutes, there was no rational thought whatsoever. I certainly believed that a bottle of pills should be enough to kill me. Imagine if I had been successful, imagine what my parents would have had to endure. Right from the outset I was viewed by the local GPs as some silly little female only looking for attention.
I was then referred to psychiatry. I attended a Day Hospital where I was expected to sit in a large group of patients and staff talking about my emotions, I was already in a terrible state, depressed and withdrawn and did not want to talk to any group of people. I listened as one psychiatrist told a patient she could throw herself under a bus if she wanted to take her own life. She obliged and ended her life that night by taking an overdose. I sat listening to him in horror, not having the strength to tell him to go to hell. Even at 20 years of age I knew that was no way to speak to any human being who was suicidal.
Whilst attending this Day Hospital I entered into a relationship with another patient and within a year we had decided to get married. We were both diagnosed with “depression” and I assumed we had similar difficulties, however after we started to live together I very soon came to realise that my husband’s difficulties were far more complex than my own. Whilst we were able to support each other, it also meant that we had to deal with our own fragile state as well as the fragile state of the other. We left the Day Hospital and purchased our own flat, both of us managing to be in full-time employment at the time. My condition did not improve, indeed it continued to deteriorate. What else would be expected? I was swallowing the benzos every single day, the drugs which propelled me to attempt to kill myself. My husband continued to work full-time, my ability to work was less predictable.
I then became the patient of a very well respected Professor of Psychiatry, George Ashcroft. He optimistically told my mother that I would recover, as he decided to start prescribing the most awful drugs to me. My mother trusted him, as did I. I assumed that if I endured the terrible effects of these drugs, I might have a chance of recovery. What my mother did not know and what I did not know was that I did not need these drugs, nor did I need to endure their toxic effects. This well respected Professor never thought to consider that I was sick because of my consumption of benzodiazepines, prescribed to me by a neurologist. The first antidepressant he prescribed to me caused fits. I was admitted to a psych ward so that the drugs could be changed and I could be monitored. I remember very clearly being shown into a room by the Professor and he proceeded to interview me in front of approx 20 staff, I can’t remember exactly how many, I had no idea who they were and I had been given no warning this is what I was about to face. I was a depressed and withdrawn young woman yet again faced with an intolerable situation.
During my time in the psych hospital I endured drug switches, poly-drugging and was left in a zombified state, finding it very hard to function. I was then transferred to another psych hospital so that I could attend a rehabilitation centre to try to get back into a work schedule in preparation for returning to paid employment. In a zombified state, I went through with this, attending the centre every day. I then returned home and managed to secure employment, struggling to work every day, in a terrible state of health. It was cruel, so very cruel. Of course every time I could not cope I blamed myself for my inadequacies, when in fact I was a very sick young woman forcing myself to hold down a job to help pay the mortgage and keep a roof over our heads.
I had further in-patient admissions and on one occasion I walked out of the ward, went home and swallowed another bottle of pills, this time it could have been fatal. This suicide attempt was the direct result of the psychiatrist’s attempt to probe into my childhood memories. I suddenly had flashbacks, and started screaming in the ward. Instead of asking me why I was screaming, a meeting was organised to discuss my unacceptable behaviour. After I returned to the ward, having survived this suicide attempt, it was suggested I should be sectioned, I was offered ECT and the psychiatrist actually said I could spend the rest of my life in hospital. By that stage I didn’t care where I stayed, after all I had just tried to end my life. However, I wasn’t sufficiently defeated to agree to ECT and my husband certainly did not agree to my being sectioned.
When this respected Professor could see no improvement in my condition, he decided to pass me onto another psychiatrist who practised psychotherapy. This new psychiatrist did not suggest coming off the drugs but encouraged continued consumption. He proudly announced he hadn’t bothered to read the first volume of my medical notes. If any doctor had ever bothered to read my medical history they would have seen that I had been prescribed a benzodiazepine and within two months I was in a terrible state, physically, cognitively, mentally and that I had tried to kill myself. No doctor ever noticed what had happened. I was just a stupid female who was too close to her mother and too dependent on her. Did they never consider I had grown up in a very rural area? I went to school, came home again and had limited chance to experience the wider world, we did not even have a telephone and there was very little in the way of public transport. Did they not notice that my mother encouraged me to go to University hundreds of miles away from home, or that she then encouraged me to go to London to work? She was certainly not trying to hold me back. Quite the opposite in fact.
This psychiatrist then decided to involve my mother by inviting her to a consultation. I had wanted professional help to protect my mother, I knew she was vulnerable and after I took the overdose I did not want her to be burdened by my state of mind. The end result of this consultation was that my mother blamed herself. That night we found her wandering in the local churchyard in a terrible state, she then took to her bed and didn’t want to get out of it again. The whole episode nearly split up our entire family, I cannot give details here of why that was. I am the only person who knows what happened. My “illness” ruined the last 10 years of her life and it was all completely unnecessary.
Due to the fact that I kept getting worse and could see no end to this situation, I decided I would not have children, I did not want any child of mine to have to endure what I was having to go through. In any case I was too sick to contemplate getting pregnant. I had come to believe that there was something seriously wrong with me, after all I had been persuaded that there must be something wrong with the neurotransmitters in my brain, my personality was flawed and I was a really peculiar human being, and it may even be due to faulty genes. What else was I supposed to think? I was a physical, emotional and psychological wreck trying to function in daily life when in fact I did not have the energy to do so. My cognition had been impaired since starting on benzodiazepines, I was chronically tired, mood was very low and all this was said to be “depression”. When I switched to the newer antidepressants I was relieved of the awful effects of the tricyclics and MAOIs, this was viewed as an improvement in my condition, but all that had happened was the drug burden on me had been lessened, making it a little easier for me to function against the disabling effects of the benzos.
And so what started out as an adverse reaction to a drug, coupled with my own difficulties in making the transition from school to adulthood, became lifelong chronic consumption of toxic drugs, destroying my health. In 2012, a change of GP practice finally resulted in a doctor questioning why I was still consuming benzodiazepines. My attempt to come off them resulted in total catastrophe. Not a single part of my body has been unaffected. I am a physical wreck, old before my time. What is worse is the fact that I spent 40 years of my life in a drugged state not even seeing what I was doing to myself, believed that I suffered from “depression”, had faulty neurotransmitters, likely faulty genes to boot and was a completely inadequate human being who could never function normally in this world. I had to get off these drugs to understand the truth. What I thought was depression was in fact damage to my brain, damage which started the day I was prescribed a benzodiazepine, the decline in my health was so rapid and so marked I fail to understand why no doctor could ever see it. I certainly could not see what these drugs were doing to me, my brain was impaired, my judgement impaired, but surely someone who is trained in the medical field should have known better, just one doctor was all it needed, just one. It is only in the past few years that I have discovered that Prof George Ashcroft discounted the low serotonin theory by 1970, I wish I had known, I wish I had known that I had no need to consume SSRIs, that there was no such thing as a chemical imbalance in my brain, causing me to be depressed.
What I have had to endure has only been a fraction of what many other psych survivors have had to endure. I wasn’t sexually abused as a child, I had really good parents. I have never been raped or a victim of domestic violence or any other crime. In many ways I have had a “normal” life, it could have been a very ordinary life, but a much happier and healthier one had I never sought medical advice in 1975. I have never been sectioned, never locked up, never been forced to do anything. Any whiff of coercion and I would run a mile, I don’t seek medical help to be coerced to do anything. A psych hospital for me was a place where I could come and go as I wished for the most part, going home, to the shops or the bank, attending university lectures and even to work when I was able to hold down a job. I was there mostly for drug monitoring and drug switching, not to be kept a prisoner or to be punished for existing. Nevertheless, my life has been completely ruined, I may still be alive but that is only by chance, if I had had my way I would be dead. I am now retired, it should have been a time of relaxation and enjoyment, instead it has been years of torture and torment. No children or grandchildren to enjoy, no looking back on a life well lived or dreams fulfilled, none of that was possible.
I have had a presence on Twitter since 2014. I set up my account at the height of drug withdrawal, when I was being tortured by the suffering I was forced to endure. I do not campaign because I had an adverse reaction to a drug, I have had adverse reactions to most drugs I have ever had the misfortune to consume, I campaign because of the destruction of my adult life, all of it and I stand with all those whose lives have been similarly destroyed. Many are dead, many left in a far worse state than myself, others will of course have fared better, perhaps they managed to escape from the cult of psychiatry before too much harm was done to them. To those who label me as a Scientologist, anti-psychiatry, anti-meds, anti-science, anti-medicine, anti-doctors, anti-vaxx, you are no better than the psychiatrists who have ruined my life, you are just the same as they are, coming at me with your silly labels because you cannot think of anything more intelligent to say. Have you ever heard of the slogan “See me, not the label”. Perhaps think about that before you write nonsense in your tweets. Also do not come at me with your accusations of “scaremongering”, “pill-shaming”, “shaming”, “stigmatising”, instead look at yourselves and look at what you do to people. When you stop harming people maybe you can have an opinion. I didn’t destroy anyone’s life, I would rather kill myself than do that to another human being. Would you also attack the survivors of child sexual abuse, is that the type of person you are?
My life has as much value as any other human being on this planet. I deserved to have a life, I did not deserve any of this. I may have been a working class female but I took it for granted that I was intelligent and would go to University, I took it for granted I had a future. Why would I not? All it takes is one consultation, one drug and you can kiss good-bye to all of that. Medical doctors are trained to prescribe drugs, they are in fact trained to cause us harm, any doctor who is prescribing drugs and does not know the risks that they pose is a danger to patients. All doctors are a danger to their patients. They rely on a corrupt pharmaceutical industry for their education, how could it be any different.
My ex-husband died in 2016. We divorced after 10 years of marriage. His mental state did not improve at all and indeed worsened. He endured decades of drugging, poly-drugging and ECT. Not long before he died he said that he did not think that the drugs had helped him. He was right, his condition had not improved. His physical health and cognition was very much poorer. Perhaps if his early years had been better understood, perhaps if he had had support as a child it might have been different. He had been a happy, normal little boy until he was pronounced partially deaf at age 7. Thereafter he was bullied and ostracised and grew into a very troubled teenager. His distrust of other people became deeply entrenched and could not be shifted. Thankfully he trusted me enough to marry me and we remained friends until his death. He was a hard working man until he could work no longer. He was honest and decent and would not have hurt anyone by intention. His life was blighted by mental pain and suffering.
When I die, my remains will be interred with my parents, it is what I want. I will be laid to rest alongside the two people, ordinary decent working class people, who did everything possible to give me a good start in life, they would have done anything for me, anything within their power. Nether of them had the chance to know what really happened to me. My mother died at a very sad time in my life. My father thankfully lived for another 25 years and we had many happy times together and I have wonderful memories of him as he progressed through very old age. Nothing that happened to me was their fault, none of it. I didn’t have the chance to build a successful marriage or to have children, grandchildren or even great-grandchildren. My life was spent simply trying to do the essentials of daily life in order to pay bills and survive. It wasn’t a life, it was more of an existence, despite outward appearances. As a friend said to me recently: “You always put on a good show” and he has seen me through the worst of it. Nearly every photograph of me you will see a big smile, hiding the sadness, the struggle, the sickness I endured every minute of every day. I don’t wear that mask any more, I can’t, there comes a point when it is just too much effort. Of course I still smile and laugh when I am with friends and family, why would I not? I enjoy people’s company but behind the smile is a very deep sadness and regret which never goes away. The only time I feel some sense of peace is when I am walking in the park or along the seashore, then I can forget, just for a little while. I don’t believe in life after death, I believe death is the end but in death I will be with the two people who brought me into the world, the two people who did not deserve to see me suffer so much. They too deserved better.
nevertrustadoctor 