Eating Alices Cookie didnt take me to Wonderland. Stop telling people to avoid medication!!!

i dont really know what this is fully about as i dont have time to read it all

but it seems this thread is to criticize people who recommend other people to not take their doctors word as gospel

anyone who tries to get someone else to take responsibility for their own health care is smart

from my personal experience, if you put 100 percent faith in your doctor without doing any of your own research, you are stupid and ignorant

recently my father died from cancer, if i was not critical of his doctor and if i did not do my own research, my father would have died before ever being diagnosed with small cell lung cancer


leaving it solely up to the doctor cost my dad his life as they did not find the cancer until i got involved, by that time, the lung cancer on his lung was the size of a lemon according to his primary physician who found it after i forced him to do the tests, after confirming it was cancer further tests revealed metastasis to several other parts of the body, they did not find the cancer until he was in stage 4 end stage cancer, for 6 months his primary doctor told him all his pain was from muscle strain or pulled muscles


if i did not go through my moms medication after the situation with my dads doctors, and do the research on her medicines, it is very probable she would be dead by now also, if not at least severely worse off

doctors are not gods, they are overwhelmed and they are stressed out, they see an incredibly high amount of patients per day and this isnt a healthcare system that has your best interests as their number one priority


bottom line, anyone who leaves their health to someone else is dumb, you need to be proactive in your health and anyone telling others to put 100 percent faith in the doctors has no clue what they are talking about

today we have a great deal of knowledge at our finger tips, with the assistance of medical officials, you can be a very healthy person, but when you have health issues, leaving it 100 percent up to your doctors is just as dumb as not ever getting 2nd opinions


when i had the situation with my father, his doctor said he had less then 6 months to live if he was lucky, he lived slightly over a year once we got involved with his health and found new doctors

reply to post by tomtom


yay finally somebody see's the potential!

the key word in your post was "smoked cannabis". this is the traditional way (which works great), but one thing to remember is theres over 500 documented "cannabinoids" in cannabis. these are individual "drugs" within the plant so to speak. when you smoke the plant you are taking in ALL of these cannabinoids. which is why it treats so many illness's.

my thing is if doctors were allowed to study and work with the plant, they could isolate individual cannabinoids for specific uses.

For example, the cannainoid THC is believed to be the cause of the testicular issues (ive never heard it suggested to cause actual testicular cancer but there are some things that suggest a few issues)

but even if it did, theres another cannabinoid within the same plant called CBD, and this is proven to halt cancer growth (of all kinds). it kills some protein that feeds the cancer.

these are just 2 of the hundreads of cannabinoids in cannabis. its clear that this plant needs more research!!!!!!!

::edit:: but big pharm wont let it happen. because they cant patent a plant. and why would they want the mass's informed of this free BETTER alternative?$$$$$$$$$.

but thats ok, Cali already had its revolution in 1996. the feds didnt like it.


[edit on 22-2-2010 by LurkerMan]

reply to post by spuddyboy


Huh? When did I say go to any conspiracy site and listen to medical advice? You're putting words in my mouth. I said educate yourself. I said ask your doctor questions. I said don't just blindly follow your doctors advice simply because they're a doctor. I never said ask people you don't know on some forum medical advice, that is insane and I would never say that. There are other ways to get education that perhaps you may not know about, aside from conspiracy forums. There is all sorts of literature on any drug that has been approved by the FDA. There are books full of medications and what they do and their side effects. There are also resources on the internet that can help educate you.

You should never just pick 1 and assume that it's correct. As I said, as human beings, we are all prone to mistakes. I'll say it again, do some research, get informed, and then make your decision.

If you're blindly following your doctor just because he's a doctor, then yes, I am saying you're doing it wrong. He or she is just as prone to making a mistake as you or I, and anyone who tells you different has no clue what they're talking about. Now, you may not have to deal with serious medical issues, you may just be seeing your doctor for check ups and colds. More than likely, in situations like that, yes, you're fine. But we were talking about depression and other more serious issues.

In my opinion, even for the small stuff, there is absolutely nothing wrong with double checking what your doctor has prescribed for you and it would be better for you in the long run.

Let me repeat my summary from earlier once again, though it seems some don't have the attention span to make it this far: Do your own research, ask questions, find out everything you can and then make your decision. Is that clear enough?

Greetings Everyone,

This is an important thread, thanks to OzWeatherman for the initial post.

I suffered moderate depression on and off for many years and was given medications that I had to stop after a month because they compounded the depression by making me feel agitated and wanting to jump out of my skin. I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression as a result of suffering from fibromyalgia and once again given medications, but these were "New and improved". These new and improved meds provided little relief, the depression was still there and I now needed stronger sleep meds to help bring me down from the anti-depressants. I was a medicated zombie.

A former head of the National Institute of Health, Candace Pert wrote a book describing how medications actually work at the receptor level. That medications are designed to block receptors thought to trigger the condition in question. Sounds good so far, yes? But then because the receptors are completely blocked, all other signals (enzymes/amino acids/proteins) are also kept from the receptors. This is what causes a medication's side effects. The bad signals are blocked, but the beneficial signals also being blocked causes the body to react to the loss of the good signals. So what does your doctor do? Give you another med to alleviate the side effects caused by the first medication, and on, and on, and on. It becomes a vicious circle.

I was a patient with blind-faith in that the doctors are the "Professionals" and know better than I. Obediently I literally swallowed everything they said and gave me. My condition never improved, and in many areas worsened. Pharmaceuticals are a Big Business, which means they are driven by the bottom-line. Perhaps at one time their motives were to better the human condition, but sadly that is no longer the case.

I do not propose that people stop taking their medications. What I do encourage people to do is to seek knowledge. Research your medications to know exactly what they do and no not. Examine the side effects and look closely at the ones labeled rare, but serious. There are treatment alternatives out there that have been around for thousands of years, take a look and you may be pleasantly surprised.

Peace and Love

The vaults of Erowid is a good place to start for unbiased self-informing on this subject.


www.erowid.org

youll get a real breakdown of both natural and synthetic drugs.

legal quasi and illegit.

Again everyone here is skirting the issue!

The OP's original statement was a plea for people here on ATS to not take advice given on ATS for medical treatment.

Let's be honest here people- not everyone who is a member here is emotionally and mentally stable.

Many people here have obvious paranoid delusions, and most likely would benefit from being on some sort of medication.

People who are unstable are VERY easily persuaded, and can be convinced to against against medical advice on the slightest whim. A 20 page post calling medicine evil and prone to evil side effects can push that someone over the edge. Then you're left with someone possibly suicidal or homicidal and guess whose fault that would be?

I would be the FIRST person screaming for cops to look at the posters who made their views seem like gospel. It's not. It's criminal.

Anyone giving medical advice over the internet is committing a crime.

Personally, I feel posts such as those should be removed immediately, before something bad happens.

You wanna advise someone? Great- how about telling them to talk to a professional who knows them, and can help them research. Not you. No one knows who you are, and you could just hurt someone.


It infuriates me that people are still in this thread posting some new age psycho-babble and NOT paying attention to the OP.


No one cares what you think of pills.


Many people care when you try to convince someone else to agree with you.

I'm missing the 'eating cookies' analogy.

If anything, I consider pharma antidepressants to be 'alices cookies'. In that case, the first sentence of your title is more than fitting.

Originally posted by (C2C)
If people were smart enough to do their research and figure out what the pharmaceutical companies are actually capable of I'm sure they would stay very far away from medication. I'm one of those people who does not take any form of medication. I bet that if someone would have switched out your medication with sugar pills and you did not know about it, you would still be cured now. You are cured now because you cured yourself through your thoughts and mind! Now im open to your arguments but because i am very open minded but from the years of research i have done on many diffrent things, i see your argurments as holding very little truth.

I agree with you here. Your body will heal itself as long as you feed it the vitamins and minerals it needs, as well as sunlight and pure foods.
Your body is AMAZING and your mind even more so.

My question to those who are on all these med's.... When the med's run out where are you? When you run out of pills, what happens?
Why doesn't anyone report on the suicides and deaths from the medications as should be done? Why do we not have (HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS) coverage on holistic medicines / healing?

reply to post by OzWeatherman


The number of people who die each day because of medical errors—physician mistakes, hospital-related illness, and reactions to FDA-approved medications—is the equivalent of six jumbo jets falling out of the sky. More Americans are dying each year at the hands of medicine than all American casualties in WWI and the Civil War combined.

source www.praktikosbooks.com...

reply to post by Pimpish


ok, you never said listen to the nutters on here, but some have been saying it.

i do understand what you are saying about mistakes can be made and i said you should get a second opinion, not harm there.

by all means do a little research yourself. cant hurt.

but do not just stop taking medication because you read it on the internet. or because someone without any real knowledge told you to. Thats what this post is about. The o.p is telling people not to listen to random folks on this website that all say stop taking meds for this and that, and thats what i was addressing.

i think you have ventured a little of topic. This post is about poeple on here who somehow think they know more about mental illness than doctors and are trying to convince people to stop taking medication.

now that is very dangerous. Because there are people on here who will listen to them. i think that anyone who tells a person suffering for any mental illness to just stop taking their meds should have their comment removed.

and i realise you never said anything like that, so no need to tell me again.

but im just sticking to what the post is about

I think what many people here are saying is that there may be other options out there to research and discuss with yourself and a doctor and yes be proactive in your health.



Not everyone shares the same hoeplessness to be dependant on man made medication outlook, some want to make sure their making the right descisions. For every mental problem there is usually a root cause. Western society is really the only one that treats the symptoms only rather than finding the root cause and working it from there.

The OP is right though in that no one should say don't take your meds, that is very irresponsible and as bad as big pharma pumping the wrong stuff into someone via there doctor

Most people are not saying that though, only to make sure you look at all your options.


I have noticed though that many of those who are in favor of pills being really the only way and always trust a docotr only are not shy in trying to use the very horrible argument technique of name calling.


Are there some people on ATS that maybe go very far with some of there ideas, probably, but most use it as a forum to discuss all the things which society discourages in common conversation and a tool to broaden awareness and education. If you are on ATS and you feel that doctors are always to be trusted and big pharma is looking out for you and flouride is really good for your teeth cause my dentist said so, then you may find your time here a bit discouraging. Most people on this forum are here to talk about and discuss what others may consider to be conventional wisdom.

In short there are not as many tin foil hats being worn as some of you may think....

So my question is what brought you to this forum then?

[edit on 22-2-2010 by Soulfear]

reply to post by LurkerMan


i agree with you but just wanted to clarify some things, everything i have ever known about it, the testicle situation is a rumor that has never been verified by any legit research


the anti cancer properties are true, but it has not been proven through research to kill all kinds of cancer cells, there are many different kinds of cancer that is does have the ability to kill, some it can slow


i am not saying that it CANT kill all cancer cells, we just have not had the research to show that yet

we absolutely do need further research and testing done

since we know there are chemical compounds within the substance that each affect certain things, we need to narrow down to find out exactly what compounds work on what illness

from there, instead of trying to synthesize that chemical, since with marinol we have learned that the synthesized version does not have the same effect as the natural substance does, use our genetical modifying capability to gm a marijuana strain dominant in each necessary chemical for all different illnesses


you have one plant for depression, one for pain, one for h.i.v., one for Alzheimer's, one for M.S., one for lung cancer, one for breast cancer, etc

it has properties that help with all of those, and now we know how to manipulate plants to become what we want them to be, we easily develop strains for each substance to help many diseases, and we wouldnt have to worry about the synthesized one not working as good



theres a tremendous amount of potential for it thats going under utilized

many people still think we need to smoke it to gain benefits, but thats not true with current vaporizer technology, if that was developed further, we could probably create inhaler type ways of distribution

reply to post by cjcord


Actually no, it wasn't. His plea was for people on the forums to stop telling other people to stop taking their medications and basically that the professionals know best so listen to them. So I guess so long as you're agreeing with the doctor, its ok.

As much as I agree with him, I would have to expand it quite a bit more. Doctors do NOT always know best. It is NEVER a bad idea to educate yourself on a prescription that any medical doctor wants you to take. The only one who you should ultimately be listening to is yourself. Not all drugs interact with every person the same way. Our bodies are different. One patient might get relief from a migraine from morphine, where another one will just get sick to their stomach. If you're taking a medication and it seems to be having adverse effects, talk to your doctor about it. Usually there is another similar medication that you can try that may not be having those same adverse effects. Maybe no medication is best for you.

There is NO blanket answer either way. The OP saying to trust the doctors because they're professionals is almost as ridiculous as saying to take medical advice from people on a conspiracy forum.

Mistakes are always an option. Get educated and then make your decision.

Doubled.

[edit on 22-2-2010 by Pimpish]

Anyone taking anyone else's word for anything without doing their own research in this day and age is doing a great disservice to themselves.

The problem with medical related info is that we're all taught at a young age that "THAT" body of knowledge is too complex to tinker with. You either go big and become a doctor or you zip it and do what the doctor tells you to do.

It's not my duty to educate anyone as to why medical schooling and education is as corrupt as "professional education" gets. Nor is it my responsibility to fill in the blanks for the average person about medical school funding as they became established in the late 1800's, or endless pharmaceutical research funding frauds, or the corrupt regulatory bodies that are suppose to be PROTECTING the public rather than protecting the profits of the industry.

No, it's each and everyone's own responsibility to look into these things themselves. Why the average person would want to take on that responsibility is exactly why we are loosing the war. Instead of the health care industry, it's the sick care industry and corporate monopolies and cartels are rolling in it; profit that is.

----

Regarding the OP and the specific industry involved in depression and metal disorders. It's extremely rancid with corruption and false, junk science that NO doctor understands. This is a fact, no doctor or research scientist knows why psychotropic drugs work the way they do on the brain. There is no physical test in existence to diagnose those disorders and guess what that means? $$$$ to be made, lots of it.

Anyone even remotely interested in opening their eyes to this reality should listen to the plethora of doctors and research scientists involved with prescribing and CREATING these medications and how clueless they are about the medications and disorders. Then start researching for yourself.

This documentary should serve as a wake-up call to this farce of an industry...

-

topdocumentaryfilms.com... told-story-of-psychotropic-drugging/

I am one of those people that feals big pharma is nothing more than a big business. Feeding of the hypochondriac public who think that the littliest thing needs to be medicated by a doctor. Any little thing from dry eyes to friggin viagra.....

This brings me to my cousin, a poor kid who has numerous health problems. Insomnia, depression and heart problems being the most severe. He was on 7 different amphetamines none of which was helping him whatsoever. One day he had a talk with his doctor about marijuana and if it could do anything to help his insonmia. The doctor said yes, if he knew where to get some to give it a try. Well he got a hold of some of this highy illegal schedule 1 drug that is demonized by most. Low and behold 6 months later he is no longer on any PILLS other than medicine for his heart palpatations. No more depression, no more anxiety, no more insomnia. Finally after 15 years he has some peace of mind.

Hi everyone. I'm brand new to this forum. I haven't even been lurking much, but I decided to put in my two cents into this debate.

I understand how the pharmaceutical company issue gets people absolutely furious, because it IS a horrible situation.

To see it simply as a cartoonish Evil Pharma Companies/Greedy Ignorant Doctors/Corrupt Govt. Officials story where if you simply think happy thoughts or meditate or take the proper "natural" medicines that you will accomplish the same thing in a good/natural way is much too black and white however.

For one, the idea that a doctor's certification means nothing is garbage. It means that he/she has spent approx. 7 years studying human anatomy, biology and biochemistry. That includes pharmacology.

True, I'm sure that there are some bad doctors out there who exemplify the stereotype completely and blindly prescribe whatever new med they're being pushed to prescribe.

A lot of meds are no mystery though. The mechanisms behind their functioning are if not clearly, then at least generally understood by the doctors that are prescribing them. Can that much be said about natural medicines?

The claim that chemical imbalances don't exist is garbage too. Sure, perhaps it's sometimes a misleading blanket term in the face of all the possible problems a person might have, but neurotransmitters are chemicals and everything our brain does relies on neurotransmitters and their various concentrations or a abilities to function so it's not entirely misleading.

Medical professionals, doctors, and researchers alike really are trying to find out why people get clinically depressed, or what causes schizophrenia, etc... It so happens that their research paradigm is mostly about brain chemistry. Brain chemistry isn't the only answer to why people do what they do, or feel the way they feel but it's a very useful perspective in my opinion.

The only reason I'm defending the mainstream approach here is because there seems to be such zealous attacks against it from some people. There is a lot to be said for natural remedies or simply changing your brain through sheer will and action, but that shouldn't discount medication too.

I'm assuming that everyone here like to think of themselves as a well reasoning and critical thinker. Well, if that's so then you have to seriously consider the possibility that perhaps a doctor's decision to prescribe a particular med isn't fueled by greed and ignorance, and that that med will actually help someone on their path to recovery in a way that is genuinely beneficial to them.

Thanks

The newest anti-depressants seem to be the same thing as ecstacy pills. I wouldn't recommend stopping the use of your meds, but realize, they are just giving you the same happy pills that you can get from a drug dealer.

Taking medications or not taking medications is an individual choice. ATS is a place for Voices on all sides of a particular topic weather or not you agree with what is being said is besides the point. The point is to Voice what you have to say freely and it is up to the individual to digest what is written, to do their own research, search their heart, and make their own choice. Advice and opinions are free and always should be taken with a grain of salt, but is discourage or dismiss the Voices of others is not in the spirit of this site. Again, it is up to the individual.

Peace and Love

I stand by my assertion that convincing someone mentally unstable that their doctors are wrong is irresponsible.

Most people with severe mental illness already suffer from paranoia and delusions of grandeur and denial. Telling someone like that to do their own research and ignore their doctors is like setting off a time bomb.

Doing your own research is not as easy as it sounds. I know firsthand the contradictory information that can be found regarding a specific drug. Who would that person believe? If they are already paranoid, and feel nothing is wrong with them (even though they are hearing voices telling them to hurt someone)---they will take this information as confirmation of their fears and then what?!?!

Can you people really NOT see how dangerous this is?

I do not believe doctors are gods. I am on A LOT of medications, but before I took even one I yes, did my own research, talked to people on it from all sides, spoke with my pharmacist and a nurse I trust.


I originally had a doctor who was misdiagnosing me. I switched to a doc who felt right to me. So no, they are not the end all and be all- but for f*** sake people- get a grip and realize that people who NEED these drugs are not in a position to make that distinction!

Your words are irresponsible, dangerous, and borderline illegal.


Just remember that the next time you tell a poster that all their side effects (many of which I have read have NOTHING to do with the drug they claim to use) are coming from their necessary medications.

The blood will be on your hands.