VIRGINIA TECH AND BEYOND: AN EXPLOSIVE INTERVIEW WITH A REBEL PSYCHIATRIST
by Jon Rappoport
http://nomorefakenews.com/index.php
APRIL 20, 2007. REPRINTED FROM MAY 23, 2005, with new material added, and small edits made in the original text, to straighten out minor transcription errors.
As you read this, you’ll notice possible echoes of the Virginia Tech mayhem.
For the past two years, I've been receiving communications from a practicing
American psychiatrist, who has an office in the southeastern US. He sees
patients privately. Increasingly, this man has been expressing doubts about the
drugs he has been prescribing.
Now, he has blown the lid off his own profession, and it appears he is ready to
switch careers or become an alternative health practitioner.
Here is an excerpt from our recent conversation. (New material is added at the
end.)
Q: Why do you doubt the psychiatric drugs?
A: They're toxic and injurious.
Q: Which ones?
A: All of them.
Q: And in particular?
A: The antidepressants. Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, and so on. They are not showing,
on balance, good results, and patients have been experiencing adverse effects.
Q: Such as?
A: Sleeplessness, nightmares, erratic behavior, highs and lows, crashes,
attempts to commit suicide, exacerbated depression, violence, dramatic
personality changes.
Q: Why do you think this is happening?
A: To be honest, I don't know. But my sense is, in general, that the drugs
interfere in unpredictable ways with various neurotransmitter systems. I also
believe they can work extreme changes in blood sugar levels and electrolyte
levels. You know, it's not hard to create these effects with chemicals. The body
is not able to integrate them in its normal functioning. I would compare it to
suddenly setting up all sorts of roadblocks and detours and forced lane changes
on a busy highway. You will get big trouble.
Q: Have you tried to communicate your concerns to colleagues and medical groups?
A: For a short time, I did. But I was given the cold shoulder. I got the
distinct feeling I was being treated like some wayward child who had his facts
all wrong.
Q: Who do you blame for this drugging catastrophe?
A: At the moment, everybody. The doctors, the drug companies, the FDA, the
psychiatric teaching institutions, even the press. And at some point, patients
are going to have to take responsibility and not follow the orders of their
doctors.
Q: Do you believe that doctors should cut back and give the drugs to some people
and not others?
A: That sounds good, but there is no way to know what effects the drugs will
cause in any given individual, especially as time passes. Even in the short
term, I have seen some frightening things.
Q: Do you believe the profession of psychiatry has made some kind of overarching
deal with the drug companies?
A: Yes. The drug companies are everywhere. They stick their noses into
everyone's business.
Q: What lies about the drugs have you had to purge from your own mind?
A: The main one is that they're some kind of miracle breakthrough. Another one
is that I can rely on the judgments and certifications of the FDA. We're playing
Russian Roulette out here. It's a very dangerous situation.
Q: Do you believe that some of the school shootings have resulted from children
being on the antidepressants?
A: I didn't, until one day a sixteen-year-old patient of mine showed up for his
appointment with a 9mm handgun. Then I began to comb back through reports on a
bunch of those shootings. I can tell you, it focuses the mind to see a young
patient sitting across from you---you've put him on an antidepressant and now
he's talking about "a new day" and he takes the gun out of his pocket and lays
it on a table next to him by the Kleenex. You think to yourself, "I may have
created a killer and his first victim could be me." People want to outlaw all
guns. I'd start with the drugs.
Q: How about the diagnosis of depression itself?
A: I've come to realize that you can't do an interview with a patient and then
come out with a shorthand assessment. It's wrong. It reduces all sorts of
problems down to a label, and then you have your official gateway into the
drugs.
Q: Your colleagues think you're over-reacting?
A: I think I'm under-reacting. I think we have an epidemic on our hands, but it
has nothing to do with mental disorders. It has to do with the chemicals we're
facilitating.
Q: This boy with the gun---were you able to talk him down?
A: I spent two hours with him that day. I told him he was having a reaction to
the drug. At first, it made no sense to him. He was on a manic sort of ride.
That really scared me---that I couldn't make him see what was happening to him.
He was in the middle of an episode and he couldn't stand outside it. Finally, he
eased up a little. He began to weep in my office. It wasn't really crying. Tears
just ran down his cheeks while he was talking. He didn't seem to notice them. He
had almost stopped being human. He was a...creature. He was on a mission of some
kind. His view of the world had totally changed. In his mindset, destruction was
the only course of action.
Q: And then?
A: He calmed down a little. I was afraid to ask him for the gun. He just picked
it up and put it back in his pocket. After he left, I called his mother. She
went home from her job and met him. I had asked her to call the police but she
wouldn't. Later, she told me she sat and talked with him for a long time and
then he handed over the gun. It was a very tense situation. I had her remove the
bottle of pills from her medicine cabinet. Then I had to follow up. I weaned him
slowly from the drug. It took two months. He finally sort of returned to being
the person he was. Even then I wasn't sure he'd be okay. He was definitely
addicted to the drug. Luckily, I didn't cut him off suddenly. He might have
killed people during the withdrawal cycle.
Q: Did you continue to see this boy as a patient?
A: I did a nutritional assessment with the help of a doctor who is very good
with that. We found the boy was having strange reactions to certain soft drinks
that have speed-type boosters in them. We gradually weaned him off them. Then we
discovered he was reacting to dyes and other chemicals in junk food. So we had
to change his diet. That wasn't easy.
Q: He was addicted in several ways to chemicals.
A: That's right. There was peer pressure for him to keep eating junk. All his
friends did. They called him weird for going off the food they were eating every
day. Finally, I discovered that, five years before I saw him, he'd been on
Ritalin for almost a year. You know, for ADHD. He'd been driven into depression
by that. He basically felt, at eleven, that his life was all over. All paths and
interests were closed to him.
Q: How is he now?
A: Much better. But he's not all the way back. I wish he were.
Q: Do you think there is permanent brain damage?
A: I don't know. He's now living outside the US with his father. I get reports
once in awhile.
Q: How does he [the son] feel about his own experience?
A: He wants it to be an example to other families.
Q: You didn't go into medicine to deal with this.
A: No. In school, my ideals were high. But I allowed myself to be led down the
garden path. I fell for the sales pitch. I'm telling you, this is not a good
situation. We are a society on the brink. Something has to be done.
Q: How do you feel about Bush's mental health screening program for all
children?
A: All in all, it may turn out to be the worst thing he's done as president.
It's just a tip of his hat to his pharmaceutical supporters. But the long-range
consequences---if this plan gets rolling---will be devastating.
Q: Is there some underlying principle at work here? Some paradigm that everyone
is accepting that is putting us into a bad situation?
A: You know the answer to that. It's the combination of easy diagnosis plus the
drug fix. The pill craze for everything. Take a drug and everything will work
out. I see it as the classic street-drug promotion. Feel good. Take this drug
and you'll feel different and better. Combine that with the basic immaturity of
most people and you have the interlock. Why work out your problems and strive to
have the life you want when you can arrive at the best destination with a pill?
I'd take this a step further. If you stacked up all the tranquilizers and
antidepressants, for adults, next to, say, marijuana, as a way of dealing with
stress, I'd say that a very modest amount of a mild marijuana would be more
successful than all those other drugs at the levels they're normally prescribed.
If I were forced to recommend one or the other, I'd go with the marijuana. And
I'd say the drug companies know this. Which is one reason why, in the US, the
enforcement on marijuana has been stepping up. But again, you're always dealing
with an individual. Each person is different. I've seen people who react very
badly to pot. It affects them like a psychedelic.
Q: You're saying the science behind the antidepressants is false.
A: Absolutely. Judging by the effects of the drugs, it has to be. It may sound
good and proper. All the right words are used. But I don't care about that
anymore. I go by results. My eyes have been opened.
Q: Then why are the drug companies pushing these drugs?
A: I'm not an expert to speak to about that. Certainly there is the profit
motive. But I think there is also the myth of progress.
Q: What do you mean?
A: That myth states that technology must keep making advances. It's the legend
of forward motion. If technology is to be seen as good, it has to keep turning
out better advances---otherwise something is wrong. And there can't be anything
wrong.
Q: It's like a hectic race.
A: Yes. If you stop, you might fall down. Secrets might be exposed. Shortcomings
might show up. So you have to keep pushing. You have to keep saying you're doing
better and better. I'm sure you can see where this gets you. You make new
mistakes to cover up old mistakes. You become careless. You lie. You hire
promotion people to tout your work. You keep the whole thing rolling forward, no
matter what. That's where we are.
Q: And you were carried on that wave.
A: For many years. But now I've stopped.
Q: Is it uncomfortable?
A: Not so much anymore. But at first I was very upset and angry. I was blaming
everyone but myself. I felt like I was in chains, that my whole education and
career were at stake. And I WAS my career. What else did I have? Getting off the
boat was quite difficult. I had every advantage this society has to offer. I
was---
Q: The expert.
A: Yes. That's a powerful feeling. People come to you with questions and you
have the answers. If you don't, then you're thrown down in the pit with everyone
else. Part of being a doctor is being above the pit, out of the problem. You're
the solution. You don't want to fall. And the only thing that keeps you from
falling is what you've learned. Your knowledge. When you see that that's based
on lies, you don't know what to do. It's like being a priest and realizing that
everyone gets to the far shore by his own means. You don't want to let go of the
doctrine that put you on the pulpit.
Q: So what would a new paradigm look like?
A: For mental health? We have to get rid of all the old classifications and
disorders. We have to let all that go into oblivion. That was wrong. That was
largely fantasy.
Q: It was a story.
A: We told it, and now we have to stop telling it. Because we've ended up
intervening in people's lives in a very pernicious way.
Q: Part of the story necessitated that kind of intervention.
A: Yes. And, not to take myself off the hook, but people want that kind of
story, as you say. They want that "expert story." They want someone else to come
in and tell them what to do and what to think and what drug to take.
Q: Why do you think that is?
A: Because people have taken the easy path. They have opted for what I would
call a flat version of reality. If they started adding dimensions on their
own---
Q: They would be forced to tell their own story.
A: In the terms you're using, yes. That's what would happen.
Q: And how would society look then?
A: Much different. Much more risky, perhaps, but much more alive. Psychology and
psychiatry don't allow for that kind of outcome. All mental disorders are
constructs. They're named by committees, as I'm sure you know. They're a form of
centralized pattern. In this context, the word "shrink" is very appropriate.
That's what we've been doing. Shrinking down the perception of what reality and
the mind are all about.
Q: Can you imagine what would happen if the lid were taken off?
A: I work with that idea every day now.
Q: And how does it look?
A: More and more appealing.
(From this point on, the material is new, dated April 9-17, 2007.)
Q: What are your thoughts about all the revelations of cheating and lying in
medical-drug studies?
A: It doesn’t surprise me. I expected that that sort of thing was going on, and
that it was pervasive. The drug companies don’t want to admit failure. They
wants their billions. I’ve come to see them as much more cold-hearted.
Q: How complicit are the medical journals that publish these studies?
A: I blame them as well. If they really wanted to, they could police what comes
into them much more carefully. They could publicize cheaters. They could
blackball them. But drug advertisers keep some of these journals afloat.
Q: So vows of ethical behavior on the part of the journals?
A: Half-truths and lies.
Q: If you can’t believe the journals…
A: I believe my patients. I listen to them. I work with them, not on them. I
trust my own observations.
Q: Do you prescribe psychiatric drugs?
A: Never.
Q: Could you get into trouble for that?
A: Yes. It’s hard to say exactly which brand of trouble, but yes.
Q: Do you diagnose patients with the conventional mental-disorder names and
labels?
A: Never. Not anymore. I don’t divide up the brain or the mind of the patient
into fictional categories.
Q: What do you think about the Virginia Tech shootings?
A: It’s horrible. I don’t know what else to say.
Q: Were you reminded of that boy who brought a gun into a session with you?
A: Reminded? It was like a hand on my throat.
Q: Do you think the accused killer had been on antidepressants?
A: It’s possible. I have no way of knowing. But if he was, there will be efforts
to downplay it or cover it up.
Q: Would you say some of his behavior leading up to, and including, the
shootings, is consistent with the effects of the SSRI antidepressants [Prozac,
Paxil, Zoloft, etc.]?
A: Consistent? Yes. That could have been the way it played out. I’m not saying
there were no other factors. But to push him over the brink from ideation to
murder…yes. The drugs can do that.
Q: So it’s quite possible that, in the absence of the drugs---
A: He would have thought about it, but he wouldn’t have done it.
Q: There are some very messed-up people out there who think about doing all
sorts of things.
A: Yes. And they don’t do them. And then you have lots of other people who just
fantasize. They imagine destruction, but they’re quite healthy. They…you see, as
a society, we’re creeping closer to the official premise that no healthy person
imagines destruction, and therefore if you do that, you’re sick. That’s a crock.
It’s not only a crock, it’s a pretence. It’s an attempt to construct a
delusional model of what a healthy human being is. But a person with no
destructive thoughts is a doll in a toy store. Meanwhile, you have men who go
out with semi-automatic weapons and kill harmless animals. What is that? Is that
supposed to be normal? How many rounds do those weapons fire every second? The
thrill of the hunt? What thrill? It’s like driving over a beetle with a tank.
JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com