Until better days come

By Amanda Melior

My book talks about a totally mentally healthy woman who gets prescribed psychiatric drugs after her caesarian delivery (for pain), and after her original problems stop, she withdraws from the medication and is forced to go through a hell of discontinuation syndrome similar to if you stop taking heroin. And, in the book, it is really described in detail what she had to go through. During this huge withdrawal syndrome, she finds a support group where she gets to know a man who had stopped taking benzodiazepines in the past, who is almost healed now and helps now other people who came to the same situation to survive and understand what's happening. In the past, during his withdrawal, he lost everything: his wife, children, his way of life. They start writing, he helps the woman very much, and they fall in love with each other. And they both realize that without the experience of withdrawal, they would never become the personalities they are now and that precisely this crushing experience enabled them to find their personal luck. They both become much better, deeper personalities. They move together and start to live in Rocky Mountains in nature, without society and enjoy what they find the most important thing on the world – their mutual love, the nature, the hills, the meadows and their togetherness...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amanda Melior
• Release date: Dec 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215081969

Book preview

Prologue

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Dear reader,

As I went through one terrible experience and sought justice with no results, I decided to bring my story before the public as a kind of a narrative, which I hope will not be without interest.

My story began in Austria where I had a caesarian delivery because of twin pregnancy and because of pain after delivery, I was prescribed the medication Lyrice. How very common nowadays, I was never told that Lyrice is a psychiatric medication which is very addictive and can be very toxic to the health. I had never in my life had mental problems before taking Lyrice, and in order to save further people from taking this drug and as a warning what the medications like antidepressants, benzodiazepines and anti-pain medications can do to your brain, I decided to step forward with my story and confess the withdrawal hell I experienced after stopping taking this medication.

In my book, I decided to really freely report the whole reality of the withdrawal from a psychiatric medication, the whole suffering of the concerned person, and the whole hopelessness of the victims with respect to a society which refuses to acknowledge withdrawal and pushes the whole blame on the concerned persons.

I decided to take this step of publishing a book in order to be heard as a victim of psychiatric drugging and to give help to other victims who might have stopped Lyrice or other psychiatric medication in the recent past and may wonder themselves about the whole array of symptoms that suddenly emerged from nowhere. They may be asking themselves whether they are losing their mental well-being and may be scared and lonely, looking for any reassurance.

In order to show solidarity with all the victims, I decided to describe all my symptoms in the whole detail, precisely as they were. I know someone from the broad public may feel offended about my openness, but in order to help other potential victims and in order to reach a change with respect to psychiatric drugs usage in the future, I believe it is necessary to be totally open about what we victims of psychiatric drugs are going through and what the risks are and to be able to stand firm in our opinion that the psychiatric drugs overall bring much more harm to the people than they help in reality.

However, I did not want my book to only be a dry enumeration of symptoms of withdrawal and a pointed finger to the pharma industry and greedy doctors cashing out on this tragedy; therefore I conceptualized this book as a narrative of my life around the time when I took Lyrice, when the withdrawal kicked in, how I survived it (I wanted to support and bring that message to the other victims, that it is indeed possible to survive it), and how it changed my life forever.

As my book afterwards will be conceptualized as belles lettres, I allow myself to put here some facts which may give the reader some understanding of the situation of the misuse currently run by pharmaceutical companies and the doctors on the innocent public with respect to psychiatric drugs, with the governments making the problem even deeper by silently tolerating it and sweeping the arguments under the carpet.

In order to currently present my facts, I researched for one year, and I must say, in spite of my greatest effort, I was not able to find any government agency, which would go through my findings, respect them and investigate the issue. Out of the FDA, European Medicines Agency (EMA), the General Attorney of New York, Patientenanwalt in Austria, Ministry of Health in Austria, and Volksanwalt in Austria, no one was even interested to look closer to see the arguments, I saw only evasive comments through half of a mouth like this cannot be and put up with this, this is not expected to change in the future.

The problem is that the pharmaceutical companies control the education of the psychiatrists and collaborate with them based on various incentives and other monetary or non-monetary benefits, travels to congresses, exotic countries, etc.

As a result of the education, this monetary as well as non-monetary collaboration, the psychiatrists are willing to overprescribe psychiatric medications where they literally can in spite of their toxicity, even for children, and this not only for psychiatric ailments but mostly off-label for such simple ailments as stress, a breakup with a boyfriend or girlfriend, or pain. For example, 90% of gabapentin yearly is prescribed off-label for causes which it is absolutely not determined or approved for. The result of overprescription of psychiatric drugs is shocking! The number of mentally ill is increasing each year.

Based on research of Dr. Peter Goetzsche -  in 1987, just before the new antidepressants (SSRIs or happy pills) came on the market, very few children in United States were mentally disabled. Twenty years later it was over 500,000, which represents a 35-fold increase. The number of disabled mentally ill has exploded in all Western countries. One of the worst consequences is that the treatment with ADHD medications and happy pills has created an entirelly new disease in about 10% of those treated - namely bipolar disorder - which we previously called manic depressive illness.[1]

A further result of the collaboration of pharmaceutical companies and doctors is also manipulation with respect to the DSM manual— based on America psychiatric association was in the year 1994 56% authors! working on the manual of psychiatric illnesses financially or otherwise connected with the pharmaceutical companies. As a result, in order to increase the profits of pharmaceutical industry and doctors, new illnesses are invented yearly. For example chronic fatigue syndrome, a withdrawal effect of the medication duloxetine becomes a new illness (duloxetine withdrawal syndrome), the criteria for bipolar disorder are made broader each year, etc.

Based on the current criteria, no one can be really sure that he/she is mentally healthy. This is the outcome which is only favorable for pharmaceutical companies and the collaborating doctors, as it guarantees an excess of pills will be consumed each year. For the pharma industry and the collaborating doctors, it does not matter if the half of the population will have brain damage; the main thing is that the pills will be consumed in high amounts.

The frantic overprescription of psychiatric drugs is normally accompanied by reassurances from the doctors that they are totally harmless even when they are not!

The toxic effects of these medications would be enough material for a new book. For example: antipsychotics cause a permanent condition called tardive dyskinesia, which causes involuntary movements of muscles on the face, protruding of the tongue, movements of the mouth like chewing, involuntary movements of the legs and body. Literally 1/6 of all people taking antipsychotics over a span of three years are in danger of tardive dyskinesia. That is a huge amount!

The usage of benzodiazepines instead causes downregulation of GABA receptors which causes anxiety and all types of anxiety disorders like harm OCD and GAD in people who withdraw from benzodiazepines. The same happens with people who used Lyrice, which is a GABA analogue. Affected people may deal with the withdrawal effects for sometimes up to three to four years. Can anybody tell me what sense it makes to prescribe a medication for a small ailment, when the person could have severe withdrawal effects for three to four years after cessation of the medication?

The only benefit of the prescription of such medications is for the pharmaceutical companies and the doctors, because the addicted person must buy their product, the addicted person cannot say, stop, I will not buy Lyrice, it is not that cheap, the addicted person is forced to buy the product even if his or her mental health deteriorates after each time taking that medication.  Naturally, if such a person comes to the doctor, based on his incentives and education from pharmaceutical companies he will not say Wait, the medication is causing you this. Please, you have to stop using your medication, it is killing you! No, the person is told, These medications are not causing any harm; the problem is entirely in your health. You are sick and need to take four or seven more medications! The truth is, if you continue to digest seven medications for your so-called illness, you are in a great danger of dying 20 years earlier than other people.  And that on cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, high blood pressure etc.

And let’s just check the presumptions of the doctors who say, There are clinical studies. The medication is totally harmless. You surely have some recurring illness.

I have researched this statement on the example Lyrice, as this was the medication I took, and the results were surprising.

Based on information from the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the clinical trials for human medications are conducted solely by pharmaceutical companies. They are not verified by the EMA anymore. In other words, the EMA makes the decision to allow the medication on the market based solely on the clinical trials conducted by pharmaceutical companies. If the pharmaceutical companies decide to manipulate the results of clinical trials, we don’t know. We may have a bunch of toxic medications on the market, and no one knows about it.

The article from August, 14 2015 does not help it either. The former vice president of Pfizer Dr. Peter Rost admits:

Universities, health organizations, everybody that I have encountered... are out there... begging for money. Big pharma corporations use that money to basically buy influence... Big pharma provides grants for various kinds of research ... make sure that the scientific researchers become beholden... the scientific researchers are not going to continue to get money unless they are saying what we (Big pharma) want them to say. They know it, you know it and it’s only maybe the public that doesn’t know it ...[2]

Further is even more brutal.

Dr. Virapen[3] estimates that more than 75% world leading scientists in the field of medicine are paid for by the drug companies to represent the interests of the drug companies by the public.

I verified those statements on the control studies made for the medication Lyrice.

I randomly chose one study concerning safety of Lyrice - the study 1019 claiming that the medication has minimal withdrawal