I have been in the practice of Internal Medicine for 30 years. For the last 20 years I have worked in holistic medicine. That involves a merging of conventional medical practice with alternative techniques. It especially involves using nutritional therapies and other approaches that help the body to heal itself, and limiting the use of drugs and surgical procedures, which may worsen the condition they are intended to treat, or create damaging complications.

Drugs and surgery are overused. Hundreds of thousands of patients in the United States are killed or seriously injured every year by their treatments. Physicians are trained and habituated to prescribe the medicine or the operation that will resolve the condition. Doctors are addicted to giving drugs. Failing to offer a drug in some quarters is tantamount to committing medical malpractice. Much of this unconscious mindset is the product of pharmaceutical salesmanship. You make a diagnosis because the patient needs to have a label for his condition. Then you choose the correct drugs, and you give them in this order, and you add this one to that one if the first one doesn't work. That is the way it works for all illnesses, including psychiatric illnesses.

We pay a big price for this behavior. People are made sick by their cures. Little opportunity is offered for the enormous benefits of nutritional therapies. Vitamin and mineral supplements are ignored or called quackery. Lifestyle changes are given lip service and little else. Doctors don't believe that patients can be responsible for their own health, and therefore impose on their patients a chemical tyranny.

The situation is the worst in psychiatry. Patients, because they are considered mentally less than competent, are given even less choice in their therapy. Drugs are recommended for life because the diagnosis is considered permanent. Therefore, a five-year-old child labeled with ADHD is prescribed Ritalin®, and because psychiatrists believe that ADHD persists in adulthood, this amphetamine-like drug is prescribed forever. Never mind that amphetamine-like drugs are addicting and may lead to addiction to other drugs.

Because there is almost no science involved in the understanding of psychiatric illness, and almost no understanding of how the drugs work, it is often the case that the drug chosen is ineffective. Then a second drug is added, and a third, and sometimes a fourth. I have seen patients who were prescribed 5 psychiatric drugs at the same time, and even one who was taking 8 psychiatric drugs at once. These patients never did well. They were groggy, confused, couldn't communicate, and unable to function in the activities of daily life.

It is ironic that our society treats substance abuse with more drugs. I have worked with drug abuse patients for over twenty years as part of my practice. Unless they are fortunate enough to enter a drug-free program like Narconon, where rehabilitation is achieved entirely without drugs, these people will receive legal drugs to get them off their street drugs. Thus a person using heroin will be put on Methadone maintenance, with legal narcotics, and a person using cocaine or amphetamines will be put on Prozac®, Wellbutrin®, Risperdal®, and related drugs. Many of them will continue to use street drugs at the same time, because the prescribed drugs don't handle their problem.

Sometimes the drugs have effects opposite to what was intended. I have seen depressed patients who did not think of committing suicide until after they were placed on psychiatric drugs. There is a black box warning in the Physician's Desk Reference for many psychiatric drugs, relating exactly this fact, that the drug may cause suicidal or homicidal thinking and actions.

Older patients are not spared the relentless drugging of our population. Most patients in nursing homes are placed on psychiatric drugs to keep them quiet. One of my patients, a bright and wonderful 85-year-old man, was repeatedly prescribed anti-depressant medication because he had had a heart attack. On my advice, he repeatedly declined to take it, but during one hospital stay the drug was prescribed again and given to him when he was unaware. When his daughter figured out why he was so stuporous, she had the drug stopped.

Psychiatric drugs are unreliable and they are damaging. They impair function. I have seen many patients complain that they could not remember, that they felt confused, that they could not function normally, and that their emotions were dulled. Two of the greatest freedoms in life are the freedom to think and the freedom to feel. Psychiatric drugs impair thought and flatten emotions. They rob people of their individuality and the opportunity to understand and truly manage their lives.

One might argue, "So what other choice do we have?" We need to evaluate the factors that impair mental and spiritual health. These include biochemical and hormonal disorders such as diabetes and thyroid disorders, drug use, prescription drug use, food allergies, nutrient deficiencies, heavy metals, stress factors. Sometimes a change in life choices is necessary, or a correction of ethics.

Because they impair thought, psychiatric drugs interfere with efforts to improve spiritual health. They imitate cure by suppressing emotions and reactions. They reduce our humanity. We have a better way.

– Dr. Sosin is the Founder and Medical Director of the Institute for Progressive Medicine in Irvine, California. He has authored two books, Alpha Lipoic Acid: Nature's Ultimate Antioxidant, and The Doctor's Guide to Diabetes and Your Child.

 
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