tTo make psychiatric drugs long term is like playing Russian roulette. That’s a harsh reality, but most patients will never be informed. The truth is that these drugs can make your life worse over time.
When I was a psychiatrist trainee, I was told these drugs were safe and effective. I assumed that it means long-term safety and efficacy. After all, I have seen professors and colleagues prescribe them to patients for decades.
They were presented as useful tools, but had moderate effects. Sometimes they worked, and sometimes the patient’s “fundamental mental illness” can overwhelm the medication. In such cases, we were taught to increase the dose, add more drugs, and if it did not work, escalate to ketamine, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). The condition we treated seemed mysterious. It changed frequently, worsened, and caused increasingly more and more disrupted patients.
That was the paradigm I was trained to.
However, over time, I realized that many of these so-called “treatment-resistant” conditions were caused by the drug itself, not the underlying disease.
This idea may not be new to the crazy American community. After all, Robert Whitaker’s trendy anatomy sets out a case in which psychiatrists often exacerbate people over time. But I would like to offer a different perspective. It would like to provide a perspective from people who only treat patients suffering from severe drug side effects and help them safely target these drugs.
Recognizing that these drugs are taking long-term, I am gambling with your brain’s future and let me share how I did.
The devastation of long-term retreat
In 2017, I wrote an article highlighting hundreds of thousands of people reporting serious withdrawal side effects on forums such as benzobudi and surviving antidepressants. These were people who mitigated the catastrophic consequences when they stopped the medication, either through planned tapers or by suddenly deciding that they didn’t want to take them anymore.
What most people don’t understand about people who have been hurt by psychiatric drug withdrawal is that they maintain brain damage, also known as long-term withdrawal. A critical feature of brain damage is that even if the person revives the drug, it does not resolve it.
This is what makes long-term withdrawals so devastating. Many patients assume that if they develop severe symptoms after stopping the medication, they can simply restart it and the suffering will disappear. But that’s not the case. The damage has already been done, and a return does not necessarily reverse it.
Neurotoxicity from psychotoxic drugs – without withdrawal
After becoming known as a doctor who recognized the condition in this community, patients began bookings at my clinic.
Initially, I assumed that these toxic reactions only occur in people who have been rapidly withdrawn from the drug. But soon I realized something surprising:
Many patients developed the same constellations of symptoms seen in long-term withdrawal.
This was especially common among benzodiazepine users. I have now treated several women who were prescribed benzodiazepines for perimenopausal insomnia to develop full-scale neurotoxicity after 6-12 months of use. These patients never tried to tapere. Only the drug caused severe permanent neurological damage.
Since then, I have been investigating long-term neurotoxicity from psychotoxic drugs taken as prescribed. And it’s very troublesome to find.
Toxicity that psychiatry refuses to accept
Mainstream psychiatry acknowledges that antipsychotics can cause neurotoxicity. However, the field refuses to extend its approval for other psychotic drugs.
However, in my experience, long-term antidepressant use can cause neurotoxicity in itself.
- Indifferent
- dissociation
- Chronic low energy
- Stirring
This condition is perceived as a sense of lateness in medical literature. However, despite its presence in research, I was never taught about it in psychiatric training. I’ve never heard of anything mentioned at a meeting.
What happens to these patients? Instead of recognizing their condition as antidepressant-induced neurotoxicity, they are diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression. Here is:
- High-dose medication
- More drug combinations
- Escalation to ketamine, TMS, or ECT
- In some cases, they are placed on heavy antipsychotics such as clozapine.
Mainstream psychiatry refuses to admit that these patients are unable to withstand treatment, so they suffer from brain damage caused by the drug itself.
Unfortunately, this is the number of patients that appear at my clinic. It has hit so many patients with a profane cocktail that exacerbates psychiatric drug therapy.
Reconstruction of problems: from “treatment resistance” to drug-induced toxicity
Correctly identifying these cases as drug toxicity will completely change the treatment approach. Instead of loading more medications, these patients need:
- Slowly and carefully taper issues
- Healing nervous system support
- Recognition that additional psychiatric drugs often exacerbate them
The injured brain does not respond predictably to more drugs. So adding medications in these cases usually worsens the symptoms rather than alleviating the medication.
How widespread is psychiatric drug-induced brain injury?
The medical community has comfortable acknowledged persistent brain damage caused by recreational medicines, but remains silent when it comes to medicines.
We already admit that:
- LSD can cause hallucinogenic disorders (HPPD), a form of persistent brain damage.
- High-performance cannabis can cause neurotoxicity and cognitive impairment, especially in young people, and can look like schizophrenia.
- The use of methamphetamine reveals brain changes and often mimics schizophrenia.
- The use of chronic alcohol can cause Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome, a severe neurological disorder.
But when it comes to pharmaceutical drugs, we assume they are somehow “clean” simply because they are prescribed. But for your brain, medicine is a medicine. Psychiatric drugs can have a very neurotoxic effect, especially when used for a long period of time.
Why this conversation can be avoided
This issue has been largely undiscussed in mainstream psychiatry.
- It is a direct threat to the pharmaceutical industry. If it is widely known that these drugs can cause irreversible neurological damage, prescriptions will plummet.
- It’s unpleasant to be approved by a doctor. Imagine talking to a patient:
“If you’ve been taking this medication for a long time, it can make you worse and cause permanent neurological damage that may never go away.” - Confuses the 15-minute medication management model. If your doctor recognizes these risks, prescribing them with a prompt visit is much more complicated.
Why patients deserve truth
We have now 17% of the US population for psychiatric drugs– Millions of people may be at risk of drug-induced neurotoxicity. Many of these individuals are labeled as “treatment resistance” if they break down the medication after medication, and more drugs can worsen the condition.
There is no way to predict how long a psychiatric drug will work before turning on you. So taking these medications for a long time is like playing Russian roulette in your brain.
We need to start notifying patients about these risks. Before they become another unnecessary victim in their crisis of psychiatric drug-induced harm.
