Saturday 22nd September 2007

The last two weeks have been traumatic.

My son rang me one morning, he’s 25, he was in tears and said he couldn’t bear to go on living.

I panicked, dropped everything and drove like a wildwoman to his house. I got him in to see someone that day who helped on the day by listening, then got him an appointment with a psychiatrist two weeks later.
Two weeks on and we are faced with no hope from the medical profession at all, in fact my son and I are both devastated at how impotent and useless most doctors/psychologists and psychiatrists are.

Every day my son’s mental and physical condition worsens and no one seems willing or able help him.

It all started at the beginning of this year when he was suffering from insomnia and was worried that it would impair his performance at the new job he was starting. The GP prescribed very mild sleeping pills, but my son’s mind is acutely perceptive and so finely tuned that the pills hit him like a shot of heroin. He complained of the side effects and was prescribed some other medication which only made him anxious and confused.

He went to a different doctor who recommended Prozac.
As soon as he took it he spiralled out of control, the anxiety skyrocketed, but the doctor said this would wear off. It didn’t and got worse. My son said it was worse than being on speed.
His doctor called in the Assessment and Crisis Intervention Service team (usually only called in when the patient is suspected of suicidal or harmful action – his medication was changed to a strong sedative which immediately sent him into a brain-dead daze, he was unable to function. His body deteriorated quickly over the next month.
Whereas before he’d been athletic, with explosive muscular power and reflexes maintained by 2 hours of boxing training every day, soon he was a lifeless zombie living in a shrunken shell of a body, with barely enough energy to walk. All this happened over the course of four months.

He’d experienced adverse reactions to all of the medications and it hadn’t been recognised by his doctor or the Crisis Intervention team that were now visiting him sporadically at home and supposedly monitoring him.

Two and a half months ago, dazed and drugged, he somehow had the flicker of insight to stop all the anti-depressant medication, abruptly. His incredible strength and will to survive momentarily flashed through the thick fog.

He has continued to watch his mental and physical health decline at an alarming rate despite taking no medication, no drugs, eating well, still trying to exercise, and summoning all his accumulated self knowledge and wisdom to fight this battle.

It seems like the SSRI medication has damaged a part of his brain and paralysed his feelings.
Where once he was a young man of great potential, creativity, with rich and beautiful feelings about life, now he's unable to feel anything for anyone or any activity. The adverse reaction to the medication has left him dead inside unable to feel any joy, excitement, love, empathy, or any desirefor the things he used to enjoy. It’s called depersonalisation syndrome.
He can identify easily with the people who go into a place and shoot everyone without remorse or conscience.

It was a Saturday morning two weeks ago when he rang my mobile phone, crying. He couldn’t go on like this any more, day after day, isolated, stuck in the house alone, no feelings, no energy, no life force, nowhere to go. He said he felt like he was in an aeroplane that’s about to crash and nothing can stop it. You have no control over that destiny. You’re about to die.

For the past two weeks my heart’s been beating at a superhuman rate, on adrenalin overload to match the crisis. Only a mother who’s child is in immediate danger knows this feeling. Eyes flared, brain on full alert, chemicals rushing through the system, fight and flight, then fight more with everything you’ve got, protect and save at all costs, my own life means nothing. Every moment, every thought is about my son.

I took some days off work to stay with him, to watch him, to listen to him, to share his pain and anguish at what had been done to him, to cry with him, to counsel him, to be there for him. I slept in the spare bed, unable to leave him alone in the house, fearing the worst.

Two weeks on.
We’ve seen two psychiatrists, one private practitioner, and one from the hospital. They both insisted that anti-depressant medication can’t do this to people, that my son is severely depressed and blaming the medication “paranoid thoughts”.
Yet I’ve done all the homework.
Here is evidence.
And Here is the book that reveals what the entire medical profession won’t admit to.
They’ve been brainwashed by the drug companies that rule the world. In years to come, like thalidomide, we’ll surely discover how dangerous those medications are– they alter the chemical balance in your brain and for people who don’t want to escape life but want to face it head on like my son, being doped out so they can’t think straight is violently abusive and damaging.

But my son trusted that the doctors and psychiatrists and professionals knew better than he did about what could help him.
They didn’t.
Instead of listening to him, understanding him and giving him wise counsel, they took the easy way out and medicated and sedated him. And those medications have left him physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually permanently damaged.

Tell me what kind of a society do we live in when the professional people we turn to in times of crisis, end up damaging us beyond repair. Then they wash their hands and move on, leaving the patient traumatised.
My son may never recover from this. He is angry, he is frustrated. He wants to kill them all for what they’ve done to his life.

Understandably, we are not only suspicious, but incredulous of the two psychiatrists we’ve just seen who want to admit him immediately to hospital and administer Electric Convulsive Therapy – how barbaric is that? Can it possibly get any worse?

What the immediate and short term future holds I have no idea. I don’t want to think about it. I focus on an image of my son as he was a year ago, strong, healthy and happy, before this nightmare started. I pray so intently for him that my body surges with Divine love and power – and I send it to him, connecting with him, feeling the love and strength returning to his body through mine.

This should not have happened.