In a society that claims to be science-based, and that often approaches the real cult of scientists, we actually only listen to scientists if we want to. Sometimes we are very attentive.
I remember well in the mid-eighties the sudden and violent reversal of advice to prevent cradle death. Before then, although it is very difficult to find someone to admit this now, we were severely told that we had to throw our babies in the forehead to keep them safe. By the end of the decade, the advice was exactly the opposite.
The treatment of stomach ulcers, for decades mistakenly attributed to stress, was also revolutionized in the 1980s, when it was recognized that they were the result of an infection and could be treated with antibiotics.
Similarly, most doctors would now be horrified if they were asked to prescribe barbiturates, which at one time were distributed by the millions as sleeping pills. What could we be prescribing now, that will one day horrify us?
Well. Our media and the medical profession just don’t know what to do in the face of yesterday’s blunt news that the so-called “antidepressant” pills don’t do what the package says.
Our media and the medical profession just don’t know what to do in the face of yesterday’s blunt news that the so-called “antidepressant” pills don’t do what the package says.
These drugs have been prescribed for tens of millions for decades, based on the fact that human mood depends on the levels of a chemical called serotonin, in the brain.
Modern “antidepressant” pills, of a type known as SSRIs, were said to raise serotonin levels and therefore deal with depression. I will leave you in a secret. Distinguished doctors have argued for years that the evidence for this claim is very weak. Other experts have said that the unpleasant side effects of SSRI “antidepressants” can be severe, and that many who take them suffer from pain and misery if they decide to stop doing so.
Now the doubts have become much stronger. Yesterday, the distinguished researchers from this great institution, University College London, stated that the prescription of these brightly colored capsules “is not based on science”. They said the serotonin theory is a “false belief” and that there is no “convincing evidence” of a link between serotonin levels and depression.
Professor Joanna Moncrieff, the consulting psychiatrist who led the study, said it bluntly: “After a lot of research for decades, there is no convincing evidence that depression is caused by serotonin abnormalities. especially for lower levels or reduced serotonin activity “. Using language of a rather devastating force, this distinguished doctor brought home her message, which was published in the scientific journal Molecular Psychiatry and was based on the analysis of studies with tens of thousands of patients.
“Thousands of people suffer from the side effects of antidepressants, including the severe withdrawal effects that can occur when people try to stop them, but prescription rates continue to rise. We believe this has been motivated in part by the false belief that depression is due to a chemical imbalance. It is time to inform the public that this belief is not based on science. ‘
It could hardly be clearer. However, the Times, which published this news prominently, also printed a startling editorial under the headline: “Antidepressant drugs work, even if the mechanism is still unclear.”
He could also have said, “It’s time to stop paying so much attention to scientists.” He suggested that despite this devastating study, SSRIs still worked better for most people than sugar pill placebos. This is a bad argument.
As early as 2010, psychology professor (and placebo expert) Irving Kirsch used U.S. freedom of information laws to unearth unpublished experimental records of antidepressant trials. He found that the difference between sugar pills and real drugs was statistically so small that it made no sense.
The Times ’refusal to accept the verdict of science is, I suspect, the true voice of our establishment, many of whom take SSRI antidepressants.
He concluded, in his book The Emperor’s New Drugs, that: “It seems beyond doubt that the traditional explanation for depression as a chemical imbalance in the brain is simply wrong.”
The Times ’refusal to accept the verdict of science is, I suspect, the true voice of our establishment, many of whom take SSRI antidepressants. I would be surprised if this latest news will make a big difference in the extensive and growing prescription of these drugs to millions of people.
This is for several reasons. The first is, of course, that there is a lot of money in prescription drugs. But there are others: many of us are certainly depressed, probably because of lifestyles that deprive us of exercise, fresh air and sunlight humans need to be healthy.
And, having become accustomed to a society that offers some kind of cure for almost every ailment, we want to believe in the startling claims of doctors and pharmaceutical companies that have unlocked the mysteries of the mind with biochemistry.
We easily accept the claim that we can regain satisfaction by swallowing a couple of capsules. Mind-altering drug use is actually a protected feature of our society known as “neurodiversity”.
Another reason for this acceptance of happy pills is World War II, with its widespread use — on both sides — of mood-altering amphetamines by soldiers and civilians trying to cope. fear and exhaustion.
Thanks to this, many law-abiding people became more accustomed to the idea of changing their mood with a pill.
In the 1950s, respectable middle-aged and middle-class classes went from amphetamines to tranquilizers like the American drug Miltown.
This was so widespread that one in 20 adults in the U.S. admitted to taking it in 1956; and then they switched to Diazepam (Valium was an example of this, and its use is still common under other names), the drug satirized by the Rolling Stones in their song about tranquilizer-dependent housewives, Mother’s Little Helper. . Mick Jagger sang, “Doctor, please! Some more of these! Outside the door, he took four more.
But he also warned, “If you take more, you’ll have an overdose.” And then: ‘No more running to the shelter of a little mother’s helper.’
Teenagers at the time, who were starting to take illegal drugs like marijuana, loved that song because they liked to make fun of their elders who moved their fingers about their legal drug habits.
One way or another, we have become much more accustomed to the idea that taking some kind of drug that alters consciousness — legal, illegal, or decriminalized — is normal and perhaps good.
Even children now receive amphetamines like Adderall, widely used in the US, or drugs very similar to amphetamines, such as Ritalin, widely prescribed in the UK. This is supposed to improve their behavior in school classrooms.
Criticize this, as I did, and enraged youth drug advocates chew your head.
Criticize this, as I did, and angry youth drug advocates chew your head.
Surprisingly, few who receive these recipes oppose it. Many become active advocates for them, and continue to lead them to the afterlife.
It is now 90 years since Aldous Huxley prophesied, in Brave New World, about a society free of families of incessant trivial pleasure, begun in mass daycares, continued with unrestricted sex, no children, no problems for curiosity, literature or religion and ended with assisted death. .
It is held together by the drug Soma, which (unlike SSRIs, marijuana, amphetamines and the rest) does no harm to its users and has no hangover.
As Huxley described it: “All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of its defects. . . the warm, colorful and infinitely friendly world of Soma-Holiday. There is always Soma, a delicious Soma, half a gram for half a holiday, one gram for a weekend, two grams for a beautiful trip to the east, three for a dark eternity on the moon.
Huxley meant it as a warning against a kind of voluntary, self-imposed slavery. It seems that we did not take it as a threat but as a promise.