The Deadly Legacy of Psychiatry

I spoke to Billy Cortice who was labelled “acute, chronic schizophrenic” by psychiatrists working under the context of the New Labour Government in the UK in 2001. Here is his testimony, and evidence against what he considers to be his life-diminishing treatment.

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Users of anti-psychotic medications have their life expectancy lowered by 15-20 years, primarily caused by the medication itself. “Yet despite this, several studies indicate that patients taking antipsychotics aren’t always told about the side-effects by their doctors.”

https://theconversation.com/antipsychotics-can-be-life-changing-but-they-can-also-put-patients-at-risk-127482

“Both first-generation and second-generation antipsychotics cause adverse effects that are known to increase the risk of dying from cardiac, respiratory, and endocrine diseases. Psychiatric users of antipsychotics die at high rates from these somatic illnesses.”

Do Antipsychotics Protect Against Early Death? A Review of the Evidence

Billy says “Because I was intuitively aware of the dangers of anti-psychotic medication, I came to fear psychiatry, and the society that was indifferent to its power. So I became a little withdrawn and insular, which was ironically not seen as a social process by the shrinks caused by themselves, but was “Negative Schizophrenia”, so ironically the quantity of anti-psychotics got jacked up and I was also put on anti-depressants, despite not being actually depressed but only ‘highly anxious’, i.e. requiring super-strength valium to see my psychiatrist. This wasn’t seen in its social context, but was a case of my apparently ‘diseased brain'”.

But then, Billy says he read:

“The study found that antidepressant users had a 33% higher chance of death than non-users. Antidepressant users also had a 14% higher risk of cardiovascular events, such as strokes and heart attacks.”

https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/do-antidepressants-take-more-lives-they-save

“All I’ve ever wanted to do is enjoy life to the maximum. Go anywhere near psychiatry and they will throw you into the Delta Quadrant”, claims Billy.

“Yes”, says Billy, “I had a psychotic episode back in 2001 that probably lasted over 6 months, all things considered. But it was understandable socially. I was only 24 years old and had bitten off more than I could chew by attempting a PhD in Ethics which I intended to be ground-shaking. But poverty meant I could not live among the academic community and had to move back with my parents, living somewhere there were no philosophers to talk to. Meanwhile, my supervisor was fairly hands-off because he said I was already competent to work on my own given my success at undergraduate level. Co-existing with this academic alienation, was relationship breakdown, and also the collapse of a political group I had invested hope with. I will also admit I was an above-moderate cannabis user at this point in time. Whilst I accept I did need to be ‘treated’ and that this did need to include ‘being Sectioned under the Mental Health Act’, it was never explained after the psychotic episode dwindled what had taken place. Psychiatrists were incredibly secretive, and showed no interest whatsoever in reducing medication, or, preferably stopping it altogether. Their jobs prospered by keeping me on a high rate of medication and advertising me as a success story. I am 46 now, but if I am dead at 50, it is unclear how many people will regard their intervention as truly successful or indeed benign.”

From my perspective, says Billy, letters from psychiatrists were a gateway to freedom from wage-labour in the form of sickness benefits. Billy thought the capitalist division of labour whereby workers do one mundane task repeatedly ad nauseum for 45 years of their life, and it is hardly varied at all but becomes quickly boring and soul-destroying, was worth escaping from, even if it meant shortening his own life.

Billy is now reducing his medication down now fairly rapidly to ultimately zero by 6 months time, to keep it smooth. He thinks the dangers of psychiatry need to be more clearly known about. Although Billy has tried to find work, his terrible track record on employment history over the past 22 years means it is unlikely anyone will hire him. So he is worried the ruse will have to go on, and just flush the pills down the loo.

Names have been changed to protect privacy.

Seismic Social Change In Anglo-America In The Twenty-First Century

Studies show younger generations are having less sexual intercourse than their parents may have done at the same age. People are not, however, having less orgasms. Whilst intercourse itself has declined, other forms of sexual practise such as oral sex or masturbation have increased. The Far Right fret this is evidence of a corrosion of social relations, but really it can also signify their increasing closeness. Unless sex is completely consensual, one partner can feel uncomfortable, under-perform, and ultimately that relationship will be more prone to degeneration. So, the decline in intercourse can be read as an increase of freedom and self-control without ever implying a miserable celibacy. The quantity may have declined, but the quality may have increased. Internet porn websites are the most popular sites online, and gone are the days when shyly and in embarrassment one would buy a magazine wrapped in brown paper from a newsagent’s top shelf, which could never be as good as video. The decline in heterosexual intercourse therefore does not contradict what we perceive to be an overwhelming increase in general sexual freedom, manifested elsewhere as the massive expansion of LGBT tolerance and celebration. Nevertheless this way of doing things signifies a break with the traditional image that the bourgeoisie liked to promote.

The best selling politics magazine in the UK meanwhile, is Private Eye, which incessantly mocks the ruling class. Here, we are defining “ruling class” as a motley assortment of uber-capitalists, monarchy, and right-wing media. We do not, for example, endorse the position of sp!ked-online that the guys in charge are Woke Liberal Cultural Middle Class Guardian Reading Remoaning Metropolitan Elite. To do so would be to daftly think one is oppressed by one’s doctor. In actual fact, professionals are just highly skilled members of the proletariat in its widest sense. They do not own means of production and they sell their labour in order to survive (albeit survive well), which is the central characteristic of a wage-labourer from a materialist perspective. The real ruling class oppose social reform, and control the purse strings, which is why politics is rarely a smooth affair, but has to involve struggle and threats. That Private Eye’s sales have overtaken the dour publications, shows there is a rebellion taking place in society.

As a third and final example, the music on BBC Radio 1 is faster, louder, and angrier than ever before, reflecting a greater degree of energy in the youth scene than has existed for decades. Last night, between 10 and 11pm, they were playing Kendrick Lamar who swears frequently. His music is regarded as expressive of the political movement ‘Black Lives Matter’. Although ‘potential offense’ was warned about prior to the show, I heard the word “fuck”, “fucking”, “fucker”, or “mother-fucker” over 10 times during this hour. This, on a BBC radio station! It reveals changing times. Anyone who says culture is becoming more censorious is just harking back to an era when the BBC really was more controlling over its content. It’s not offensiveness per se the youth do not like, it’s anything associated with the old bourgeoisie. So long as the bourgeoisie is not suppressed by the state itself, it is entirely legitimate to undermine their previous absolute but now-waning control over society through a culture war.

Society is in a process of anti-bourgeois rebellion. A little like ‘rock n’ roll’ was in the late 1950s and 1960s. But it is running far deeper. It is not yet coherently “anti-capitalist” which is why the Left have been slow to tune in, turn on. Does the absence of an economic analysis really matter? Human history’s advances have never been predictable and the idea “the Revolution” is one quick flash is a Leninist conceit. Leninism doesn’t work, but human impulses will always find new ways to operate. As was said in the movie Jurassic Park, “Life is the most powerful force in the universe. Life will always find a way”.

The process of change is not a simple issue of conquering state power. On the contrary, and this is closer to what Karl Marx actually said, the key is the constitution of a new body-politic. Freedom-for-all relies on the creation of a classless society. Given all prior attempts at a direct confrontation with the bourgeoisie have failed, a new approach was needed, and now we have one. Discrediting and shaming conservative moral values is the way we are gaining freedom today. Moral coercion against the ruling class from the bottom-up will collapse the identity of the bourgeoisie, until such a point they surrender to whatever economically anti-capitalist force has emerged, then we may even find they co-operate in the process of dismantling capitalism as an aspect of their redemption.