No Sex – We’re on Antidepressants mentions that this series of videos began with a recent gift from Britain’s Medicines Regulator – MHRA – and that RxISK is expecting another gift in April.
Turns out we are being spoilt for gifts. On March 18, MHRA issued a fabulous new document about transparency. A colleague did something that would have been impossible a year ago – he put MHRA’s wonderful statement into ChatGPT who/which transformed it into something remarkable – ChatGPT made remarks readers are likely to remark on – See AI versus The Deep State.
This was an unexpected pre-Easter Egg. We are still hoping for a post-Easter Egg. This post on SSRI Good Trips is our appreciation for what MHRA have done and are doing.
It also surprisingly raises the bar for MHRA and their efforts to lead the world in being Transparent even more than the posts on SSRI hazards – Bad Trips on SSRIs and No Sex on SSRIs – which you might have imagined is primarily what MHRA have been trying to avoid being transparent about.
What Good Trips brings home is that our issues with medicines – SSRIs in particular – is not simply a matter of transparency about hazards. Potential takers of any medicine need a vision about what a medicine does and its appropriate use.
This post offers an SSRI vision completely at odds with the company vision MHRA are glued to and with the view you are likely to hear from critics of these and other psychotropic drugs.
MHRA claim to be trying to get to transparency base camp about a set of company documents called Patient Information Leaflets. But the forked tongue version of hazards you get told about by companies and regulators come glued to something more important.
From one perspective, the missing piece of the jigsaw can be viewed as a laughably incorrect vision of what SSRIs do. From another perspective it is this false vision rather than the actual hazards the chemicals in SSRIs deliver that kills people like Woody Witczak – See Bad Trips on SSRIs.
It’s more difficult to see MHRA getting permission to say any of the things in this Good Trips post than it would be for them to get permission to say – Yes SSRIs can cause Suicide and Yes SSRIs can wipe out your ability to make love forever.
If male readers of this post, and perhaps a few women who’ve withdrawn from public life, wonder where the phrase Say Yes to the SSRI comes from and why it’s linked to a woman in a wedding dress – check out Say Yes to the Dress.
The Good Trips on SSRIs Transcript is here. The GT Video is here and embedded below along with shareable You Tube, Instagram and Tik-Tok clips.
YouTube clips
https://youtube.com/shorts/
https://youtube.com/shorts/
https://youtube.com/shorts/
https://youtube.com/shorts/
Instagram Clips
1. Serene
https://www.instagram.com/p/
2. Goldilocks
https://www.instagram.com/p/
3. Not for severe
https://www.instagram.com/p/
4. Say Yes to the SSRI
https://www.instagram.com/p/
5. Better than well
https://www.instagram.com/p/
TikTok Clips
1. Serene
https://www.tiktok.com/@
2. Goldilocks
https://www.tiktok.com/@
3. Not for severe
https://www.tiktok.com/@
4/ Say Yes to the SSRI
https://www.tiktok.com/@antidepeffects/video/7620955396265676055
Bad Trips on SSRIs
There will be one more post in the series next week:
Consenting to SSRIs
annie says
How the algorithms work for me. I regularly press the YT button on my phone. I don’t have to do anything. On the feed up comes The Telegraph, The Spectator, Douglas Murray, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Donald Trump, etc. etc. Stuff I have an interest in. Scrolling through there was RxISK, under Douglas Murray, No Sex We’re on Antidepressants 75 views 8 days ago. This is the first time I have seen RxISK appear, here..
So all these ‘shorts’ will appear, and go who knows where. A spreading of RxISK tentacles –
Micro-dosing makes sense as SSRIs work on the sensory nervous system and what we don’t want is an SSRI going haywire, and doubling the dose, which happens much too often, is a guarantee to drive your sensory nervous system wild. Too wild and awful things happen. Also, it’s pretty easy to ‘give a short’ to your doctor, or even play them the short and punchy Good Trips on SSRIs, with your phone in your hand..
MHRA will never come up with something like this, they don’t have the ‘gift’. Their ‘eggs’ won’t hatch.
Say Yes to a Dress
Say No to a Woe
Harriet Vogt says
‘What Good Trips brings home is that our issues with medicines – SSRIs in particular – is not simply a matter of transparency about hazards. Potential takers of any medicine need a vision about what a medicine does and its appropriate use.’
As you often say (paraphrase), part of any drug (I hate the informal, implied harmless chumminess of the word ‘meds’ – though know it’s common parlance), is information. So it’s pretty extraordinary that, for example, Prozac (fluoxetine), the world’s most famous SSRI, number 5 best seller by volume in the US, the world’s largest market est 50% volume, comes with added biodrivel – not information.
Since industry and its medical handmaidens/handpersons (whatever) were shamed out of flaunting the ‘serotonin deficit’ marketing reason to believe (aka the RTB), the PIL copy reads more hesitantly, like it’s got a hole in it:
‘How Fluoxetine Capsules work
Everyone has a substance called serotonin in their brain. People who are depressed or have obsessive-compulsive disorder or bulimia nervosa have lower levels of serotonin than others. It is not fully understood how Fluoxetine capsules and other SSRIs work but they may help by increasing the level of serotonin in the brain.’
https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/files/pil.11909.pdf
The NHS corporate information is equally disinformative:
‘It works by increasing the levels of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is thought to have a good influence on mood, emotion and sleep.Fluoxetine helps many people recover from depression, and it has fewer side effects than some other antidepressants.Fluoxetine usually takes around 4 to 6 weeks to work.Fluoxetine will not change your personality, it will simply help you feel like yourself again’.
https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/fluoxetine-prozac/about-fluoxetine/
I was thinking – have they just edited out the overt and obviously risible claim of treating ‘depression’ by correcting a fictional ‘serotonin deficit ‘- and left the rest hanging there? When it suddenly occurred to me – oh, I see what they’re doing, they are perpetuating the myth by continuing to allude to it, with added vagueness. This is not editorial faiblesse.
I guess it’s not uncommon in medicine – drugs – to be unclear about precise modes of action. But the very least the human being encouraged to swallow a pill might expect from a prescriber is a notion of what effects they could expect to feel.
Your wholly lucid explanation (memorably, iconically even , visualised in the final slide) – taking the edge of sensory system reactivity – makes total sense of the adverse effects fessed up to in the PIL – (‘common side’ – decreased sex drive or sexual problems, dizziness, change in taste, uncontrollable shaking, blurred vision, rapid and irregular heartbeat sensations, flushing, vomiting, dry mouth, unexplained vaginal bleeding ,feeling shaky..’ etc. etc.),
It will be interesting to see if the next ‘transparent ‘ iteration of the SSRI Patient Information Leaflet is – um – any more transparent.
Dr. David Healy says
H
You say it’s not uncommon in medicine to be unclear about precise modes of action. This has nothing to do with SSRIs. In this case the knowingly sold mode of action is a lie. A lie that is completely at odds with the experiences of people taking the meds – experiences obvious to the person on the med and to those living with or mingling with them. The idea of taking 4 to 6 weeks to work is out there is the earth is flat universe or perhaps a conspiracy claiming we never landed on the moon.
Words fail me – how is it possible for so many people to be so duped for so long?
The next video in the series may reveal something of the mechanics of duplicity.
D