Shipwreck of the Singular, which Samizdat has just published, took more time to write than all my other books combined. The others tumbled out – often in just a few weeks.
Unpublishable
Pharmageddon took 3 weeks. But it then took 4 years to find a publisher. I took on an agent to help get a publisher. Faced with Shipwreck, the same agent said it would never be published. She didn’t know why. She didn’t want to waste her time finding out. This made it clear to me the publishing world was changing just like everything else was. It led to Samizdat, which is part and parcel of Shipwreck.
To be fair, the original Shipwreck was 30,000 words longer.
It also didn’t have the final ‘Crusoe, we say, was Rescued’ chapter.
As part of getting Pharmageddon published I also hooked up with an editor, Jonathan Cobb, who as his initials suggest did miraculous things to the text. Guided by him, the book I thought I had written in the first place emerged.
JC looked perfect for Shipwreck also. He was happy to get involved and I was thrilled to have him on board from early on. Again, he pointed to areas that needed work. In particular, the need for a final chapter, although he was less enthusiastic about the direction ‘Rescue’ took.
Despite miracles, my agent said Shipwreck would never be published.
Catholic or Protestant
An old joke in Northern Ireland goes:
Man confronted on street dragged into an alley and asked at gunpoint ‘Are ye Catholic or Protestant’ answers I’m Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Atheist (take your pick). He is then asked ‘Are ye Catholic Hindu or Protestant Hindu’.
Many people on the Left and the Right, religious and non-religious, will endorse many points made in Shipwreck but are upset when it doesn’t endorse their cherished beliefs as the answer to the problems we now have. They become less enthusiastic. Both can agree its better not let something like this see the light of day – it might divert us from our ancient quarrel.
Its the forgotten, the disenfranchised who might buy into ‘Rescue’. Those who control our health, economic and publishing systems won’t.
At the moment, we are only allowed to be pro-Drugs, pro-Vaccines and pro-Science or anti-Drugs, anti-Vaccines and anti-Science. There is no room for being pro-Drugs but wary of the institutional framework through which we get our drugs. We want to believe that working with the system but campaigning to increase access to drugs for the disadvantaged can only have a good outcome. We don’t want to hear that our good intentions may make things worse. We certainly don’t want to hear that most of what has gone wrong has come from good intentions.
I refuse to join any club that would have me
Marx, Karl or maybe Groucho, perhaps brings the problem home. Unless you are on the Left, and in the United States that would be the extreme Left, way Left of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, bringing Karl into the picture is a recipe for total disengagement and maybe worse.
Telling people that Karl was the maker of many a Wall Street fortune for investors who paid heed to his message about the capitalizability of technique – there were more sales of his main book in US financial circles than anywhere else – isn’t enough to save either him or me with folk from the Right.
Even trying to show them we face a conspiracy good enough to please anyone in QAnon, or that in my efforts to bring out the violence some treatments cause, I can readily contemplate working with the NRA, or that Shipwreck sees regulation as part of the problem, is not a recipe for making anyone on the Right think I am one of them.
On the Left, Shipwreck produces confusion among publishers and agents who don’t have the nerve to try and re-imagine a recasting of their cherished beliefs to face the challenges that now confront us. Even though I’m right on in a willingness to embrace (perhaps not the right word) that most progressive of-the-people-and-for-the-people enterprises, the for-women industry, in an effort to spread word about the permanent sexual dysfunction many treatments can cause and how the efforts of another industry mean that the numbers of us making love and the number of times we do so is steadily falling.
Pleading that Albert Camus, an icon of the Left, said deciding whether to commit suicide is the central philosophical question, and that Shipwreck is about the unwillingness of philosophers or anyone else to face up to the fact that close to 300 different drugs can take this out of our hands and cause us to commit suicide – falls on deaf ears on the Left.
Cracking Ice
Asking people can they not hear the ice cracking is perhaps an uncomfortable question given climate change.
When Marx appeared on the scene in the Springtime of 1848, the ice coating Europe was cracking all around him. Many of his insights sparkled. But his followers trapped these insights in a deep freeze. Fifty years later the deep-freeze of psychoanalysis completely sealed over the unsettling idea that our nervous conditions and other health disorders might stem from our interactions with each other.
Whether the Left or the Right like it or not, the Ice is cracking again. We need signs of new life, new thinking, for a new world. For 5 years before Covid, Life Expectancy had been falling. More health services won’t fix this because health services are causing it. This is a more immediate and personal crisis than even climate change – but no-one is talking about it.
Seat at the Table
Since about 1980, something has gone badly wrong with both capitalism and medicine. From 1880 to 1980, socialists like Alexandria or Kamala had been prepared to execute communists like Rosa (Luxembourg) to get a seat at the table where decisions that were increasing wealth and health all round were being made.
Their continuing presence at the table is now part of the problem. They show no sign of discomfort with a system that centers the greatest concentration of Fake News on earth on the medications our doctors give us. They seem unable to understand why someone like me might not trust them when they ask us, almost force us, to believe in this Fake News and take whatever health services say we should take.
They blame the problems we are having on anyone except themselves and work to get social media to ban anyone asking questions. If cornered they throw up their hands and say what can we do?
Right Stuff Needed
What we need to do is to start Caring – about each other.
Health is the quintessential place where people are supposed to Care about others. It’s the place where people who think they naturally Care go to work – along with a bunch of others who Care a lot about money.
If we ask what it is that people who Care within health do, the likely answer is they wipe bottoms or have a cheery face for the vulnerable and disabled. Some claim that sticking to the Evidence of what works is the highest form of Care.
Wiping bottoms and being cheery is not Care, even though people who have smiles and grins in their genes can do a lot of good by just being natural. The genes for sticking to what is mandated are more of a problem.
The best example of what Care involves centers on how we respond when someone who has had a drug says something has gone wrong – especially when what they say appears to be at odds with the ‘Evidence’. When what they say is not in the information that comes with the drug, or in anything ‘reputable’ you can find.
The evidence you or they can now access has become increasingly Careless. It makes a virtue of being Careless. Being Careless is how we achieve objectivity – supposedly. And this systematic Carelessness makes it increasingly dangerous for the rest of us to Care.
Agreeing with someone who claims to be injured by a drug is not Caring if you are anti-drugs and believe everything that anyone says about what a drug has done to them.
It’s more likely to be Care if you work in health and in agreeing with the person who claims to have been harmed you set up a real risk you will lose your job, or, if you don’t work in health, you set up a scenario where health professionals dismiss you.
Care is scary and the way things are going anyone who starts Caring may need to take to the woods and resist rather than get on the train when told.
Care transforms.
Without transformation there can be no Rescue. This is what Shipwreck is about.
Shipwreck of the Singular
annie says
The people best placed to grasp what is going wrong and force our ‘betters’ to justify the distinctions that have been bestowed on them are those whose lives have been touched by what is going wrong in healthcare.
Shipwreck shows you how we got to the point of peril we are now at. It points to a Care that needs courage. A book won’t get us there. It needs you to engage and engage others.
https://samizdathealth.org/
Some months ago, a very good friend who lectures and designs courses approached me for something to give her students as a listening project. The students, she calls the crème de la crème, are doing a course prior to entering medical school. I suggested David Healy’s TED Talk
https://tedxaberystwyth.com/2018/05/22/david-healy/
.
When she visited her caravan recently and we ploughed through the mud and water with her three Skye terriers, she said her students just loved the talk and were very positive about it.
So proud of her that she sees the ‘big picture’, and that maybe these medical students will take away what needs to be a new future …
tim says
Greatly encouraged by this opportunity seized to enable these medical students to listen to, and discuss David Healy’s TED Talk.
It would surely be of similar educational value to Vocational Trainees in General Practice, along with all the Samizdat Publications?
Thank you Annie and ‘good friend’.
mary H says
Tim, you may have heard that the UK now has a ‘Youth Mental Health Ambassador’ by the name of Dr Alex George who is from North Wales. I have contacted him via Twitter to raise his awareness of the role that ADs etc. can play in inducing suicidal thoughts and ‘akathisia’ in acting on those thoughts through to completed suicides. I feel we must jump at every chance that we find to bring this knowledge to the fore. ‘Nick’ added the akathisia video to my message too.
tim says
Thank you Mary.
This is indeed so very important, especially seizing any and every opportunity to increase AKATHISIA AWARENESS.
mary H says
All I can say here is thank goodness for Samizdat and also for Amazon. Have just ordered now, hardback not available it seems but paperback version is – AND WILL BE DELIVERED BEFORE VALENTINE’S DAY! How wonderful if many took to ordering this to present to loved ones on that day! I couldn’t wait that long so have also ordered the Kindle version. A wet afternoon will be quite acceptable so that I can curl up with it.
Daryl says
Someone sent me this. Have you heard of this celebrity and his daughter are trying to spread awareness about Akathasia? This video has over 200 thousand views at the moment.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mmk6aESKYWE&feature=youtu.be
mary H says
Yes Daryl, the whole story seems to have a really divided following. The daughter is often being blamed for “not believing the doctors” etc. and should have accepted the way that her father was being diagnosed/treated. Others, of course (as we do) see the reality of his condition which worsened by being given additional drugs. Very many seem horrified that his salvation seemed to come from Russia!
I don’t know Jordan Peterson’s work/ comments prior to this at all but there is yet another section who deem his suffering to be justified due to his past comments/behaviours.
From our perspective – AKATHISIA IS VIEWED BY SUCH A WIDE AUDIENCE which surely must hit home with a good number of ‘viewers’.
susanne says
Mad in the UKMad in the UK
New Campaign: Supporting Litigation Against Mental Health Services Protecting Harmful Psychiatric Practice
By John Henden -16/01/20210995
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People experiencing emotional distress and unusual psychological experiences, need protecting from the pathology-driven medical diagnostic approach, which has resulted in much untoward death and significant harm over the past half century.
Within this blog, I will outline a new campaign to achieve long-term improvement within mental health services, which challenges employers of those who practise this outmoded model.
Biomedical psychiatric practice, with its main vehicle of psychotropic drugs prescribing, causes harm: many lives lost and debilitating side effects from the consumption of these drugs. This is not about the profession of psychiatry as such – the same assumptions and practices are shared by most mental health professionals to some extent, and many psychiatrists themselves are concerned about these problems. It is about a whole paradigm that urgently needs to change.
This new campaign is set to address this growing problem, which is now of epidemic proportions, by encouraging legal action against mental health partnership NHS trusts protecting biomedical psychiatric practice. One case has been won and we hope other successes will follow. CAPDA (Campaign Against Psychiatric Drug Abuse) is connecting with and supporting a growing body of aggrieved survivors of mental health services and grieving relatives and friends of those who did not survive. We call on others to get in touch via the contact details at the foot of this blog.
susanne says
I don’t have much optimism about this – but who knows?
A patient safety commissioner—why we need a new voice for all harmed patients
February 4, 2021
The principal recommendation of the report is to create a new role of independent Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC), “… a person of standing who sits outside the healthcare system, accountable to Parliament…” who would “…be the patients’ port of call, listener and advocate, who holds the system to account, monitors trends, encourages and requires the system to act.” (be interesting to see who gets the job)
The government response to the report got off to a slow start with Cumberlege describing the lack of progress as “woeful” in November last year. However, in December the government announced that the legislative basis for a new Patient Safety Commissioner would be incorporated in an amendment to the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill. These amendments have recently been published and were passed through the Commons on 27th January.
The government’s accompanying factsheet describes the PSC as “…a champion for patients…to promote the safety of patients and the importance of the views of patients in relation to medicines and medical devices.”
James Titcombe, Patient Safety Campaigner and co-founder of Harmed Patients Alliance.
Joanne Hughes, Co-founder Harmed Patients Alliance, Author http://www.mothersinstinct.co.uk, Patient Safety Campaigner and Advocate for Restorative Healing Approaches after Healthcare Harm. Twitter: @Mothers_Inst_UK
susanne says
Solution-focused brief therapy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I suspect this approach would be too late for most who kill themselves as a result of prescribed drugs but here is a bit more re above
Have read a bit more about J H Amongst other projects ,He is massively involved in running training in prevention of suicide nationally and internationally using S F T He runs a consultancy – which claims unusually high levels of success in preventing suicide amongs the thousands of people he has trained. Not to say this may not be an eggageration over decades of work in multiple countries
I.m always cautious about mentioning something I don’t know much about . there’s never been any mention on the blogs about John H which i would have expected some from some who comment or write and comment on suicide on the blogs His book which is heavily promoted is Preventing Suicide: The Solution Focused Approach
JH does mention the part drugs play causing harms and suicide so have written to ask if he could give more information resulting from his decades of experience The litigation he is proposing (above) is on a no win no fee basis but there’s no info as to whether he or his business takes a fee.
John Henden
John Henden Consultancy Ltd
BA(Hons) RMN Dip Couns(Univ of Bristol) MBACP FRSA
john@johnhendenconsultancy.co.uk
Carla says
I appreciate your expertise and invaluable knowledge on Ted talk, David. This educational discourse is of substantial value to existing practitioners and those embarking on a career in medicine and other health related careers. Thank you David for sharing and debating your concerns.
As for Mikhaila voicing her concerns about her dads (Dr Peterson) situation, I am sorry that daughter and father had to pay the price for speaking the truth.
To mistreat people when they have been harmed by psych meds, is a travesty of justice.
People, before they judge should have all the facts before they gaslight peoples mental integrity.
I am delighted to hear that your dad is recovering from akathisia, since he has stopped ingesting benzo diazepam. It is a very slow and unbearable road to recovery. I am glad Dr Peterson has a brave, intelligent and courageous daughter, advocating on her poor dads behalf.
The Peterson family had enough insight and common sense to do the right thing for their dad.
Once you have your health ruined, some practitioners twist and distort the truth. This is to make you look like you are crazy to the outside world. (The psyc meds are never to blame!)
Misdiagnosis is part of the modus operandi, some practitioners use. People can die from akathisia and go through hell. It makes them suicidal. These medicines are very dangerous!
Thank you Mikhaila and Dr Peterson for, for putting yourself out there and speaking the truth and creating an awareness that is second to none.
The press and others concerned have got to be accountable for misconstrued information and ruining peoples lives.
Bless you and your father for setting the records straight.
Mikhaila and Dr Peterson, please stay strong.
It seems like the whole culture of medicine, journalism and Law, needs to change to keep up with those who are ahead of their time.
It is sad how a lot of people don’t care!
The crisis the psyc meds induce is always blamed on another health condition.
susanne says
Call for coroners to record prescription drug use
By Rory Winters, 24 March 2021
Stephen O’Neill, the 48-year-old Coalisland man who took his own life in the summer of 2016.
THE niece of a County Tyrone man, who took his own life, is calling for coroners to record all the prescription medication a person has been taking in the period prior to their death.
Coalisland man, Stephen O’Neill, died in July 2016, less than two months after he suffered an adverse reaction to an antidepressant called Sertraline (also known as Zoloft).
While the coroner at Mr O’Neill’s inquest stated that the Sertraline “possibly contributed” to his death, his consumption of this drug was not recorded on his death certificate.
This has led Mr O’Neill’s niece, Colleen Bell, to campaign for change to the coronial system to ensure all the pharmaceutical drugs a person has been taking in the lead-up to their death, are officially recorded by coroners.
All unnatural deaths, including both drug and suicide deaths, must be reported to coroners.
However, Ms Bell is concerned that the current system doesn’t allow for “possible links”, between prescribed antidepressant medication and suicide, to be “fully known”.
Mr O’Neill, a brother-in-law of Sinn Féin deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill, was prescribed Sertraline after he informed his GP that he was suffering with mild anxiety.
He began taking the drug on a Thursday. Ms Bell told The Detail: “By Friday night, Stephen was so agitated that he started feeling suicidal.”
On Saturday morning, Mr O’Neill went to his pharmacist to explain how much his mental state had deteriorated since he took the Sertraline. The pharmacist called the out-of-hours doctor who told him to stop taking the drug.
Mr O’Neill’s family called a crisis team for advice and the 48-year-old musician then voluntarily admitted himself into the Bluestone Unit, a psychiatric facility in Craigavon.
In the weeks before his death, Mr O’Neill continued to be prescribed a range of drugs, from various sources, in an effort to improve his mental health.
However, his family now believe he would have been in a healthier state of mind had he stayed away from those drugs.
Ms Bell said: “In the last six weeks of his life, Stephen had been prescribed Sertraline; a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), Quetiapine; an antipsychotic drug, Mirtazapine; a serotonergic drug, and other drugs such as Diazepam, Propranolol and Zopiclone.”
The last drug that he was prescribed before his death was Busiprone which is used to treat anxiety disorders.
Ms Bell said: “Stephen was poly-drugged. He had been on a real cocktail which just seemed to exacerbate his symptoms.
“His mental state deteriorated massively from the point that he was prescribed the Sertraline.”
Dr David Healy is an Irish psychiatrist, working in the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, who has examined Mr O’Neill’s medical history.
He was also the expert witness for the family at Mr O’Neill’s June 2019 inquest.
Dr Healy told The Detail: “It was very clear that after a few pills of Zoloft (Sertraline), the drug had an immediate, toxic effect on him. It was clear that it caused him to feel agitated and suicidal.
“In the hospital, Stephen then explained what had happened to him and they semi-listened, in that they recorded his view, but they didn’t take him seriously enough.”
Dr Healy added that if they had taken Mr O’Neill “more seriously”, the doctors would have suggested keeping him drug free for a while, but instead they “threw drugs at him”.
He said: “Stephen was handing it to them on a plate, he explained what the drug was doing to him, but they weren’t listening.
“Six weeks later, he ended up dead. It seemed to me a very clear-cut case and I was happy to get involved, and to argue the case.”
However, while Coroner Patrick McGurgan said the Sertraline “possibly contributed with other identified stressors” to Mr O’Neill’s death, none of the drugs which he was prescribed were recorded on his death certificate as causing or contributing to his death.
Ms Bell said: “The coronial system should be reformed so that coroners have to, in some way, record and later compile, in an archive, all the pharmaceutical drugs which people have been taking in the lead-up to their death – including antidepressants prescribed by doctors.
“This would mean it’s not just the drugs which are recorded on death certificates, as causing or contributing to deaths, that we can draw statistics from.”
Stephen O’Neill (second from the right) pictured with his siblings.
Stephen O’Neill (second from the right) pictured with his siblings.
Change
In 2016, The Detail reported that prescription drugs featured on more death certificates than illegal drugs in Northern Ireland over a ten-year-period.
However, because of the limitations in the coronial system, Coroner Joe McCrisken explained that the number of pharmaceutical drug-linked deaths was much greater than official statistics showed.
For instance, Coroner McCrisken told The Detail he oversaw the inquest of a man who took his own life “when under the influence of Diazepam that he had bought illegally”.
He added: “The dose wasn’t enough to kill him but it was enough to make him feel that he wanted to self-harm or try to take his own life.
“In that case Diazepam didn’t go on the death certificate. Diazepam will be picked up in the toxicology report, it will be picked up in the post-mortem, but it won’t be recorded on the death certificate as a cause of death.”
Coroner McCrisken said he was, therefore, “confident” that the connection between certain prescription drugs and suicide is a “much bigger problem” than the figures suggested.
Unlike in the example referenced by Coroner McCrisken, neither Stephen O’Neill’s toxicology report, nor his post-mortem report, showed any of the drugs he had been prescribed, in the lead-up to his death, as being in his system when he took his own life.
However, guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) – a statutory UK agency which produces ‘evidence-based guidance and advice for health, public health and social care practitioners’ – states that insomnia, depression, nightmares, agitation and anxiety are common or very common side effects of SSRIs, which Sertraline is.
NICE guidance adds that psychotic disorders, paranoia and suicidal thoughts are also possible side effects of SSRI drugs.
Ms Bell told us it’s these issues which are “more relevant” to her uncle’s case than “toxicity levels”.
The Lord Chief Justice’s Office told The Detail: “In the case of a drug-related death, if any drug (illicit or otherwise) has caused or contributed to the death (confirmed by way of a post-mortem report with a toxicological analysis) the specific drug, if identified, is included in the formulation.
“If there is more than one drug involved then the cause of death may read multi-drug toxicity without specifically identifying each and every drug, but each case is fact specific.”
However, the Lord Chief Justice’s Office declined to comment on proposals for changes to the coronial system, citing that it is not responsible for legislation.
The Southern Health and Social Care Trust told The Detail: “Whilst we are unable to comment on any individual, the trust did participate fully in the inquest process regarding Stephen’s death and we accept the coroner’s findings.”
The Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Department of Health (DoH) both declined to comment on issues raised in this article.
Ms Bell said: “They are all passing the buck. It’s very frustrating. Really, it will require political action.”
Sinn Féin Mid-Ulster MLA Linda Dillon told The Detail her party is engaged in the “formative stages” of discussions in relation to these issues.
She added: “The DoH needs to have a statistical breakdown regarding prescription medication and suicide, which could come from coroners recording all prescription medication the person had been taking in the time leading up to their passing.
“We need to establish that data to see if there are patterns between suicide and a certain profile of person being on particular prescription drugs.”
Ms Bell has had some engagement with Mental Health Champion Siobhan O’Neill about her uncle’s case, though she hopes to progress this further in the coming months.
She also runs a Facebook page in her uncle’s memory, called Stephen’s Voice, which has around 9,000 likes.
The page says: “We are not medical professionals, we are Stephen’s family and are here to tell Stephen’s story and raise awareness of serious adverse reactions to prescribed medications, particularly antidepressants.”
Ms Bell added that suicide rates and prescription rates for antidepressants, and antipsychotics, are both “so high” in Northern Ireland.
She said: “To better understand potential correlations between the two issues, there needs to be change in the coronial system.