For many years I have tried to discover how to control panic attack and have discovered that its not particularly difficult.
I have searched and explored lots of ways to cure anxiety and panic attack symptoms.

Some will tell you that, by definition, anxiety disorder and panic attacks are very intimately with each other, and that the only divergence between anxiety attacks and panic attacks is that a panic attack is an anxiety attack out of control, and I mean literally out of control.

Signs of panic attacks include difficulty breathing, quickened heartbeat, a dizzy feeling, sudden cold, feelings of dread, crawling sensation on your skin, and even numbness in one fingers and toes. It's interesting to note that, symptoms of anxiety disorder included many of those just mentioned but always with a much lower level of intensity.
How To Control Panic Attack -
Some people say that one feels control is lost during a panic attack, and while you are having an anxiety attack, one is one the verge of being out of control.

Millions of people nowadays believe that a combination of medication and alternativ treatment is appropriate, yet others feel that prolonged consumption of antidepressant drugs such as Paxil and Zoloft can lead to dependency and or addiction.  A growing number of doctors feel that medications only treat the symptoms and not the real problem itself.

And even though its not yet proven that eating certain foods can induce panic attacks, it has been agreed that there are some foods that aggravate and step-up the risk of panic attacks. Caffeine is one of these culprits. People who usually drink more than a few cups of coffee or soda can increase their chances of having them. Alcohol as well as illegal drugs can also disturb your body making you open to panic attacks. One suggestion is to try herbal teas of sage and chamomile, in lieu of coffee whenever you need to soothe your nervous system.

When learning how to cure anxiety, whatever elevates your heart rate for thirty minutes or more can help your body deal with stress thereby reducing the risk of panic attacks. Your body needs physical exercise that benefits every organ in the body and promotes circulation. Exercises can be as simple as a vigorous walk, gardening or even walking the dog in the neighborhood.

Panic attacks can also be dealt with most effectively with deep beathing and other specific meditation techniques. Yoga advocates breathing from the diaphragm making our oxygen intake much deeper. The value of deep breathing cannot be stressed enough. It can relieve the body of more impurities adding health and vitality. Discover for yourself how to cure anxiety today and with a stress-free mind, enjoy your future.

Hope you find these tips on how to control panic attack useful

It’s just after midnight, and I have some time to sleep before I get back to work after a week off.  Not excited one bit.  My job isn’t horrible, but it’s psychologically frustrating and I am hating the public school district/system more and more.

I’m also hating how CoD was poop today.  In other words, I played like crap… and not just any crap… really bad crap.  In my last game I think I had about 6 or 8 deaths before I managed to get a kill.  It was Hardcore Team Deathmatch.  It sucked.  I’m much better at FFA.

Lisa and I drove out to the desert to pick up a rock, but not just any rock… a very specific, supposedly heart-shaped rock that Lisa spotted there on the day I proposed to her almost 10 months ago.  Wow, has it really been that long?  I guess that’s not that long.

The meds I’m on don’t seem to be solving much.  They make me feel better in the moment, meaning that I’m not so down-in-the-dumps on a normal day-to-day basis.  However, it seems to be more of a cover-up than a long-term solution.  Yay for hyphenated phrases.

I’ve reinstalled Windows XP.  After some extensive use of Windows 7 I have decided that Microsoft doesn’t like me.  They’ve removed some key features that I previously found quite useful.  There were also some other minor changes that just made my computing experience unpleasant.   Additionally, some of my most important software did not have Windows 7 compatible versions.  Now that I’ve got Windows XP back, I feel a bit more… free, I guess one might say.

I’m going to go to bed now.

In the U.S. Senate today, the health committee voted 13-10 along party lines to advance a horrific “tax and socialize” health care bill. Not only would this bill give the U.S. government unprecedented control over a socialized health care system, but it would also be one of the largest tax increases in American history.
It has been said that Democrats can’t wait to get their hands into your pockets in order to take your money, but it usually turns out that whatever money they are able to grab from the American people, the reality is that they end up wanting to spend even more than that.

In fact, a preliminary analysis from the Congressional Budget Office reveals that the version of the “tax and socialize” health care bill being pushed in the House of Representatives would cause federal deficits to go through the roof.

The CBO report estimates that the 10 year increase in federal deficits from the health care bill would be just over 1 trillion dollars:

“On a preliminary basis … the proposal’s provisions affecting health insurance coverage would result in a net increase in federal deficits of $1,042 billion for fiscal years 2010 through 2019.”
Not only would it send federal deficits soaring, but the “tax and socialize” plan being pushed by Democrats also has these wonderful features:

*It would REQUIRE all Americans to buy health insurance. Americans who refuse to buy health insurance will be hit with heavy fines of more than $1,000. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that these draconian fines will raise around 36 billion dollars over 10 years.

*It would create a government-run insurance program to compete with private health insurance.

*It would implement a 5.4 percent tax increase on individuals making more than $1 million a year, with a gradual tax beginning at $280,000 for individuals.

Republican Representative Roy Blunt from Missouri summed it up when he said this about the bill: “What we really have here is a bill that, without any question, will kill jobs, will limit access to health care, will raise taxes and will lead to a government takeover of health care.”

When many Americans hear the words “health care reform” they seem to think that they will be getting free health care.

But that is not the case at all.

Instead, it is going to mean that they are forced to buy health insurance, it is going to mean that the U.S. government will control their health decisions and it is even going to mean that the U.S. government is going to decide who lives and who dies.

Health care run by the government also means mandatory vaccinations. The CDC is now saying that the U.S. may need 600 million doses of swine flu vaccine in order to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the United States this fall.

In the future, if your national health record shows that you have not taken the mandatory vaccines, then you will not be able to get any more health care until you do.

But there are even more frightening health care changes that the Congress passed earlier this year.
The truth is that the Democrats inserted provisions into one of the economic “stimulus” bills that gave the federal government COMPLETE control over your health care under a nationalized health care plan.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, otherwise known as “the economic stimulus bill” contained almost all of the key elements of Tom Daschle’s ideal nationalized health care system that he outlined in his 2008 book, Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.

In his book, Daschle wrote that doctors will have to “learn to operate less like solo practitioners” and be willing to accept mandatory government controls and guidelines. And guess what?

That is precisely what that bill now forces doctors to do.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 created a brand new bureaucracy called the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology. This new government organization will monitor all medical treatments to make sure that your doctor is prescribing the exact drugs and medical treatments that the U.S. government believes are “appropriate” and “cost effective”. So much for medical freedom, eh?

The bill also radically changed the way that the health care system treats the elderly. Currently, Medicare pays for medical treatments for the elderly that are considered to be safe and effective. But that has all changed. Now, a cost effectiveness standard set by a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research will apply. So now if the U.S. government officials decide that it isn’t cost effective for your mother to get cancer treatment she will be out of luck. In her recent editorial, Betsy McCaughey described Daschle’s attitude towards the elderly in his book:

He praises Europeans for being more willing to accept “hopeless diagnoses” and “forgo experimental treatments,” and he chastises Americans for expecting too much from the health-care system.
She also goes on to describe how this new “council” would actually make choices to deny health care to elderly patients if they don’t have enough “productive” years left:

The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

Do you understand what that means? It means that now the United States government decides who lives and who dies. But most Americans seem tickled pink that they are about to get the “free health care” that Obama supposedly promised them. Instead, they are going to find out that they are going to be forced to pay for mandatory health care, that their health care decisions are now totally controlled by the federal government and that many of them have just been hit with crushing tax increases in order to pay for it all.

Here is another film on drugging children!  I can see the sinister aspect of this as a way to damage to brains of children they see as too bright to accept being two legged livestock for the NWO.  For almost frivolous reasons, schools give a child drugs and a label and chemically lower their intelligence.  The “reason” is never the one given.

Did you know the government pays off schools and even low income parents in order for kids to take drugs?  Watch this film.

There is another story of a child dragged off by police and the mother abused and imprisoned  for refusing to give the child drugs.

Ritalin is related to crystal meth.  Why so many meth/crack addicts?  They are used to “being on speed”!

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were on psychiatric drugs and their behavior changed AFTER they were put on drugs.  Antidepressants which were seen as a “miracle cure” 20 years ago cause children to be violent.

I was “put on drugs” as a teen and know the nightmare scenario.  I ended up in the state hospital with my parents relinquishing custody to the state (temporarily) after a suicide attempt due to the despondent depression caused by antipsychotic drugs prescribed by an overzealous psychiatrist after consulting her because I was having trouble making friends.  I ended up a high school dropout with a psychiatric label and a sense of underachievement.  Leaving the hospital before I was officially discharged (snerk snerk) may have cause me to be submitted for targetting.  I never liked to “comply” without a reason.

I took 100 mg lamictal and 150 veniba a.k.a. efexor, then i took 100 mg lamictal and 20 mg paxil aka paxera, i have a little dither.

because i slept only 4 hours.

understand that, sleeping from 00 am to 8 am is the keypoint success against bipolar disorder.

will back here.

Today is day 12 on Paxil.  Lisa says she’s noticing a difference, outwardly.  She says that I still get irritated but I get over it much more quickly, and she also seems to think it has improved my overall sociability.  It’s hard for me to tell from inside.

My stomach hurts this morning.  I don’t know if it’s something I ate or if it’s the medicine, or just something else completely.  I had a bowl of frosted shredded wheat cereal and some orange juice.  That’s not bad at all.

My restroom experiences have been more frequent since I started taking the Paxil.  Additionally, my poop has been more broken up and not very solid.  Too much info?  You’ll live.

I did something completely unprecedented a few days ago.  I am normally extremely picky about who I have as friends on facebook.  I only had a small handful of them.  However, I decided to go out on a limb and just add a ton of people from my “suggestions” page.  These are not exactly random people.  I may not know them, but apparently they are friends OF friends and facebook suggests that I add them, so I obliged this time around.  My number of facebook friends doubled within 24 hours.  Haha…

I’m missing church right now because I’m not feeling well…  I don’t like missing church.  I will be reading James chapter 2 today since I am staying home.

end

I was born with blessings and some curses.  I suppose that is not unusual, that’s what a lot of people would say, but let me fill you in on mine.

My blessings were a brain that has an IQ of over 150, and a big strong male body with a tolerance for pain.  My curses were I was born somewhat autistic (Asperger’s is the closest on the spectrum) and I had severely crossed eyes, indicative of central nervous system issues during gestation.

I probably would have been OK with the Asperger’s alone because of my intelligence, even with all the other issues I have had long periods of “success” in the workplace, but clearly people would have still thought I was a bit goofy.  Well of course if you are goofy and successful then they call you “eccentric.”

But when I was five, between kindergarten and 1st grade, my family made the decision to correct my eyesight with eye surgery.  I don’t blame my parents for this decision, they had to make it and I think they did the best they could, there is no doubt in my mind that they loved me deeply.

What happened is one day my mom gave me a book to read like “Tommy Goes to the Hospital”  It was really a picture book with a few words that mom and dad read to me.  Then one day mom gave me a little red pill to take, I took it and laid down to take a nap.  When I awoke I was in the hospital.  It was scary, and I didn’t know why I was there.

Very early the next morning the nurses gave me another red pill and then an hour or so later they strapped me into a gurney and wheeled me to the operating room.  I was awake, and my memories are of a couple of doctors and a couple of nurses in scrubs with masks on, and the very bright light straight above me.  I was strapped down, I couldn’t move.  After that they put a mask over my face and gave me some ether as a general anesthetic.  I will never forget that sickly sweet smell!  I think it knocked me out for a few minutes but I awoke to experience torture –  I was awake while someone (another human being) was sticking a sharp knife in my eye.  This was torture that I experienced, and it has had profound effects on my entire life.  I am not bitter at the doctors, in one way the surgery was successful and I have had a lifetime of relatively good eyesight.  The problem is that they knew I was conscious, I was screaming!  I could not escape.  The doctors I guess had to make decisions too.  They may have figured that a young child would not remember bad things like that, or they may have calculated that more anesthetic would risk killing me.  I am not telling you this to fix blame on them, you just need to know what happened, and you need to know that young children DO remember trauma.

I had recurring memories of  the hospital stay and the surgery (complete with ether smell) throughout my childhood, though curiously the memories themselves did not bother me much.

When I reached the age of 18 and went off to college, I was sitting in a math class one day (a class I really enjoyed, no math anxiety here) when out of nowhere BOOM I started sweating, shaking, I had trouble breathing, I had to jump up in the middle of the lecture and run out of the room.  After about 10 minutes things returned to normal.  I had had the first panic attack in my life. A week or two later, in the same classroom, I had a second panic attack, even more severe than the first.  I really thought I was having a heart attack!  It too subsided but the next day I went to student health services and they checked me out, said I didn’t have any heart problems, I was a healthy 18 year old, and that all that had happened was that I had got some “nerves.”

Back in 1968 very little was known about PTSD so I don’t fault the people at the clinic.  There were at that time literally thousands of WWII and Korean War vets on the sidewalks in Skid Row Los Angeles.  Back then they were called “bums.”  Just like people call the homeless “bums” now.  Some things never change.  Now we know that these vets were suffering from what was called “combat fatigue” but what we call PTSD now, and they were self-medicating with alcohol and other drugs.  Even to this day there is a stigma attached to PTSD with some people at least, because it is clear that some people go through the same or similar bad experiences and don’t get PTSD.  The deniers of PTSD simply say that those who acquire PTSD are “weak.”

What are the consequences of having PTSD?  First, panic attacks, which I believe are brought about by a constant high level of adrenaline in the body.  I think that what happens at the moment of trauma is that your body is overwhelming swamped with adrenaline, fight or flight, but that you become traumatized because you are in a situation (restraint, wounded, incapacitated) where you can neither fight or flight.  When that happens, the adrenaline remains in your system for too long and literally burns up some neural pathways.  In many situations, the act of fighting or fleeing provides exercise to your body and the adrenaline is burned off rapidly.  Where the damage occurs is in the amygdala  and associated regions in the central part of the brain, that ancient part that is often referred to as the “reptile brain.”  The damage to the brain is organic and probably irreversible, certainly not by surgery and it is impossible for me to see how a drug therapy can repair physically damaged neural pathways deep in the brain.  Recent advances in medical imaging technology have confirmed that there are indeed physical differences in the brains of the traumatized and untraumatized.

And I think once you have had a panic attack, you are more likely to have more, you are likely to become predisposed.  This is because a panic attack is a horrible experience.  You literally feel like you are having a heart attack, like you are going to die on the spot.  You become worried that you will have another panic attack, and you become “hyper vigilant”, a part of your brain starts constantly monitoring your bodily functions like heart rate, perspiration and breathing.  A little up tick, caused by something minor like a rude check out person at the supermarket or someone butting in line ahead of you, or someone cutting you off in traffic, can put you right into full panic if you are hyper vigilant.  Why?  Because there is no rational reason for your body to feel that way, so it must be another incipient panic attack.   There are cues in the environment that are triggering your panic, but until you get more aware of how panic works you will simply assume that you must have a physical problem (like a heart attack.)

Another consequence of PTSD is anger.  This is usually directed inward towards yourself and outward at the same time.  I think that it is directed inward because somehow you feel that you could have done more to avoid the situation where you were traumatized.  Anger directed inward seems to lead to depression, complicating your life even further. Anger is directed outward at society as a whole, because in your mind it is unbelievable what some fellow human beings did to you.  Needless to say, anger directed outward can have some bad consequences.  But I don’t think most people with PTSD anger are dangerous.  Several times I have encountered a vet walking down the street yelling and screaming at all the world.  Sometimes I have engaged them in conversation, and all the ones who would talk to me had a decent coherent conversation with me for five or ten minutes, they told me their story, and then they went off down the street yelling and screaming.

Just in the last four years or so I discovered within myself a direct link between panic attacks and anger.  I discovered that if I let myself get really angry, then a panic attack was almost surely to follow in its heels.  Since I made that connection, I strive not to be angry.  It is not always possible, but sometimes walking away is good for your health.

It is curious that many children who are traumatized at an early age do not show any symptoms until they reach adulthood.  In my case I started getting serious panic attacks at 18-19 years of age, and they continue to this day, though in the last few years they have lessened.  The only symptoms I had as a child were an incredible fear of doctors, hospitals, medical devices, needles, etc.  Also around age 16 I developed serious insomnia, which left me haggard almost every day.  It took me hours most nights to get to sleep, and that continued up til about 6 years ago, when a therapist hypnotized me.  Of course in my mid-life I used whiskey to go to sleep, that was the only way I could have enough rest to get up and work in the morning.  It was a short term solution and seriously bad for my health.  I did also have vivid  recurring memories *visual, smell, taste, pain) of the torture all through my childhood but they didn’t seem to bother me.  After I started getting the panic attacks, I stopped for the most part having those memories return.

I think the reason that traumatized children are shielded from some of the worst effects of trauma have to do with the biology of  human evolution.  We are standing on the apex of several million years of hominid evolution, and for 98 percent of that time, most humans never reached the age of 30.  It was important for the survival of the species that juveniles reach mating age, without the problems that PTSD would cause them, but it was less important that adults have that genetic protection.  Children and juveniles were raised in common by the tribe or clan, all the children had lots of “parents” so adult shielding from trauma was simply not needed for survival in the evolutionary sense.  Evolution is economical.

Insomnia is debilitating, and many PTSD victims suffer from it.  They have nighmares.  They have worrisome recurrent dreams with unsolvable problems.  They are hyper vigilant, so when they lay down to sleep every little tinge in the body that is unusual is cause for concern.  Many of them turn to alcohol – like I did – in order to get to sleep at all.  Of course sooner or later you get the rebound – the alcohol wears off in a few hours and you find yourself wide awake at 3 AM.  In my case I also had hypnagogic jerks.  This is the sensation you get when you are almost asleep, but you get “jerked” back awake, like someone has startled you.  Another factor is that when I was 16 I witnessed my father have a stroke and dying while he was sleeping.  It was not pretty, he had lost all bodily function and control, with his eyes wide open but blank.  By all measure (maybe his heart was still beating) he was dead before the ambulance left.  For years after that (until a few years ago I was terrified that I would die in my sleep.   I felt this terror every night.  By the time I was 30, I needed to have the lights on in order to go to sleep, I had to have the TV or radio on to go to sleep, and I had to have some whiskey in me to go to sleep.  There were two things in my life that complicated my sleep problems at that time.  First of all I was a heavy tobacco smoker.  Tobacco constricts the blood vessels, and when I lay down to sleep my heart was always pounding like a hammer.  Since I was hyper vigilant you can understand where that took my thoughts.

Another complication was my work schedule.  At around 30 I got a job as a supervisor in a casino, one of the youngest in that position in Reno.  The problem was it was a relief shift.  That means I had to work 2 graveyard shifts 1 AM – 9 AM, Two day shifts (9 AM – 5 PM) and one swing shift (5 PM – 1 AM) EVERY WEEK.  Although it was a good job opportunity I have to say in retrospect that working that schedule for 3 years was very destructive of my health, both then and in years to come.  For someone who already had serious sleep problems, I am lucky it didn’t kill me.  I would never do it again, I wouldn’t ask anyone to do it, and I think work schedules like that should be illegal.

I worked steadily all through my 30’s and did not have many panic attacks.  I was self-medicating with alcohol (but not at work, I was a conscientious employee.  I did need a few shots at the end of the work day to get right.

At the age of 42 my life fell apart, I used to say it was like a bomb went off in my life.  Separation and divorce, child custody fight, bankruptcy, several relocations, the beginning of real health problems like dental disease, loss of our home to foreclosure, and the loss of my career in the casinos.  Any one of those qualifies as one of the most stressful events in life, and I had five or six of them in one year.

I spent the next 8 years working in minimum wage jobs, some of them heavily physical, which at my age completed the breakdown of my body.  About that time I came the closest I have ever come in life to killing someone.  I got hired on at a pallet plant – a place where they scavenged broken pallets from around the area and then tore them apart and rebuilt them.  Hours of work there was 6 AM until 4 PM with one half hour lunch and two 10 minute breaks.  The work was outside in the sun (I was working in August) and there was no shade.  They handed me a nail gun and pointed to a stack of pallets and told me to get to work.  The pallet yard was next to an elementary school and since I had no idea what I was doing, about 5 or 6 times a day I would hit the board wrong and a nail would go whanging off into the distance.  I could hear it ping in the school yard when it landed.  There were two brothers who ran the operation and they were both abusive drunks, one of them was worse than the other.  (A few years later one of them went to jail for attempting to murder his sibling.)   One day they asked me to sort some boards into piles, but they assumed that I would know the criteria of how they wanted them sorted.  I did the best I could, but around noon the little bastard came up to me, using the foulest language called me the stupidest person he had ever met.  I was tired and cranky and I had a 2 x 4 in my hands.  My impulse was to simply split his skull with it, and I was a big strong boy then.  Thankfully I didn’t kill him, but I looked him in the eye and layed the stick down.  Somehow I think he knew what I was thinking.  I finished the shift but never went back.

All during this period I was aware that I had some mental issues.  I knew I had panic attacks and anxiety.  Sometimes I was extremely depressed for a couple of months.  I experienced agoraphobia at times.  I developed OCD.  I searched constantly for a psychotherapist to help me.   I found a few in that period but most of them were not very good.  One good one I had dropped me when I lost my job (and my insurance) when the casino I was working in folded.  One problem I have had with psychotherapists is that I am much smarter than most of them.  A few were bright, but with those I would rather have an intelligent theoretical conversation than do therapy.  It is a problem for a therapist when your patient is constantly critiquing your methods and even the basis of your mode of therapy.  Most of them don’t enjoy it.  I know that now.

By my late 40′ s I realized that I was drinking too much – that I was likely an alcoholic. I know, some of you will say I should have figured it out 10 years earlier, but it was alcohol that allowed me to function in any way near to normal, and it didn’t cause me major problems in my life.  (I didn’t have any DUIs, I didn’t get into bar fights, I didn’t beat the wife and children.)  I did quit for a couple of months in 1996.  But I was suffering then from extreme agoraphobia (I could barely leave my apartment) and I got referred to a program run by the University.   That’s when I met the SSRI family.   I had two months when the only time I left my apartment was the once a week journey 8 blocks to the group therapy session that was supposed to help me.  Well it was a cluster fuck.  I was extremely agoraphobic, but I was being forced to be in a room of a dozen or so strangers, most of whom were in their 20s and they were there for amphetamine or heroin abuse, or for domestic violence.   We had absolutely no commonality.  After a month of that I started drinking again in order to be able to go to the meeting!

The psychiatrist who was in charge of the program gave me Zoloft to help with my panic and agoraphobia.  It didn’t work.  As a matter of fact, when I was taking the Zoloft it was the first time in my life that I felt “crazy.”  Up to that point I knew I had problems but I had never felt like that.  I found myself walking down the sidewalk, and all of a sudden I would find myself “stuck”.  I could not move either forward or back.  Sometimes I would just stand there for up to 10 minutes before the stuck feeling went away.  After 10 weeks or so of the Zoloft I convinced her that it wasn’t working and she switched me to Paxil.  She started me off with (I found out later) double the normal therapeutic dose.  I took Paxil for the next 17 weeks and it was the absolute worst period of my life.  My agoraphobia deepened.  I kept all my curtains closed because I was afraid that the sun would come up.  (Meaning that when the sun comes up you should go out and function.)  A couple times a day I could crack my door open and peek out.  I had plenty of food because at that time I was an OCD hoarder – I had stocked up!  I was no longer going to group therapy because the group had ended.  The presumption is that 8 weeks or so of therapy is enough.  Around this time, since my panic was worsening she gave me a bottle of 100 ativans.  Now lots of people like benzos, I don’t, for me they were similar to drinking alcohol but without the happy.  I went through the ativans in a month and she gave me a bottle of klonopins, another benzo.  I was still taking the Paxil and I wasn’t drinking.  My agoraphobia deepened further and my panic became almost constant, from the time I awoke in the morning until I went to be at night.  Some times I would awaken to a full on panic attack.  For the first time in my life I developed tremors, in both arms and both legs.  At one point I could recognize seven distinct varieties of tremor in my body, and I even had some idea of the types of thought that triggered each one.  I could not stop them.

After 2 months of klonopin and paxil I had a heart to heart talk with her over the phone.  I had reached the point where I was in constant panic, so the way I used the klonopin was to take one and see if I could sleep.  I would wait a half hour or so and take another one.  Sometimes I had to take 4 in order to sleep.  They didn’t help at all with my panic, I panicked right through the klonopin.  Of course the way I was taking the klonopin was dangerous, and she knew it and I knew it.  I was honest with her.  She asked me how many klonopins I had left and I told her I didn’t have any.  She told me that the klonopins weren’t working so I needed to stop.  So I cold turkeyed off 5 klonopins a day because I didn’t have any and I had no access to any.  That was about 3 days of pure hell, far worse than quitting alcohol cold turkey.  I don’t know what she was thinking about, but she shouldn’t have a medical license.  What she put me through was dangerous.  When coming off these drugs, you must taper down.

It was around that time that I had the first suicidal impulse in my life.  I had walked over to the shrinks to get the prescription for my second months of klonopin and I was on my way to the pharmacy which was located on the other side of the railroad tracks.  As luck would have it, a freight train was coming down the tracks.  I had a sudden impulse to step in front of it.  The impulse was pretty strong but I didn’t do it.  I never felt that way again until about late 2005.  But the thing about suicidal thinking, once it happens to you I think you are prone to get it again.

In that year also I had my first experience with AA.  I had quit drinking, but the people who were “helping” me put pressure on me to go to AA.  So I went and it was a disaster.  I am not an AA basher.  What happened is the night I chose to attend the meeting they had a “candlelight” meeting.  I found myself still in high agoraphobia, sitting in a dark candle lit room with 40 strangers.  There was a constant movement of people in the dark around me as those 15 or 20 who were there under court order went up and got their attendance verified.  I made it to the end of the meeting, when all of a sudden everyone stood up and clasped hands.   I was trapped inside the circle.  I had to leave in a hurry thankfully I didn’t run anyone down on the way out.  I had to walk past several bars on the way home and somehow I managed to stay out of them too.

About 2 weeks after I cold turkeyed off the klonopin I called her again as I was running out of Paxil.  I told her my condition (constant panic and extreme agoraphobia)  and she decided to take me off the paxil.  She asked me how many I had left and I told her that I had one tablet left.  She told me to break it in half and take a half each day.  That’s how she tapered me off paxil!  I had an extremely rough five or six days.  One thing you have to experience is the “snaps” that is the snap, crackle, pop that you hear INSIDE YOUR HEAD when you are coming off paxil.   For 5 or 6 days I had the strangest dreams I had ever had in my life, though not all of them were scary.  The sensations I experienced in coming off Paxil were similar to the sensations you get when you are coming on to LSD.  One night I had a vivid dream of Satan.  One night I had a vivid dream of the gorgon Medusa from Greek myth.  I had a dream of my own birth, sliding down the birth canal and taking my first breath.  I have never had dreams like these before or since in my life.

There is a reference to panic and PTSD in Greek Mythology, and that is the story of Perseus and Medusa.  Anyone who approached the gorgon Medusa and looked at it was immediately frozen into place.  This is similar to the effect of a visual cue for a panic attack.  You look at it and suddenly you are frozen by fear.  Perseus solved this problem by looking at Medusa in a mirror, looking at the fear in an indirect way, and thus was able to slay the monster.  Out of the blood of Medusa sprung winged Pegasus.  I have taken cues from this myth in my own program of rehabilitation, trying to find indirect means to attack the panic.  The early Greeks at the dawn of civilization were a warrior race, and most certainly were aware of the effects of trauma in their fellows.  I think that this was expressed in myth.

Once the paxil was out of my system the constant tremors went away, but I have been bothered with them ever since intermittently, especially when I am facing some stress.  However I did lapse into a severe depression, about 6 weeks, the deepest depression of my life.  I could not get out of bed.  I did realize after a few weeks that I had to do something or I would simply die.  I went and got some whiskey and found myself a job.  I still didn’t drink on the job, but by now I sure needed that bottle by 5 or clock or so.  I was working doing heavy duty lifting in a warehouse at age 48 and alcohol was my only medicine for my agoraphobia and the constant pain of neuropathy and dental pain.

All through this period my dental health was deteriorating as well.  In 95 I was working at a casino and I bought the insurance plan.  I even paid extra for “dental coverage.”  I went to the dentist (I had to go with my therapist to keep me calm) and he said he could do the work required for five or six hundred dollars.  It turned out that the dental coverage I had been paying for covered only one exam per year, but no real dental procedures.  I was barely surviving at that time I had no extra income above my basic requirements of food and rent.  A year or so later I got sent to another dentist by the vocational rehab program in town.  When I told the dentist that I got panic attacks, he told me that he couldn’t treat me because “he didn’t want to get attacked.”  What a moron.  I could tell you lots more about dentists but I am starting to get angry.

In November 2000, my health collapsed.  I was working full time, but one morning I simply couldn’t get out of bed.  I called in sick.  I had liver disease, my skin was yellow and my belly and legs were swollen.  My sister took me to the hospital and the nurse asked me how long I had had liver disease.  It was a puzzler for me, because I didn’t know I had liver disease.  I  think I may have died that day, briefly.  I know I saw the light when I passed out in the exam room.  I have not had a sip of alcohol since.

By early 2001 I had landed in a half way house in Reno.  I weighed 230 lbs. when I entered the hospital, and in six weeks my weight went to 155.  I had lost 75 lbs. in six weeks.  My arms looked like pipestems.  I spent 19 months at the halfway house.  I will say this, they kept me alive.  Some people are under the impression that these county half way houses are run at the expense of the local taxpayer.  What happens really is that the social worker signs you up for presumptive SSI, maybe $800 a month or so from the federal government.  The county takes all of that money every month, we were given an allowance to spend of $82 a month.  So it is really the federal government and the residents who are paying for their stay.  If you are on SSI, you are not allowed to seek employment (that is how it was then) but you did have to apply for permanent disability in order to continue staying there.  I applied for SSD as they asked me to and I was sent to a doctor for a review.  The doctor examined me and asked me “Why do  you think you are incapable of working?”  I answered him that I thought I was capable of working.  I was probably wrong, but I had worked all my life and I still had the ethic.  My application got turned down and again I was forced to appeal it.  I had to hire a lawyer $4000 contingency and when the judge decided I was disabled I had also repay the county $7000 that it said I owed them for my time at the halfway house.  So basically I paid the county $25000 for 19 months of two meals a day and sharing a bedroom with a stranger.

A few years later I had my experience with Effexor.  The therapist I was seeing worked with a doctor and she prescribed me Effexor.  Given my experience with Paxil I was not eager to take it but I did.   I took it for 6 weeks or so and I found myself becoming more and more aggressive.  I was living in one of those low income apartments where you share a kitchen with three other units.  Well if you have a miracle that works out but most of the time one or two of your kitchen mates are addicts, thieves, or paranoid schizos.   I got sideways with one of my neighbors a guy as big as me but a few years younger.  I found myself walking up to him in the lunch room and calling him out to his face, I took off my shirt and roostered around the complex, I became very aggressive.  I am ashamed of this now, I have never acted like that in my life, and since I quit the Effexor I haven’t acted that way since then.  It is not in my nature.

I realized that the Effexor was causing me to act that way.  It was making me aggressive.  I called up the doctor and told her that the Effexor wasn’t working.  She said she would work something out and I should call the pharmacy in a couple of hours.  It turned out when I called the pharmacy that she had decided to tritrate my dosage UP.  The other thing is that up until then she had given me free samples.  I was poor.  I had less than 10 dollars to my name.  The cost of a months Effexor for me at the new double dose would be almost $250.  That was a friday night, and I was about to have a very bad weekend cold turkeying off Effexor.  Maybe it was a lack of communication, but I clearly told her that the Effexor was making me feel violent.  I literally wanted to beat my neighbor to death with my bare hands.  I knew that I couldn’t take the Effexor any more and at any rate I couldn’t afford to fill the prescription.  Effexor is a double medication, it contains an SSRI component and an older anti depressant component.  Bottom line is that quitting Effexor cold turkey is like walking off a cliff.  That weekend I experienced the worst panic attack of my life and a quick sharp descent into the unspeakable darkness.  Among other things I did that weekend is I gave away my car to a stranger walking down the sidewalk.

Yeah sure, taper off.  You can see how well that works in real life.

I know this has been a long depressing monologue, but somewhere around 2004 I started getting SSD, and I was able to stabilize my finances, rent a better apartment and do a bit better in general.  I started getting politically active, because I had come to see how corrupt and greedy our health care system is.  When it became clear that our government was torturing people, I started working to impeach George Bush and that gang of criminals around him.

I would say that the last 3 or 4 years of my life has been blessed.  I have not conquered all my fears or solved all my problems but I have more friends now than I have ever had.  I have music.  I live in a beautiful part of the world.  I stopped being angry at women and started simply enjoying their beauty and accepting from them what they could give me willingly.  I accepted that the chances of an autistic like me for a long term relationship with any woman are slim.

have a peaceful day,

Bill

Link here:

http://urlet.com/suggestion.face

http://highboldtage.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/ssri-antidepressants-the-biggest-corporate-scam-of-all-time/

In the 1970’s the pharma industry started research on a new class of drugs.  It seems like humans sometimes get depressed and Pfizer saw an opportunity to cash in on our misery.  They started experimenting with a class of drugs called serotonin reuptake inhibitors.  Basically the goal was to manipulate the level of serotonin in the brain with the underlying idea that people with more serotonin were happier and less depressed, and those who had lower serotonin levels tended towards depression.

The idea that serotonin is a hormone that controls your mood was the subject of one of the early studies that were the scientific basis for the later marketing bullshit after the introduction of Prozac, Paxil, et al.  Simply put, a group of monkeys were observed for a period of time and it was determined which of the males were alpha males (they got the best food and the most females to mate) and the rest of the males (losers in the game of life.)  Once that determination was made, the monkeys were killed and the level of serotonin was compared to the social ranking of each monkey.  The research suggested that high levels of serotonin correlated with “success” and lower levels with “failure.”  The alpha monkeys had higher serotonin levels.

The first thing that pops into  your head when you really think about it is of course there is no way to know what a monkey “feels” like.  There is a great big assumption here that monkeys that are “successful” or “alpha” are somehow less depressed or happier than the other less blessed members of the troop.  This is just scientific idiocy.  After all, don’t we all know some humans that are rich and successful but also depressed and suicidal?  Don’t we all know a few humans that are poor as a church mouse but as happy as a human can be?  Of course we do.

But then again, Big Pharma, and many therapists and doctors really don’t care how you “feel.”  They just want you to be able to get up in the morning and go to work.  If an antidepressant accomplishes that, then they call it good.  Add to that the fact that the average doctor in the US was gifted $15,000 a year from Big Pharma all through the 80’s and 90’s and you can see why doctors are so enthusiastic in prescribing them.

There is a deeper flaw in the original research though.  It is the assumption that the hormone serotonin regulates mood.  This is only an assumption with no evidence that it is true.  It is my personal opinion that serotonin regulates social standing in the group, that is high serotonin will make a person behave more alpha (dominant and aggressive), and low serotonin will tend to make a person  into one of the followers in the group.  That is the only correlation that is provable by the monkey study.  I am sure that big pharma was aware of this flaw, and that’s what makes SSRIs a scam.

Which leads to another problem with SSRIs that has manifested itself in human society:  SSRIs have been implicated in violence, mass murders and suicides.  The killers at Columbine were taking SSRIs, and there is a very long list of other killers who have been taking this crap when they went over the edge.

Well think about it!  Take a troop of monkeys with a few alpha males, some adult females, and some males who are peripheral followers.  We  may think that the alpha males are happy and the followers are miserable, but how would we know?  Now put all the “unhappy” peripheral males on an SSRI regimen to ease their “depression.”  If serotonin is as I believe a hormone regulator of social status and not mood, what you have done is create a troop of monkeys that are all alpha males!  This is a recipe for violence, aggression, and the breakdown of monkey society.

Don’t we see the same thing in human society?  The evidence is overwhelming that SSRIs produce violence and aggressive behavior in humans, at least some of them.  How can this be if an SSRI is nothing but a benign antidepressant, a mood elevator?  The answer is that people who take SSRIs start believing that they are the leader of the pack, to varying degrees.  This is also a recipe for disaster.  When everyone imagines himself to be a leader there will be no peace.

Chemically most SSRIs have a component phenylalkylamine that is the same chemical found in mescaline and amphetamine.  For this reason, and for the reasons above, I call the SSRI’s “designer speed.”  SSRI’s are basically a timed release version of methamphetamine.

SSRIs are addictive.  There are two obvious proofs of the addictive qualities of SSRIs.   The first is the fact that people often build up tolerances to the drugs, and the dosage must be increased.  Your doctor will look you in the eye and tell you that you must “titrate up” your dose.  On the street, drug addicts call this process something else.  The second proof is the heavy, serious withdrawal symptoms experienced by many who try to quit an SSRI.  These withdrawals are so serious that the Pharma companies themselves strongly urge people to taper down from the drug rather that quit cold turkey.  When your doctor hands you a free month supply of Paxil or Prozac he is hooking you on a drug, and it is an expensive drug.  Remember that.

There have been countless studies since the monkey study of course , mostly financed by Big Pharma, but there is overwhelming evidence that the studies publicized by Big Pharma have been cherry picked, it has been proven in court.  And there was a study just a few years ago, a meta analysis of hundreds of large studies, that proved there is really only one factor in improving the life of someone who is really depressed.   That is the “alliance effect” which refers to the situation where you have a therapist that you like and who you trust, and who you believe is working in your interest.  Nothing else really matters, not SSRIs or older antidepressants, not therapy technique like CBT, nothing.  So if you are seriously depressed find a therapist who will talk to you, and if you are lucky you will find one who really cares.

Most of the studies done in the last twenty years are of short duration 8-12 weeks or so, and most of the ones published by big pharma indicate that the pills helped people who were somewhat depressed, but did very little for people who were chronically or deeply depressed.  The reason for this is simple:  take 100 people who say they are depressed.  Maybe 75 to 80 % of them will get out of their funk with or with out the drug.  Swings in mood are normal, but they don’t usually last more than a few weeks.  You give someone your faux medication, full on in the knowledge that the patient will get better anyway whether he takes it or not.

This is fraud on a grand scale, Big Pharma is the perpetrator abetted by a greedy and gullible medical establishment.

My advice for you, if you are depressed, before you consider this big pharma crap, is go for a walk every day, talk to interesting people, and turn off your television.  Give it a try.

have a peaceful day,

Bill

The HeART Auction has been launched! It is now up and running here: http://myworld.ebay.com/iowajulz/
To donate items to this auction please email give2manie@yahoo.com.

Chuck Nemeroff, the controversial former Emory University psychiatry department chair, has been named chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Miami School of Medicine – has the man got no shame?

It was only October last year that Chuck was forced to resign from Brown University. Phil Dawdy at Furious Seasons summed it up like this:

A few of you have probably already caught the news elsewhere: yesterday, Charles Nemeroff resigned as chair of the psychiatry department at Emory University. The move came on the heels of revelations that he’d taken in $2.8 million in pharma consulting monies since 2000, but had only reported less than half of that–all while taking NIH research grants on the other hand and assuring his university that he was taking in less than $10,000 a year in pharma dough.

For those of you who don’t know, Nemeroff is one of the biggest depression researchers in the world and his work is hugely influential in the field. But as CL Psych has repeatedly detailed, Nemeroff’s work is often scientifically compromised.

I’ll hand over to Phil again for his take on the latest news:

News is just out that, as expected, the controversial former Emory University psychiatry department chair Charles Nemeroff has been named chair of the psychiatry department at the University of Miami School of Medicine. Nemeroff is infamous for epic conflict of interest issues and dubious research findings. I’d say Miami U. and Nemeroff are made for each other as the university has the dirtiest, most thuggerific football team in NCAA football.

The Miami Herald reports:

“On Thursday, Pascal Goldschmidt, dean of UM medical school, called Nemeroff ‘an extraordinary psychiatrist and scientist. . . . He got into serious trouble on disclosure on conflict of interest.’ “Goldschmidt said he had read investigative reports from Emory about Nemeroff’s activities and found nothing to indicate that payments the psychiatrist received had in any way influenced his research results.

“In a telephone interview at mid-day Thursday, Nemeroff, 60, told The Miami Herald he was excited to be coming to Miami. ‘I think it’s going to be a top-10 school.’”

Extraordinary psychiatrist and scientist? Last month, Bernard Carroll, a California psychiatrist and co-author of Health Care Renewal, delivered an epic smackdown of Nemeroff over his involvement in pimping Seroquel for major depression:

“As for Dr. Nemeroff, he is yesterday’s news. The adverse findings by ACCME about his program serve as a reminder to corporate sponsors and CME companies that Dr. Nemeroff is so compromised by now that he has lost effectiveness as a front man for Pharma. Indeed, he is so toxic that he now glows in the dark.”

Phil Dawdy’s Nemeroff back catalog is here.

My Nemeroff back catalogue is  here, here and here.

Read even more here, here and here.

Babies whose mothers used antidepressants during pregnancy visit the doctor more often and have higher risks of certain health problems than other children their age, a new study suggests.  It found that rates of congenital heart defects and physical therapy — a potential sign of movement-related problems — were elevated among babies whose mothers used antidepressants throughout pregnancy. These children also tended to have more doctor visits and higher rates of certain other health problems, like respiratory and digestive symptoms.

Click here to read more…

In a letter to the Irish Times, the ‘great and the good’ [my irony] of Irish psychiatry wade in to the Shane Clancy case (detail here) to sort out a few misunderstandings for us mere mortals (and Dr Michael Corry) who they think know nothing…

“…A controversial statement has been made … namely that antidepressants cause homicide, which we wish to rebut…”

“…There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that antidepressants cause homicide…”

“…the erroneous belief that antidepressants induce aggression and homicide…”

“…those with severe depressive illness, who need antidepressants for continuing wellbeing…”

So say Prof PATRICIA CASEY, Prof TIMOTHY DINAN, Prof MICHAEL GILL, TCD, Prof BRIAN LAWLOR, Prof JAMES V LUCEY, Prof KEVIN MALONE, Prof DAVID MEAGHER, Prof COLM McDONALD.

Pretty black and white then, or so they would have us believe. However in reality it’s not so clear cut… There is much evidence (anecdotal and trial and pharmacovigilance data) that to points to a link between antidepressants and violence.

For instance I wonder if any of these very impressive Irish professors have read the paper Antidepressants and Violence: Problems at the Interface of Medicine and Law.

 11:59 pm

6 Signs He’s About to Dump You – AMERICA -  Ladies, if you’ve had any sort of relationship with a man, you know damn well he’ cheated on you at some point in time.  We all know that half of all men cheat, but if you don’t want to believe it,  go see your therapist.  While you’re there bawling your eyes out on the couch she’ll probably ask a few questions before recommending a daily cocktail of vodka, paxil and valium.  “Does he smell like another woman’s vagina after work?”  “Does he have a box of condoms in his glove box?” “Is he sleeping over a friend’s house every night of the week?  If you answered yes to any or all of these questions but are still in denial, you better speak with your man quick because here are six signs he’s about to dump your ass.

1. He’s Acting Differently.  Of course he is. He’s been cheating on you for months.

2. He’s Avoiding You.   No, don’t think that.  He’s just getting used to not having you around.

3. You’re not having sex.  Well he’s having sex, just not with you.

4. His Response to You Has Changed.  Hes’ not busy some of the time, he’s busy all of the time.

5. He Has Suddenly Become Very Private.  That’s because he’s living with somebody else across town.

6. He is Totally Unreliable.  He’s only relying on the fact that you’ll get the hint sooner or later. (http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/sex/6-signs-your-guy-is-cheating-527862/)

So, sisters, if your man is exhibiting any of the above signs, don’t turn a blind eye on the situation and pretend it isn’t happening, because it is.  Even if your guy is only showing three or four of all the signs, get it through your head that he’s about to use all of them very soon.  Also know that no matter what you say or do, it’s jus too damn late to fix whatever goofed up the relationship.  Men are fickle and when they know they have your wrapped around their cocknballs they’re going to walk on your like a dirty rug.  Maintaining a strong relationship with open communication is one of the best things you can do to keep your man’s eye from wandering, but  if you don’t open your mouth and say something you’re going to be out on your ass real soon. 

Well then, at lot has happened since i last posted here.

I continue to write just never get around to putting it out there.

My laptop committed suicide, so that’s going to take a while to sort out, it’s quite devastating. I have been keeping a private journal for a while now and i lost it all.

I’m attempting prozac, i have no clue why nothing else works for me? Maybe i’m just one of those people? I am trying harder than ever though.

Other than that i have developed a strong fondness for watching shows on the internet, i’m now officially up to date with everything american time, which is pretty cool seeing as England gets everything six months to a year later! How awesome is Eastwick? I absolutely love discovering a new show, since i am still grieving charmed and sex and the city.

I am quite uninspired to make a proper post at the moment, losing all of my writing has been an unexpectadly huge set back.

Yesterday it was announced that Health Canada has approved GlaxoSmithKline’s swine flu (H1N1) vaccine , Arepanrix, for use in Canada. The mainstream media, drug companies, doctors, and Health Canada says that the swine flu vaccine is safe, but there is evidence to the contrary. I also strongly assert, with good reason, that the swine flu vaccine is not safe for pregnant women and young children.

GlaxoSmithKline assures us that the swine flu vaccine is safe. Let’s look at their track record to see whether they are a good, honest company, or not:

Paxil is an antidepressant drug that GlaxoSmithKline first introduced to the market in 1992. A few days ago a US jury ordered the company to pay 2.5 million to a woman who took the drug during pregnancy and consequently her son was born with serious heart defects. There are 600 similar cases pending that blame Paxil for heart problems and other birth defects. At the trial, an executive of the drug company talked about burying negative studies of Paxil. A company memo was presented as evidence during the trial.

In 2000, GSK pulled a drug for irritable bowel syndrome, Lotronex, off the market because it was linked to severe side effects and several deaths. It had only been on the market for 8 months, and in that time had caused 4 deaths and nearly 200 serious gastrointestinal events.

In 2001, an article in Bio-Medicine links GSK’s anti-smoking medication Zyban with 5000 adverse reactions and 40 deaths.

In 2003, the Italian branch of GlaxoSmithKline faced fraud and bribery charges for providing financial incentives to physicians to favour their products.

In 2005, the drug company was forced by the FDA to put new warnings on the labels of three of their asthma medications: Advair, Serevent, and Foradil. These asthma medications all contain long-acting beta 2-adrenergic agonists (LABA), which are linked to an increased risk of severe asthma episodes and death.

Also in 2005, GSK paid over $150 million dollars in a drug pricing fraud case. It was alleged that the company was engaged in a scheme to set and maintain fraudulent and inflated prices for anti-emetic drugs Zofran and Kytril.

In 2007 the FDA issued a warning about the GlaxoSmithKline diabetes drug Avandia. Avandia has the propensity to worsen heart failure in patients who already have significant heart failure. GSK has faced hundreds of lawsuits over Avandia. Patients who are suing GSK say that the company knew about the drug’s risk but did not warn consumers until until the FDA forced its hand.

In 2008 the Argentinian authorities started an investigation of a possible link between the deaths of 14 children and an experimental vaccine they were taking in a clinical trial run by GlaxoSmithKline.

In the summer of 2009, a “media backgrounder” written by GlaxoSmithKline talks about how they are testing the HPV vaccine Cervarix on a large number of different women. The vaccine has not been approved yet but they are using women as guinea pigs in their trials.

What lawsuits will we hear about after enough people have been vaccinated by their new swine flu vaccine, Arepanrix? GlaxoSmithKline can laugh all the way to the bank, because it will be taxpayers, not the company, who will be paying for any vaccine damages. That’s a pretty sweet deal for GSK!

GlaxoSmithKline expects to earn revenue of about 2.1 billion from the sale of their H1N1 vaccine. When they tell you the vaccine is safe, are they thinking about your safety, or are they thinking about their profits?

Instead of lining up for the swine flu jab, try something that is safe and effective. There are ways to boost your immunity naturally, and/or try a homeopathic flu immunization.

After analyzing a 2001 e-mail from a Paxil user who aborted her fetus because it had a heart defect, Glaxo officials noted in company files they were “almost certain” the drug was related to the problem, Jane Nieman, a former Glaxo drug-safety executive, told a Pennsylvania jury.

Now that Glaxo has been found guilty and Kilker case has ended, pending an appeal of course,  what of the remaining court documents that have yet to surface?

READ THEM ALL HERE!

Yes – this really was part of Glaxo’s defence: “… In court, senior GSK officers in court said this apparent admission that the drug was responsible for the defects in the aborted baby was a mistake. They told the court somebody must have ticked the wrong box…”

Read the rest of the story from Sarah Bosely at the Guardian:

A jury in the US today found that Seroxat (known as Paxil in the US), the antidepressant made by the British pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), was responsible for heart defects Lyam Kilker developed in the womb while his mother was taking the medication. Lyam’s family was awarded $2.5 million (£1.6m) in damages.

The following documents, disclosed by GSK, were cited in court by lawyers representing the family of three-year-old Lyam, as evidence to back up their claim that pharmaceutical company GSK knew about the problems with Paxil back in 2001.

This first email is from an unidentified woman (not Lyam Kilker’s mother) to GSK at the end of May 2001.

“I was diagnosed with panic disorder about four-and-a-half years ago. Since that time I’ve been taking Paxil, which is truly a miracle drug. I’ve been panic-free with this drug and have been able to go on with a normal life.

“I was married in October of 2000. My husband and I found out we were pregnant at Christmas time. I was so excited. I love children. The only problem is that I carried the baby to six months gestation and then had to have a termination.

“The doctors diagnosed my son with Truncus arteriosis. They said he would not lead a normal childhood and would most likely not make it through the open heart surgery that he would need as soon as he was delivered (if he was able to make it to that time).

“To say the least, I was absolutely distraught with this news. I thought this was something that I did [...] because I stayed on the Paxil for selfish reasons.

“I wanted to know if you could direct me to any information you might have of any woman that has taken Paxil and still had healthy babies.

“My husband and I are ready to try again to get pregnant in the next monthor two. I am so nervous. I don’t want to stop taking my miracle pill. But, then again, if there is a chance that this might hurt or affect the baby, I want to know upfront. And I will somehow stop taking it for the time being.

“Please contact me as soon as possible. I love everything this drug has done for me. I am so thankful that your company had this available for me. I just want to continue to have a normal life and have the child that I always wanted.

“Please contact me as soon as possible … Please don’t forget about me.”

The woman sent a second email, on 1 June 2001.

“This response is in regards to an e-mail that I had sent you previously. I was asking to see if you have any or are in the process of any clinical trials for women who are currently on Paxil and pregnant. I wanted to find out information to see how many women were on Paxil during pregnancy and if they were able to successfully have healthy babies.

“I am in no way insinuating your product did this to my child. I love the product, and I don’t think I could have gotten through my panic attacks without the wonderful help of this miracle drug.

“I just want to start to try and get pregnant again soon. I do not want to put my unborn child through anything that would hurt him/her.

“Please, if you do not have this information, where is this information held? Does anyone do studies like this? Please, any information you may give me would be great. Thanks again for your help.”

The following GSK internal memo from June 2001 refers to her emails.

“Report 2001014040-1 describes the occurrence of a terminated pregnancy in a female of unknown age prescribed paroxetine (Paxil) for panic disorder.

“This report was received from the patient and has not been confirmed by a physician or other health care professional. Concurrent medications and medical conditions were not known.

“Four-and-a-half years ago, the patient started Paxil (dose unknown). Since taking Paxil, the patient noted she has been panic-free and has been able to go on with a normal life.

“Patient discovered she was pregnant in December 2000 while being treated with Paxil. However, she reported that at six months gestation the pregnancy had to be terminated because the fetus was diagnosed as having Truncus arteriosis.

“Her physician told her that the child would not lead a normal childhood and would most likely not make it through the open heart surgery that he would need as soon as he was delivered, if he was able to make it to that time.”

GSK emailed the following response to the woman on 6 June 2001.

“Thank you for your inquiry. We are attaching a copy of our current product information for Paxil. Please review the section on use during pregnancy.

“Further questions about your treatment should be directed to the physician, pharmacist or healthcare provider who has the most complete information about your medical condition.

“Because patient care is individualised, we encourage patients to direct questions about their medical condition and treatment to their physician.

“We believe that because your physician knows your medical history, he or she is best suited to answer your questions.

“Our drug information department is available to answer any questions your physician or pharmacist may have about our products. Your healthcare professional can call our drug information department …”

But an internal GSK internal document relating to the correspondence, headed “re-investigation of case number A0348482B”, dated 13 June 2001, states: “Relatedness assessment to medication – almost certain.”

In court, senior GSK officers in court said this apparent admission that the drug was responsible for the defects in the aborted baby was a mistake. They told the court somebody must have ticked the wrong box. GSK said it would appeal against today’s jury verdict.

A jury found that Paxil caused heart problems and other birth defects when used by a pregnant mother.  The maker has to pay $2.5 million for not warning about the side effect.

Read more

This from Sarah Boseley at the Guardian:

A family has been awarded $2.5m (£1.6m) in damages after a jury in Philadelphia decided that the British-made antidepressant Seroxat was responsible for their three-year-old son’s heart defects.

GlaxoSmithKline, the British manufacturer of Seroxat, known as Paxil in the US, said it would appeal against the verdict. Although drug regulators in the US and UK warned in 2005 that Seroxat could be linked to heart defects, GSK does not accept its drug is the cause.

Thousands of women worldwide have taken antidepressants such as Seroxat in pregnancy, assured by manufacturers and doctors that they are safe. The case is one of a number in the US and the first to end in a verdict against the company.

Michelle David, 24, was prescribed Paxil in the US after panic attacks. Around mid-February 2005, she discovered she was pregnant. According to her lawyer, Sean Tracey of Houston, Texas, her obstetrician gave her the standard advice at the time: that Paxil was safe. David later stopped taking it because of side-effects that might have been attributable to the pregnancy.

Her son, Lyam Kilker, was born in October 2005. A couple of weeks later he stopped feeding and doctors found he had two holes in the heart and a very rare congenital defect called an interrupted aortic arch. “The hospital put in a stent to keep him alive,” said Tracey. “He had acquired an infection – the heart condition made him more susceptible.”

Soon afterwards, Lyam had the first of two open heart operations and spent five months in hospital. He will need more major heart surgery in five to 10 years.

A number of studies have suggested that rates of congenital heart defects are higher among women taking Paxil and other drugs of the SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor) class. David Healy, professor of psychiatry in Bangor, Wales, who gave evidence in the Kilker case, said that at 4%, the rate of birth defects was double the normal rate, while the rate of major defects was 2% compared with 1%. The general rate of miscarriages is 8%, but 16% of women on Seroxat miscarry.

GSK denied that its drug was responsible for harm to babies in the womb.

Lawyers for women in the US allege that GSK knew of the problem earlier than it admits. Internal documents produced at the Kilker trial suggest that it was investigating complaints as early as 2001, when a woman emailed GSK to ask whether Paxil could be the reason for her baby developing severe heart defects in the womb. The pregnancy was terminated.

GSK replied with a formal letter telling her to consult her doctor. But an internal report recorded that the link between her baby’s defects and Paxil was “almost certain”. In court, GSK officials said the report was a mistake and that somebody had filled in the form wrongly.

“…In court, GSK officials said the report was a mistake and that somebody had filled in the form wrongly…”

Oh well, that explains it all then, doesn’t it… ?

i feel like i’m dead.  or dying.  either way i’m watching Ghost Whisperer trying to get jennifer love hewitt to talk to me.

i desperately need a shower.  but at least i brushed my teeth & changed my undies today.  had a psych appt, so i even got dressed.  he is switching me from paxil to effexor.  hopefully this will work better.  or just work at all.  but that would be better.  he asked me what i’d like him to help me with today.  i told him i just want to feel like a human.

when i go out around other ppl i feel like such an outsider.  really like i’m an observer, not a part of the life going on around me.  all these ppl with their friends & families & lives.  living.  i feel like i’m not a part of any of it.  i don’t belong in this world.  i don’t know where i belong.  i don’t know what’s wrong with me.  i just want to crawl into a hole & stop feeling anything.  i want to die.  i fantasize about slicing my arms open.  i also fantasize about setting certain people on fire.  we’ll see. (nah, i’m not gonna kill anyone.)

i’ve hunted up some p/t jobs to apply for.  hopefully something will come through soon.

e. is being very good about it all.  i’m very lucky to have such wonderful & supportive friends & family.  i could easily be living on da skreets these days.