Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications.

Abstract

Medication Madness: A Psychiatrist Exposes the Dangers of Mood-Altering Medications . Peter Breggin. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2008, 400 pp., $26.95 (hardcover). Quite arguably, everybody knows what to expect from Peter Breggin. He'll detail the extensive risks of psychiatric drugs and expose the drug company research in which these risks were revealed. Next, he'll expound upon the subsequent evidence that further substantiates these dangers, and he'll tell of the disturbingly successful machinations of the pharmaceutical juggernaut designed to shape public and professional opinions of stimulants, tranquilizers, antidepressants, and neuroleptics. And he'll do all of this in spades, perhaps with an ace or two pulled from each sleeve. Readers are hereby advised: With Medication Madness , Breggin delivers as expected. Only the casual reader, however, will likely believe that the author merely meets expectations. Many will recognize that Medication Madness represents an evolution in his thinking and writing. The project began as an effort to update 1991's Toxic Psychiatry , but Breggin shifted focus. Perhaps he'd learned so much in the intervening years that change on the molecular level was inevitable. Whatever the case, with Medication Madness, Breggin impressively integrates upwards of 50 case histories and assessments from his legal work with the critique-related material with which so many are familiar. Throughout, and especially at the end, he also blends in a touch of philosophy-his own, of course. In doing all of this, he has produced not Toxic Psychiatry 2, by whatever name, but a new, though certainly recognizable, creature. While integration is a key to the book's effective structure, the emphasis throughout is on two elements. One is medication spellbinding, a concept Breggin has been elucidating in earnest in articles and presentations since 2006. Spellbinding, more technically referred to as intoxication anosognosia, refers to one's inability, when intoxicated, to comprehend one's own mental and emotional impairment. The second element so prominently featured here is people. This book is not about drugs, treatment, or the psychopharmaceutical complex as much as it is about people-people who have been harmed, people who have suffered, and, in some cases, people who have healed. Most of the chapters throughout the first two-thirds of Medication Madness prominently feature detailed case histories. The material presented is authentic-not dramatized-and is taken from Breggin's interviews with, and assessments of, the victims as well as from interviews with family members, witnesses, and various collateral sources. He also draws from police reports, medical records, and toxicology and autopsy reports. Thus informed, Breggin takes readers into his consultations, onto the witness stand, and along harrowing journeys of medication spellbinding. We meet 38-year-old Harry, a good husband, good citizen, and good guy. While taking Paxil, he eventually concluded that he needed to kill himself. The best way to accomplish this, he reasoned, was to obtain a gun, and the best way to accomplish that was to run down a cop with his car and steal one. It seemed logical to Harry. We meet Adam, a college-aged kid not too interested in college. He was no troublemaker, though, and his parents believed he'd settle down eventually. He was also prescribed Paxil and robbed nine gas stations, most of which were in his neighborhood, all in broad daylight, and while using the family car. Not unlike Harry, perhaps, this all seemed logical to Adam. We meet Martin. Briefly. This case is fairly short, because Martin jumped off a hotel roof after a short time on Halcion. He wasn't staying at the hotel-perhaps he saw the place and just thought it seemed logical. We meet some children, too. There is Andy, "not quite twelve years old," a sensitive kid to whom life had dealt some early losses, then some Zoloft. …