HOW PSYCH DRUGS RUINED MY TIME AT UNIVERSITY
I started my degree at Oxford University in 1977. I was a healthy teenager with no body problems, and was enjoying the adventure of academic life in an institution I had worked hard to enter. All went well until I caught a virus in my second year and was medically mismanaged by my GP, who prescribed a drug supposedly to help the debilitating symptom of post-viral vertigo. Except it didn’t as this was a psychiatric drug with the highest Black Box warning for serious side effects. Instead of recovering, I was plunged into a spiral of worsening vertigo, to which was added increased anxiety and a brain so foggy that I struggled to complete the simplest academic tasks. To find out what happened and how I eventually recovered, please read on …
A Predictable Perfect Storm
When I got sick with a mystery virus at Oxford in 1978, it was one of those life-changing events that I look out for nowadays when taking a patient’s case history. The person will invariably tell me they were all right before the event, but have “never quite felt the same since.”
It always comes as a huge shock when you go from having no health problems to debilitatingly sick overnight. Yet, in hindsight, there were significant factors in my case history that predisposed me towards getting sick at some time in the future. These were:
*Having a mouthful of mercury fillings (15+) from primary school age. This definitely impacted my ability to learn and remember information. While I was an A star student, I had to work much harder to remember what I read and spent much time memorising large chunks of information. I would also forget the names of my friends when passing them in the corridor at school. An early sign of Alzheimer’s?Years later, with my amalgams safely removed, reading, is by comparison with those earlier times, effortless (I still have to look up words I don’t know) but my ability to retain knowledge at 67, is much better than it was at 19! Just before getting my mystery virus, my dentist had drilled out all my mercury fillings and replaced them with - more mercury!
*Having two root canal fillings. If you have read my blog Why Are Root Canals So bad? you will know that it is impossible to eradicate all infection from a root canal treated tooth. This is a chronic immune overload. With additional overloads (flu or a virus), local defences break down and infection spreads to distant organs. Along with more mercury amalgams just before getting my mystery virus, I had also received a second root filling.
*Undiagnosed food allergies. Shortly after being born, my skin was so itchy that I was given scratch mitts. A subsequent history of ear, nose and throat problems should have been a major clue to cows’ milk allergy but the penny didn’t drop until I was in my mid-twenties.
*Lack of sleep at university. This wasn’t due to partying or staying up all night writing essays. It was due to a noisy student in the room next door who played rock music every night.
It wasn’t one single trigger, but the combined burden of dental infections, toxic metal exposure, and chronic sleep deprivation that ultimately tipped my body past its threshold and into illness.
Years later, I had a clue to what the mystery virus may have been when I tested positive for Coxsackievirus.
Once acquired, this hit-and-stay virus, which has been associated with M.E., can linger on in tissues, held in check only by a resilient and properly functioning immune system.
Medical Mismanagement
Although blood tests at the time clearly pointed to an infection, there were no tests carried out to find out which virus it was. Despite scientists in The John Richardson Research Group linking Coxsackievirus to many cases of ME/CFS, there is sadly still no test for Coxsackie on the NHS.
Nothing in the NHS approach to viral or post viral illness seems to have changed from the 1970’s. If the viral symptoms haven’t resolved in a few days as you would expect in a traditional acute infection like flu (before Covid), the thinking is still that “it must all be in the mind.”
One GP that I saw accused me of making up symptoms to get out of studying. Another asked me about my relationship with my mother (who had come from Northern Ireland to look after me because she was worried about my health). Yet another wrote me a prescription for a medication which she said would help my vertigo, so severe that I had to hang on to whatever object was close by to stay upright.
Unfortunately, unknown to me at that time, the medication was a class of psychiatric drug - a benzodiazepine. I was so unused to questioning medical things at that time that I took the drug, hoping it would help me stay upright in order to cope with the intensive schedule of an Oxford eight week term.
Worsening Side Effects
Over the following weeks, I experienced an effect called Medical Spellbinding that refers to a condition where the person taking the drug becomes unable to recognise that the drug itself is causing their symptoms. Psychiatrist Dr Peter Breggin outlines these potential effects of benzodiazepines in his excellent article Brain-Disabling Effects of Benzodiazepines available online. The first sentence of this article states, “The benzodiazepines have for several decades been recognised in the literature and clinical practice for their capacity to cause mental and behavioural abnormalities.” I describe the side effects of psychiatric drugs in more depth in my blogs Ten Things You Need To Know About Psychiatric Drugs and The Dangers of Psychiatric Drugs. I have called this dumming-down effect of psychiatric drugs “rape of the soul” in previous blogs.
The specific side effects that I struggled with while trying to get through my degree were:
*Worsening vertigo and impaired coordination - the benzodiazepine was prescribed to help vertigo: paradoxically, it did just the opposite. This is because
benzodiazepines suppress central nervous system activity which slows the brain’s ability to compensate for post-viral vestibular damage, thereby increasing vertigo.
*Severe decline in being able to think clearly. We’d call this “brain fog” now. This stopped me studying as intensively as the curriculum required and I experienced increased difficulty writing essays for my tutor (no computers or AI in those days) that I would have found easy before illness and medication.
*No social life - once the work was done - total exhaustion due to the hypnotic effects of the drug.
*No enthusiasm for planning a future career. I wanted to curl up and rest!
*Weight gain and increased appetite.
*Lack of self-esteem - as my academic performance and wellbeing declined, so did my confidence.
*However, the worst side effect was a progressive emotional blunting which slowly erased the feelings that make life matter - love, joy, happiness, friendship - all gone over a period of months. The full extent of this loss only became clear when I discovered a remedy later on that undid all the damage so I could get my life back.
The Remedy
After struggling to finish my degree (without the cherished First) I wanted to go home and do nothing. My parents wanted me to do a doctorate (something I would love to do now) but at that time I just couldn’t face any more academic work.
Instead of continuing at university, I moved to Devon where I saw a doctor who worked outside the NHS and approached health problems in a different way. This marked a turning point in my road to recovery.
My successful actions included:
*Dietary clean-up - removal of gluten, cows’ milk, refined sugars while eating a real-food Ancestral Diet of the kind I describe elsewhere in blogs.
*Dental clean-up - this came later on with education and a decline in health following the placement of a third root canal. The penny dropped. I had already had mercury amalgams safely replaced. The root canals had to go too. The job was complete with the clearance of infections in old wisdom tooth extraction sites (cavitations). Getting rid of silent jawbone infection did more for post-viral vertigo that any previous intervention.
*Sauna-based Detoxification Programme - this medically supervised sauna-sweat programme allowed me to sweat out the toxic drug residues that had accumulated in my body. Not only psychiatric drugs but medical drugs such as painkillers, anaesthetics and others as well as recreational drugs, pesticides, chemicals and radiation can lodge in the tissues and remain in the body for years. I went through one episode of low blood sugar. I didn’t even realise I had a problem with it. I had other episodes of releasing radiation from former X-rays and an afternoon where I could smell cigar smoke in the sauna (my dad used to smoke cigars in the car all the time when I was a child). By the time I had sweated out all the drug residues, I had also gotten rid of the “wooden” effects of the benzodiazepine and reclaimed my emotions. I got married later that summer. Incidentally, this is the same detox programme that was established near Ground Zero for the firemen who inhaled toxic fumes and dust from the World Trade Centre tragedy of 11th September, 2001.
Just Say No To Psychiatric Drugs
The main message of this blog is Just Say No To Psychiatric Drugs. They suppress symptoms temporarily but never address root causes. They come with a raft of severe side effects that merit the strongest FDA Black Box warning. They are easy to prescribe, but difficult to withdraw from. I compare giving a psychiatric drug to throwing a spanner into the delicate works of a machine.
Therefore, I suggest that you:
*Look for and address the real underlying physical causes of your symptoms and address these one by one. Examples of physical conditions that can cause psychiatric symptoms are thyroid illness, chronic infections, Long Covid, to name a few.
*Insist on Informed Consent, a legal and ethical principle in medicine. It means that a patient has the right to receive clear information about a proposed treatment and understands the risks, benefits, and alternatives so they can make a voluntary decision - including saying no.
Before starting a medication you are entitled to know:
*The diagnosis it is intended to treat
*The type or category of medication
*Whether it is being prescribed off-label (not for its original intended purpose)
*Expected benefits
*Common side effects
*Serious or long-term risks (including Black Box warnings)
*Withdrawal risks
*How long it is intended to be taken
*Alternative treatments (including non-drug treatments)
*What happens if you choose not to take it
Without that discussion, consent is not truly informed.
If you are an adult with decision-making capacity, you have a legal right to decline a psychiatric medication, even if a doctor recommends it.
If you feel your health has been affected by psychiatric drugs and wish to do something about it, please get in touch with the Good Health Clinic on goodhealthclinic@outlook.com to request a free 30 minute Enquiry Call or book an appointment. Please note that an Enquiry call is not a consultation but an exploratory call to see if this is a clinical approach you wish to pursue.To your very good health,
Suzanne Jeffery (Nutritional Medicine Consultant)
M.A.(Oxon), BSc.(NMed), PGCE, GNC, BSEM, MNNA, CNHC
The Good Health Clinic at The Business Centre, 2, Cattedown Road, Plymouth PL4 0EG
Tel no: 07836 552936/ Answer phone: 01752 774755
Disclaimer:
All advice given out by Suzanne Jeffery and the Good Health Clinic is for general guidance and informational purposes only. All advice relating to other health professionals’ advice is for general guidance and information purposes only. Readers are encouraged to confirm the information provided with other sources. Patients and consumers should review the information carefully with their professional health care provider. The information is not intended to replace medical advice offered by other practitioners and physicians. Suzanne Jeffery and the Good Health Clinic will not be liable for any direct, indirect, consequential, special, exemplary or other damages arising therefrom.