WITHDRAWAL CAN START WITH SHAKING AND SHIVERING, BUT IT MAY LEAD TO
VIOLENCE AND MURDER.
We know psychiatric drugs can cause violent urges when people are on them. But what happens when they enter the harrowing state of withdrawal?
The public is largely unaware that withdrawing from psychiatric drugs can lead to serious psychiatric symptoms. In fact, the withdrawal period is one of the most risky times of violence toward oneself or others. Take the so-called “Batman” shooter in Colorado. He killed 12 people and wounded 70 at a crowded movie theater while withdrawing from Zoloft.
Study after study demonstrates that violence is one of the symptoms of withdrawal from psychiatric drugs, yet psychiatrists mislead the public by denying that their drugs are addictive. Instead, they cite a made-up condition called “Discontinuation Syndrome,” brazenly claiming that withdrawal symptoms are only signs that the person had been doing well on their drug and needs to get back on it.
But it’s all just a big lie. Psychiatric drugs can be very hard to quit.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration has put one class of these drugs—stimulants such as Ritalin, Adderall and Vyvanse—on its Schedule II list. This is the same category of drugs with a high potential for abuse and dependence as opium, morphine and OxyContin.
On another class of psychiatric drugs, antidepressants, withdrawal afflicts as many as four out of five takers—a potential 85 million people. And the mean length of the withdrawal process is nearly two years—per drug. And the dirtiest secret of all: the same psychiatrists putting you on a psychiatric drug rarely know how to get you off.
