Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

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While I won't get into how overmedicated our society is, I do believe that marketing and media is responsible for our beliefs that taking a pill will make everything better. It won't. Too many people are prescribed antidepressants and left high and dry. Studying depression and other mood disorders has taught me that combination therapies work best. However, even antidepressants and counseling don't always work. Another common belief is that these therapies will work for all people. They won't. That's why it is important to get to the root of the problem, especially if it is psychological. To the pharma industry, it's big $$$, because people don't want to deal with it. Give me the pill

There had been development of drugs targeted at female sexual dysfunction disorder. If you hadn't heard of this condition, you're not alone. The drugs themselves are not very effective. Still the best solution, according to one of my professors, is to "wine em and dine em." There's a whole other conversation that could be had on this topuc, but I thought i'd share that with you.

Miltown is a sedative, much like Xanax, not an antidepressant. The doctor would have had to have given you something else for depression.    

I don't know why you've decided to make this your call to arms -- after ingnorance around masturbation and pleasure.  "methinks thou dost protest too much.
So if the APA decided to donate 1million $ to the D&R website, you would refuse it I guess because they also receive funding from Pharma.
Aren't we forgetting what's really important here?
How many different options can we provide to help people fight their depression. 
I can't believe how judgmental you are being.
The fact that you could pull yourself up by your biker boots, does not help me one little bit. 

has three fingers that point back to you. Why are you such a crab apple when I express my opinion when there is so much support for what I'm saying against antidepressants. Could it be because you are hooked on your meds? Stop being such a cry baby. Go out and buy yourself biker boots and stand tall. That starts by counting your blessings first thing every morning BEFORE you pop those pills. I'll even hold your hand while you go through withdrawal.

BAD Betty

In America, each person is entitled to his own opinion, but each person is not entitled to his own facts. Bruce Levine isn’t qualified to write this article: Fact is Bruce Levine is a practicing Psychologist Dr. Levine is on the editorial advisory board of the journal Ethical Human Psychology and Psychiatry, and he is an editorial advisor for the Icarus Project/Freedom Center Harm Reduction Guide to Coming off Psychiatric Drugs.

A longtime activist in the mental health treatment reform movement, he is a member of the International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry as well as MindFreedom. Dr. Levine has presented talks and workshops to diverse organizations throughout North America.http://brucelevine.net/

A Whole Book full of Facts based on FDA and Drug Company data: 
Listening to Prozac, but Hearing Placebo

Published on February 20, 2010 by Jonathan Rottenberg, Ph.D. in Charting the Depths. In The Emperor's New Drugs, he absolutely dismantles the case for antidepressants as a
pharmacologically effective treatment.

The data from the FDA shows antidepressants are not more effective than
placebos. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/charting-the-depths/201002/listening... Recent facts about over prescribing antidepressants:

1. Center for Disease Control Oct. 2011 reports: From 1988 to 2008, the rate of antidepressant use in the United States among all ages increased nearly 400% (1). 50% of people taking multiple antidepressants have not seen a mental health professional in over one year.

About half of all anti depressants are prescribed by internists, not trained therapists. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db76.htm

2. The Overprescription of Antidepressants Has Become Simply Ridiculous

New data on the overprescription of antidepressants Published on February 28, 2011 by Jonathan Rottenberg, Ph.D. in Charting the Depths

The survey found that antidepressants were routinely prescribed to people who had no history of *any* psychiatric diagnosis. That mean no history of depression for sure, but it also means no history of diagnosable anxiety, eating disorder, or any of the usual conditions that antidepressants might legitimately be prescribed. Hence, I conclude that in the United States, at least, the overprescription of antidepressants has reached ridiculous proportions.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/charting-the-depths/201102/the-overp...

3. Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy

In the 1970’s ,like many psychiatrists, Dr. Levin treated 50 to 60 patients in once- or
twice-weekly talk-therapy sessions of 45 minutes each. Now, like many of his peers, he treats 1,200 people in mostly 15-minute visits for prescription adjustments that are sometimes months apart. Then, he knew his patients’ inner lives better than he knew his wife’s; now, he often cannot remember their names. Then, his goal was to help his patients become happy and fulfilled; now, it is just to keep them functional. Cause: Insurance companies won’t reimburse talk therapy beyond a 15 minute consultation time so psychologists switched to drug therapy.

no problem. i do as you say every morning.
even have very cool biker boots -- you know that.
i think, and i don't know why, you are hell bent on dismissing the heaviness of real depression and making a case for non pharm intervention. if you, if i, could do without my meds, trust me, i would. do you really think anyone wants meds? and again is pot  not a rx. soon it will be big pharm too.
i'm just one of the lucky ones for whom rx really works and when i had sex, and if i ever have sex again, i had very little trouble and eventually no trouble with orgam or libido.
again, why is this your mission?
should i just get out my vibe every morning instead of my vitamins/meds?
o g i know where this is going.
just try opting out.
this is not your conversation.

The thing about a psychology degree is that it isn't a medical degree. The fact that he is a psychologist doesn't AT ALL qualify him to talk about chemistry, brain chemistry and so on. There is virtually no hard science required for a psychology degree. He might not ever have gone beyond high school science. I'm not knocking psychologists, mind you, but they are not medical doctors and cannot generally prescribe drugs. It's psychiatrists who've studied medicine, medicines, biology, chemistry, biochemistry, that sort of thing. Levine might have spent his whole academic career studying Freud, Jung, Adler, etc. That's great, but it's not the kind of science that would qualify him to make this sort of pronouncement on this subject. 

He might or might not be right, but he has little more authority on the subject than anyone who cobbled together a set of stats; a journalist, say. Sure, as a practicing psychologist, he might have treated many people who were on drugs prescribed by othe people, but that's all anecdotal research, not the sort of double blind peer reviewed science that would "prove" the drugs don't work. The that fact that he's repeating other people's studies impressive, nor does his clinical psychiatry practice lend those studies much weight.
Additionally, much of what he talks about says that ADs are overprescribed, which hardly proves they are ineffective. Apples and oranges. 

how very interesting, i love these heated conversations.

Calling depressed individuals who rely on medication "cry babies" and
characterizing them as ungrateful for their blessings sets advancements
in eliminating the stigma surrounding mental illness back fifty years. 
If sex and alcohol fixed your depression, Betty, then you probably
weren't severely enough depressed to need meds in the first place - which
of course is part of your point.  I do agree with you that
antidepressants (among with a myriad of other medications) are
over-prescribed, lead to dependence, and sometimes do more harm than
good.  I also find the conflict of interest you describe particularly
interesting and unsettling.  But you cannot paint every depressed
individual with the same brush; it's callous, condescending and
contributes to the idea that depressed people all just "have the blues",
could prevent it if they wanted, and should just shake it off - or
drink it off, in your case (which is another way of using a drug, of
sorts, to cope with your situation, I might point out).

changed my life, lifted my spirits and gave me the courage to take more risks. In my experience, alcohol was a depressant. However, changing my diet, embracing yoga and giving myself permission to have sex on my terms is what turned my life around. Today I cannot smoke pot like I used to thanks to my COPD from years of smoking cigarettes. I use a tincture instead. Mostly I see marijuana as a friend and I'd rather have a drop or two of tincture before going to bed than a couple of Advil PM or the other crap they promote like Ambien or Lunestra. I just think big pharama is out of control and needs to be reigned in. Doctors are not gods. I find it difficult to trust any of them and primarily I rely on my own good horse sense. Look, I've made it to 83 in relative good health so I must be doing somethig right.

Betty:  First Carlin with her blog entry about Palestine (yes, I am Jewish and I lived in Israel for a time) and now you with your diatribe on the efficacy of antidepressant therapy - PLEASE STICK WITH MASTURBATION!  Neither you nor Dr. Levine are qualified to make such blanket statements as though they're based in researched and factual data.  I, for one, have benefited tremendously from antidepressants in my life.  And one reason I'm not helpless, hopeless, passive, bored or fearful and isolated is the great results I've attained from using antidepressants!  

Libido is effected by depression and anti depressants. Betty has just said she thinks anti depressants are over prescribed. So STOP SHOUTING YOUR RIDICULOUS DEMANDS!!!!! (no-one who means it shouts the word please) No wonder the peace initiatives in the middle east are largely female if being male means you feel entitled to take such an attitude.  Anti depressants do sometimes effect libido so are pertinant to sexual function. But they don't have to be, it's just how this subject arises here sometimes. Sexual well being and health are inextricably linked. And there's nothing wrong with disagreeing with Betty but you don't need to do it in a way that is bossy, ignorant and condiscending to both D&R. This site is about sexuality, not just about your ridiculous notion of female masturbation in isolation. This isn't your website and your not the only user.  

I'm sure you knew this was the sort of post that would get people going, Betty. I think it's wonderful that you are talking about this, and I think everyone should talk about it and continue to debate it in this heated fashion. My 2 cents is a very personal anecdote, and not meant to be a story that represents the entire population. I do believe that medication is over-prescribed, and rarely works the way it is supposed to. However:

As a child and teenager, I suffered from crippling anxiety. And I do be crippling, I don't even really know how to describe it to people other than to say that it was so bad that I often questioned continuing my life. My mother and father both claim I was born that way, that they could tell I was anxious even as an infant. I'm sure the argument could be made that they were, in fact, the ones who were anxious and thus caused me to have these problems, rather than a chemical imbalance. I'm sure that argument is valid.

But I can also tell you that when I started taking Paxil at the age of 14, the positive effects on me were immediate and life changing. By the time I was 18, I had almost completely eliminated the anxiety that had, up until that point, ruined my life. I was finally comfortable in my own skin. Truly happy for the first time in my 18 years. Nobody should ever have to feel the way I felt, and all I can tell you is that if you have never felt that way then you really have no idea what it's like. It's terrible, and dark, and scary, and you can't make it stop. No amount of diet changes, therapy, exercise or love made a difference to me. Antidepressants did.

So yes, I am now dependent on a drug for my happiness. It's not the most preferable outcome, but it's a lot better than death or feeling like I needed to kill myself because life wasn't worth living. I don't ever tell people that they should go on antidepressants because it will "fix" them, like it did me. But I do ask people not to judge me for my decision to be dependent on them for happiness.

Carlisleorama,
Yours is a very interesting story. Thank you for sharing that. Have you ever tried to come off the meds to see if things are different for you now? 

Um, Anonymous:
Really, dude/ette?  Are you really gonna have the brass balls/tits to ask Carlisleorama that fucking question after she told you of her truly heartfelt, positive story?  Do you ask people with high blood pressure, diabetes, etc.  those same questions?  Would you....?  Can't you respect that this woman's ALIVE TODAY because of the medication?
-Faith.

I have never intentionally tried life without the meds. I was once on vacation in Hawaii and was having so much fun I forgot to take it a couple of days in a row, and then had a really bad anxiety attack during a surfing lesson. Of course, that's the sort of situation where an anxiety attack would make sense, with or without antidepressants. But it felt a lot like how I used to felt, terrified for no real reason I could put my finger on. It wasn't like I was afraid of drowning or hurting myself... more like a some vague fear of the vastness of the ocean, or something like that.
Point is, I don't really see any reason to try and get off the meds, or try life without, when I can so clearly remember what it was like without them. It's not something I want to take a chance on.

Dr Levine does ask some useful out of the box questions.  For instance,  WHY is it then that all this depression came out of the woodwork when historically it was never this bad?  No matter how qualified you appear with your brain chemistry ideas,  you are patting your self on the back a little too hard to say that THIS MANY Americans in THIS ERA are depressed and it is all because we just had not been diagnosing it well enough in the past and here are the drugs to fix it.  No one denies that:

Depression exists.
The pills work for some. They should take them.
Sometimes brains don't work right. No one should deny that.

The interesting question is:  What kept this MANY Americans from killing themselves in the past 200 years?

I think the answer is that clearly the pills are overprescribed because our culture is screwed up and that people are not good at coping skills,  standing up for themselves,  and just being allowed to have a bad day now and then without needing to fix it! A little Nietzche now and then would do a lot of people a lot of good.  OUR culture is HORRIBLE at even acknowledging that we all have a dark side,  a scary side,  that considers suicide without actually doing it,  or that 'lusts after all manner of wickedness' without actually doing it (or even doing it now and then).  That can be healthy,  especially if it causes us to re-assess our lives and personal values.

The other issue I respect Betty greatly for is that she always tries to side on the anarchistic side of humanity. Humans are actually very compliant, sometimes to a fault. And it is one of psychology/psychiatry's greatest flaws is that it by it's very nature tends to beat the status quo into you with a club,  and we should ALL be questioning the status quo. I mean if someone calls you crazy or nuts,  what does that imply?  That their way is the ONLY WAY and all humans can be categorized by how COMPLIANT they are with the status quo.  One of psych's greatest failures is the way they had to be protested before they could even accept homosexuality as not crazy.  They, ahem, didn't figure that out on their own, did they?  So much for "unbiased" science.

Of course,  if I ever get depressed and actually NEED medications I am going to catch all sorts of hell. 

Faith,

Your reaction to my post is very irrational. It seems to me like you're projecting heavily on me. I never suggested, in context or tone, that I don't respect her choice to take antidepressants. I'd like to point out to you that you are speaking to someone that has been on Prozac for the better part of six years.

But aside from that, your reasoning is actually dangerous. If we don't question the idea that we can't live without it, we will stop seriously researching the options and will never get to the the heart of the matter that could eliminate the disease. I'm obviously not talking just about individuals, but as a society. And as a society, this is *exactly* what has happened. 

And fact is that just because we need medication at one time in our lives doesn't mean that we will need it always. Life changes and people change with it. It is possible to overcome depression and anxiety and live medicine free even though at one point in our lives, we couldn't have lived without it.

If we can't, than we can't and I have no criticism to that, and neither did my question above. But it is important to stop and ask yourself and others. If we don't, we won't make progress on the matter. 

(Obviously diabetes is a completely different condition, the comparison is ridiqulous. And yes, I would say it to a person with high blood preassure since it is a condition that may need to be medicated sometimes, but not necessarily always and forever. It very much relies on the conditions under which we live. But it's a moot point here.)

While I have strong questions about the over/hyper-medicating of our society, and respect the questioning of them, I am deeply concerned and troubled that medications for mental illnesses are singled out for focus.  I am also deeply troubled by the lack of respect and compasssion for the varied issues of mental illness.  Why my questioning and comparison of high blood pressure and diabetes ridiculous?  Is it because it is a part of the body, and can be (possibly) seen?  The same might (can) be said for those as well if we were really pressed, but the respect for the need to take those medications (as necessary) are there.   There are other medications for other physical ailments that are overprescribed and do not do so well for other people.  Maybe we can focus on them too... It is great that we question the over/hyper-medicating of our society, and we need to do reasearch, but let us focus on what we can do in the here and now to keep ourselves alive.  As an aside, I was on Lexapro for 3-4 years before I got off, and I did not need it (for now) anymore, but I respect the people for whom this is a different case.

-Thank you.

Carlisleorama, I wrote a big reply to you that doesn't seem to have come through. That happens here sometimes, regardless of context, and it's annoying.........................................

I think the answer is that clearly the pills are overprescribed because our culture is screwed up and that people are not good at coping skills,  standing up for themselves,  and just being allowed to have a bad day now and then without needing to fix it!

OUR culture is HORRIBLE at even acknowledging that we all have a dark side,  a scary side,  that considers suicide without actually doing it,  or that 'lusts after all manner of wickedness' without actually doing it (or even doing it now and then).  That can be healthy,  especially if it causes us to re-assess our lives and personal values."

Those might all be causes, but they existed just as well 200 years ago, if not even more so. I think the answer is, we don't have to work as much (especially physically), have more time to brood and we live life as separated from other human beings, which we are not meant to do. In older days, communities were smaller and tighter and living was harder. This for good and worse, but it also meant that every individual was of high importance to the group, community or family. Even as there were increadible class differences, you could always take pride and self esteem in doing a day's work.

I also hear that some people have their diabetes cured by going on a healthier diet.  That is where I got the comparison from.  Why the pressing to live "drug-free" when it is "just" emotions that are involved?  I'll say that depression, like any other disease is treatable and has to be monitored.  I notice there is a medication on a commercial for psoriasis, and the effects for some people can be severe.  Do we focus on getting them "drug-free" as well?
-Faith

Last night I posted a long answer to Faith's latest post. Like quite a few times before, my post simply vanished, or failed to show up in the commenting section. It's obvious this happens no matter what the context of the post is, so I know it's not censorship. I am so sick of putting lots of  my energy into writing posts to just have them disappear. It happens at lease once in five posts!!
As well as this, when you preview your post, formating code comes up, which you than have to sit and delete over and over again.
I suggest D&R solves their technical problems with the commenting section. 

And to Faith - you really need to get your facts straight. Depression is treatable, but not by medication. Medication might help you deal with it better, but it doesn't solve the condition and it doesn't erase the negative feelings you have. They only take the edge off.
And there is not enough research on these drugs, which essentially mess with your brain chemistry, which we don't know enough about, either. Go research. So there's heavy medical arguments as to why you should try to live without them.
Again, to compare psoriasis and depression is insane! And Yes, I'm sure I'd recommend coming off those meds if the side effects are too severe. And yes, when drugs have questionable effects, people tend to question them. And no, diabetes is incurable. A good diet can only make it more managable. 

This was the short version of my previous post, but I'm not going to sit and write for another hour.

And Carlisleorama: what I wanted to say in my other post that disappeared was that the situation you describe could very likely have induced the anxiety attac, but especially the fact that you went cold turkey with the meds.
And just because you have a clear memory of how it was, doesn't mean that it will always be that way. We grow and change over time. It is possible to overcome depression and anxiety. Love and nurture yourself and keep an open mind. 

Faith..

...I agree with EVERY FREAKIN' WORD you said...but...I am STILL troubled with I am deeply concerned and troubled that medications for mental illnesses
are singled out for focus.  I am also deeply troubled by the lack of
respect and compasssion for the varied issues of mental illness.   Is it because it's "all in your mind,"  and that some people should "just get over it," that some people have that attitude?
-Faith.

I tried to post this before and it also never made it through to being published.  Ad ministratos: Please look into your technical issues with comments! Contributors: If you are about to comment on the site I recommend you save a draft of your comment in your email or on your computer because it seems like there's a 50/50 chance it will actually make it through.  It is frustrating to spend time contributing your opinion or advice and for it to be wasted.  Here was my original comment:

Why I believe Antidepressants Don't Work was NOT my title. That was Carlin's idea because she loves controversy.  So do I to a degree. But now, what do I have to do to calm down Faith and anonymous over their upset about the title rather than the content of my post.

I do have some experience with depression. . not mine, but a lover. When Grant and I first met in 1965, his therapist had him on every upper and downer known to medicine. I held his hand and his cock through several months of an awful phase of quitting cold turkey. (Not a good idea). And yes, there were times he considered suicide but didn't go thru with it. When his depression lifted, we went on to have an incredible 5 year love affair that turned into 45 year friendship. He was enraged when he later researched what his psychiatrist had him on and I agreed.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if some sexual topic got this much action? Seems people prefer to discuss illness and meds. Is it because they've had more experience with meds than sexual pleasure and feel more at home being critical rather than constructive or inspirational?