We have all heard of the chemical imbalance theory. This so-called theory has been around for years. I was told I had a chemical imbalance at age 14 inpatient in 1989. People will be told this if they are diagnosed today.
I questioned this theory when I was a teen through sheer disbelief. Later I wondered if it might be true. When I realized years had passed since I had had depression, anxiety, mania, voices and delusions despite the prognosis that said I would suffer all my life I knew there was something wrong with that chemical imbalance theory.
At the age of 32 my skepticism and indignation overcame my fears and I asked my GP if I could take the chemical imbalance tests. I wanted to see on paper if I still had a chemical imbalance. Asking her to order the bloodwork and testing for depression and bipolar entailed telling her my long secret psychiatric history. I had no fear of the results. I knew I was cured of Bipolar. I just wanted proof. I wanted to be undiagnosed.
My wonderful doctor returned my call and she informed me there were no lab tests for depression or bipolar. I was flabbergasted and righteously upset. How the hell did the pdocs and my treatment team determine I had had imbalanced chemicals all those years ago?
Answer, they did not know. They flat out lied to me. There was no test to take which proved any balance of any chemicals. I first found out about these lies from the fantastic youtube channel Psychetruth. These two videos, Chemical Imbalance and The Truth about antidepressants and chemical imbalances are excellent primers.
This fact was already well known by psychiatrists. Loren Mosher in his famous resignation letter to the American Psychiatric Association accused his fellow psychiatrists of willingly propagating the chemical imbalance lies despite the fact that it was utterly unproven.
Today I breezed by my friend Gianna’s blog and discovered she had posted an article originally from Healthy Skeptic debunking the chemical imbalance myth.
Healthy Skeptic is run by a guy named Chris Kresser and he has indeed done his homework. This excellent article is a must read for anyone that has ever suffered from depression or depressive illnesses.
Thanks Chris for this information and for your hard work in collating and exposing the realfact versus the pharmaganda.
Hi Jane,
By experience, my husband has learned how to change his bipolar mind. I’m glad to read about your beliefs about chemical imbalance and being able to be healed.
Dave has changed! Hope you’ll look at our websites.
http://www.enjoyingyourhealth.com
http://www.healthytipsforyou.com
Warmly,
Dianne
By: Dianne on August 21, 2008
at 11:17 am
Hi,
I linked to this page after searching google for “bipolar chemical imbalance.” I’m 37, male and have been coming to a crossroads here as I am totally lost and sad. I’ve been “depressed” years or all my life. I was told once in a hospital that I was bipolar and finally just didn’t believe them. I have taken “SSRI’s” and now am on nothing. I feel crazy and out of control, like I can’t control my emotions and will crack any minute.
So, I’m going back into a partial hospitalization day-group, and at the intake, I was extremely upset because I didn’t want to go back. I told her, “maybe I AM bipolar.” She told me (she is a younger therapist) that if you are bipolar, that IS a chemical imbalance. I don’t want to take those bipolar meds, but I don’t want to lose my mind either.
Anyway, thanks for the post.
By: Greg on August 26, 2008
at 6:36 pm
Dianne : Thanks for the links, I did check them out. Congratulations on the work you did with your husband in bringing him back and beating bipolar. Excellent news.
Greg Your comment leaves me concerned for you. I don’t know all the answers man. More important than your chemical imbalance or lack of is your psycho-spiritual state of being. Do you love your life? Why not? Do you love yourself? Why not?
Those are the important questions. If you can genuinely answer yes to both then you will no longer be depressed or bipolar. No med, no therapy can give you that.
You need fulfilling spiritual purpose and you need to follow the calling of your heart and live according to a safe, sane, healthy and balanced lifestyle.
If you gain all that happiness will grow inside you. As long as you live without that you will be in dissonance with reality, with life and with yourself.
Sometimes it takes some people a stint in mental health services or on drugs to realize that psychiatry does not have the answer. They are a system of control and they do not believe that you have a spirit or a soul.
My lack of trust and downright cynical hatred of mental health caregivers in the past biased me and left me to deal with those moments of cracking up and breakdowns on my own.
I have hurt myself and others as a result. You have to live with those consequences too. I’ve also writhed in total madness on the floor of my bedroom, screaming and scratching and pounding things and very grateful for the self imposed privacy I needed to do that.
Otherwise I would have been drugged and restrained out of needed catharsis in mental health services. Sometimes your mind just cracks and stays that way for awhile That is how it goes.
In end you have to do what you have to do. If you are going to crack it might be better to literally drive out into the desert to be alone or out in the woods somewhere. A city, a support group, an institution, unhealthy places to go crazy and be crazy in. In the urge to save you and the public from you they will damage your mind and body and soul.
Maybe that is exactly what you need for awhile. To be damaged and restrained and made helpless and unaccountable. If that is what you want, psychiatric services are there for you, inpatient or out.
By: Jane on August 26, 2008
at 7:39 pm
“Why would I have to go to the North Pole, something, alone, for the possibility to rage quietly, without anyone trying to stop me? (…) And it wouldn’t even do, the North Pole, not alone. It would have to get noticed by someone, to really be efficient.”
I see that with many people. A need to get one’s feelings witnessed and acknowledged by someone, another human being. Guess, that’s partly what drives people into the mental health system. While others, knowing that the mental health system doesn’t do anything but pseudo-witnesses and pseudo-acknowledges through stopping them forcibly, prefer to act out in the street. Where all they get is another form of pseudo-witnessing and pseudo-acknowledging, that mostly sends them straight into the mental health system, anyway.
I also think, that is why alternatives where people are allowed to act out while others do nothing but genuinely witness and acknowledge (Soteria, Diabasis, etc.), have so much better outcomes.
I managed somehow. Acted out as much as I felt was “safe” in front of my therapist, and did the rest at home, alone. The result is, that I still sometimes feel like a volcano (although not nearly as often or intense as before), ready to explode. I hope (and am actually quite sure), that meditation over time will help me overcome the remaining fear and anger issues.
But, geez!, how I wish the system would get this. Instead of explaining away feelings of not being understood as a symptom of a chemical imbalance in people’s brains… (I actually found this listed as a symptom of “schizophrenia” in one or the other Danish publication, mainstream, of course: “Schizophrenics often do not feel understood by their surroundings.” Oh, really?? Gosh!… )
By: Marian on August 27, 2008
at 3:52 am
Thanks Marian for reminding me of the issue of people consciously or unconsciously seeking out attention to witness their states.
It would never occur to me. That is so contrary to my own experience. Madness to me is a healing cathartic time and very very private.
It is like having a psychological bowel movement or reverse peristalsis. It’s like being allowed to scream in mental anguish and pain without receiving unwanted or unneeded false solutions for it.
Institutionalized witnessing is indeed *pseudo*. They don’t care how or why. They *know* it’s syndrome, symptom or disorder. They *know* it’s a chemical imbalance. They *know* it’s just a matter of hit or miss chemical fixes.
In the words of my psychiatrist. Therapy can not even begin until drugs have been in effect for some time. Otherwise, it’s just talking to the disease.
By: Jane on August 27, 2008
at 8:09 am
Sure. It’s so much more rewarding to talk to x mg Abilify & y mg Effexor, something, than to talk to an alive human being with his/her own feelings and thoughts. The Abilify & Effexor are rather unlikely to be oppositional, and they’ll let you talk TO them, without interrupting and disturbing. Nothing’s more annoying than having your train of brilliant thoughts constantly interrupted by completely irrelevant emotional outbursts. These diseases, they just so won’t understand!
Joking apart, I think meditation is the perfect solution, if you haven’t got a safe place to go with people who just accept and support what you’re going through. In meditation you yourself become the witness of your emotions and thoughts, so you don’t need another human being to be there with you. The only trouble with it is, that a lot of people just can’t do it when they’re in acute crisis. Distance themselves from their emotions and thoughts in this way, I mean. And they need to be witnessed and acknowledged, the emotions and thoughts, in one or the other way. Otherwise you end up where you started from: in denial.
By: Marian on August 27, 2008
at 1:31 pm
Thank you, Jane. I respect your opinion, and for whatever reason, I have “linked” to your website – probably we have some of the same thoughts about psychiatry.
I really think I need some type of “mood” stabilizer? I am at the point of almost going to the hospital, but I know that it won’t help. But there is no help other than being clumped in groups with other people who I don’t want to be with. I think I may be worse than I thought I ever could be.
Ultimately, I know that I have to let them help me or, like you said, take my self to the desert and work it out. But, I have thoughts that I could rebel in a sick twisted way inside and basically turn into a vegetable, like rainman.
I’m scared, Jane, but I don’t think you need or even want to hear this. I am seeing my “therapist” tomorrow.
By: Greg on August 27, 2008
at 8:14 pm
Greg: “I really think I need some type of “mood” stabilizer”
Now, I’m neither a professional nor do I have first hand experiences with psych drugs (other than pot and taking a short acting tranquillizer once), but when I read this, I came to think of what it says in the Harm Reduction Guide to Coming Off Psychiatric Drugs : Most professionals tend to prescribe a dosage, that is sometimes several times higher than what would be enough for you to have a satisfying effect. So, when they for instance prescribe you 600mg of lithium/d you might want to try with 100 – 200mg/d, and see, if it’s enough to take the edge off. But I’d be very careful and make sure to get the exact same dosage every day. And beware of reducing or stopping abruptly after you’ve taken a certain amount for some time! Well, I guess, you know about withdrawal, since you’ve tried SSRIs. Check out The Icarus Project. You might find some useful resources and support there, too. And start meditating, if you haven’t yet done that. In the long run, it’s a far more effective “mood stabilizer” than the chemical ones.
Take care!
By: Marian on August 28, 2008
at 2:04 am
Thanks Marion for the advice. Since I already saw the doctor today and am now on something, I’ll have to give it some time. Lamictal.
By: Greg on August 28, 2008
at 6:13 pm
I wish you only the best Greg, good luck with your healing.
By: Jane on August 28, 2008
at 6:24 pm
Just found your blog and loved reading your story of recovery. You inspire me to be more persistent with my own meditation efforts.
You mention a yogic diet; I’m wondering how much that facilitated your recovery. My interest is in nutrients defined commonly–diet, supplements, detox–as well as more broadly. Meditation IS a healing nutrient for mental health as well!
Sue Westwind
http://www.thenutrientpath.wordpress.com
By: Sue Westwind on August 29, 2008
at 10:15 am
Thanks for your visit Sue.
I am a great amount of respect for understanding and practicing good nutrition habits and in experimenting on one’s self to find out.
As a result I tend to levy an analytical and skeptical eye towards many of the claims and cures in that arena.
Nutritional wellness played a solid role in my recovery. Making my body a healthier organism to inhabit made my life better.
The discovery that I walking around mildly dehydrated all the time and finding a healthy internal water balance was a huge advance in wellness.
Nevertheless there is some solid mental work that occurs in meditation that does not occur spontaneously as a result of eating supplement X.
Learning how to remove emotional triggers, slowing my mind and gaining self love were all things that were done by using consciousness and intention based mind training.
In the end, a positive self esteem, self love, relaxation and high energy can sustain you and keep you balanced even through short periods of less than optimal nutritional wellness or high stress.
By: Jane on September 1, 2008
at 4:49 pm
[...] illness, pharmaceuticals, psychiatry, psychology, treatment From Bipolar Recovery, the post Chemical imbalance lies At the age of 32 my skepticism and indignation overcame my fears and I asked my GP if I could take [...]
By: Chemical Imbalance Issues Syndrome (CIIS) « Mental Dimensions on October 15, 2008
at 10:07 am