Medication Spellbinding

Since the hallmark of medication spellbinding is a lack of appreciation or concern about adverse mental effects, any substance that produces indifference or apathy is highly spellbinding. Patients taking neuroleptics can 

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X. Patients subjected to biopsychiatric interventions often display poor judgment about the positive and negative effects of the treatment on their mental and emotional functioning, often causing intoxication anosognosia (medication spellbinding).4... 

The following four characteristics of medication spellbinding are taken from this author s book Medication Madness (Breggin, in press) ... 

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MEDICATION SPELLBINDING AND IATROGENIC HELPLESSNESS AND DENIAL... 

The concept of medication spellbinding expands or elaborates on the concept of iatrogenic helplessness and denial. It specifically observes that... 

Euphoria is unusual in patients treated with the neuroleptics because of the suppressive effects on the central nervous system (see chapter 2). It is more common among patients treated with antidepressants, stimulants, and benzodiazepine tranquilizers, especially alprazolam. Drug-induced mania is an extreme of medication spellbinding. 

The concept of medication spellbinding occurred to me when I was reviewing a lifetime of clinical and legal cases in the process of writing a new book, Medication Madness... 

The zombie effect is the ultimate manifestation of medication spellbinding as a central aspect of the brain-disabling effects of psychiatric drugs. 

Akathisia can cause extreme iatrogenic helplessness and denial and, ultimately, a dangerous degree of medication spellbinding. 

Van Putten et al. (1974) found that 35% of their patients decompensated after one injection of intramuscular fluphenazine, usually as a result of akathisia. In a striking illustration of medication spellbinding, often even the patient wanted to blame the problem on his or her mental condition ... 

Chapter 2 described and documented the primary lobotomizing or deactivating effect of the neuroleptics. The anosognosia or denial exhibited by so many TD cases probably reflects a permanent deactivation phenomenon as well as a more specific intoxication anosognosia (medication spellbinding). 

All of the neuroleptics are profoundly medication spellbinding (chapter 1), rendering the user unable to perceive the damage being done to his or her brain, mind, and body. Because of this, the neuroleptics readily lend themselves to the creation of iatrogenic denial and helplessness, in which the doctor uses drug-induced brain damage and dysfunction to produce a more docile, less troublesome patient. 

Garland and Baerg (2001) described cases of apathy, one accompanied by disinhibition, in a child and four adolescents. A 14-year-old boy on paroxetine became so flat that his face became masklike, similar to parkinsonism, but without any other signs of that disorder. His parents and the clinician were concerned about his loss of interest, but typical of severe medication spellbinding, the patient was quite satisfied with his life and did not recognize a problem. ... 

A 14-year old boy taking fluoxetine again demonstrated medication spellbinding (Garland et al., 2001) ... 

The above syndromes, all of which are medication spellbinding, often appear in combination with each other. Often the syndromes will abate within days after stopping the antidepressant, but sometimes they persist, leading to hospitalization and additional treatment over subsequent weeks or months. Reported rates for these syndromes very widely, but each of them appears to be relatively common. They frequently occur in individuals with no prior history of similar problems or behaviors (Breggin, in press). 

Lithium for the treatment of manic episodes or bipolar disorder was originally promoted to the public and to the mental health profession as the ultimate example of a specific biochemical treatment for a specific psychiatric disorder. To bolster this claim, it was said that lithium lacks any brain-disabling effects on either patients or normal volunteers. This view of lithium directly challenges the concept of medication spellbinding and brain-disabling principle of psychiatric treatment. Although a number of new drugs have now been added to the mood stabilizer armamentarium, lithium remains the prototype. 

In keeping with this medication spellbinding effect, normal volunteers on small doses suffer impairments of their reflexes but do not realize or acknowledge the impairment (Linnoila et al., 1974). Lithium patients who report no side effects often have grossly obvious tremors. The failure of patients on maintenance therapy to notice their own neurologic defects clearly demonstrates that long-term treatment with lithium is medication spellbinding. 

What is needed To begin with, mental health professionals, physicians, and the public must become more skeptical, perhaps even cynical, and certainly more sophisticated about what psychiatric drugs and electroshock really do to the brain, mind, and person. Awareness of medication spellbinding and the brain-disabling principles of psychiatric treatment is key to this understanding. Psychiatric drugs do not cure mental disorders. Instead, their primary or essential effect is to cause brain dysfunction and compromise mental and emotional acuity. 

Driven by medication spellbinding, patients frequently fail to identify obvious drug withdrawal reactions, such as an abrupt increase in... 

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