IN SPITE OF BIG PHARMA –
May 3, 2024 – When I was able to fully grasp the situation I was in, a feeling of overwhelming panic immediately set in. It was not a desperate need for narcotics I felt, but exclusively the fear of not having access to my Lyrica and Zyprexa, the immediate cessation of which I had come to fear more than death itself. It was May 21st, 2019, when I woke up in a strange hotel-like room drenched in sweat, fully clothed with a winter jacket on and feeling absolutely terrible. Next to me on the nightstand were six plates of food wrapped in cellophane and above me stood a massive, muscular Nigerian man named Henry…
I first went to a psychiatrist in 2008 as the transition from being a university student to an adult life had proved quite overwhelming for me and resulted in feelings of anxiety and depression. What I needed was metacognitive therapy and a mentor, but the cult of psychiatry was insistent that the solution to all my problems could be found in psychiatric drugs alongside made-up diseases and labels. I tried many of their useless so-called “medicines,” but in 2011 I ultimately ended up on Lyrica and Zyprexa alongside nine diagnoses. I was told that these drugs had the same dependence profile as ibuprofen (that is, none), and so I figured, “Well, it can’t hurt.”
