Are Drug Addicts Bipolar?
Although it is still common to label drug addicted persons as “bipolar”, the fact remains that the bipolar label is still just that — a label. It’s not a physical illness by legitimate medical standards and there is no physical test, that can be done on a person, which shows a “chemical imbalance” or “bipolar”.
I’ve heard drug addiction and mental disorders likened to cancer and diabetes. How do those even compare?
What would you think of a doctor that recommended chemo therapy because a patient said they feel bad and they believe they have cancer? You would think the doctor is crazy if he did not first order tests, tests and more tests! And yet, thousands of prescriptions for powerful pharmaceuticals are written daily for people who say they feel unwanted emotions, without any physical tests to determine the cause.
If you have ever been personally diagnosed with bipolar you know first hand that there is no blood test or any physical examination done to determine whether or not you have such a disease.
If you take a minute to read the medical information insert for Seroquel (Quetiapine), a drug regularly prescribed for “bipolar”, you might be surprised to find wording such as, “The mechanism of action of SEROQUEL … is unknown.” Or “It has been proposed…” In other words — in spite of well asserted claims that medications “balance” a “chemical imbalance” — the makers of the drug don’t actually know why the drug does what it does nor do they know how much of each chemical our brain is supposed to have in the first place. What they do know with absolute certainty is the long list of serious and sometimes permanent side effects (or a better term would be “unintended effects”).
A recent article in Newsweek did an excellent job of exposing the fact that in clinical trials, antidepressants performed almost no better than a sugar pill — a placebo. Yet those who were on the medications experienced the side effects you see on the insert or label on the medication. Personally, I would rather take a sugar pill than a medication that did not perform much better but left me hating sex and throwing up.
In the interest of public awareness and good health, I highly recommend this article to anyone considering medications as a solution to drug addiction or emotional difficulties.
