Drug Centric Model

[zhenka11230]

I've been reading books like Anatomy of Epidemic and The Myth of the Chemical cure (both great).

 

The Drug-Centric model was particularly paradigm shifting for me.  Basically the idea is that psychiatric drugs are just psychoactive substances like any other drugs.  They don't correct "imbalances" but simply change how you think, feel, behave in ways that you may find helps with whatever life-conditions or illnesses you may have (or not).  

 

We can't deduce that just because drug acts on neurotransmitter X, deficiency in X is the problem.  For example taking a pain killer does not cure the cause of pain, it simply has side-effects that we want.  Viewing psychiatric drugs as treating underlying problems as opposed to having wanted side-effects is called the Disease Centric Model.  Obviously Big Pharma wants us to see it this way.

 

This way of seeing it made everything make sense.  We were sold the idea that we were treating diseases while instead we were misled into becoming drug addicts.  I am sure heroin addicts also had beneficial side-effects at first...  Then brain addopts, gets damaged and all hell breaks loose as it did with us.

[Cassie]

All illegal drugs were once legal medicine...including heroin.

 

Anatomy of an Epidemic is a great book - I'll have to check out the other one. Thanks!

 

I remember reading in Anatomy of an Epidemic that when they actually measured serotonin levels in depressed people's brains, they were all over the place. Some were low, some were high and most were in the average range.