Please visit http://pills.cf.huffingtonpost.com/
"There's Elavil and Thorazine and Lithium and Mellaril
Abilify and Topamax and Loxitane and Tofranil..."
Tom Lehrer famously set the periodic table of elements to the tune of
the famous "Modern Major General Song" from Gilbert & Sullivan's Pirates
of Penzance. Now, Millie Niss has produced a version of the song
listing psychotropic drugs... The site
http://pills.cf.huffingtonpost.com/ contains a music video based on this
song (directed by Millie Niss, starring Elana Shneyer, music performed
by Michael Szpakowski), links to a Flash application which plays the
song and displays the lyrics, and a Flash-based interactive database
giving information on the pills mentioned in the song.
Please pass the link on to anyone who wants a laugh or is seriously
concerned about the extent to which contemporary society turns to
mind-altering drugs to solve all its ills... The site will also be of
interest to mental health consumers who rely on these drugs to treat
their illnesses, as it gives factual information and true stories about
a large variety of psychiatric drugs.
The site does not condemn psychiatric medication as such -- the site's
creator has benefited from some of these drugs in a modest way and she
knows many others who lead fuller lives thanks to antidepressants or
antipsychotics. But she has also witnessed dangerous overuse and misuse
of psychotropic medications, which can exacerbate mental illness and
cause life-threatening medical problems.
Referring to a mood stabilizer which worsened a close friend's severe
diabetes, her endocrinologist said "You can be stable in your grave!"
Another friend got good results from years of Lithium treatment, but
now, in her early sixties, she has kidney failure, as well as thyroid
and parathyroid disease which require surgery -- and every specialist
she has seen is convinced that the Lithium caused these medical
conditions. The young woman who acts in the video on the website was
given antidepressants and steroids by doctors who did not communicate
with each other, and she developed psychotic mania and was hospitalized
for a month on a locked psych unit....and she has no family history of
severe mental illness and had no personal experience with it aside from
the kind of painful but common depression which a majority of people
will experience some time in their lives. A friend of a friend died at
age 38 from Lithium toxicity...after years of dangerously high lithium
levels which his doctor failed to notice but which were plainly visible
in his medical records.
These examples are just the tip of the iceberg...medication errors are
now among the most common causes of death in the United States.
Non-life threatening misuse of mild altering drugs has turned our
schools into dispensers of stimulants, has transformed the mental health
professions into mere pill-pushers who do not offer individualized care,
psychological therapy, or support services, and has made a generation of
young adults facing the ordinary challenges of life dependent on
expensive and dangerous chemicals.
Anne Sexton picked up on this trend many years ago in her poem "The
Addict," which opens with a description of Sexton's nightly encounter
with her myriad bottles of pills:
Sleepmonger,
deathmonger,
with capsules in my palms each night,
eight at a time from sweet pharmaceutical bottles
I make arrangements for a pint-sized journey.
I'm the queen of this condition.
I'm an expert on making the trip
and now they say I'm an addict.
Now they ask why...
WHY!
--from "The Addict" by Anne Sexton (1966)
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