Shoe: I would hate to see a law passed where one size fits all.
Yes. I am as opposed to forced non-medication as I am to forced medication and this is because it does not allow an individual to determine what works best for them.
You know what I would appreciate is an honest discourse on medication because the truth is that some people identify it as helpful, some people identify it as harmful, many identify it as a bit of both.
- The truth is that there are many tools, most people find they need to draw on a variety of them and what they actually are will vary by individual.
- The truth is that no one should have to apologize for finding a tool that helps them.
- The distortion of that truth is to say that people who don't find medication to be helpful are suffering from a different form of mental illness called anosognosia.
- The distortion of that truth is to say that it's wrong to kill but it's not wrong to kill a schizophrenic.
- The distortion of that truth is to say that schizophrenia or psychosis is purely a biological affliction.
- The distortion of that truth is to say that people never recover without medication, that everyone must make use of it and that those who don't must have it forced upon them for their own good.
Even statements like this one are a distortion...
Quote:
My brother, Harry, was afflicted with schizophrenia in 1969 at 27, during his last year at the University of Saskatchewan. A natural leader and elite athlete, Harry was a winner. Harry did not take medication because it made him ill (groggy).
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Groggy? We're talking 1969 which means we're talking first generation atypicals like Haloperidol and Thorazine with a well-established history of severe neurological side effects including the popularized notion of the
Thorazine Shuffle. When these drugs were marketed, they were actually done so under the idiom that they were the equivalent of a chemical lobotomy. Could we ever talk about the possibility that maybe Harry's pills made him
more than groggy? That maybe they made things worse for Harry than what he was already dealing with?
We're now up to second generation and even, third-generation anti-psychotics and initially, these were promoted as being so much better than the first generation with their history of neurological damage and dysfunction. But that was a distortion of truth too because we now know that they cause diabetes and strokes and sudden cardiac arrest and a host of other tagalong detriments. In spite of which, some people find them to be beneficial and some people find the risks to be acceptable. But who should be making that risk/benefit assessment? I say, the individual should. And if the individual isn't allowed to make that choice and instead, society makes it for them, and those people die or are damaged as a result of their forced treatment... we can no longer call it compassionate care and instead must acknowledge that it is capital punishment for a crime they did not commit.
I'm opposed to killing anybody, including schizophrenics.