Not mad yet? We’ll help you get there.

Instead of treating us, psychiatrists are opening a path to insanity

The Therapeutic Goods Administration now proposes to make it legal for doctors to prescribe drugs like Psilocybin, a hallucinogenic drug that causes episodes of psychosis exactly like the banned substance LSD (d-lysergic acid.} to treat depression.

Gerry Milner was an excellent old-school psychiatrist originally from the United Kingdom. He was my consultant for a time and told me a story.

In the early 70s, Gerry had a colleague, another psychiatrist, who was working in the city of Birmingham in the UK not far from the city where Gerry worked. This colleague had a large practice, and the draw card was that he was experimenting in treating patients like war veterans with PTSD (Posttraumatic Stress Disorder) using psychedelic drugs, and hallucinogens like LSD.

He had many patients on his books and charged big fees. These drugs were not really legal then, but it was still possible to obtain government authority to prescribe them “experimentally.” He was making good money and boasted to his colleagues like Gerry how successful his treatments were.

One afternoon Gerry, who worked at a mental hospital some distance from Birmingham, got an urgent telephone from this well-to-do psychiatrist begging him to accept a patient at the secure mental facility where Gerry worked.

The psychiatrist claimed that a patient he was treating had gone berserk and the man needed to be locked up for his own safety. Gerry asked him why he could not take his patient to a hospital in Birmingham where he practiced. ‘Oh no!” the wealthy shrink replied. “My reputation will be ruined.”

Gerry waited and after about 30 minutes a blue jaguar appeared in the car park of the hospital. Every window, including the windscreen, was smashed.

Sitting forlornly in the front seat dressed in a suit was the psychiatrist, his head bent down, bleeding profusely from wounds on his scalp and face while leaning out the window was a bearded veteran screaming at the top of his lungs, “For Chrissake help me kill this bastard.”

Gerry never saw his colleague again, but he did become aware that this was the last time this colleague experimented with mind-altering substances like psilocybin.

My own story is no less illustrative. Many years ago I found myself on the tropical Island, Keppel. I was staying there with several friends in a rented cottage. One companion produced a quantity of LSD, a psychedelic drug and wondered if I was interested in trying it. Having heard so much about it and its properties I was anxious to experience its effects firsthand.  My companion offered me a small square of blotting paper which she insisted contained a small quantity of the drug dissolved.

I swallowed it whole and initially felt nothing. We went down to swim in the sea, and it was there I first noticed its effects.  Tropical islands like Keppel are insulated from the surf by coral reefs but to me the waves began to grow larger and larger, and the water raced back out from the shore as if a Tsunami were imminent.

I left the sea and retreated to the bush land but here the effects of the drug became more disturbing and dramatic. I began to suffer severe distortion in all my senses, sight, hearing and even smell. Rainbow lorikeets, relatively small birds hanging upside down from the trees began to appear like giant multicolored condors with huge beaks and claws. Small planes taking off from the island assumed the size of passenger jets with roaring engines.

I became terrified of being left alone and my companions had to watch out for me in case I went off into the forest or dived into the sea. For almost twelve hours I was completely helpless and had to be led around by my companions like a small child. Though hungry I could not tolerate food and as I tried to lie down to sleep I was assailed by horrifying images, uncertain whether these were nightmares or real experiences while awake.

Finally some twelve hours after taking the drug, my mind began to return to normal and I could eat, walk and talk normally.

For many weeks after this event, I would occasionally experience severe almost suicidal depression, but this would only be a matter of hours and pass off spontaneously.

I had experienced the quintessential bad trip which is not uncommon for a lot of those who take psychedelics regularly. I was completely unable to understand how anyone, having gone through my experience, could be induced to take the drug again.

I was not surprised that during the sixties and seventies, when taking these drugs was the fashion, there would be reports of people jumping off buildings or trying to swim across large bodies of water only to drown. I recalled the experience of Gerry Milner’s patient and was not surprised that these drugs had resulted in cases of people killing others in homicidal rage.

There were famous celebrities who took these drugs. The wife of Cary Grant, the famous movie star, suffered a breakdown after taking psychedelic drugs and was admitted to a hospital where her doctor told her that continued use of the drugs would kill her.

It is these drugs that the Therapeutic Goods Authority (TGA) proposes to allow doctors to prescribe. Yet, ironically it is this very body, as I have discussed in an earlier blog, that proposes to deny us the simple pain killer Panadol.  A simple analgesic used effectively since 1893 is restricted while dangerous mid-altering drugs will be approved.

Prominent psychiatrists like Patrick McGorry, Australian of the Year, have spoken out against the TGA the approval to allow Psylocybin and like drugs to be used.

This state of affairs has arisen from pressure from members of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists who propose to allow its members to experiment on war veterans and other patients in order to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

This once hallowed profession of doctors, skilled professionals who led to the world in the treatment of the mentally ill has now descended into the delusion that there is a drug solution for every problem. Every illness of man can be treated with a psychiatric drug. Antidepressants are given for the mildest of depression, and heavy antipsychotics to the intellectually disabled whose behavior is not acceptable to these doctors. Some of these poor patients become so numb they are like zombies.

Those simulants that are overprescribed in young children to modify their attention spans are chemically related to speed and ‘ice’ and their usage in this country is becoming the highest in the world.

It is hardly surprising that this group of doctors now wants to introduce potentially dangerous pharmaceutical treatments to treat conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder and depression because they have lost the capacity to care for these patients in any other way. They have lost ground to psychologists who exploit the NDIS, charging sums in excess of $5000 for reports so that parents can have their children diagnosed with autism or attention deficit, diagnoses children bear for life.

Although this is the subject of another article, these psychiatrists have let War Veterans down, failing to be at the forefront of support and assistance that would reduce the incidence of their suicides. Giving them these dangerous experimental drugs is not the answer. The effects of these drugs are unpredictable so further deaths will result. Note the patient at the beginning of this blog.

The other important point about psychiatrists is that their fees put them completely out of the range of ordinary, poor mentally ill people. The surprising revelation about these psychedelic drugs is the cost. This is scandalous both for these psychiatrists and the drug companies producing them.

Treatments with psychedelic drugs will cost as much as $7,000 per gram. There can be no possible justification for this. Is the Government and therefore the taxpayer expected to fork out for these treatments?

They must be out of their minds and, if they have their way, you will be expected to join them.