Drugs and Your Brain
Psychiatric drugs became part of the top moneymakers for the phar-maceutical industry in the mid-1970s. By then, buying xanax to treat anxiety and depression had been developed. Since then, their use has skyrocketed. According to the new president of the American Psychiatric Association, “Psychiatry’s relationship with drug companies is rife with the appearance of conflict of interest and frankly with conflict of interest itself.”
Breggin and Cohen maintain that some anti-anxiety drugs, such as Prozac, Ritalin, and Xanax, actually cause a chemical imbalance, rather than correct it. Peter R. Breggin, M.D., an expert in psychiatric drugs and their negative effects, says that all the commonly used minor tranquilizers, with the possible exception of BuSpar, are sedatives, or central-nervous-system depressants, and create clinical effects similar to alcohol and barbiturates. Bear in mind that one of the most common side effects of sedatives is depression!
All minor tranquilizers impair physical coordination and mental alertness, which is why it’s dangerous to drive or use other mechanical devices when taking them. Even at low doses these drugs can impact your brain waves on routine EEGs, especially in the frontal lobe of the brain.
Most drugs interact with specific receptors in your brain to produce their effects. This site tells how xanax works. Receptors are structures located on the outside surface of nerve cells. These structures interact with a variety of chemicals, including medications. Think of a chemical as a key and the receptor as a lock. But it’s not quite that simple.
According to Samuel H. Barondes, all psychiatric medications work on the same neurotransmitters-primarily dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Although drug companies would like us to believe psychiatric disorders are the result of an excess or deficiency of these chemicals that can be fixed by taking a medication, the researchers who know how drugs work and how they effect the brain still don’t know how they effect the cause of an anxiety disorder, if in fact they do. Moreover, many psychiatric drugs frequently bind to more than one receptor, and so have more than one effect. Some of these effects can be worse than anxiety.
Medications are not magic bullets. They do not target a receptor upon entering your body, appear magically at their goal, perform. their work, and then disappear. This false notion completely ignores the facts. It is possible that you can take anti-anxiety drugs, feel better, and experience no short-term side effects. Be aware that these drugs have not been tested for long-term use or on the unique individual that is you. (Research results only present averages, not individual responses.)
