Psychiatrists and Spiritual Emergence

As you may know, if you have read this blog in the past, I am a psychiatrist by training.  I no longer practice it.  


Today, I look back on all the psychiatrists I have ever known......in training, colleagues, people I became friends with, etc---all of them.


We are strange birds.  Even Grof.  We are a varied and unusual lot.  We kill ourselves often.  We have the highest suicide rate in all the specialties of medicine.  I have never met a psychiatrist that did not strike me as very "other."  The older crowd in Psychiatry still believes in some of what they say.....they believe in the "diseases" that the profession invented and "treats."  


I do not believe that "psychiatric disorders" are diseases (despite what was drummed into my head for 4 years in residency), be they proposed to be caused by genetics, or environmental toxins or "schizophrenogenic mothers."  


     There is not one shred of evidence to show--for example, with a blood test, or with other technical analyses we use in the rest of the medical field, or a brain scan, that can diagnose or really even corroborate a psychiatric diagnosis.  In Med school, they actually teach the prospective psychiatrist, "you are normal! When the patient's beliefs or behavior significantly differs from your's, THEY are sick."  I'd like to chime in that no one is "normal," --it is just a statistical invention.  Normal is an idea akin to the terms "sane" or "insane," which are legal terms but used regularly in everyday parlance.


Many, if not most or all, people that have  what psychiatry pejoratively labels "psychosis" are actually going through a healing process.  A healing process for the mind and soul.  It might not be pretty, or understandable easily to others, as each of these events is unique to the person it is occurring in.  But, I contend that most, if not all "psychoses" and many "cyclic mood disorders" represent Spiritual Emergence.  


The classic reference book is Spiritual Emergence by Stan and Christina Grof.  It is one of many books now written about the phenomena.  One simple way of putting it re: spiritual emergence, is "we are not just our bodies, we are not just our brains, our brains are not our minds, and the mind and spirit are intertwined."  Eventually, usually via some painful or traumatic event (s), the person--that is, the spirit within the person, begins to show itself to the mind of the brain owner.  The brain owner starts to find out he/she is much more than "they told you," or that s/he ever could have imagined.  It is, by definition, mind-blowing when this occurs.


  Traditional psychiatry views this as "illness" which "must be shut down immediately or they will be like that forever!" 


So, most people get shut down by the system.  They put you through the torture mill--maybe a few times--maybe for life.  Stigma, isolation and emotional pain make the torture drugs they inject people with, like haloperidol et al, all that more horrible.  


But, it never quits.  Shut down or not, the spirit will not be stopped.  It must be assimilated by the brain owner once this process starts---all the new information and ways of learning that the Spiritually Emerging individual is experiencing must be accepted and the person learns how to live with an expanded consciousness.


  New psychiatry must teach this and change the approach of the field if it is to survive and not just be a poison-pushing Big Pharma whore.

Mortal Sin Sells or "Malpractice In Action!"

This article I write as a concerned scientist, and I am a psychiatrist, among other things. I don't watch much TV (none) but when I do I see something so immoral and deceptive, that I finally had to write about it. 

 It is the direct marketing of prescription drugs to the public, via commercials that promise vague solutions for vaguely described problems. Basically, in a commercial for citalopram or some such anti-depressant, it show a woman with a pained look on her face, and someone holding her, and saying "ask your doctor if "KureItAll" is right for you!"

 This started during the fascist Reagan years...got pushed through a Republican dominated House and Senate---so the drug companies knew they'd finally paid enough for a carte blanche. They ran quick 6 week studies to "quickly approve" drugs for treatment for long-term, often for the rest of the patient's life though the drug has never been tested in humans for that long a period. The FDA rubber-stamped these unwaveringly over and over. Also, many existing drugs, especially those whose patents were about to expire, the drug companies ramrodded again quick shoddy studies to "use the drug for other indications." Problem is, most of these drugs do not help the depression at all--it just sedates the client more, and thus turns off the higher functions of the brain. 

 Some horrific and scientifically unsound and immoral abuses include approving neurileptics like Quetiapine or Aripiprazole as first line treatments for Bipolar Disorder! Might as well give them reserpine and wrap them in sheets and spray cold water on them while applying leaches! This is barbaric malpractice of the worst sort--government approved! 

 This type of "new indication" for drugs we know are very toxic, brain-disabling compounds with serious and often PERMANENT side effects, meaning brain damage, movement disorders (your body moves and shakes and you can't control it), Parkinson-like syndrome (like giving someone Parkinson's disease) as the "treatment" for a number of vague mythical "diseases" that are often little more than people emerging from the haze of the lie-matrix that has been presented to us and forced down our throats as "reality." In other words, they are waking up to who they really are, and the shrinks misguidedly shut it down, and consign that person to a life of marginalization, stigma and certain poverty.

Does anyone else see something's wrong here! Natural medicines, phytomedications, and healing plants such as medical cannabis and opium poppies are much much safer and often provide the same or superior relief to many of the so-called "psychiatric disorders." 

Down with big Pharma--those of you with stock, divest for sake of human rights! Those who can, boycott psychiatrists who just write scripts and take no interest in you or your issues--that make no attempt at some sort of at least "supportive therapy." Lastly exercise your right as educated clients/patients to know about ALL POSSIBLE treatments for your disorder, even if it is not yet legal (like psilocybin for cluster headaches and end of life issues.) They may be able to get into a study of these natural non-toxic plant-derived compounds.

The times, they are-a-changin'---let's all push back at those in control and take back our rights!

Andre S. Lange, MD

Sacramento 

A Real Hero Of Mine Passes this from Shady Backflash, info allegedly from Phil Lesh

Shady Backflash 

allegedly from phil lesh:

Fare thee well, Bear Karma: 8
#921 5 minutes ago
A Beautiful Mind

I received a text in the middle of last night that Bear Stanley has died in a car accident in Australia. Bear, for me, was a true kindred spirit; when we first met, it was as if I had met a long-lost brother from another lifetime. I am heartbroken and devastated at his passing.

He was a friend, a brother, an inspiration, and our patron at the very beginning of our creative lives. We owe him more than what can be counted or added up- his was a mind that refused to accept limits, and he reinforced in us that striving for the infinite, the refusal to accept the status quo, that has informed so much of our work.

He never gave up his quest for pushing the limits of whatever he was working on. We had just been discussing his concept of point-source sound reinforcement in relation to a new project of mine, and his vision incorporated the latest developments in technology and perceptual research.

My heart goes out to his family, for whom he had such love and pride- his wife Sheilah, his children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren- who have lost their patriarch.

A mind like Bear’s appears very rarely, and it’s been my privilege and honor to have known and lovedtwo such minds- Jerry and Bear. I always laugh when I think about what Jerry once said about Bear: There’s nothing wrong with Bear that several billion fewer brain cells wouldn't fix.

I am eternally grateful for all of the gifts that Bear brought to the scene and to the music.
Fare you well; I love you more than words can tell.

- Phil

15 hours ago ·  ·  1 person

Excellent Article about the Abuses of Big Pharma and It's Favorite Destructive Bedfellow, Psychiatry.

When Daniel Carlat, a psychiatrist in Massachusetts, was flown to New York with his wife by Wyeth, the “training” weekend he attended in a luxury hotel was topped off with a Broadway show. It was early 2001 and he had just agreed to the US pharmaceuticals company’s proposal that he give talks to doctors about its antidepressant Effexor.


See full article at Citizen's Commission On Human Rights International!  Please consider 
donating to this essential and very worthy cause, Thanks, Dr. Lange

http://www.cchrint.org/2011/03/09/a-sugared-pill/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter