If someone finds alcohol to help relieve social anxiety at parties, that does not mean alcohol is nontoxic. If an SSRI helps one to subjectively feel “better”, that does not mean that the drug is actually curing a bodily pathology (until proven it does), and that the drug does not have potentially undesirable side effects. Chemical imbalance theory I understand as being thoroughly debunked which the book Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker explains about in detail. That is my understanding of Szaszian logic regarding psychiatric drugs – if a psychiatric drug is actually curing a bodily pathology, then it would not be a psychiatric drug, it would be neurological drug if the drug treats an objectively demonstrated neurological pathology.
Some feel SSRI’s help them detach from/dampen their feelings, this may be desirable for some. Some feel that psychiatric drugs are helpful for their own personal reasons. If you feel psychiatric drugs are helpful to you, I am happy for you (for whatever reason you feel they might be helpful to you). Many individuals have extremely bad experiences on psychiatric drugs, and do not find psychiatric drugs to be helpful. Both Szasz and I believe that voluntary psychiatry should remain legal. Both Szasz and I are opposed to psychiatric coercion and nonconsensual psychiatry. Just because some people seem to find SSRI’s helpful, does not mean that it is ethically or morally OK to force them on any adult.
Psychiatric disorders (mental illnesses) are diseases by fiat (in the sense that there is no proven bodily pathology involved). Psychiatric disorders are not discovered like cancer or tuberculosis; psychiatric labels are voted into existence. Homosexuality was once an official psychiatric disorder, until the official psychiatric diagnosis was officially voted out of existence in about 1973. Regardless of any or all of this, whether you are or are not on any psychiatric drugs, I hope that you find a sustainable path to happiness and inner and outer peace.
If you are on psychiatric drugs, and ever decide to discontinue psychiatric drugs, please do so under the supervision of a prescriber and perhaps consider a hyperbolic (super slow) taper down off the drugs. I have read stories of those withdrawing from SSRI’s breaking the capsules apart (with their prescribers green light/approval) and counting the little beads of the drugs in order to titrate down slowly over a period of months or years. Books like Anatomy of an Epidemic, describe why there is evidence that a lot of the research related to SSRI’s may be using poor research design methods and questionable statistical analysis.
