IMPORTANT FACTS

1. Faced with the stress of fame and relationships that are always in the limelight, artists have been prescribed psychotropic drugs as a �quick fix� solution. For many it has been perilous and, tragically, led to death.

2. Producer Don Simpson, singer Chuck Negron (Three Dog Night), actor and comedian Eric Douglas, were all victims of failed psychiatric drug rehab programs that hooked them on psychiatric drugs and, ultimately, in the case of Simpsons and Douglas, led to their deaths. INXS lead singer, Michael Hutchence, was also a victim.

3. In 2004, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a public warning about psychiatry�s latest antidepressants causing suicidal and hostile effects. These are drugs that have been inadvertently promoted in films and television series, unwittingly ensuring a deepening psychotropic drug culture.

The antipsychotic drugs [or major tranquilizers] have also been exposed for causing poor concentration, emotional dullness, sexual dysfunction, leaking breasts, blood disorders and life-threatening diabetes.

CHAPTER FIVE Psychiatric Drugs Create Harm

In his 1932 novel Brave New World , Aldous Huxley tells of a �utopian� but totalitarian society controlled by drugs: �And the dictator � will do well to encourage � the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.�

Today, with the increasing prescription of mind-altering drugs, Huxley�s Brave New World is all too real.

As author Donald Spoto wrote in A Passion for Life, �Pills, shots, amphetamines, barbiturates�it was the arsenal of the good life, a sign of a busy and glamorous schedule, a regimen almost as popular as frequent visits to therapists and psychiatrists. � [B]ut for many celebrities, Max Jacobson�s [�Dr. Feelgood�] �speed� shot was the best of them all. This was an intravenous dose of amphetamines � that provided an instant sense of enhanced mental capacity, diminished the need for sleep and brought an unnatural state of euphoria. Controversial but not yet illegal, it was prized by many until the horrors of addiction were evident.�

Spoto further wrote, �Jacobson�s roster of patients was long and impressive (among them were Tennessee Williams, Cecil B. De Mille, Zero Mostel, and Margaret Leighton), and the physical and psychological dependencies he created in them with his drugs brought the rich and famous constantly to his door.�

President John F. Kennedy, Elizabeth Taylor, Eddie Fisher, Andy Warhol, Johnny Mathis, Truman Capote, Otto Preminger and Anthony Quinn were also subjected to Jacobson�s chemical bomb. Debbie Reynolds, who was married to Fisher at the time, told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1989, �I didn�t realize what was wrong or what his going to Max Jacobson � the �speed� doctor who was always ready to give celebrities their shots�would lead to. �Dr. Needles,� I called him.�

Psychiatric drugs are highly addictive. Psychiatrists know it, which compounds the crime.

Don Simpson, one of Hollywood�s most successful producers (�Top Gun,� �Flashdance,� �Beverly Hills Cop� and �The Rock�) was a tragic example of psychiatric irresponsibility. He was prescribed psychiatric drugs to withdraw him from his illicit drug use� one addictive chemical simply replaced another. On January 19, 1996, Simpson was found dead of a massive drug overdose at his home. Police found 80 bottles of prescription drugs in the house. An autopsy determined that a cocktail of cocaine and prescribed stimulants, antidepressants, sedatives and tranquilizers had caused heart failure and death.

Former Three Dog Night singer Chuck Negron, who had undergone the same psychiatric drug substitution program as Simpson, and also failed to kick his habit, said: �They � sent me out on the road with different medications that were legal. � At one point, I ended up having a bigger habit on the prescription stuff than when I first checked in.� In 1993, the Medical Board of California charged the psychiatrist who ran the �detox� program, Robert P. Freemont, with gross negligence and unprofessional conduct for over-prescribing drugs and administering medications without proper follow-up exams. Freemont died before the Board finished its investigation.

On July 6, 2004, Eric Douglas, the son of Kirk Douglas and half-brother of Michael, died of �acute intoxication� from prescription tranquilizers and painkillers combined with alcohol. Ruled an �accidental overdose� by the coroner, the actor and stand-up comedian�s story is another tragic example of failed psychiatric rehab programs. A Los Angeles Times article on his death noted, �Court and medical board records indicate that Douglas� final, fatal descent may have stemmed from treatment by a psychiatrist who has since had his license revoked by the Medical Board of California.� In 2001, Douglas filed a lawsuit against the psychiatrist, William O. Leader, who had treated him between 1997 and 1999. The suit stated that Leader�s near-lethal doses of psychiatric drugs so incapacitated Douglas, he was unable to care for himself and nearly died twice. According to the court documents, Leader also �prescribed drugs over the phone without seeing Douglas.� The lawsuit was settled out of court in May 2004.

While psychiatry misleadingly markets a false image of science and�without a shred of evidence�claims that �biochemical imbalances in the brain� cause mental disturbance and addiction, in reality, it seeks no more than the control and manipulation of people�s lives.

Consider these words of psychiatrist Nathan Kline and his cohorts in 1967 as they mapped society�s psychotropic future for the year 2000: �Those of us who work in this field see a developing potential for nearly a total control of human emotional status, mental functioning, and will to act. These human phenomena can be started, stopped or eliminated by the use of various types of chemical substances. What we can produce with our science now will affect the entire society.�

And affect society they have. Millions now take mind-altering psychiatric drugs. Psychiatrists prescribe them, ignoring their dangerous side effects and addictiveness, keeping the general public �woefully ignorant of the dangers� of them.

Stevie Nicks, the incomparable lead singer of Fleetwood Mac, is testimony to this. In 2001, she released a new solo album�her first since 1993. She also went public about her eight-year absence from the music scene: she�d been addicted to a tranquilizer, Klonopin, prescribed to her by a psychiatrist. �I had just stopped doing cocaine,� she told Entertainment Weekly, �and it was like a month and a half after, and I was fine, totally fine. [But] to soothe everybody�s feathers around me, I went to a psychiatrist. It was a bad decision. � It was so awful that I could go into a psychiatrist�s office and they could put me on this medication that nearly destroyed my career, nearly destroyed me, nearly destroyed my parents�because they just lost me for those years.� In another interview she said, �My creativity went away. I became what I call the �whatever� person. I didn�t care about anything anymore.�

But if the cocaine addiction was a nightmare, nothing prepared her for the withdrawal from a psychiatric drug. Klonopin is one of a class of tranquilizers called benzodiazepines. Medical studies show they can be addictive within 14 days of taking them. As such, according to medical advice, a person needs to withdraw from them slowly. Stevie Nicks spoke of the intense difficulty she had withdrawing herself off Klonopin: �I�m the one who realized that [the drug] was killing me � I was in there [drug rehab] sick for 45 days, really, really sick. And I watched generations of drug addicts come in and go out. You know, the heroin people, 12 days � and they�re gone. And I�m still just there.�

Psychiatric drugs do not help a person achieve more creative abilities or more knowledge about life or the mind; they do not enable a person to solve his or her problems. They may cause a person to believe that his problems have been fixed, that he is better off, but all that has happened is that he has been made less aware, less in control. The original problem or distress is still there, unresolved. These drugs have now been accepted so extensively, and psychiatry has so aggressively marketed itself as a branch of medicine, that they are now seen as prescription medicines, not the life-threatening agents they really are.

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