The first thing that you need to be aware of when talking to medical professionals is that, in the vast majority cases, they will not have had any personal experience with the medications that they prescribe. I would say that this is true in the vast majority of cases regarding psychiatrists and even more the case when dealing with your family doctor. Furthermore, doctors regard personal anecdotes from mental health consumers with suspicion and often your claims, if they fly in the face of the doctor’s convictions, will be entirely disregarded.

Also, it is pretty important that you remember that doctors make their living dispensing medications — certainly psychiatrists do. Most doctors will diagnose you with a mental illness with the expectation that you will then need to visit them on a regular basis (for the rest of your life) to manage the medications that you will need to take for life to avoid relapse. I do not say this to insinuate that doctors will not try to do what is in your best interest — they will. However they will predominantly pursue a course of treatment that is in BOTH your best interest (as they see it) and in their best interest. It is important that you be aware of this fact.

The main point that I discovered in being treated by more than a dozen doctors, psychiatrists and therapists — I have been seen by some of the top psychiatrists in several cities as well as been a patient in one of the most prestigious mental health clinics in the world — is that the professionals know a lot less about the medications than I do. The reason for this is that I have been prescribed more than a dozen psychiatric medications of many varieties. And I have made friendly with countless people who also take such medications. What I experienced myself and what I heard from others who have been prescribed psych meds does not fit with what I have been told by psychiatrists. This is because the doctors have NEVER taken the medications. They go on the reports from the manufacturers and clinical studies. At this point, I quite certain that I trust my own lying eyes more than I trust what comes out of Pfizer’s mouth or the mouth of a drug study.

I can not stress how important this fact is. Why would you take an anxiety cure from a person who has NOT used it to cure their own anxiety? In this way the mental health establishment is horribly flawed. In fact, I have always thought that AA (alcoholics anonymous) used a much better model whereby people who actually had personal experience in solving my problem could give me advice. Instead I pay a psychiatrist $200 an hour to have him explain to me how to cure a problem that he has never faced. At the end of the day I am not any better and he drives home in his Lexus. Clearly this is a good deal for both of us?!

I do actually want to talk a little bit about my experience with anxiety medications. When I was seventeen I started to have some serious social anxiety. I ended up being brought to my first shrink who explained that this was treatable with medication and that I should start taking a benzodiazepine daily. He started me on klonopin. This really helped for the first few months but after a while it stopped working. I mean I could not tell any difference in my anxiety levels when I took it. So I decided that I should get off it. However, this proved extremely difficult. I could not get off of it without having horrible withdrawal effects. I late learned that benzos have a horrible withdrawal syndrome associated with them. I actually had to be medically detoxed off of them with a course of barbituates. This was entirely unpleasant I can assure. Today, I do not take any benzos and my level of anxiety is certainly not any worse. In short I had to go through a very unpleasant withdrawal syndrome that lasted months (months and months of suffering) because… I am not sure why? Because my expensive doctor thought that they would help. He was entirely wrong.

I was also put on an SSRI to help with generalized anxiety. I have been on countless SSRIs and SNRIs. This turned out to be disastrous. Today, I am no longer on the SRNI (I was on effexor until recently) and I am grateful. However the process of getting off of these medications has been hellacious. I can not in good conscious recommend anyone get on anxiety medications at any time. There are ways to manage to anxiety without medication. There are countless techniques that you can use that will WORK better than anxiety meds.

The thing about anxiety medications is that they do NOT work. Not only do they not work, they come with horrific side effects that are, in most cases, far WORSE than the anxiety disorder themselves. Finally, the fact of the matter is that once you develop a dependence to any of these medications, you will need to continue to take them until you die or develop diabetes or go blind. And expect to weight 300 pounds when that happens.

If there is one thing that I would preach is that develop a sense of personal responsibility and begin to learn acceptance. Sometimes the best thing to do is to just stop making your situation worse. I know that in my case, there has been untold damage that has been the direct result of my taking anti anxiety medications. I hope that no one has to go through all of the pain and suffering that I have gone through — so needlessly — so that I could be a luxury consumer of mental health services.

Because of the fact that I was born into an affluent family, I have been able to consume mental health services that most people might not be able to do. I have been to clinics for many weeks that cost more than $1000 a day. I have spent more than $500,000 in my life on mental health services. All I can say is that I AM NO BETTER FOR IT. If you have not been able to afford such luxuries you may think yourself at a disadvantage. I would beg to differ. Because, the fact is, when you are at a renown mental health institution you naturally proceed under the illusion that the doctors there KNOW HOW TO TREAT ANXIETY. Because of this you are willing to try their prescription cures, despite the horror stories you may have heard from others, because you want to get better and you think that they can help you. The fact is that they CAN NOT HELP YOU. They do not know how.

I want to repeat what I have said. I have spent more than $500,000 in my life on mental health services and I honestly believe that I would be in better shape today had I never spent $1. Without exception all of the advice that I have been given has been wrong and all of the claims that were sold to me have been false. The worst part about it was that I desperately wanted to believe because in some cases I was hopeless. I wanted to ignore the fact that their promises were not coming true. But after ten years being passed around by doctors I simply have come to see the truth.

If you are struggling with anxiety, I can save you a lot of time and money with the following word: Acceptance. Accept that you have an anxiety disorder and take steps to treat it. However, if you get involved with anti anxiety meds just be prepared for your life to get a whole lot worse.