The Myth of Low-Serotonin & Antidepressants - Dr. Mark Horowitz

Big thank you to Dr. Mark Horowitz for this enlightening study. I hope this presentation brings value to you and your loved ones. If you enjoyed this video and if you want to help create more, please consider supporting After Skool on Patreon. Thank you. www.patreon.com/AfterSkool

SSRIs helped me through a horrific part of my life, I was on them for just under a year….. My doctor gave me the best answer ‘ It isn’t going to be these pills that cure you, it’s up to you to resolve the pain in your life, these will just make it easier to bridge that gap’

“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.” - Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore Kaczynski

I suffered severe depression 16 years ago as a teenage. Spent my whole life fighting depression, mental illness and relying on antidepressants. I got diagnosed with OCD. Not until my mom recommended me to psilocybin mushrooms treatment. Psilocybin treatment saved my life honestly. 8 years totally clean. Never thought I would be saying this about mushrooms.

Almost everything you said can be applied to benzodiazepines as well. I can't find ANY doctor with the right knowledge about how to properly taper off my medication... So I found myself forced to go from doctor to doctor, storing the medication, and with a lot of research and effort do my own taper off plan. They always think they know better than you because they are doctors and you're not, but they lack empathy and experience. I almost died, and also a friend of mine, from the benzo withdrawal symptoms and I can assure you I'm not going to go through that again just because of someone's arrogance. Thank you for this video and for spreading the message. Best Regards.

You know you live in clown world when psychedelics that have a higher safety rating than coffee are made as illigal as heroin while also having the most potent long term anti depressant effects ever seen in human history.

I've told people for years that there is no evidence to support the idea that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain and they look at me like I'm crazy. To this day I believe that my little brother killed himself due to withdrawal symptoms from these meds. I am so grateful for this video and I'm going to spread it around as much as I can.

I took anti-depressants for two and a half years to deal with severe social anxiety stemming from ASD. I've been coming off them for the past two months. Honestly, it hasn't been too bad. I've suffered from insomnia and gastric upset on occasion, but emotionally, I feel better than ever. Here's to a better future 🎉

Psychedelics are just an exceptional mental health breakthrough. It's quite fascinating how effective they are against depression and anxiety. Saved my life.

Thank you for this, i'm a therapist and often feel undermined by the field of psychiatry. In my role we're expected to encourage people to take medication, then we're never supposed to talk about side effects or them getting off medication.

One problem with anti-depressants is that the withdrawal is worse than the depression, which is then mistaken for your actual depression. The withdrawal hits and you think "Gee this must be what my depression really feels like. I better stay on the drugs so I don't feel this bad all the time." I was on SSRIs for 15 years, absolutely zombied out of my mind and incapable of doing anything, just waiting for something to change. Long story short I stopped the drugs and when the withdrawal hit I had to remind myself "This is the withdrawal, not the depression." After 6 months I started to feel the difference, and after 9 months my depression was gone.

I thought I had depression 11 years ago. I numbed myself with Wellbutrin about 3 months before I was like, NOPE! I just had a terrible boss/job, bad habits, and the wrong attitude. I changed jobs, started exercising and taking vitamins, stopped eating bread, paid off my college debt, made friends through bicycling clubs, and got into personal development. That whole body/mind/lifestyle tactic changed my life! Depression isn’t because something’s wrong with you, it’s a red flag that something’s not right. We’ve gotta stop internalizing the ugliness of our society’s way of life/employment and blaming ourselves for feeling unhappy in a world that cares about money more than well-being.

I can't help but feel this crushing rage, empathizing with the uncountable number of people who have been hurt by the lies of pharmaceutical companies. If you're told one thing is a solution when it isn't, that's not just a lie, but it's robbing that person of the path to finding a solution that does work.

I'm sure that these medications are overprescribed, and many people could resolve their problems through lifestyle changes or therapy, but I don't think that's the case for everyone. I have struggled with cycling depression (occurring several times a year) and nearly constant anxiety and OCD for over 20 years. I have had a very stable life and always been physically healthy, and these problems persist whether I love my job or not, whether I am alone or have a good relationship, etc. Obviously difficulties in life can make my struggles worse, but they never go away. Since I was 14 I have tried various forms of therapy, diet changes, exercise, meditation, spiritual pursuits, vitamins, naturopathy, etc. Literally everything except medication, as I had many fears about it. Finally this past year I tried it as a last resort, and the difference is incredible. It makes me wonder what my life could have been like if I had tried it earlier, if I would have had more success or better experiences. For me it was the right choice. This may not be the case for everyone, and I certainly don't think it should be the first line of treatment, but I'm happy these meds exist for those that need them.

As a person who suffered from anxiety and depression and who was on an anti-depression for about 18 months and made the decision to get off it about 4 years ago, I very much appreciated this video. The drug had me put on weight, lose my sex drive and made me feel like I was in a fog. I decided that I did not want to live that way and was weened off the drug over a 6 month period. I am doing good and glad for my decision. THANK YOU

I was on anti depressants for 25 years! My doctor said I could wean off within 4 weeks and I said no ways as “who was I without them) so I did it over 6 months as I was on a high doze. Been off for years now as was best thing I ever did. Saying that, whether placebo or not, the pill supported me whilst stuck in my trauma cycle I’m a huge fan of meditation and actually feeling the feelings (not the pain story) as it literally changed my life 8 years ago.

My mental well-being improved dramatically when I decided I didn't believe in the "chemical imbalance" hypothesis any longer, and simply decided that I wasn't going to allow anyone to pigeonhole me as someone that is naturally unhappy. I realized there is nothing wrong with me, I just live in a soul-crushing time and place. The postmodern consumerist society we live in simply isn't conducive to long-term contentment. To be well-adjusted to a sick society is no sign of sanity, quite the opposite really.

To be fair my Dr told me we don’t really know how SSRIs work and most of what is accepted comes from marketing and was only ever theory, all we know is some people find them useful, some not much and some not at all. She also said they may give me a lift that would then enable me to make changes in my life which would actually be the things that make the difference. She was a fairly young Dr and i appreciated her up front honesty giving the facts.

Just want to take a minute to appreciate the outstanding work of the illustrator!

Before I took an SSRI I wasn’t strictly depressed, but I did worry too much about things, to the extent it was debilitating. I’m a lot happier now, and I couldn’t really care less whether that’s a type of intoxication, my life is better.