Have you ever found it odd that a side effect of Cymbalta, a leading anti-depressant, is suicide? It seems counterintuitive, but in a country where medicine is dictated by Big Pharma, such a paradox is hardly surprising.
That’s because, as former CNN correspondent Amber Lyon points out, Western medicine treatments are not intended to get to the root of the sickness.
The result of prolonged medical treatment is a country with 70% of its citizens on prescription drugs. And perhaps more shocking, where at least one fifth of its population is taking five or more prescription pills.
The US remains one of only two countries in the world with direct-to-consumer advertising, and the sheer amount of pills flooding the market is having deadly results. According to the book Our Daily Meds, nearly 100,000 Americans die each year from prescription drugs, roughly 270 people every day.
The non-profit organization Trust For America’s Health also found last year that deaths involving prescription drugs quadrupled between 1999 and 2010. Nearly 6.1 million people abuse prescription pills and overdose deaths have doubled in 29 states, exceeding vehicle related deaths.
With the innate perils of these drugs becoming more evident, Lyon dedicated her journalism to finding another way to treat psychological illnesses. Her personal experience curing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) with psilocybin mushrooms led her into a world of research establishing that what we’ve been told by the establishment about psychedelics is wrong.
Lyon travelled around the world to legally take psychedelics with foreign cultures that have used them medicinally for thousands of years. She explains that when done in a safe setting, these psychedelic therapies allow people to confront, process and purge their darkest memories, instead of numbing them with pharmaceuticals.
How Psychedelics Are Saving Lives
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Amber Lyon joined Abby Martin on Breaking the Set to debunk the myths surrounding psychedelics and explain their proven benefits.
Amber Lyon Trips All Over the World to Discover the Power of Hallucinogens
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Lyon launched the website Reset.Me in order to change the narrative and spread awareness about the benefits of psychedelics.
Written by Abby Martin and Anya Parampil, photo by Wikimedia Commons
Photo is a little heavy on the airbrush. Geeeez. Her ring isn’t square on her finger…tsk tsk. I should call myself ‘The Critic’ rather than ‘The Otter’.
Tobacco, not nicotine.
http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/129/1/28.long
I absolutely adore the fact that you are willing to put yourself out there for a class of medicine that is ridiculously demonized.
However, when you are doing such a good job of safely promoting psychedelics, don’t make nicotine out to be the bad guy when it’s all the other junk (smoking or dipping) that comes along with it that is deadly. Nicotine has health benefits that, last I checked, outweigh the risks of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) or vaping. Am I going to recommend someone start using nicotine just for the hell of it? Absolutely not. Am I going to tell people trying to quit smoking to use NRT or bupropion as a healthier intervention? Hell yes.