Gary G. Kohls, MD

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I have been writing a weekly column for Duluth’s Reader since 2009. Many of those columns were about issues that should be of serious concern to mental health practitioners (and family practice doctors) whose practices often rely on the use of temporarily helpful but often permanently brain-disabling – and potentially addictive – psychiatric drugs for patients who complain of temporary emotional problems that can often be effectively treated – and even cured – by non-drug means.

The major themes that I have dealt with over the years have included:

• 1) the known dangers of the synthetic chemical drugs that alter the brain, psyche and soul;
• 2) the serious, often life-threatening withdrawal symptoms that can result when these drugs are suddenly stopped or too-rapidly tapered down (thus indicating that the drugs were dependency-inducing/addicting);
• 3) information about brain nutrient therapy for brain-malnourished or brain-damaged folks who may actually be neurologically-impaired and not simply mentally-impaired;
• 4) safer, non-toxic, non-drug alternative approaches to mental ill health;
• 5) information about the reality of combat and non-combat-induced psychological traumas (PTSD) as causative factors in neurological/mental ill health; and
• 6) the large variety of aspects of traumatic stress injuries that have been misdiagnosed as “mental illnesses of unknown origin” and therefore simplistically and erroneously treated with potentially dangerous medications.

My writings have been inspired by my own clinical experiences with suffering, emotionally traumatized people in my independent holistic health care practice. Over a thousand patients had come to me having been diagnosed with a bewildering variety of “mental illnesses of unknown origin”. The vast majority of my patients (approaching 100%) had begun their tragic descent into psychological hell when they were victimized by acute and/or chronic psychological, emotional, physical, sexual and/or spiritual violence and neglect (battered child syndrome, battered woman syndrome, childhood or spousal domestic abuse, child neglect, clergy sexual abuse, combat-induced PTSD, etc, etc), all traumas that led them into America’s psycho-pharmaceutical system, a system that has been dominated – starting in the 1950s with the first block-buster (and soon discredited) psych drugs like Thorazine and Valium. Those two drugs were among the first in a long line of brain-altering medications many of which were later found to be far more dangerous that first advertised and that are still being greedily manufactured by a long and growing list of highly profitable mega-corporations, all under-girded by very conflicted, very pseudo-scientific “research” studies, misleading advertising, and cunning 24/7 promotion that is designed to brainwash both prescribers and “consumers”.

I’m just one of a small number of out-financed, shouted-down, whistle-blower healthcare-givers and activists world-wide who have remained dedicated to their professional duty to warn the uninformed or deceived by going up against the overwhelming billion dollar dis-informational advertising campaigns that come from amoral transnational mega-corporations. It often seems like we are just crying out in the wilderness.

Sadly the cunning, well-financed ad agencies and corporate lobbyists behind the brain-washing are very successful at influencing the consumers of drugs who are told by attractive actors on TV to ask their doctors about the new medication.

Unbiased studies have repeatedly shown that prescribing practitioners are far more compliant than they care to admit when patients demand a prescription for drugs that they have seen advertised. After all, taking 2 minutes to write a prescription is easier and more profitable for a practitioner than taking 20 minutes to not write one. Doing a favor for a patient by simply writing a prescription can be a very welcome break in an otherwise busy, double-booked schedule.

The bottom line: the drug-industry designed, tested and controlled studies often get on a fast track to the Big Pharma-infiltrated FDA that demands neither long term safety studies nor evidence that the new investigational drug is not a mitochondrial toxin. Big Pharma – and every other transnational corporation that you can think of – are in the business for the money and for the profits for their shareholders and management teams – which is why they pay their CEOs, boards of directors, lawyers, lobbyists, spokespersons, drug salespersons and spin doctors so well.

The Hippocratic Oath – has the Big Business of Medicine made it Obsolete?

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