r/Antipsychiatry

Shrinks are mind cops that can get away with giving you agonizing life ruining conditions from drugs and lock you up just for being a bit weird. I don't get how instead they're treated as saviors. Did we forget lobotomy was a thing and similar results still happen from ECT and antipsychotics? that the latter was even advertised to be used like a lobotomy at some point? How can you justify making someone live with permanent akathisia?

About three years ago I got 'cancelled' online. My family can't handle basic emotional support so they kept increasing stress on me/being abusive until they admitted me to a psychward. I wasn't even in crisis, they just couldn't handle slight emotional support.

But what I'm talking about is that when someone has an actual problem, such as people in your local area trying to piss you off psychiatry just assumes you're delusional. Similar to when family etc. is actually abusive but psychiatry individualises the issue and you're seen as the problem. People legit got themselves admitted to the psychward so they could harass me BC of the internet. The psychiatrist wrote in the notes that I was 'paranoid about """cybergangs""" out to get me' because I explained what was going on. It's like they pretend that real world problems don't exist because they don't fit their narritive. Over the past several years I've had real problems with real people but I get blamed and they just see it as 'paranoid schizophrenia.' It's so dumb.

Not to mention that I was initially admitted to a ward a few years before it was after my mother had attempted to kill me, and she phoned and framed my freaking out as a 'psychotic break.' Psychiatry is built by abusers and authoritarians to gaslight the people they want to hurt and protect the ones on top.

I was poisoned, in actual mortal danger with my body failing and the hospital went along with framing it as a psychotic break. I still have injuries from this time and my metabolism and skeleton etc. has been permanently damaged.

Just a hypothetical situation because IRL they do everything to prevent this & never end up in this situation. In the hypothetical situation that they do, do you think they would be treated any differently by the other psychiatrist? Or no different because they do not care about the substance of their field at all and all that they have learned is truly for show and no arguments could convince them to change their opinion?

Would the other psychiatrist even listen?

Not sure if she ever really gives a health update for Jordan Peterson, and this is fairly tedious, but watching the entire video is enlightening about some permanent and severe effects from prescription ssris and benzodiazepines. Do I agree with the “ lion diet?” Maybe not, and maybe not even their politics but I have always found J Peterson to be talkative and interesting, and no one really deserves to suffer like this.

As I was watching all I could hope for is that her message reaches a wider audience. Something needs to be done about these dangerous drugs.

Our bodies are made of millions of organisms that each have their own biological and chemical behaviors. If these organisms are not happy then we ourselves won't be.

It is pointless thinking in terms of abstract emotions and behaviors when there is real science that underlies everything.

The "trial and error" strategy of psychiatry is fundamentally flawed in that it doesn't understand the underlying mechanisms, it only views the surface result. Some drugs may make people appear to be better but may be wreaking huge amounts of damage on their internal biology and impairing their overall functioning.

Psychiatry does not help people. It destroys their lives and makes it so they can never reach their full potentials.

The field of psychiatry itself needs to be destroyed and replaced with a field of metabolic mental health.

Hey all. I'm posting to this group, because I know many other groups would chastise me for wanting to eventually go medication-free (specifically because I have a bipolar diagnosis, which seems to condemn people to lifelong chemical dependencies).

I am currently on an anti-psychotic, anti-epileptic, two anti-depressants, and a beta-blocker. I feel like my medications have dampened my emotions and made me numb to the spectrum of human experience. I don't feel sad. I don't feel happy. I don't laugh, and I don't cry. My mood cycles much the same as it did before, but I'm apparently "better" - as in, I'm tired and mentally absent, so I don't trouble other people as much as I did before.

I do not want to be on these medications anymore. I won't stop them cold-turkey, because I am already withdrawaling from an SNRI (Effexor, a drug from hell), and I know how horrific withdrawals can get.

I thought getting off the Effexor would make me feel a bit more like myself. I still feel numb. I'm afraid I'll never be the same again.

I just want to be able to cry. Have any of you been able to overcome drug-induced anhedonia? Does it get better?

I'm an idiot and I've already been playing around with it but I want to know how to get off completely. I took 175mg two nights ago and my blood pressure went lower and lower. Now I am scared to take it again. On top of everything else I have a CTO and mandatory bloodwork. But I want completely out. God will work the details out. I just want to be responsible in weaning myself off.

You will never be allowed to be honest to these ghoulish. Reprehensible practices even when you exit their built-in holocaust of mad-houses they push towards you and others. No one truly believes the damage they do to others is reversible. Enjoy the larger man breasts, destitute family dynamics, and broken synapses from life-long interventions and coercion. Compliance has become the absolute. Epiphany of modern science and medicine. I, the doctor can not be wrong about this opinion. Which is shared by I the rule-makers. Note jotting Lunatics who believe my elitism triumphs each and every day. At no cost to the children. We are inherently drugging for a cost-free living

I used to love gym when I was a normal person. Now I haven’t gone in two years. I even get scared of the idea and when I workout I’m constantly checking my body. It’s always the first recommendation I get for stress but I just spend days laying in my bed and only going out for work. I’m not even motivated anymore I kind of accepted that in this life I won’t be the person I wanted to be because of these drugs they convinced me to take when I was 21

I can't believe I'm dealing with people. Who fail to see standard FDA results on how invega sustenna blocks medical efficiency. When they start men on the lowest dose of 5mg of what was already 20mg. Adderall IR

No one in their right mind when gaining copious weight would follow the instructions to do their daily chores and activities. They set patients out for failure. Say no excuse for your misuse in the face of your honest disclosure about the medication consumption. They are ethical. You aren't. The rules aren't being rewritten. Constant Goo goo ga ga get's broken down into spite. How you are the problem

I'm the problem? You found zero reason to try and reason with why and how anyone would be undeserving and maybe unable to reverse what anti psychotics do to young minds. Especially with family and their habit forming histories. Who shame you along pharmacies. Demonizing you as a drug addict meth head. Psychotic. It's blatant.

Prescribed and forced as a child. Coerced and manipulated off and on them again with serious life-altering drugs. As an adult. Pathetic. Forget trust. Forget respect. YOUR LOST

However, if it does exist, there is an objective truth that protects the dignity of people.

If truth is relativistic, then everything the powerful say is true.

If truth exists, it is clear, objective, and exposes lies and manipulation.

Something inside you tells you that everything they've done to you is wrong, that they've lied to you and manipulated you.

What is it that tells you this?

I am an undergraduate student currently majoring in psychology. I have a fairly neutral view of psychiatric medication, and had wanted to go into psychiatry initially.

The reason I had for going into this field was largely due to my negative experiences as a patient of psychiatry. I wanted to contribute to shaping ethical policy. This, I thought, would correct the actions and policies of psychiatrists with whom I had had negative experiences prior.

Although there are a lot of systemic issues in this field, I don't think the entire system is corrupt. Even if it is, I still want to provide my efforts to making changes within it.

I'd like to get your perspective on this. It is of utmost importance to take experiences like those stated on this sub seriously. I really appreciate the care you guys have.

If there was a way you wanted to see the field change, what would it be? What ideas would you want someone to carry with them on their way to becoming a practitioner?

After being on here a few months and looking at this sub, I agree with so much said here but I worry that the way it's said gets in the way of the anti-psychiatry movement. If the anti-psychiatry movement can rise, the world would be a better place but there's things in this sub that prevent anti-psychiatry rising like

1. Actions of some members off this sub

The dude who brought my attention to this sub did so because he got banned off r/addiction when I was a mod there for promoting addiction and for promoting quitting cold turkey off alcohol. He argued with most of the sub over several months with like 3 posts a day and would fight like hell in the comments saying other's are wrong and brainwashed by the medical field when they told that it'd kill them. Looking at the dude's profile he did the same on r/socialwork and got banned there as well.

I’m sure most of you aren’t doing the same here but there sure is a lot of 'medical advice' give despite it being against the rules.

2. Actions of people on this sub

A couple of months ago, a young girl was on this sub and got blasted to high hell by you guys for saying some people are helped by medications or for saying 'mental health' instead of 'mentally ill' like you guys seem to prefer. One person said she made up her stories of being raped because she said something you didn’t like. Or that her opinion didn’t matter because she managed her mental health with therapy and not meds so that’s why she was here.

On my main account, i got blocked and then banned by a few people just for a comment saying that something they said was biologically not possible.

I cant hard but feel sad for that girl. She’s deleted her account now and if she’s reading this I wish her the best.

3. Cult like inclusion and exclusion of information

Based on those 2 I find it weird that you guys include only things you agree with and exclude anything you don’t, even down to the mentions of some subs meaning the post is deleted. And any disagreement is punished or viewed as that person being brainwashed. It really is how a cult operates.

4. Major focus on only American information

One thing I’ve seen here is you guys post mainly the information of the USA and then generalise that. A big example a little while ago was that suicide rates are the highest they’ve ever been. I can’t help but think that research shows true only in the USA, most other developed countries are showing lower rates.

Failures of the American medical system and American psychiatry (and there are heaps) aren’t the failures of psychiatry in general. The US system is fucked up it seems though you can't say it’s all fucked because yours is.

5. Twisting research articles to prove your point rather than reading the article which isn’t related to the point

Every link to a research article I’ve seen here has not had the information the poster said it had. Every single damn one.

6. "The DSM is wrong therefore psychiatry is wrong"

Firstly, the DSM is like the Fahrenheit of medicine. There are heaps of valid criticisms and its bad and for that reason most of the world doesn’t use it.

Psychiatry and the DSM aren’t the same though and saying its bad doesn’t necessarily mean psychiatry is bad. This also goes into the reliance on American info. Like it’s not a psychiatrists fault the US uses a completely outdated and idiotic system

7. Diffusion of personal responsibility over actions

Theres been a lot of posts here saying "I’ve used X for 10 years and I’m not better" and one guy complaining he hadn’t received help from his psychiatrist in 20 years he’d been seeing him. Or “this happened to me 10 years ago, I’ve done nothing to fix it and it’s their fault it continues happening.” If these people had been involuntarily held for that long then yeah that makes sense. If they haven’t though, they have every right to not go back.

The best metaphor I can think of is plumbing. If I hired a plumber to fix my pipes and each time they come, they break something then I shouldn’t hire that plumber again. And if I continue hiring them after 20 years of them constantly breaking things and not fixing them, that’s on me being an idiot.

"Oh yeah, i see this person every X weeks for 19.5 years. They fuck me up each time and of course I’m going to go back and see them" is stupid. Unless you’re held involuntarily, don’t book in again and it’s not the psychiatrist making you and you’re screwing your own life up.

8.Actively doing things that make your mental health worse and blaming it on medications

Theres a lot of posts saying "I take all these drugs and i feel shit. I also take medications and feel like shit, therefore it’s the medications fault." Same with sleep, homelessness and trauma. One little pill or injection, no matter how effective or not, isn’t going to change things if there's other things happening that make your mental health worse.

There are things other than medications that hugely help the problems and doing them can reduce the impact.

9. Overly expecting medications to "cure"

One of the main arguments I’ve seen in this sub is that psychiatry is pointless because it doesn’t fix the rest of our lives. I’m not denying things like homelessness, trauma, substance use, etc. aren’t tied to mental health and mental illness (and yes, they’re separate terms don’t criticise based on semantics). What I’m saying is that it’s not the psychiatrists job to fix up your life problems. Dude who brough my awareness of this sub blamed the psychiatrist for his homelessness and substance use, not recognising that he was homeless before starting psychiatry.

Expecting a psychiatrist to fix this is like going to a plumber for dental work. They’re not going to fix it because it’s not their job. It’s maybe a social workers job but mostly ours.

10. Use of assumptions and "I believe," "might" and "probably" as fact

Vast majority of posts on here I’ve noticed having this point of saying “I believe/might be/probably is the case” (regardless of if it’s actually true or not) and so many people in the comments agree and say yeah, that’s the case and it starts this echo chamber of bouncing off what was initially an estimation. This is especially when people think ‘If you do X, the mental health system will do Y.’

Either you guys can predict the future or know what other people are thinking in which case I’d question how you ended up in this situation. Or you’re believing you’re thoughts as absolute, objective facts. I know that this is social media and this happens but when you’re tying this to excluding or punishing any tiny little thing that disproves it, the result is just compounding sadness, anger, and beliefs formed on accusations.

11. Claims to faith or nature as cures

“Don’t have faith in the DSM, if has no evidence base. Instead have faith in this Bible with no evidence base” is idiotic and you’re doing the same things you say you hate the psychiatrist for. Similarly, “Use these natural ingredients to help your problem.”

You guys do realise that medications are made from natural ingredients (like anything is) yeah? One person here said you can fix Bipolar with anti-oxidants based on a sentence in a research article. Not realising that the amount of anti-oxidants you’d need to take for that would kill them.

All medications are based on natural ingredients, it’s just that the medical field titrates natural ingredients. Like if I have a headache, yeah I could skin the bark of willow trees and use it to make tea to reduce my headache OR I could take one Aspirin which is derived from Willow bark and have the same effect.

11. Use of personal experience as "evidence" psychiatry is wrong

This post isn’t a defence of psychiatry, it’s a critique of this sub. Realistically, psychiatry is used because the benefits of it outweigh the downsides for most people. It sucks and it’s horrible what’s happened to you guys, not denying that. It’s also unfair to paint everyone’s experience with the same brush.

12. Claims of moral/intellectual superiority against people who use medications or straw-manning arguments.

Quite a few posts on here have a process of “I’m right” and questioning that if I’m right how could others’ be so stupid to do the things you don’t do because you’re right. Not only is this circular logic but it’s based on the assumption that their experience is wrong/uninformed because they haven’t had the same experience as you.

As well, half the psychiatrists on here are called ‘medical lunatics’ and I can’t help but see that as a way of attempting to discredit someone on the basis of mental health rather than the actual things wrong. There’s enough valid criticisms of psychiatry. Calling someone a medical lunatic to discredit them is the same as them saying “you’re schizophrenic so you’re wrong,” if you get angry that they do it, don’t do the thing they do.

13. The complaining protector

A big part of me gets all this, there are valid injuries, valid injustices and valid criticisms of psychiatry. Like I’m saying, this isn’t a defence of psychiatry it’s a critique of this sub. But overall, half of this sub is complaining with a vibe of ‘this happened to me, it’s their fault and now I’m stuck with it.’ A lot of times that’s true, however putting the responsibility of fixing it on the psychiatrists’ though, all that does is make you powerless.

Anyway, those are my thoughts on this sub. There is so much wrong with psychiatry and I'm not defending psychiatry, I'm saying that this sub gets it wrong a lot of the time. I'm sure some people on this sub will Point 2 me though that's to be expected. There's a reason why the most common mentions of anti-psychiatry on reddit aren't about the benefits of it, it's about the downsides of this sub and the more it's improved, the better mental health care is.

Does it help? How effective is it?

Hello! I am aware this is Antipsychiatry. While psychiatry did save my life by diagnosing me with ADHD and got on Stimulants, it saved my life for the 7 months or so before it quickly turned 180 when I had a horrendous experience being on sodium oxybate for misdiagnosed Idiopathic Hypersomnia, where it really disrupted my CNS and gave me insane psych symptoms. I am in a rough patch where I need to job hunt and move soon in a month or so, have serious symptoms after a bad Psilocybin attempt, and am desperate to find relief for what's going on. Post is below, thank you.

TL;DR: Bad drug trial (sodium oxybate) made me paranoid and messed up my fight-or-flight response. Tried shrooms 8 months later, resulting in an extremely traumatic trip and a form of HPPD. I need stimulants for severe ADHD, but they now make the OCD/Anxiety/Hyperarousal infinitely worse. Life is very hard with OCD-like fixations, crippling fear of inanimate objects, and social anxiety. Facing a forced medical separation within a month. Need medication advice to stabilize me NOW.

I am a Mid-20s Male diagnosed with ADHD/ASD, Anxiety, a form of Depression, and Sleep Apnea. I am trapped in a catastrophic loop: my nervous system is in a state of chronic paranoia and threat detection failure.

Note on Dr. Gillman: I paid for a consult with Dr. Ken Gillman, who said I would be a good candidate for Phenelzine, and my provider is willing. I'm just hesitant because, due to severe social anxiety, I did not emphasize the extreme severity of my "inanimate object fears" (mentioned below) to him.

Clinical Trauma Timeline

• Oct 2024 – Mar 2025: High-dose Sodium Oxybate (Xywav) trial for misdiagnosed Idiopathic Hypersomnia. Severely hurt my CNS. Gave me deluded thoughts, profound agoraphobia, severe DPDR, and visual alterations (like a Minecraft texture pack was updated in my brain) that have never resolved.
• Early January this Year: Traumatic 1.5g Psilocybin experience (attempted for depression/anxiety). It gave me HPPD, locked my nervous system into 10/10 chronic hyperarousal, started my inanimate object fear, and blew up my trauma responses times 1000.
• Feb 2026 (Inpatient): Diagnosed with "drug-induced psychosis" from the psilocybin. (Important Note: The 100/10 paranoia didn't happen instantly, although it was very apparent the day immediately after. It was a compounding stress cascade over several weeks where my threat-detection system finally broke, making me wonder if this is extreme PTSD-driven hypervigilance rather than primary psychosis.
  • Inpatient: First Dr offered Abilify (which I turned down out of fear it would crush my ADHD dopamine) and suggested stopping my TRT. A second Dr suggested Luvox for OCD, theorizing that my ADHD was improperly treated and causing OCD-like behaviors (offered Guanfacine or trialing stims again).

Current Symptom with Threat Misinterpretation. Even without medication, I experience an insane paranoid "hunted" fear response every day. I am extremely ungrounded, dissociated, and terrified 24/7. I see a therapist, but it feels like a waste of time right now because my biology is fundamentally hijacked. I need a chemical anchor before behavioral therapy can even touch this.

• Inanimate Object Fear, where Neutral objects (furniture, the monitor I'm typing on, stuffed animals in my room) are visually interpreted as predatory or "sentient." My logic remains intact; I know they aren't real threats—but my body reacts with a full physiological fear response. I am especially terrified of nighttime outside, related to the bad psilocybin trip occurring at nighttime.
• Hyper-Salience: I experience thoughts when people walk by like it is "divine timing" or synchronicity. Or that a fan in my room is a threat to me or is going to fall on me or attack me, or my girlfriend falling asleep at a certain time is happening for a reason. I logically know it's irrational, but my brain is WAY over-salient. Klonopin can mute the anxiety and threat interpretation salience by a good large margin, actually (the intensity seems heavily correlated with my stress levels), but the underlying perception of the threat lingers regardless.
• Severe OCD behaviors where I’m trapped in a 16-hour-a-day compulsive research loop on my computer or phone, trying to "fix" my neurochemistry because the world feels so threatening. It is a state of total cognitive hijacking. THIS IS WHAT IS KEEPING ME NON-FUNCTIONAL. It's like maladaptive to try and regain control of how unsafe I feel, so I start researching how to feel safe through medications, instead of fucking job searching and planning my future life.
• Deep Depression from all of this happening and taking hours to get to work and showing up late, avoiding people, barely able to work much, and avoiding a lot of stuff or places out of fear. It’s been so incredibly hard on me. 
• Sleep Avoidance / Insomnia: Because my daytimes are so terrifying and painful with constant fear and literally no pleasure from any input, behaviorally, my brain doesn’t want to go to sleep at night. Note, I am still sleeping, usually a minimum of 6 hours a night, averaging 7-7.5, just not sleeping consistently in a window, but nighttime is the only window where the threat-scanning quiets down slightly. My brain hijacks that time to just feel something other than terror and doesn’t want to wake up to experience the same terror I’ve been in every day.

The Stimulant Paradox. My COMT VAL/VAL genotype leads to severe ADHD without stimulants. Stimulants (Desoxyn/Adderall) provide the dopamine needed for executive autonomy, but they dump fuel on the baseline fear, making the paranoia unmanageable and just causing me to obsess more over how bad I am feeling. However, I cannot survive a total "medication washout" during a major cross-country move. When I try to stop the stimulants, the severe bed-bound depression and rumination are intolerable. The amphetamines are basically acting as my only antidepressant right now.

• Ex: Failed Lamictal Trial, I actually tried Lamictal (25mg) for just one day, but it immediately blunted some of the positive stimulant effect, almost got in a car accident, and made me feel so flat that I panicked and stopped. Anything that negatively affects the stimulant's mood-boosting properties is incredibly hard for me to tolerate.

Current Meds:

• Desoxyn (5mg up to 40mg/day) or Adderall.
• Klonopin (1mg 3x/day): Mutes the physical panic/noise intensity, but doesn't fully stop my head perception from scanning for threats, and worsens ADHD EF and worsens my depression and apathy.
• Discontinued (on for 3 weeks) Luvox 25mg recently in prep for possible Phenelzine.
• PRN: Pregabalin 50mg 3x/day (can make me sad/tired/loopy, worsening EF and thus worsening anxiety).

My Questions for the Community: Because of my functional timeline (needing to apply for jobs, interview, pack, and move in the next month), I don't have the luxury of months of trial and error. Having already suffered two massive med injuries (Xywav and Psilocybin), I am terrified of making a wrong move that worsens my baseline.

1. Is Phenelzine indicated first? If I stabilize the mood/anxiety and strengthen the PFC, will I regulate my thoughts better so the irrational fears fade? Or will the notorious MAOI insomnia make my sleep avoidance 10x worse?
2. Or should I use an Antipsychotic first? Would a low-dose AP act fast enough as an immediate "fire extinguisher" to clear the paranoia without completely crushing my ADHD dopamine and leaving me too unmotivated/emotionally blunted to move? And consider Phenelzine later?

Leading into a guess of which of these 4 paths makes the most sense?

Path 1: Add an antipsychotic to baseline to dampen the amygdala's reality threat-misfire without hopefully crushing my already horrific ADHD.

Path 2: Start Phenelzine / or Luvox/SNRI Rapid Titrate.

Path 3: Stop all Stimulants and try non-stimulants Wellbutrin +/- Strattera. (tried wellbutrin shortly in the past and completely made my stimulants stop working)

Path 4: Quit everything entirely for 3-6 months (I feel Not feasible: I have a massive move and job obligations NOW). It's like I am choosing between deep depression and intense ADHD unmedicated, or intense heightened paranoia/anxiety and OCD researching on Stims (but I also research off stims too)

How do you regain executive autonomy when a patient (me) has reached the absolute burnout phase of medical self-management? At what point do I consider it wraps with stimulants, even though they are the only things that helped me DRASTICALLY improve my life before Xywav/Psilocybin really destroyed my CNS?

Google Drive Link with Some Personal Notes on my Situation: Please DM Me for Link if you may help me further please.