Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died due to drugs and the efforts to prevent drug abuse have not stopped this crisis. But underneath it all is a hidden tale of addiction, violence and the greed of those who profess their intention to help.

The War on Drugs

The 1990s saw the start of what is commonly called the “drug crisis” in America with a rise in overdose deaths involving opioids and continuing over the decades to include the jump in heroin deaths in 2010 and circling back to opioids today in the form of synthetics such as fentanyl.

More than one million Americans have died from drug overdoses since this drug crisis began and currently around 100,000 people are dying each year. It is a tragic situation that has garnered a tremendous amount of news coverage and funding.

The annual budget to fight the war on drugs in the United States is now over $39 billion with more than a trillion dollars having been spent since 1971. This is a staggering amount of money with very little if any positive results to show from the expenditure.

But underlying all of this is something that is rarely if ever talked about, the mental health industries drugging of men, women and children in the name of help.

The Rise of Medication Assisted Treatment

Just ahead of the drug crisis, psychiatrists voted into existence “abuse” and “dependency” as mental health disorders and added these to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) thus ensuring that they would be able to treat and bill those suffering from addiction.

However, the psychiatric model of treating drug addiction, now commonly called Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT), began even earlier. While the history of MAT goes back to the 1900’s the modern version of this method came into existence in the 1940s when methadone, a synthetic opioid, was developed. The idea behind this treatment is to simply substitute addiction from one drug to another such as Suboxone or Vivitrol.

By first substituting one addiction for another and then labeling the affliction a mental illness, psychiatry has guaranteed themselves not only a cash cow but also customers for life.

The Source of Societal Decay

Substance Use Disorder (SUD) as it is now labeled in the DSM, is often diagnosed with a secondary co-occurring mental illness such as anxiety, depression, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, and even schizophrenia.

In turn, the person being subjected to MAT drug rehab is often also prescribed one or more psychiatric drugs, something called polypharmacy. This prescribing of multiple mind-altering drugs makes for a deadly cocktail that puts the user in danger and also those around the individual.

While there are no actual tests to determine if a person if suffering from a mental illness and the chemical imbalance theory has once again been debunked as nothing more than a marketing ploy with no basis in fact, it is factually known that the drugs prescribed by psychiatry come with a long list of horrific side effects and adverse reactions.

Furthermore, users of these drugs put themselves at risk of suicide in some cases and they are also potentially putting those around them in danger of violence, including homicide.

More than 30 studies, drug regulatory agency warnings and expert opinion link psychotropic drugs to violent and suicidal behavior. Additionally, 27 international drug agency warnings exist that link psychiatric drugs to the adverse effects of violence, mania, psychosis or homicide; 51 warn of self-harm or suicide/suicidal ideation and 22 report aggression and hostility.

With 1 in 6 Americans on a psychiatric drug and the number of antidepressant overdose deaths continuing to climb it is well past time for policy makers to take a good hard look at the utter failure of the mental health industry to help those in crisis. The truth is that the mental health industry created a society of drugged individuals and violence. Isn’t it time for a change?

Demand for Change

“It is known that people taking or withdrawing from psychiatric drugs have committed at least 65 high-profile acts of senseless violence, resulting in 357 dead and 336 wounded,” states the president for the Citizens Commission on Human Rights in Florida, Diane Stein. “It is also known that these figures include at least 37 school related acts of violence yet those in a position to help prevent future violence refuse to investigate this possible cause and instead call for more mental health programs and funding.”

The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) has repeatedly called upon lawmakers to hold legislative hearings to fully investigate the correlation between psychiatric treatment and violence and suicide yet this has not happened effectively. Instead, the Biden-Harris administration “recently awarded $68.5 million in grants that support behavioral health education, training and community programs to help address mental health and substance use conditions in support of” President Biden’s agenda.

CCHR, a nonprofit mental health watchdog, is also demanding that mandatory toxicology testing for psychiatric and even illicit drugs is required in cases where someone has committed a mass shooting or other serious violent crime and that law enforcement officers, school security and teachers are trained on the adverse effects of psychotropic drugs in order to recognize that irrational, violent and suicidal behavior in persons they may face could be influenced by these drugs.