Feeling depressed?

Feeling depressed? Don't reach for that anti-depressant pill. It may cost you your life.

Here's the story of Kaili and Breena. 

And here's the dirty story of how a company fabricated data to sell their anti-depressant. They were fined a billion or so but still made money.

Instead of pill, why not go for meditation and exercise.

Here's the story of another company and its bad, bad medicine.

The evil called olanzapine AKA zyprexa, olandus, etc.

My son has been on zyprexa since he was 17. He is now 27. In between, for a very short time, he was also on abilify and another anti-psychotic but we returned to zyprexa for a very interesting reason which will be a subject of another post.

OK, truth to tell, he is not anymore on zyprexa, which costs a fortune, but on olandus which costs one third a fortune through the years. But from the same evil mold: olanzapine.

We have tapered down to less than 5mg. And he is entering another withdrawal phase, I believe. He now spouts expletives and unintelligible words interspersed with "fuck" and "shit". But most of the time he seems to lack life. Gone is his interest in reading (he used to ask me to bring copies of The Economist  from our office library) and in watching Fareed Zakaria and even Bill Maher. He does not even watch videos anymore. He still logs in to FB but his friend from school have since been "unfriended" or perhaps have "unfriended" him.

But we are determined to get him off this psychiatric hellhole.

I think he now  has a slight tardive dyskinesia or whatever. He jogs his head to one side in an awkward manner.

If you are about to take zyprexa for any reason (mostly from prescription by psychiatrists who does not know any better), please read first this story of Sally and the comments of many suffering from the side effects of the drug.

And this also: Carole's story.

Happy new year 2016!

I've been busy in my other blog hence very sparse posting here.

These were duds:


But Happy New Year anyway!!

Update on my [son]:  Making slow progress here and there. He goes out unaccompanied and now spends most of his mall hours at the SM Seaside. Taxi fare is P150 one way. It is about P200 from SM Cebu so we saved a little.

We've learned to let go but still stressed out when it is already dark and he is still not home. We have to rely on the kindness of strangers.

For the past couple of months [he] most often communicates only with hand gestures.

One time he came home on a habal-habal, a motorcycle that serves as taxi, and the driver said he picked him up at SM Seaside after noticing that other habal-habal drivers seemed to ignore him. [My son] was dressed up only in shirt, shorts and slippers. (When he wears his better clothing and shoes we find that he does not have any problem flagging a taxi.) According to the kind driver, [my son] only blurted Talisay when asked where he was going. The driver happened to be from Talisay also so he gave [my son] a ride home (for P150). Along the way [my son] was only making hand gestures to guide the driver. This he does also to taxi drivers according to a couple that I interviewed when I chanced on meeting them while waiting for [my son] to reach home.

Update on medication. Robert Whitaker has another article on madinamerica.com confirming the uselessness of anti-psychotic drugs such as [my son] is taking.

We are down to less than 1/2 of his olanzapine.

Note: As of September 25, 2016 I have edited out the name of my son to protect his privacy.

An open letter in behalf of my strange son

The full name of my son is [edited out for privacy]. It comes from the Cebuano word [edited out] which means someone to look up to or honorable.

For a couple of years now he has been behaving strangely, taking him on a path away from the meaning of his name, hence the title of this post. In this open letter I would like to ask the forgiveness of those who have been on the receiving end of this strangeness.

He was not always like that. Like me he was kind of shy and reserved around people but can be talkative at times among friends and family. As a child he was very sensitive; tears would well in his eyes when he was chided by his siblings and me even over simple matters.

[Nickname of my son], as he is known in the family,  is the second child of three siblings; sandwiched between two girls. Just like his sisters he was born through natural childbirth in our little rented room in Tormis St., Sambag, Cebu City. I was then working in a regional office of a government bank while their mother was working with the Talisay local government as a day care teacher. The children were all delivered safely by Mrs. Ramirez, a midwife of Talisay LGU, who was a close friend of my wife.

We moved to Talisay, the hometown of my wife, when he was 5 years old. In the elementary (public school like the rest of his siblings)  he was a boy scout and, as almost all kids do, spent a lot of time in basketball. He would oftentimes get a dressing down from me about wasting his time on a sport meant for tall people. In college he grew to be 5'9" tall; still short for my standard though he was 1 inch taller than me. Looking back at this now with regrets I think I must have contributed to his strangeness.

As an episode of this strangeness, I learned from our youngest daughter, He has been sending explicitly vulgar chat messages to a Ms Angela. His tweets to Ms Kathryn Bernardo have been rather crude. He sometimes fail to sign out from his FB and twitter hence our discovery.

I hope Ms Angela, Ms Bernardo, and others would find in their hearts a place for forgiveness for Hal. Ms Angela, I believe, is a fine young lady from the snippets of posts I saw in my son's FB account when he was not yet unfriended. Ms Bernardo is also one of the fine artists in the country. My wife, and daughters are ardent fans. So is my son despite his strangeness.

I will explain in another post what led to this strangeness. This is getting tiresome for a  senior citizen who had hoped to spend his retirement years in peace.

In the meantime here are similar poignant stories from a father, and a mother whose son is as strange as mine:

A Mother and Son's Journey by Rossa Forbes

 My Mysterious Son by Dick Russel

Note: As of September 25, 2016 I have edited out the name of my son to protect his privacy.

Need a sketch for MCWD? Here's an easy way.

We applied for water connection with the MCWD. And they needed a sketch. Thanks to Google Map, we attached these to our application:

And the details came from Google earth:

We used this also when we applied for a Cignal connection two years ago.

This RJ45 fails

This batch of RJ45 plugs is crappy.

This morning Danel and Conde visited Dodon and played games on the xbox. The wireless connection was spotty.

After Dodon's pals went home  I made a patch cable to connect our xbox to our router. I was meaning to do this for a long time now. Yesterday, Dodon and I were at the SM. We dropped by Ace Hardware and bought  RJ45 plugs. 

But the plug does not seem to be of the kind that I have in my other patch cables. The cable tester does not show a good connection.The plug does not fit snugly into a port; it won't click in place and falls off at a touch. I think I need to get some real plugs from AC-DC or Advance Electronics.

14 January 2015. OK, I was wrong. It was not the RJ45 plugs that were crappy but this crimper I bought from CDR King:

So I got this one which worked fine, but a little pricey, from Harmanson:

You get what you pay for.

Seasons greetings

Due to my other blog, I did not have time to put my random thoughts here. Next year, I think I will have time to spare.

Much of my thoughts nowadays, however, is about the iatrogenic condition of my son. It is almost eight years now since he was started on medication. It was only towards the end of 2013 that we began to learn about the side effects of neuroleptics. 

Thanks to Robert Whitaker, Monica Cassani, Will Hall, and many other great guys, we are beginning to understand the problem. 

The healing of our son will be a slow but exciting process for the family.

Happy new year!