Pharmaceutical Drugs. Are they a Lifetime Sentence?

Once on drugs, always on drugs? And if so, are you at the start of a long journey towards serious ill-health and chronic disease?

Pharmaceutical medicine has little problem prescribing drugs. For its patients it is the normal consequence of seeing a doctor, or visiting a hospital, anywhere in the world. Given the growing concerns about the safety and effectiveness of prescribed drugs, deprescribing drug taking is rarely mentioned.

However, a recent paper, outlined in the Medscape journal, “New Deprescribing Guidance Marks an ‘Important Moment’ in Psychiatry” brought this concept to my attention.

          “A new expert consensus statement from the American Society of Clinical Psychopharmacology offered clinical guidance on when and whether to discontinue psychiatric medications. The statement, developed by a 45-member international task force, reached consensus on 44 of 50 recommendations addressing when deprescribing is warranted. Among the key points: clinicians should periodically reassess all medications, always verify adherence before concluding a drug isn’t working, and engage patients in shared decision-making about discontinuation”.

What this article demonstrates is taking pharmaceutical drugs, all with known, usually serious adverse health reactions, ‘deprescribing’ them is something not often considered in conventional medicine. What this means is that conventional medicine appears to be content to allow its patients to continue taking drugs, often for a lifetime, without considering the likely health consequences to patients.

As a practising homeopath I routinely prescribed homeopathic remedies for my sick patients and there was never a presumption that a patient would take them for long. If they did not work - I changed them to something that did work. If they worked - the regularity of the prescription was reduced to “take as necessary”. Usually, once a remedy began to work, this proved to be with decreasing frequency. “Deprescribing” remedies was never an issue!

With conventional medicine the situation is different. There seems to be an automatic, inevitable presumption in favour of continuing drugs, almost regardless of the outcome.

• If a drug works (even minimally) the patient is presumed to need it, will not be able to cope without it, so patients are encouraged to continue taking it.

• If a drug does not work, the patient remains ill, so the assumption is that they still need it, perhaps in a stronger form, or another similar drug; otherwise the illness will get worse.

So all patients need to ask whether these assumptions are medical one’s, or based on the business model of conventional medicine. Selling drugs, after all, is what the pharmaceutical industry, which dominates conventional medicine, does!

Reading the Medscape article reminded me that the prescription of “Lifetime drugs” is common, perhaps even routine. The is despite the fact that taking a drug over an extended period of time is likely to increase both the likelihood of causing serious adverse drug reactions, and the need for increasingly stronger drugs, alongside the creation of drug tolerance and dependency.

Nowhere is this more so than with psychiatric medicine. This can be quickly demonstrated by looking at the known “side effects” of antidepressant drugs (for example see this account from the MIND website), and antipsychotic drugs (see this similar account from MIND). They include many serious illnesses and diseases such as heart and liver problems, diabetes, problems with vision, seizures (fits). But there are others which would clearly prejudice the patients lifestyle and quality of life, including confusion and agitation, sedation, sleepiness, decreased alertness, drowsiness, hallucinations, suicidal feeling and behaviour

Imagine living with a drug that you have to take for the rest of your life that might be subjecting you to these so-called ‘side effects’! Yet this is what conventional medicine does, routinely.

So perhaps it is a positive sign that at least one section of the Conventional Medical Establishment is starting to think about ‘deprescribing’ their use. Whether it happens, or not, is another matter.

Moreover, confidence in the positive impact of pharmaceutical drugs are invariably exaggerated. The ‘medical science’ that informs and supports the use of prescribed drugs is not as strong as most people assume. Most drug trials do not describe ‘cures’ but in the main suggesting that they can help:

• to reduce the severity of a condition by 30% (or similar),

• and then only in 25% of patients (or similar).

So what ‘medical science’ is usually saying is that 75% of patients will not be helped at all, and even those who are helped are still likely to continue suffering some 70% of the illnesses impact.

In this way pharmaceutical drugs are given too much credit for what they can actually do! I have written about this over-confidence before in medical spheres other than mental health. For instance, when chronic pain is treated (as it is routinely) with pain killing drugs patients will usually find that the more painkillers they take, the more they need, and that increasingly strong doses, with stronger ‘side effects’, are required as the pain gets progressively worse. Eventually, when painkillers no longer work, a limb replacement operation is often required. For two examples of this ‘long journey’ into chronic ill-health see two of my articles, both written in 2018, about “A long journey through pain and painkilling drugs to surgery”, and “Ronald. A patient nearing the end of a long journey through pain, painkilling drugs, chronic pain, and Tramadol”.

These examples of life-time drug prescriptions will be well known to many people. If we open our eyes we can see them all around us. The problem is that most people, brought up to believe in the ‘miracle’ cures of conventional medicine, do not associate the long-term drug taking with the exacerbation of health problem.

Taking pharmaceutical drugs, for any condition, is rarely anything more than a temporary fix, and more often than not is a ‘fix’ that will exacerbate, rather than improve, patient health. Almost inevitably taking one drug leads to two, then more; and to the prescription of stronger, more toxic drugs, ending with major (often brilliant) invasive operations, spiralling ill health, and ongoing long-term chronic disease.

 

The Immune System. It is the only mechanism we have that keeps us well, and can make us well when we fall sick.

 Hello All

Another one of my posts, titled above, has been deleted (censored) by Google. This is the email that I received from Blogger. 

"As you may know, our Community Guidelines (https://blogger.com/go/contentpolicy) describe the boundaries for what we allow – and don't allow – on Blogger. Your post titled 'The Immune System is the only mechanism we have that keeps us well, and can make us well when we fall sick.' was flagged to us for review. We have determined that it violates our guidelines and deleted the post, previously at https://safe-medicine.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-immune-system-is-only-mechanism-we.html.

"Why was your blog post deleted?

"Your content has been evaluated according to our Misleading content policy. Please visit our community guidelines page linked in this email to learn more.

I have asked Blogger to review this decision but I am fully aware that they will not do so. Google is firmly committed to the Pharmaceutical Medical Establishment, which brooks no dissent from the narrative.

However, you are still able to read my "misleading content" on my favoured Substack platform (click on this link). I would urge you to do so in order to decide for yourself whether it contains "misleading content". And whilst you are there you can either 'subscribe' to receive all my future articles (free), and 'follow' me on the platform (also free).

Blogger/Google's censorship of genuine health discussion demonstrates the lengths that Pharmaceutical Medicine will go in order to stifle debate on important issues relating to our health.

 

Addendum 6th March 2026

I have a tiny apology to make to Blogger. They have 'reinstated' my 'misleading post', presumably because it is no longer a 'misleading post'. Strange that. I have not changed it in any way, shape or form. But whereas I said that would not reinstate it (a statement based on past experience) they have now done so. Thank you. 

          "We have re-evaluated the post titled 'The Immune System is the only mechanism we have that keeps us well, and can make us well when we fall sick.' against our Community Guidelines. Upon review, the post has been reinstated. You may access the post at https://safe-medicine.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-immune-system-is-only-mechanism-we.html."

So perhaps this is a small victory for freedom of speech, even for Patient Choice and Health Freedom too?

The Immune System is the only mechanism we have that keeps us well, and can make us well when we fall sick.

Understanding the Immune System helps us understand health and wellness issues. Conventional medicine has jettisoned it. Natural medical therapies embrace it. It's the main difference between them.

The main problem with Pharmaceutical (or Conventional) Medicine, for most people, is that its treatments (notably its drugs and vaccines) are (i) largely ineffective, and (ii) often positively harmful. Yet this is actually a secondary problem, and it arises largely from its most basic problem.

The fundamental problem with Pharmaceutical medicine is that it has forgotten/discounted/jettisoned the one and only mechanism that keeps us well, and makes us well again when we fall sick.

Pharmaceutical medicine has successfully installed two very disempowering beliefs, as described in this Substack article by Embodying Homeopathy:

Embodying Homeopathy (my big "f you" to allopathy)

1. Symptoms of illness means that you are broken and need fixing.
2. Your body is not smart enough to fix it; so you need fixing from the outside.

          “It’s a really good way to keep people sick and dependent. And whether that was the intention or not isn’t up to me to say - but regardless of intention, the impact is all around us. These beliefs put a massive obstacle to cure smack dab in the middle of your healing journey because they reinforce a very core idea that your body is not capable of healing”.

I agree. The Conventional Medical Establishment is just plain wrong in its attitude to health and well-being. The human body has everything it needs to keep itself healthy, and to get better when it gets sick - with one proviso - we need to look after our immune system.

THE IMMUNE SYSTEM

From whatever vantage point we take to view pharmaceutical medicine this neglect of the immune system becomes apparent.

• Pharmaceutical drugs (the pain ‘killers’, the ‘anti-’ drugs, the ‘blockers’, the ‘inhibitors’, et al) all seek to force the body to do something it would not normally do. They kill pain (temporarily); they fight germs, they block and inhibit natural bodily processes. What they do is described in the name!

• Vaccines seek to fight germs, artificially, from the outside, trying to do what the body’s immune system does naturally. And it does so on the arrogant belief that the pharmaceutical industry knows best.

Yet it is worse than this. Conventional medicine’s failure to acknowledge the immune system’s role in our health is probably the most important factor preventing it from understanding what is actually making us sick, and why its treatments are failing to deal with illness, effectively and safely.

MEASLES OUTBREAKS

Whenever conventional medicine considers a medical issue, their dismissal of the immune system means that they are unable to identify the real problem. Take its regular problem with so-called “measles outbreaks”. It is not just that they are trying to make ‘a mountain from a molehill’ (measles is a mild illness, most of these ‘outbreaks’ involved small numbers of cases, and recovery is usually quick. Regardless of this conventional medicine requires the vaccination of the entire population of young children!

Conventional medicine states that these ‘outbreaks’ of measles are serious, and routinely blame them on ‘unvaccinated’ children. It makes the assumption that if only all children were vaccinated no one would ever contract measles.

The problem for conventional medicine is that amongst those who contract measles in these outbreaks are children who have been fully vaccinated. And conventional medicine is not very good at explaining why this should be! In addition, and more generally, there is now a number of good studies that show ‘unvaccinated’ children to be healthier than ‘vaccinated children’. So how is this to be explained?

Conventional medicine struggles to explain why children who contract measles come from both groups. They either avoid the issue, or come up with highly complicated, often quite incredible explanations.

The simple explanation, however, becomes clear when we bring the immune system is taken into the picture. Natural medical therapies can consider 4 different groups of children.

1. Vaccinated children who have a strong, protective immune system. This means they did not need to be vaccinated as they would not have contracted measles anyway. These are the vaccinated children who do not get sick.

2. Vaccinated children with a weakened or compromised immune system. These children are more vulnerable to contracting measles, and any other disease. These are the vaccinated children who get sick.

3. Unvaccinated children with a weak immune system. These children are most in danger of contracting measles, are most likely to get sick, and who are likely to suffer the (very occasional) serious side effects of measles.

4. Unvaccinated children who have a strong, protective immune system. These children will not get sick, regardless of their vaccination status, and do not require vaccination in order to keep them well.

So for natural medical therapists vaccination status is not important; but the immune system most certainly is! What this means is that the starting point to illness, of all kinds, is quite different to that of pharmaceutical medicine - the primary importance of supporting and strengthening the individual’s immune system.

THE CONFUSION OF CONVENTIONAL MEDICINE

This is why Conventional Medicine always goes around in circles when it discusses illness. It does not understand illness, so it has no effective treatment for it. I recently read this Substack article from Popular Rationalism about a recent measles scare in the USA. It correctly asks for ‘more data’ as it struggles to make sense of the existing data. It is an excellent article, in its restricted way, but it is clearly uncertain about why both vaccinated and unvaccinated children were going down with measles! If it is read with a focus on the immune system, rather than vaccination status, many more questions are answered.

Popular Rationalism. What's Going On with the MMR Vaccine? 44% of Measles Cases in Colorado Transmission Chain Were Vaccinated Individuals

 

The most serious consequence of ignoring the immune system is that conventional medicine appears quite unable to identify the causes of illness. I wrote about it here, in my Substack article.

          “I realised this first several years ago whilst starting to put together my Iatrogenic (Doctor-Induced) Disease E-book. Each page of this book focuses on an illness or disease in order to see whether conventional medical drugs and vaccine can cause it. In doing so I found that conventional medicine routinely denies that their drugs and vaccines cause all kinds of illnesses. Indeed, worse than this, time and time again, conventional medicine states that “there is no known cause”.

So I asked the important question that arises. If a medical system does not know what causes illness and disease how is it able to treat it, safely and effectively? Let’s look at the different ways conventional medicine, and natural medical therapies, deal with a fever.

DEALING WITH FEVER

When someone gets ill the body’s usual response is to throw a fever. This is a normal and natural response of the immune system, an attempt to heal itself. The response of conventional medicine is often to give the patient a pharmaceutical drug in order to reduce the fever. What this means is that drugs are introduced to treat the patient in a way contrary to what the immune system is trying to do. It is what causes illness, through adverse drug reactions.

Homeopathy does quite the opposite. Faced with a patient with a fever it will prescribe a remedy which is made from a substance (homeopathically diluted and potentized) that (in its normal state) would actually cause a fever. In other words, the remedy is prescribed to correspond with, and support what the immune system is already seeking to do. It is called ‘treating like with like’, or the Law of Similars, on which homeopathy is based.

This is a fundamental difference in approach to treating an illness. Homeopathy is not fighting, or blocking, or inhibiting anything. It is recognising the body’s ability, through its immune system, to heal itself - and supporting that process.

So conventional medicine, when it considers an illness like the measles outbreak study mentioned above, focuses on pharmaceutical interventions (vaccinated or unvaccinated), whilst natural medicine focuses on the immune system (strong or compromised). The former talks about the need for drugs and vaccines. The latter focuses on the individual immune system, ensuring they are (i) eating a good diet, (ii) having adequate exercise, and (iii) having sufficient relaxation and rest (avoiding stress) - the three main factors that support and strengthen our immune systems.

For the pharmaceutical industry, which dominates conventional medicine, the former view is the more profitable, the latter is not. This goes some way to explaining its approach to most health issues; and the reason for its failure. When it considers illness it focuses on its business model - selling drugs and vaccines. If fails to focus on the individual, and the capacity of his/her body to heal itself - which is not profitable.

For natural medical therapies the patient is central, identifying the body’s weaknesses, and addressing them by supporting/stengthening/utilising their immune system. This goes a considerably way to explaining their greater success in dealing with sickness.

An effective and safe medical system is possible only when the immune system becomes central. The 100 year plus experiment with pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines demonstrates clearly that treating the body ‘from outside’ does not work. It has led to epidemic levels of chronic disease, and a plethora of ‘new’ and ‘rare’ diseases.

We, each one of us, as individuals, have within us the means of staying well, and regaining wellness. Any successful health system needs to recognise this simple but vital point. Accordingly it would spend less time promoting drugs and vaccines, and more time educating everyone

about the importance of their immune system, and how we can all support and strengthen it every day of our lives.

Good health rests firmly in our own hands; it does not come with a bottle of pills, or a vial of vaccine.