When I was a kid, I had a pretty okay time when I was very young. My mum was quite ill, my dad was doing shift work to financially support us. We were in a small community church, wonderful godparents and one set of grandparents were nearby and we saw them regularly at weekends. I was a bit of a pass the parcel kid, but there were lots of caring people around. I was always an outsider. Only really had two friends at school, and spent most of my time reading books.
It wasn't entirely trouble free, my parents insisted that their friends should 'tease' my younger sibling and I so we wouldn't grow up 'spoilt' or 'oversensitive'. Some of their friends got the boundaries right. Others not so much.
When I was about 8 my family moved house. The new church we went to had more than one other kid my age, finally... but none of them wanted to know me. I wasn't a leader's kid or born into that church. No status. At school I knew no one either. Bullied. Told off at home for the wear and tear that caused my school clothes. Spent a lot of time in the libraries. My life was just church and school, nothing else at that point. I had developed migraines and all extracurricular activities had been stopped. I was miserable. Things weren't easy with my family. I wasn't the perfect kid they had wanted. I didn't exhibit the socially expected and appropriate emotions at the right time. Sensory sensitivities, a 'picky eater', physically clumsy... Probably autistic, maybe dyspraxic, but just 'awkward'.
At secondary school I found some friends. Guys, geeks, no pretensions of being righteous, role players, occultists and fantasy card game players. I wasn't exactly welcomed, still an outsider with very different beliefs, but they were considerably kinder, and tolerated me hanging out with them.
It got to the point with where I was so distressed with the school, church, home experience I became suicidal and my friends at school didn't know what to do with me to keep me safe. They told a teacher, who called my dad. When I got home there was a discussion of why I felt distressed. I couldn't explain it, pinpoint it, describe it - it's not like I'd been allowed much practice at talking about feelings.
It was decided I should go to the doctor with my mum. A couple of times we went to the doctor, who was from the same church. Mum crying and saying 'why are you doing this to us?' 'why are you saying we're a bad family?' I wasn't, but it seemed like I was an embarrassment. A reputation problem. In a process that has been repeated several times since in different ways, the sickness and trauma in the family was put onto me. I became the family scapegoat for it all. When the GP offered Prozac, even though I was 15, the answer was yes. There was no real discussion that I remember about side effects, or what to expect at all. They didn't understand what I was feeling, or why in the first place, so how would they assess the difference? It was a 'wonder drug' apparently, and me taking it made my family feel much better. Placebo effect for the people who weren't even taking it.
It did nothing for me. I was still desperately distressed only now I was being stubbornly, wilfully unhappy and taking a drug that should fix the broken part of the family. My feelings had never been welcome, and now the bit of me I felt valued for, my mind, was apparently broken. My parents had faith in the medics, and big pharma. I thought it must be me, and I was extensively gaslit about the experience I was actually having, because they were so pleased I was going to get better. The power of faith and belief.
The brain doesn't stop growing until you're about 24, and there was no discussion, no real question about whether it had been through trials in anyone my age, over 25 years ago.
We know that SSRI antidepressants can cause all sorts of issues, starting with increased suicidality, nausea, heart rate changes, and sleep problems. I have always had sleep problems. My best friend was older than me, and was able to get away with buying over the counter sleeping pills, giving them to me daily because I was so desperate to shut off from the world for a few hours a night and sleep, he knew I wouldn't stockpile them. I wanted to sleep and not wake up.
I have spent most of the last 25 years on various types of psychiatric drugs and physical health drugs, many to deal with the side effects or permanent results of other drugs I was taking. Had several extreme adverse reactions to some of the pills I've been given. Taken medications that come with the black box warning 'may cause sudden unexplained death'. My feelings had been deemed so inappropriate, distressing and painful that I risked my life to suppress them.
At this point in civilisation we are all dealing with generational epigenetic trauma. My family never meant to hurt me. I understand some of how they got to where they are, from listening to them about their experiences. I forgive them. They had no idea what a dark path I would walk down because I had blunted and inappropriate emotional responses to my experiences. I had no one I could trust to talk with, bullies in every direction, and medics who repeatedly told me they were the experts on my experience, they knew better than me what I was feeling and why. The reality was that I had social and spiritual problems.
Things have vastly improved for me recently due to a combination of detox from a daily minimum of 13 big pharma meds, facing my spiritual problems - truth and reconciliation time, and a huge upward shift in the quality of the company I keep.
The NHS website currently says Prozac can be given to to children from the age of 8. Does it make sense to give a child with a growing brain, experiencing depression, a drug that can increase suicidality? Prescribe it for bulimia, with a common side effect of nausea? Heart rate changes for a child with anxiety?
It makes me so distressed and angry that we're still doing this to children. Kids even younger that I was. It's an uncomfortable fact that the frontal lobe which is the part of the brain we use to make moral decisions is the last bit to fully develop, and that psychiatric medications can be numbing, and empathy impairing, temporarily in adults. What are we doing to children? Has that been researched and should we investigate it, or do we just need to declare that experiment over, and repent? When does it stop? Do we really need to sacrifice children's minds to big pharma for the convenience of giving them pills to quiet down their distress rather than finding someone trustworthy who will help them express what they are experiencing?
With these current experimental medical interventions, labelled 'vaccines' they are coming for the children. We know the children are not at risk themselves. The risk is to adults status, reputations, convenience. The situation is far worse than I experienced. If the kids only experience the very best possible outcomes, and it's Russian roulette, how do you plan to explain to your child who grows up with a profound respect for life from conception, that when they were at no risk, you got them injected with cells developed from an aborted fetus? A future vegan that animals were killed for the development and contents of these injections? They are using gene therapy with no long term safety data, no control groups, that we already know can cause death or devastating permanent health problems, immune disruption, neurological problems, and sterility. Sacrificing children's future fertility, why? for what, and to whom?
I pray this is the point where we stop sacrificing children for convenience/reputation/status and every other reason. When are we going to stop scapegoating them? When fatal or lifelong effects are turning up in trials, it can never be acceptable to us to say 'add more children to the trial so we understand better how many will be killed or disabled'. No. No more child sacrifice.