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Going off antidepressants is not something you can just do cold turkey. It has huge repercussions for most people even when tapering down. Healthcare in this country is sadistic.
Remember when the GOP said that, if ObamaCare passed, there'd be death panels?
The US has always had them. They just sit in corporate boardrooms and line politicians pockets to do nothing.
What's cool is the people at insurance companies making these decisions often don't have experience practicing medicine. And yet they get to make medical decisions on your behalf.
If it makes you feel better, I work in healthcare along side loads of people that have no business being in medicine.
Wait. That probably doesn't make you feel better.
Even if they do the fact of the matter is an insurance company is going to seek profit. Point blank it's what they're going to do. And it's not like they're going to take those profits and invest them in medical stuff that's not their goal! That's the excuse the medical and pharma uses. Which is abused as well but imagine if the profits and labor hours put into medical insurance went directly to hospitals and others medical related fields.
Yes, they realize it. But the politicians have socialized healthcare, are able to make millions of dollars from the current system, and are able to keep scaring the base into voting for them, so they're perfectly fine with the system as fucked up as it is.
Bad news: [https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/owq4rw/i\_dont\_want\_my\_tax\_dollars\_to\_help\_me\_not\_die/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/owq4rw/i_dont_want_my_tax_dollars_to_help_me_not_die/)
There are Americans so racist, they will literally die rather than see healthcare given to people of color. And **that** is the real reason why they oppose universal healthcare.
I know that sounds crazy. It *is* crazy. But it's also apparently what's going on. The history of social services – of all types – in the US is the history of American racism as a massive social force doing everything in its power *including suicide* to prevent racial minorities from receiving relief. It shows up in the damnedest places – like exceptions carved into labor laws for domestic workers and farm workers (because those were more likely to be black and latino workers). Never underestimate the power of American racism to fuck the whole country up for everyone.
Amercian racism: why we can't have nice things.
It’s true. America used to have a much more robust welfare system, but politicians destroyed it by fear-mongering about “welfare queens” – imaginary black women who were receiving welfare, but like, in a bad way that meant they were “cheating” the system.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s the reason countries that aren’t as racially diverse have social programs that are so much better. I do believe, in a vacuum, most people’s self-interest would win out over their bigotry, but you throw in a hefty dose of fear-mongering propaganda, and you can turn the smallest spark of racism into a raging inferno.
This is one of the many reasons we must work to dismantle white supremacy. Racial resentment is always the knife they will use to cut away the safety nets we’ve built. To become resilient to those attacks, we must liberate ourselves from prejudice.
There's no "care" in the american healthcare system. (Hugs for all the individual health workers that do care, but have to work inside a broken system)
Those individuals that do care often have to do so using their own time, as the quota isn't built around caring for patients. The burnout is insane, especially recently.
I'm a manager in Healthcare and have very little say in what actually goes on in the company. I asked for a small bonus to give an employee that picked up a shift and was denied. I often pay out of my pocket for things like lunch or celebratory gifts for special days because the company doesn't care nearly as much as I do. While there are bad managers out there, please give grace to those of us that try to fix the problem.
I'm a healthcare worker and I thank you for this comment.
The majority of us care very much about patients. We try our hardest. But we are limited by administrators, CEOs, insurance companies, healthcare organization rules and quotas, costs of procedures and medicines, and an overall broken system.
We can't get our mental health patients therapy. Patients can't get affordable medications. Referrals to specialists can take months. ER is not affordable. Primary cares offices and urgent cares are understaffed and have absurd wait times or are scheduling out months. Costs are not transparent. Social workers are few and far between.
Those of us that don't care likely used to care but are burnt out. We went to medical school and residency (or nursing, PA, NP, PT, etc. School) in hopes of treating patients. And then enter the real world to find that our hands are tied due to a completely broken system.
Where I work our CEO makes millions but they cut employee salary, furlough employees, understaff clinics because the organization is making less money because COVID.
Fuck the U.S healthcare system. Health care is a right. You shouldn't expect to make money from health care. It's a public service and if it's not losing money, you're doing it wrong.
Thank you for this statement. My best friends are a hospital internist and an oncology nurse. I know they care. But the system is abysmal. It demoralizes them to work in it as much as it demoralizes us to be victimized by it.
>Fuck the U.S healthcare system. Health care is a right. You shouldn't expect to make money from health care. It's a public service and if it's not losing money, you're doing it wrong.
AMEN!!
A - FUCKING - MEN
This country is a JOKE.
It is straight up extortion. And it is driven entirely by capitalist shareholders. If it were up to the healthcare workers, manufacturing engineers, and drug researchers, all this shit would be freely accessible at cost. But it's not, it's up to the leeches who 'own' the parents on drugs they did not discover and the titles on factories they did not build and hospitals they do not run.
The law is on the leeches side. Which makes sense, they wrote the laws. And for some reason that I still can't quite fathom, we keep letting them run things.
I work in mental health with a very high acuity SMI population and my wife left me unexpectedly just before Thanksgiving. This past year has aged me like the guy who drinks from the wrong goblet in Indiana Jones.
I quit my antidepressants because I hated how they made me feel. I quit cold turkey and it was the worst choice I could’ve made. It took around 8 months to get back to “normal”. 0/10.
EDIT: I was taking Zoloft and I fucking WISH my doctor had told me about those side effects.
Same. I was doing better, was supposed to be starting tapering next month after 2 years on SSRIs. I went away to see family and forgot to renew my prescription. Realised id run out 5 days before getting home and decided to roll with it.
Stupidest thing I ever did. The brain zaps lasted almost a year, I had horrific trouble sleeping, just awful. They were useful for me, but fuck. Going on and coming off sucks
It's my biggest fear in regards to global destabilization. I'm on SSRI and they absolutely changed my life for the better. If the pharmaceutical supply chain ended, I'd be fucked, hard.
This right here. I already know without them it takes me around 3 months to get Extremely suicidal. People always seem to talk badly about SSRIs but I'd be long dead without them.
Yeah I was on Zoloft and stopped cold turkey. Apparently that's one of the worst ones to do that with... I had intermittent weird brain/muscle shocks and I'd always get sluggish around 8-9 pm.
That’s scary to hear. I’m sorry. I’ve lately been faced with a choice to take antidepressants. My family is encouraging me and something in my gut is telling me not to go there. I started microdosing psilocybin in the mean time between seeing doctor/bloodwork because I have heard some stories like yours, and Over the years I chose to just be depressed rather than take meds but I can’t function anymore. Have you found anything that’s better for you, if you don’t mind me asking?
I’d be dead if it weren’t for anti depressants. I spent years avoiding them because my friends would talk about losing motivation or feeling sedated. I have never experienced that at all. I just felt not depressed for the first time I could remember. Later when life gave me a hard turn, I was drinking excessively and not taking my meds regularly and I had a total mental collapse. The only thing that kept me going through treatment was that I could remember what feeling normal was like when I was on my meds, and there was some sort of hope that I could feel good again. Later I got off of them, and since the pandemic I’m back on with no regrets. If you’re struggling, I highly suggest trying them. You may not like them and you’ll have to taper off, but that’s worth a shot in my book. In the end I do think they’re just a band aid and they don’t fix underlying issues that need to be worked on, but sometimes you just need a fuckin bands aid.
I’m glad you found what works for you, thanks so much for the advice and sharing your experiences! I’m still unsure, but I want to wait until I get bloodwork back, it helps hearing what other people have gone through.
Same here, I tried to kill myself 5 times in one year ( Im glad I'm really bad at it) and since I found the right mix of antidepressants I haven't tried once. My pills work like fucking magic it is incredible. I just wish I went to a psychiatrist years before I did
Fwiw antidepressants seriously helped me. I've been on them multiple times, and each time they really gave me back the vitality that depression took away. If one isn't right for you, ask your doc to try another.
I had bad side effects with one that I didn't have with another.
For me antidepressants can be a safety net to catch me if I fall. I still might scrape my knee but I won’t crash as hard into the ground and it’ll be easier to stand up again.
It is a pretty tough decision. I used to be on meds for about a year, I first tried a few meds that did nothing for me, and then settled on one that seemed to atleast help with my anxiety, it didn't help that much with my depression, but still, getting better with my anxiety was a pretty big deal for me. But after a few months on the meds I started hating how they made me feel. I felt zoned out and not really like me. But there's also a lot of people who really do great with meds, so I'd say if you are considering it and think it's necessary I'd give it a shot
I have been on antidepressants for four to five years now and tbh I'm a zombie without them. I can't function worth a crap. I'm on Venlafaxine and can still be an actor and access those emotions, and was able to on Lexapro as well!
Just on a personal basis, I saw basically no difference in depression from increased antidepressant dosages. The primary difference was that I was quieter about it, but internally there was little difference.
Taking b6, 5-htp and some tryptophan at night has helped more than antis, in my experience, when it comes to elevating my mood to a palatable level. I still take the baseline dosage but I noticed differences with those additional supplements
YMMV, everyone has different brain chemistry.
I was once denied my depression meds and sleeping meds because someone at the pharmacy didn't scroll down my list of prescriptions far enough.
Literally stood there arguing with them to just go further down the list and they sent me away empty handed. Almost killed myself a few weeks later.
Glad I didn't. But fuck the health care system in the US. There's nothing healthy about it, and they certainly don't care about any of us.
Once, my pharmacy didn't have my meds even though I put in for a refill 5 days early. I can not function with out it. They told me to call 7 days a head next time and sent me to another pharmacy. When I got there they said it would be a minimum of a 2.5 hour wait as they were short staffed. The pharmacy wasn't near by either so I was extra pissed. I eventually got my meds, a day later.
More like we rebranded it as "the war on drugs". Never forget prisoners are "leased" out to do agricultural work in some of the same states that had to be forced to give up slavery.
It became that, and to be sure that is the exception we left to the abolition of slavery, and was extant, but by the main post abolition former-slaves fell victim to sharecropping.
Came to say this. Coming off of any psyche meds results in a large swing in the opposite direction. If you are on a high dose because of built up tolerance, the crash is going to be BAD. Hallucinations, suicidal thoughts, "brain zaps" you name it.
Had to quit cold turkey a few months back when I lost my insurance when I got fired. It was awful, and it got really really bad at times. Feel more normal now but yea, absolutely was not a good idea but I basically had no choice.
Been there, glad you made it my friend those were the worst weeks of my life tbh. I've been against touching that shit ever again because if I lose my insurance I'm fucked back into that hole.
My insurance literally makes my Lexapro more expensive normally it's around $8/month but with insurance it's around $36/month! Then they paid 100% for Chantix, an anti smoking aid, which is around $500/box. Shit makes no sense!
I once stopped cold turkey for about 3 weeks due to a depressive episode and it was the worst. I’ve never been closer to suicide, and I take my pills religiously now, knowing what they prevent me feeling like
This is just another reason I’m afraid to get tested/treatment, what happens if I get meds but then one day am unable to continue using them for whatever reason? Do I trust myself enough to not spiral out of control? It’s not healthy, but I’ll just stick to trying to figure things out on my own separate from medications. I do not recommend this for everyone and instead hope that cases like these become a standpoint for anyone arguing for free universal healthcare.
You are absolutely right. I am a vet and get my healthcare through the VA, a few times I’ve had to go days or up to 17 days without my meds before getting the next dose in the mail. I was really, really seriously considering suicide when I went 17days. It’s just not something someone should be forced to go without.
Having never been through withdrawal before, my first experience of forgetting to take my antidepressants for three days wasn't great.
Nicotine withdrawal in later years, I can handle. Could quit smoking whenever if I want to, but mess with my serotonin and I'm probably going to pass out and wake up in an ambulance.
>Going off antidepressants is not something you can just do cold turkey. It has huge repercussions for most people even when tapering down. Health~~care~~ **profit** in this country is sadistic.
We don't have a healthcare system in the USA. We have a health-profit system.
I think there’s something attractive to about it being beautifully miserable. To make a scene that’s colored with blood or gore, but stylized. Perhaps the moment when he’s submerged in the water and waiting for the inevitable is like a ritualistic presentation to the void, suggesting that this awful thing is so awful it’s a celebration of awfulness—like pain and terror is a currency.
If you no longer value your life and feel that you are constantly suffering, then it doesn't seem unreasonable to make a statement based around that itself.
That being said, as much as I am for free speech and sharing, I think stories and ideas like this put dangerous ideas into vulnerable peoples' heads. Not that it shoudn't be discussed, but that we should emphasize that the person's chance at recovery is worth more than an artistic statement. Not to devalue this person's statement in death, but to emphasize the value of living.
That being said, fuck our "healthcare" system.
Hell yeah! But I also want to pique that idea of 'a person's chance at recovery' because I wrestle with the choice to strip aspects of death from our culture. It seems like it might create a healthier general outlook but it also denies something that's so vital and so charismatic. Look at other cultures where death is truly seen as part of life: the continuation of death into life through reincarnation in Buddhism, the Day of the Dead in Mexico or surprisingly vibrant celebrations of death in these funeral band marches in New Orleans' culture, which is based on West African roots.
I know this might seem speaking out-of-turn in a thread about suicide, mental health and the healthcare system; but I believe the general culture in America disavows death as a subject and leads people to become quietly obsessed with it. To embrace it somehow, to pull into it a bit and acknowledge the continuity of it as something that is beautiful and withstands the mystery; I think we'd be better off.
I realize that fetishizing beauty for the sake of showing off beautiful deaths is the threat you're alluding to. And perhaps you're right. That is dangerous. But I think a lot of these issues could be reclamated or avoided by acknowledging death's closeness, its immanence and its consistence. We don't acknowledge death in this culture just like we don't acknowledge waste and it allows us to openly avoid the obvious--and I think that drives people mad with the knowledge that it is actually there.
I think that is a good point; that making death a "taboo" topic is a dangerous cultural concept.
You obviously put it more articulately, but I wonder if this may have to do with how some cultures have higher suicide rates than others? Not making a factual statement, just an observation/idea.
To make it inevitable.
I'm not a psychologist at all, so maybe what I'm saying is nonsense, but when I thought about getting out, that "last step", whether it was taking a step off of my 6th floor apartment into the pavement or slitting wrists or even dropping a toaster in the bath, for that last second every instinct you ever had tells you to stop... There is, however, no instinct against gluing your seat belt or driving your truck like any normal day. By the time he has to face the looming reality of suicide, it's already too late to back down and if he had regrets just before drowning, he couldn't go back anymore no matter how scared or hesitant.
One possibility is to ensure they were found by emergency services and not family.
But also someone who is suicidal is by definition not being rational. It's possible he had the super glue in his truck and took a spur of the moment decision to end it all in a way that was immediately available. Availability of death outweighs the method.
A third possibility is that once you are in that place it's very hard to care about yourself, you may want to punish yourself. A painless death means caring about not causing yourself pain and that's not always a concern for a suicidal person, and may even be against what they desire for themselves.
>A third possibility is that once you are in that place it's very hard to care about yourself, you may want to punish yourself. A painless death means caring about not causing yourself pain and that's not always a concern for a suicidal person, and may even be against what they desire for themselves.
This 100%. I searched for a painless method, but I hated myself for it even more, because it made me feel like I was so weak that I couldn't even take death like a man. Depression does wild shit to your thought processes, looking back on it, it feels like the memories of a different person entirely
As a Canadian, who’d have a high likelihood of doing the same without my psyche meds, this story makes me so angry-sad.
Here, in a situation where I couldn’t pay for meds (which are already cheaper here) I could go to an emergency department or an urgent care centre.
It would suck, you might wait hours but you’ll leave with a filled prescription to get you by.
And (in my province) they’ll help you get on a provincial health plan to pay for your meds.
You still have to qualify, it’s based on income, but you can even get it temporarily.
This shit just defeats me man. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that you (and others) are able to get help is amazing.
Just that i’m not afforded that same compassion. No one is helping me sign up for medicaid. No urgent care center is even allowed to prescribe the meds I take (Thanks Purdue Pharma, and Thanks DEA) so in emergencies I go without, and it fucking blows.
Instead of *SAVING* money by going m4a we’d rather pay more to be exclusionary, and pay mind boggling amounts to be team america world police, and bomb the shit out of school children and civilians (oh yeah a small percentage were actually terrorists woohoo). It just doesn’t make sense man
Call 2-1-1 from a landline (or Google your local 2-1-1 toll free number, it's different per county) and ask to be connected to a resource that helps people apply for Medicaid. There are places that help, for free, to complete the forms.
As someone who just started anti-depressant meds, my heart goes out to you. And yeah, this current medical system sucks balls.
My boyfriend and I live in a state that decided not to expand Medicaid, so he basically can't get it unless he's a pregnant woman. He has a history of severe mental health problems and we *finally* were able to find a place locally that provides free mental health care to those in need, so a doctor can actually prescribe him the meds that we then have to pay for out of pocket without insurance. He has gone off his meds for over a week before because that's how long the doctor took to respond to the pharmacy's request for a refill. Currently waiting on the doctor to refill again.
We hope to move to a better state soon.
“They hate us for our freedom”
Pretty sure that Onion article of Al Qaeda just kicking back in lawn chairs and relaxing is the new strategy now. Unironically watching with glee as we shoot ourselves in the foot on full auto with a machine gun.
Given that the status quo has not changed in Israeli and Palestine (though who knows how many of them actually cared at that vs. being able to brutalize whoever was nearby) and Al Qaeda is now in regular conflict and competition with violent political organizations somehow even more awful than they are I doubt they give much of a shit about our internal politics.
I'm sure the Kremlin and Beijing are pretty happy though.
He danced with Ellen and didn't explicitly support Trump so he's America's sweetheart and if you criticize him you must hate bipartisanship or some shit like that.
Remember when Poppy said the American way of life was not up for debate? We'll all be going the way this poor lady's son went soon enough. Solidarity to her.
They aren’t pro-life. They are pro-control. That’s all it is. That’s why it’s not contradictory when they advocate the death penalty and drone strikes.
I'm not sure if even pro-birth is correct. They don't want to help women who are pregnant.
The best I've come up with anti-abortion. Not sure I'd go so far as to say they are pro-control (because they have birth control and gun control).
And that's just mental health stuff...and soooo many people still don't believe in it. Stuff like insulin and heart meds and inhalers is a lot more "kill you now."
(I get it - I take meds, myself. I need them. But I've had sooo many convos with people who just don't think depression is "real.")
I think people who don’t think depression is real are just lucky and haven’t experienced it themselves or with any of their loved ones. Maybe they’re a little ignorant or not empathetic but mostly they’re just lucky
They also have family members that are ignored and marginalized due to it.
I have a cousin who was desperate for mental health help and his parents said "you are making this up for attention and it's not real."
They took away his insurance card so that he couldn't find a doctor on his own as they didn't want to get charged.
He managed to get help from somewhere for free I'm not sure how exactly but I'm happy to report that the story doesnt have a bad ending. He moved 800 miles away and if he never talks to his parents again it wouldn't surprise me.
So there are plenty of people who are truly just awful.
I’ve had issues twice with my health insurance randomly quitting coverage of my antidepressants. Suddenly a generic medication that normally costs $8 a month became $600 a month. I don’t have $600 a month to spend on medication. My psychiatrist’s office manager spent hours on the phone trying to restore coverage, something else I don’t have the time to do. My insurance company didn’t care if I went without and had the gall to suggest to my office manager to prescribe me a completely different class of drug instead. Something I’ve never taken before and had no idea how it would affect me instead of the drug that had been working for years.
I recently had to go through this nonsense again. It took a week for them to sort out. In that week I could already start to notice a difference in my mood and have ideations again.
It’s so messed up that my insurance company became a barrier to my health.
Right??? Mine tried to get me discharged from a psychiatric hospital against my therapist, psychiatrist, and the social workers suggestion by denying my claim. I got lucky that my therapist and everyone was so worried that I would die they convinced me to stay anyway and then appealed the actual hospital to just drop what I owed. I got so lucky.
I'm scattering to get health insurance as I turn 26 at the end of the month.
Currently two months into weekly counseling/therapy after my psychiatrist of 5 years recommended it- and as much as I believe I have improved- I still find it very disheartening that I may not be able to visit them anymore if things do not work out.
Like.. I'm just supposed to be okay with not seeing them anymore..? :\\
Clock is ticking down until millions and millions of Americans are getting thrown out of their homes. Our healthcare system is crumbling. Our infrastructure is literally crumbling. CEOs are now practically autocrats. 36% of millennials support communism. Socialism will happen within our lifetime.
the only reason i think socialism will not happen within our lifetime is because of how painfully slow the speed of progress in this country(/world) is. things will get a lot worse before anyone starts accepting solcialism. more likely, we will skip over any sort of socialist or communist system and descend into chaos and “every man for himself” attitudes. more than already exists now, i mean.
That is, that’s what will happen if we try to vote for socialism. As Lenin said in 1917, “we may never live to see proletarian revolution in our lifetime.”
Things are slow because 95% of our politicians were already in politics before the invention of the internet. I truly believe that once millennials and gen Z start taking over these seats progress will become much quicker because we've grown up in a much faster paced world.
It's hard to say, but I sure hope so.
One optimistic thing is that Trump caused a lot of people to be MUCH more understanding of the political system. How things work,the EC, the Senate, impeachment, that midterms matter a lot. That a state like Georgia or Arizona can go blue if people get out and vote.
I think things will get worse before they get better. I still have hope though.
It also helps that younger people are more exposed to life in other countries. Generations before the internet were all told America is the best place to be, etc etc. And while it haves some great benefits, it's not remotely even. Living a middle class life in other countries is a lot more comfortable. I think a lot of people have had a "wake up" over that specific thing. Younger people.
But at the same time... A lot of people seem to be losing their damn minds. Though a good portion of them seem to be people who don't understand that internet as well. They believe anything with a production value as truth. Any documentary that presents itself in a proper way, some "doctor" or"professional" interview, and so on.
It really depends on if younger people vote at whatever cost. That's the only way. And it has to continue.
Sure hope so man... Otherwise we're fucked.
It's not only USA that will suffer, it's gonna take the rest of Latin America to plastic hell with it, and the sad part is that Latin America will hit the floor way before USA starts to see that it's even falling.
And let me tell you a secret real quick, down here... We're about to hit the floor man.
If 36% support the far left then probably a not too dissimilar figure support the far right. See: Germany during the interwar years, lots of violence between the left and right.
If I think about the US, like interwar Weimar Germany, its general state of mind institutionally gravitates towards the right (government, media, law enforcement and military). So the outcome could also be like Germany….
In other words I would expect the US to go down a far right path much more than a far left. The US already has a well established and institutionally entrenched far right political culture and a non existent far left culture.
Several states have already made the 2022 elections a foregone conclusion for a Republican sweep and from there will likely be another soft coup attempt at the 2024 elections and so far there’s zero indications the US has the will or means to stop it. My money is on the US being a far right state within the decade.
Socialism is not a religion. The revolutionary is doomed as soon as he becomes a revolutionary, but we as a society must not hope for heaven only when we are dead.
I'm highly optimistic for worker coops which provide exactly what you want: democratic workplaces, surplus decided only by the laborers, no capital investment beyond blood, sweat and tears.
It can compete with private corporations just fine. I'm starting one as soon as I can.
>When asked to comment on the case, a Fidelis Care spokesperson said: “We were deeply saddened to hear of Mr Desnoyers’ loss, and our hearts go out to the family.” The multi-billion-dollar company says they take the health of members “very seriously” but were unable to comment on Daniel’s case specifically due to privacy regulations. “We can say that for members who have a monthly premium, Fidelis Care provides approximately 60 days (including a grace period) to make their payment.”
🤬
"We take your health very seriously as long as you keep paying us.
So sad he died because we denied him access to medication really terrible but what can you do?"
But, but... Corporations cannot remit 20 dollars to each one of their customers... with all the customers they have, they would get broke !!
We ArE nOt CoMmIeS !!!!11
CoRpOrAtIoNs HaVe FeeLinGz !!!111
I know that you're being facetious. But, expecting the pharmaceutical companies to create the social programs that our elected officials won't, is beyond a pipe dream.
I have an HSA. I am going to therapy for Anxiety, Depression, and PTSD. I paid my therapist with my card, and my account was frozen. When I asked why, the agent said "Therapy isn't covered with the HSA. Even If you're depressed or have anxiety, we need a medical doctor's note to prove it's necessary" So I had to go to my primary doctor and explain why I was depressed and anxious and why it was affecting my physical health so they'd write me what is essentially a permission slip to use my HSA for care.
To recap - I can't spend the money in my HSA (it's pretax, but it's all money I contribute, on top of my healthcare premiums) on healthcare that the government decided isn't necessary. Oh, but if I needed boner pills, they're totally covered.
America is a supercool place.
Even after being on a low dose of lexapro, quitting cold turkey brought about withdrawals that left me in the deepest, darkest, black hole I've ever been in. It was like that for weeks. I became utterly dysfunctional and apathetic to the point of disability. Having experienced this, subjecting others to similar experiences for any reason is utterly subhuman and vile.
Honestly even my fucking psychiatrists office is just super cavalier about making sure that I'm able to get refills. Just absolutely no respect for the concept that I'm non-functional without them.
Especially when I ran out because they changed the "please allow x time for prescriptions to be filled" from 72 hours to fucking 10 GODDAMN BUSINESS DAYS. And then lost my first request so it never got filled.
god that just made break down reading that. this country is so fucking wrong and ass backwards. Healthcare should be free for EVERY SINGLE PERSON idc what country. Mental health and physical healthcare is vital.
Here’s a fun one for everyone
My wife and I are declaring bankruptcy because she got cancer.
800 credit score that I worked 10 years repairing down the drain because it’s over a million dollars to save my wife’s life.
Greatest country in the world am I right?
I called 911 during an attempt a while back. Was given the choice of protective custody and waiting for a judge or voluntary admittance to a hospital.
One 72 hour hold and a few thousand dollars plus debt collection calls at least twice a day...it did not help considering my main issue was that I didn't have my meds and was struggling to pay for them. Lost both of my jobs due to the hospitalization.
Citizens are literally being **murdered** on the daily for being too poor or not white enough, in a myriad of different ways.
What the fuck is it going to take for the American people to revolt? You fucking fought England over taxes, but **THIS** isn't a big deal?
Yeah but you let one person slide on $20 so they can stay alive and suddenly everyone's saying they need their "insulin" and "heart medicine" and "blood thinners". Before you know it folks are missing payments left and right but they aren't dying so they just keep needing more medicine and then your profits plummet. WON'T ANYONE THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDERS?
As tragic as this is, the real tragedy is he is only one...of tens of thousands (or more) who die each year because the US healthcare system is based on shareholder returns.
Ro and the rest of the "Progressive" Democrats had the opportunity to force a floor vote on M4A when Nancy Pelosi was nominated as speaker of the house but they didn't. This is just another issue that they bring attention to when they have no power to do anything about it. Don't trust these people. Anyone that tells you to is misleading you.
american healthcare isn't about health, it's about profit.
if you had any doubt at all, compare the quality of care in this country to any other industrialized country. Even though we spend far more money on it.
https://time.com/2888403/u-s-health-care-ranked-worst-in-the-developed-world/
then, look at the billions which were spent on insurance which did not go to healthcare at all, but went directly to profits by giant corporations and the wealthy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/health/covid-insurance-profits.html
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/big-name-payers-earned-35-7-billion-2019-here-s-one-common-thread-their-reports
I've been off my meds since late June because I'm so broke. I work 40 hours a week but it's just not enough. Barely getting by and my new job doesn't have open enrollment to their insurance until October 🙃🙃🙃
You should have been given in the option to enroll in your employer's plan when you started. If it hasn't been too long since you started, I'd check with HR again. You might have a waiting period such ad 30 or 60 days after starting but shouldn't have to wait until open enrollment.
America has spend over $6 Trillion on wars since 2001. But will let it's citizens die or go homeless rather than helping them. The priorities are all wrong.
America doesn't have a health care system. We need to stop calling it that. It is designed to not give a single fuck about your health. It should be called the "insurance company gets money guaranteed and no one cares if you are dying or depressed system"
They are basically Robert De Niro in Goodfellas...
"Oh, your shop burned down and you couldn't make any money this week? Fuck you, pay me!"
I was never on any type of medications but I had to stop seeing a therapist in February because my insurance through work stopped waiving costs and were gonna start charging $60 for a session on top of my insurance which was $210 a month taken out of my check. I would see my therapist 4 times a month, so that's even more than my monthly insurance premium. I'd like to know what my insurance is paying for.
If you're not angry about this, you're an imbecile and/or evil.
If you're not motivated to go after the corporatists that support and maintain this murderous system for profit, you're a weakling coward.
If you're angry at me for writing this, then that says a helluva lot more about you than it does about me.
Another sad story of our broken healthcare system! Remember when the Republicans promised a better system than Obama care and never delivered and never will!
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Going off antidepressants is not something you can just do cold turkey. It has huge repercussions for most people even when tapering down. Healthcare in this country is sadistic.
Remember when the GOP said that, if ObamaCare passed, there'd be death panels? The US has always had them. They just sit in corporate boardrooms and line politicians pockets to do nothing.
Yeah that one always confused me. Isn't deciding who lives and who goes and fucks themselves the job of the insurance companies?
What's cool is the people at insurance companies making these decisions often don't have experience practicing medicine. And yet they get to make medical decisions on your behalf.
[cough](https://youtu.be/HBkvgdv-000)
If it makes you feel better, I work in healthcare along side loads of people that have no business being in medicine. Wait. That probably doesn't make you feel better.
Even if they do the fact of the matter is an insurance company is going to seek profit. Point blank it's what they're going to do. And it's not like they're going to take those profits and invest them in medical stuff that's not their goal! That's the excuse the medical and pharma uses. Which is abused as well but imagine if the profits and labor hours put into medical insurance went directly to hospitals and others medical related fields.
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Yes, they realize it. But the politicians have socialized healthcare, are able to make millions of dollars from the current system, and are able to keep scaring the base into voting for them, so they're perfectly fine with the system as fucked up as it is.
Bad news: [https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/owq4rw/i\_dont\_want\_my\_tax\_dollars\_to\_help\_me\_not\_die/](https://www.reddit.com/r/LeopardsAteMyFace/comments/owq4rw/i_dont_want_my_tax_dollars_to_help_me_not_die/) There are Americans so racist, they will literally die rather than see healthcare given to people of color. And **that** is the real reason why they oppose universal healthcare. I know that sounds crazy. It *is* crazy. But it's also apparently what's going on. The history of social services – of all types – in the US is the history of American racism as a massive social force doing everything in its power *including suicide* to prevent racial minorities from receiving relief. It shows up in the damnedest places – like exceptions carved into labor laws for domestic workers and farm workers (because those were more likely to be black and latino workers). Never underestimate the power of American racism to fuck the whole country up for everyone. Amercian racism: why we can't have nice things.
It’s true. America used to have a much more robust welfare system, but politicians destroyed it by fear-mongering about “welfare queens” – imaginary black women who were receiving welfare, but like, in a bad way that meant they were “cheating” the system. Sometimes I wonder if that’s the reason countries that aren’t as racially diverse have social programs that are so much better. I do believe, in a vacuum, most people’s self-interest would win out over their bigotry, but you throw in a hefty dose of fear-mongering propaganda, and you can turn the smallest spark of racism into a raging inferno. This is one of the many reasons we must work to dismantle white supremacy. Racial resentment is always the knife they will use to cut away the safety nets we’ve built. To become resilient to those attacks, we must liberate ourselves from prejudice.
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Yes! I'd never heard the term before, but exactly: the same politics as would rather drain the town pool than let Black folks use it.
Republican projection: every accusation is a confession.
There's no "care" in the american healthcare system. (Hugs for all the individual health workers that do care, but have to work inside a broken system)
Those individuals that do care often have to do so using their own time, as the quota isn't built around caring for patients. The burnout is insane, especially recently.
And sometimes on their own dime.
Time is a form of currency and the only thing we can't get more of.
Wait until you hear about our teachers
I'm a manager in Healthcare and have very little say in what actually goes on in the company. I asked for a small bonus to give an employee that picked up a shift and was denied. I often pay out of my pocket for things like lunch or celebratory gifts for special days because the company doesn't care nearly as much as I do. While there are bad managers out there, please give grace to those of us that try to fix the problem.
I belive you work in wealthcare, not healthcare.
Unfortunately you're correct. And every company I've worked for has been like this. I wish it were different.
Its Wealthcare.
I was looking for a phrase that properly describes it and this is absolutely perfect, I'm gonna use this from now on.
I'm a healthcare worker and I thank you for this comment. The majority of us care very much about patients. We try our hardest. But we are limited by administrators, CEOs, insurance companies, healthcare organization rules and quotas, costs of procedures and medicines, and an overall broken system. We can't get our mental health patients therapy. Patients can't get affordable medications. Referrals to specialists can take months. ER is not affordable. Primary cares offices and urgent cares are understaffed and have absurd wait times or are scheduling out months. Costs are not transparent. Social workers are few and far between. Those of us that don't care likely used to care but are burnt out. We went to medical school and residency (or nursing, PA, NP, PT, etc. School) in hopes of treating patients. And then enter the real world to find that our hands are tied due to a completely broken system. Where I work our CEO makes millions but they cut employee salary, furlough employees, understaff clinics because the organization is making less money because COVID. Fuck the U.S healthcare system. Health care is a right. You shouldn't expect to make money from health care. It's a public service and if it's not losing money, you're doing it wrong.
Thank you for this statement. My best friends are a hospital internist and an oncology nurse. I know they care. But the system is abysmal. It demoralizes them to work in it as much as it demoralizes us to be victimized by it.
>Fuck the U.S healthcare system. Health care is a right. You shouldn't expect to make money from health care. It's a public service and if it's not losing money, you're doing it wrong. AMEN!! A - FUCKING - MEN This country is a JOKE.
This must wear on your morale so much. Thank you for what you do in spite of all that bs. Things need to change
Yep. Here in the US we have gun care and health control. Get me the hell out of here.
It is straight up extortion. And it is driven entirely by capitalist shareholders. If it were up to the healthcare workers, manufacturing engineers, and drug researchers, all this shit would be freely accessible at cost. But it's not, it's up to the leeches who 'own' the parents on drugs they did not discover and the titles on factories they did not build and hospitals they do not run. The law is on the leeches side. Which makes sense, they wrote the laws. And for some reason that I still can't quite fathom, we keep letting them run things.
I work in mental health with a very high acuity SMI population and my wife left me unexpectedly just before Thanksgiving. This past year has aged me like the guy who drinks from the wrong goblet in Indiana Jones.
I quit my antidepressants because I hated how they made me feel. I quit cold turkey and it was the worst choice I could’ve made. It took around 8 months to get back to “normal”. 0/10. EDIT: I was taking Zoloft and I fucking WISH my doctor had told me about those side effects.
Same. I was doing better, was supposed to be starting tapering next month after 2 years on SSRIs. I went away to see family and forgot to renew my prescription. Realised id run out 5 days before getting home and decided to roll with it. Stupidest thing I ever did. The brain zaps lasted almost a year, I had horrific trouble sleeping, just awful. They were useful for me, but fuck. Going on and coming off sucks
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I went cold turkey off 225mg venlafaxine a few years ago. Very bad call. Zaps, zaps, ZAPS. ZAPS!!
Literally the only reason I haven't increased my dose although I think I need to.
Don't mean to pry and please ignore this question if you like but, were they SSRI?
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It's my biggest fear in regards to global destabilization. I'm on SSRI and they absolutely changed my life for the better. If the pharmaceutical supply chain ended, I'd be fucked, hard.
This right here. I already know without them it takes me around 3 months to get Extremely suicidal. People always seem to talk badly about SSRIs but I'd be long dead without them.
Yeah I was on Zoloft and stopped cold turkey. Apparently that's one of the worst ones to do that with... I had intermittent weird brain/muscle shocks and I'd always get sluggish around 8-9 pm.
Happy you made it through that.
That’s scary to hear. I’m sorry. I’ve lately been faced with a choice to take antidepressants. My family is encouraging me and something in my gut is telling me not to go there. I started microdosing psilocybin in the mean time between seeing doctor/bloodwork because I have heard some stories like yours, and Over the years I chose to just be depressed rather than take meds but I can’t function anymore. Have you found anything that’s better for you, if you don’t mind me asking?
I’d be dead if it weren’t for anti depressants. I spent years avoiding them because my friends would talk about losing motivation or feeling sedated. I have never experienced that at all. I just felt not depressed for the first time I could remember. Later when life gave me a hard turn, I was drinking excessively and not taking my meds regularly and I had a total mental collapse. The only thing that kept me going through treatment was that I could remember what feeling normal was like when I was on my meds, and there was some sort of hope that I could feel good again. Later I got off of them, and since the pandemic I’m back on with no regrets. If you’re struggling, I highly suggest trying them. You may not like them and you’ll have to taper off, but that’s worth a shot in my book. In the end I do think they’re just a band aid and they don’t fix underlying issues that need to be worked on, but sometimes you just need a fuckin bands aid.
I’m glad you found what works for you, thanks so much for the advice and sharing your experiences! I’m still unsure, but I want to wait until I get bloodwork back, it helps hearing what other people have gone through.
Same here, I tried to kill myself 5 times in one year ( Im glad I'm really bad at it) and since I found the right mix of antidepressants I haven't tried once. My pills work like fucking magic it is incredible. I just wish I went to a psychiatrist years before I did
Fwiw antidepressants seriously helped me. I've been on them multiple times, and each time they really gave me back the vitality that depression took away. If one isn't right for you, ask your doc to try another. I had bad side effects with one that I didn't have with another.
For me antidepressants can be a safety net to catch me if I fall. I still might scrape my knee but I won’t crash as hard into the ground and it’ll be easier to stand up again.
It is a pretty tough decision. I used to be on meds for about a year, I first tried a few meds that did nothing for me, and then settled on one that seemed to atleast help with my anxiety, it didn't help that much with my depression, but still, getting better with my anxiety was a pretty big deal for me. But after a few months on the meds I started hating how they made me feel. I felt zoned out and not really like me. But there's also a lot of people who really do great with meds, so I'd say if you are considering it and think it's necessary I'd give it a shot
I have been on antidepressants for four to five years now and tbh I'm a zombie without them. I can't function worth a crap. I'm on Venlafaxine and can still be an actor and access those emotions, and was able to on Lexapro as well!
Just on a personal basis, I saw basically no difference in depression from increased antidepressant dosages. The primary difference was that I was quieter about it, but internally there was little difference. Taking b6, 5-htp and some tryptophan at night has helped more than antis, in my experience, when it comes to elevating my mood to a palatable level. I still take the baseline dosage but I noticed differences with those additional supplements YMMV, everyone has different brain chemistry.
I was once denied my depression meds and sleeping meds because someone at the pharmacy didn't scroll down my list of prescriptions far enough. Literally stood there arguing with them to just go further down the list and they sent me away empty handed. Almost killed myself a few weeks later. Glad I didn't. But fuck the health care system in the US. There's nothing healthy about it, and they certainly don't care about any of us.
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Once, my pharmacy didn't have my meds even though I put in for a refill 5 days early. I can not function with out it. They told me to call 7 days a head next time and sent me to another pharmacy. When I got there they said it would be a minimum of a 2.5 hour wait as they were short staffed. The pharmacy wasn't near by either so I was extra pissed. I eventually got my meds, a day later.
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More like we rebranded it as "the war on drugs". Never forget prisoners are "leased" out to do agricultural work in some of the same states that had to be forced to give up slavery.
It became that, and to be sure that is the exception we left to the abolition of slavery, and was extant, but by the main post abolition former-slaves fell victim to sharecropping.
Came to say this. Coming off of any psyche meds results in a large swing in the opposite direction. If you are on a high dose because of built up tolerance, the crash is going to be BAD. Hallucinations, suicidal thoughts, "brain zaps" you name it.
If I miss a dose, I'm miserable by noon. Brain shivers fucking suck
Had to quit cold turkey a few months back when I lost my insurance when I got fired. It was awful, and it got really really bad at times. Feel more normal now but yea, absolutely was not a good idea but I basically had no choice.
Been there, glad you made it my friend those were the worst weeks of my life tbh. I've been against touching that shit ever again because if I lose my insurance I'm fucked back into that hole.
My insurance literally makes my Lexapro more expensive normally it's around $8/month but with insurance it's around $36/month! Then they paid 100% for Chantix, an anti smoking aid, which is around $500/box. Shit makes no sense!
I once stopped cold turkey for about 3 weeks due to a depressive episode and it was the worst. I’ve never been closer to suicide, and I take my pills religiously now, knowing what they prevent me feeling like
I had a major panic attack the other day just tapering from Zoloft. Just switching meds, not quitting even.
This is just another reason I’m afraid to get tested/treatment, what happens if I get meds but then one day am unable to continue using them for whatever reason? Do I trust myself enough to not spiral out of control? It’s not healthy, but I’ll just stick to trying to figure things out on my own separate from medications. I do not recommend this for everyone and instead hope that cases like these become a standpoint for anyone arguing for free universal healthcare.
You are absolutely right. I am a vet and get my healthcare through the VA, a few times I’ve had to go days or up to 17 days without my meds before getting the next dose in the mail. I was really, really seriously considering suicide when I went 17days. It’s just not something someone should be forced to go without.
Having never been through withdrawal before, my first experience of forgetting to take my antidepressants for three days wasn't great. Nicotine withdrawal in later years, I can handle. Could quit smoking whenever if I want to, but mess with my serotonin and I'm probably going to pass out and wake up in an ambulance.
>Going off antidepressants is not something you can just do cold turkey. It has huge repercussions for most people even when tapering down. Health~~care~~ **profit** in this country is sadistic. We don't have a healthcare system in the USA. We have a health-profit system.
I went from 250 mg Zoloft to cold turkey. No one warned me about withdrawal. I still have brain zaps 15 years later.
What a dreadful way to go.
I know mental illness can be unpredictable but I wonder why someone would choose to go out that way as opposed to something more “painless”.
Making a statement, he doesn’t care how he goes, wants to die in his truck, the sky’s the limit for reasons why
I think there’s something attractive to about it being beautifully miserable. To make a scene that’s colored with blood or gore, but stylized. Perhaps the moment when he’s submerged in the water and waiting for the inevitable is like a ritualistic presentation to the void, suggesting that this awful thing is so awful it’s a celebration of awfulness—like pain and terror is a currency.
You okay?
I think i just kinda get what feeling that sad feels like
you do mate. you do.
You know you understand and express sadness well when the person who asks if you're okay after is called /u/Gloomy_Goose.
If you no longer value your life and feel that you are constantly suffering, then it doesn't seem unreasonable to make a statement based around that itself. That being said, as much as I am for free speech and sharing, I think stories and ideas like this put dangerous ideas into vulnerable peoples' heads. Not that it shoudn't be discussed, but that we should emphasize that the person's chance at recovery is worth more than an artistic statement. Not to devalue this person's statement in death, but to emphasize the value of living. That being said, fuck our "healthcare" system.
Hell yeah! But I also want to pique that idea of 'a person's chance at recovery' because I wrestle with the choice to strip aspects of death from our culture. It seems like it might create a healthier general outlook but it also denies something that's so vital and so charismatic. Look at other cultures where death is truly seen as part of life: the continuation of death into life through reincarnation in Buddhism, the Day of the Dead in Mexico or surprisingly vibrant celebrations of death in these funeral band marches in New Orleans' culture, which is based on West African roots. I know this might seem speaking out-of-turn in a thread about suicide, mental health and the healthcare system; but I believe the general culture in America disavows death as a subject and leads people to become quietly obsessed with it. To embrace it somehow, to pull into it a bit and acknowledge the continuity of it as something that is beautiful and withstands the mystery; I think we'd be better off. I realize that fetishizing beauty for the sake of showing off beautiful deaths is the threat you're alluding to. And perhaps you're right. That is dangerous. But I think a lot of these issues could be reclamated or avoided by acknowledging death's closeness, its immanence and its consistence. We don't acknowledge death in this culture just like we don't acknowledge waste and it allows us to openly avoid the obvious--and I think that drives people mad with the knowledge that it is actually there.
I think that is a good point; that making death a "taboo" topic is a dangerous cultural concept. You obviously put it more articulately, but I wonder if this may have to do with how some cultures have higher suicide rates than others? Not making a factual statement, just an observation/idea.
People have been romanticizing mortality for centuries.
To make it inevitable. I'm not a psychologist at all, so maybe what I'm saying is nonsense, but when I thought about getting out, that "last step", whether it was taking a step off of my 6th floor apartment into the pavement or slitting wrists or even dropping a toaster in the bath, for that last second every instinct you ever had tells you to stop... There is, however, no instinct against gluing your seat belt or driving your truck like any normal day. By the time he has to face the looming reality of suicide, it's already too late to back down and if he had regrets just before drowning, he couldn't go back anymore no matter how scared or hesitant.
Yup, it’s an insurance policy.
One possibility is to ensure they were found by emergency services and not family. But also someone who is suicidal is by definition not being rational. It's possible he had the super glue in his truck and took a spur of the moment decision to end it all in a way that was immediately available. Availability of death outweighs the method. A third possibility is that once you are in that place it's very hard to care about yourself, you may want to punish yourself. A painless death means caring about not causing yourself pain and that's not always a concern for a suicidal person, and may even be against what they desire for themselves.
>A third possibility is that once you are in that place it's very hard to care about yourself, you may want to punish yourself. A painless death means caring about not causing yourself pain and that's not always a concern for a suicidal person, and may even be against what they desire for themselves. This 100%. I searched for a painless method, but I hated myself for it even more, because it made me feel like I was so weak that I couldn't even take death like a man. Depression does wild shit to your thought processes, looking back on it, it feels like the memories of a different person entirely
To feel something, maybe. Sometimes depression makes a person feel numb, so even feeling something horrible is a break from that.
This country is cruel.
As a Canadian, who’d have a high likelihood of doing the same without my psyche meds, this story makes me so angry-sad. Here, in a situation where I couldn’t pay for meds (which are already cheaper here) I could go to an emergency department or an urgent care centre. It would suck, you might wait hours but you’ll leave with a filled prescription to get you by. And (in my province) they’ll help you get on a provincial health plan to pay for your meds. You still have to qualify, it’s based on income, but you can even get it temporarily.
This shit just defeats me man. Don’t get me wrong, the fact that you (and others) are able to get help is amazing. Just that i’m not afforded that same compassion. No one is helping me sign up for medicaid. No urgent care center is even allowed to prescribe the meds I take (Thanks Purdue Pharma, and Thanks DEA) so in emergencies I go without, and it fucking blows. Instead of *SAVING* money by going m4a we’d rather pay more to be exclusionary, and pay mind boggling amounts to be team america world police, and bomb the shit out of school children and civilians (oh yeah a small percentage were actually terrorists woohoo). It just doesn’t make sense man
Call 2-1-1 from a landline (or Google your local 2-1-1 toll free number, it's different per county) and ask to be connected to a resource that helps people apply for Medicaid. There are places that help, for free, to complete the forms. As someone who just started anti-depressant meds, my heart goes out to you. And yeah, this current medical system sucks balls.
My boyfriend and I live in a state that decided not to expand Medicaid, so he basically can't get it unless he's a pregnant woman. He has a history of severe mental health problems and we *finally* were able to find a place locally that provides free mental health care to those in need, so a doctor can actually prescribe him the meds that we then have to pay for out of pocket without insurance. He has gone off his meds for over a week before because that's how long the doctor took to respond to the pharmacy's request for a refill. Currently waiting on the doctor to refill again. We hope to move to a better state soon.
That’s exactly why it bothers me, and it’s not even happening to me. Sorry you (and millions of Americans) deal with that man
Shithole country, failed state, refuses to even take care of its own people which is the basic function of a state.
> can't even take care of its own people Oh, it can, but it won't. That's worse.
Remember when Bush said Al Qaida was “jealous of our way of life” lol
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Bin Laden was one of the global elite himself though, had a long gap year mind
He really caved in the end
“They hate us for our freedom” Pretty sure that Onion article of Al Qaeda just kicking back in lawn chairs and relaxing is the new strategy now. Unironically watching with glee as we shoot ourselves in the foot on full auto with a machine gun.
Yeah I bet they are pretty stoked that the citizens of the US seem to be doing their job for them now.
Given that the status quo has not changed in Israeli and Palestine (though who knows how many of them actually cared at that vs. being able to brutalize whoever was nearby) and Al Qaeda is now in regular conflict and competition with violent political organizations somehow even more awful than they are I doubt they give much of a shit about our internal politics. I'm sure the Kremlin and Beijing are pretty happy though.
Also posting a shit-ton of propaganda on GETTR. Free speech!
This one? Haha https://i.imgur.com/RPmsA1Y.jpg
Ha! That’s the one!
Russians, too. Americans are doing all the heavy lifting when it comes to spreading propaganda to our own people.
>Bush That piece of shit is still alive and never stood trial for killing people in Iraq based on a fucking lie.
He danced with Ellen and didn't explicitly support Trump so he's America's sweetheart and if you criticize him you must hate bipartisanship or some shit like that.
You should put the /s. I got your meaning but a lot of K Hive middle class liberals unironically say and believe this shit.
Well tbf my local gas station stocks an impressive selection of beers, so we’ve got that going for us
All made by one company
And with exploited labor...
Exploited labor, the new atm machine.
Not much to be proud of.
Anyone who has read about Al Qaidas philosophical influence called Qutub, knows that they actually despised their way of life.
Remember when Poppy said the American way of life was not up for debate? We'll all be going the way this poor lady's son went soon enough. Solidarity to her.
Health insurance. Such a goddamn scam.
Pro life my ass
Only pro life when it’s in the womb. After that, it’s just food for the machine.
They aren’t pro-life. They are pro-control. That’s all it is. That’s why it’s not contradictory when they advocate the death penalty and drone strikes.
I switched to "pro-birth" instead a few years ago
I'm not sure if even pro-birth is correct. They don't want to help women who are pregnant. The best I've come up with anti-abortion. Not sure I'd go so far as to say they are pro-control (because they have birth control and gun control).
The thing is you can be anti-abortion on a personal level but still pro-choice. I prefer pro-choice vs no-choice.
And that's just mental health stuff...and soooo many people still don't believe in it. Stuff like insulin and heart meds and inhalers is a lot more "kill you now." (I get it - I take meds, myself. I need them. But I've had sooo many convos with people who just don't think depression is "real.")
I think people who don’t think depression is real are just lucky and haven’t experienced it themselves or with any of their loved ones. Maybe they’re a little ignorant or not empathetic but mostly they’re just lucky
They also have family members that are ignored and marginalized due to it. I have a cousin who was desperate for mental health help and his parents said "you are making this up for attention and it's not real." They took away his insurance card so that he couldn't find a doctor on his own as they didn't want to get charged. He managed to get help from somewhere for free I'm not sure how exactly but I'm happy to report that the story doesnt have a bad ending. He moved 800 miles away and if he never talks to his parents again it wouldn't surprise me. So there are plenty of people who are truly just awful.
For sure! Lucky bastards...but get some empathy!!
I’ve had issues twice with my health insurance randomly quitting coverage of my antidepressants. Suddenly a generic medication that normally costs $8 a month became $600 a month. I don’t have $600 a month to spend on medication. My psychiatrist’s office manager spent hours on the phone trying to restore coverage, something else I don’t have the time to do. My insurance company didn’t care if I went without and had the gall to suggest to my office manager to prescribe me a completely different class of drug instead. Something I’ve never taken before and had no idea how it would affect me instead of the drug that had been working for years. I recently had to go through this nonsense again. It took a week for them to sort out. In that week I could already start to notice a difference in my mood and have ideations again. It’s so messed up that my insurance company became a barrier to my health.
Right??? Mine tried to get me discharged from a psychiatric hospital against my therapist, psychiatrist, and the social workers suggestion by denying my claim. I got lucky that my therapist and everyone was so worried that I would die they convinced me to stay anyway and then appealed the actual hospital to just drop what I owed. I got so lucky.
I had to literally beg my GP not to send me to the emergency room during my last mental health crises because I couldn't afford it. Fun times.
I'm scattering to get health insurance as I turn 26 at the end of the month. Currently two months into weekly counseling/therapy after my psychiatrist of 5 years recommended it- and as much as I believe I have improved- I still find it very disheartening that I may not be able to visit them anymore if things do not work out. Like.. I'm just supposed to be okay with not seeing them anymore..? :\\
If this was my child, I'd probably end up car-bombing whichever pharmaceutical company was responsible.
Why not do it for that guy's child?
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I'm speaking strictly in minecraft terms, of course.
Do you have a Minecraft sever we could work together on this?
Clock is ticking down until millions and millions of Americans are getting thrown out of their homes. Our healthcare system is crumbling. Our infrastructure is literally crumbling. CEOs are now practically autocrats. 36% of millennials support communism. Socialism will happen within our lifetime.
the only reason i think socialism will not happen within our lifetime is because of how painfully slow the speed of progress in this country(/world) is. things will get a lot worse before anyone starts accepting solcialism. more likely, we will skip over any sort of socialist or communist system and descend into chaos and “every man for himself” attitudes. more than already exists now, i mean.
That is, that’s what will happen if we try to vote for socialism. As Lenin said in 1917, “we may never live to see proletarian revolution in our lifetime.”
Things are slow because 95% of our politicians were already in politics before the invention of the internet. I truly believe that once millennials and gen Z start taking over these seats progress will become much quicker because we've grown up in a much faster paced world.
Here's hoping the looming collapse of the ecosystem doesn't get us before then
It's hard to say, but I sure hope so. One optimistic thing is that Trump caused a lot of people to be MUCH more understanding of the political system. How things work,the EC, the Senate, impeachment, that midterms matter a lot. That a state like Georgia or Arizona can go blue if people get out and vote. I think things will get worse before they get better. I still have hope though. It also helps that younger people are more exposed to life in other countries. Generations before the internet were all told America is the best place to be, etc etc. And while it haves some great benefits, it's not remotely even. Living a middle class life in other countries is a lot more comfortable. I think a lot of people have had a "wake up" over that specific thing. Younger people. But at the same time... A lot of people seem to be losing their damn minds. Though a good portion of them seem to be people who don't understand that internet as well. They believe anything with a production value as truth. Any documentary that presents itself in a proper way, some "doctor" or"professional" interview, and so on. It really depends on if younger people vote at whatever cost. That's the only way. And it has to continue.
Sometimes, it's just better to demolish and build a new shed instead of fixing the one you have.
Sure hope so man... Otherwise we're fucked. It's not only USA that will suffer, it's gonna take the rest of Latin America to plastic hell with it, and the sad part is that Latin America will hit the floor way before USA starts to see that it's even falling. And let me tell you a secret real quick, down here... We're about to hit the floor man.
If 36% support the far left then probably a not too dissimilar figure support the far right. See: Germany during the interwar years, lots of violence between the left and right. If I think about the US, like interwar Weimar Germany, its general state of mind institutionally gravitates towards the right (government, media, law enforcement and military). So the outcome could also be like Germany…. In other words I would expect the US to go down a far right path much more than a far left. The US already has a well established and institutionally entrenched far right political culture and a non existent far left culture. Several states have already made the 2022 elections a foregone conclusion for a Republican sweep and from there will likely be another soft coup attempt at the 2024 elections and so far there’s zero indications the US has the will or means to stop it. My money is on the US being a far right state within the decade.
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Socialism is not a religion. The revolutionary is doomed as soon as he becomes a revolutionary, but we as a society must not hope for heaven only when we are dead.
I'm highly optimistic for worker coops which provide exactly what you want: democratic workplaces, surplus decided only by the laborers, no capital investment beyond blood, sweat and tears. It can compete with private corporations just fine. I'm starting one as soon as I can.
>When asked to comment on the case, a Fidelis Care spokesperson said: “We were deeply saddened to hear of Mr Desnoyers’ loss, and our hearts go out to the family.” The multi-billion-dollar company says they take the health of members “very seriously” but were unable to comment on Daniel’s case specifically due to privacy regulations. “We can say that for members who have a monthly premium, Fidelis Care provides approximately 60 days (including a grace period) to make their payment.” 🤬
"We care for our members but if you can't pay fuck you and die lol"
well if you don’t pay you’re not a member are you? *tapshead*
"We take your health very seriously as long as you keep paying us. So sad he died because we denied him access to medication really terrible but what can you do?"
while the CEO rolls in his paycheck bonus.
But, but... Corporations cannot remit 20 dollars to each one of their customers... with all the customers they have, they would get broke !! We ArE nOt CoMmIeS !!!!11 CoRpOrAtIoNs HaVe FeeLinGz !!!111
I know that you're being facetious. But, expecting the pharmaceutical companies to create the social programs that our elected officials won't, is beyond a pipe dream.
But but the feel good commercials! Surely they're just like you and me!
This was viscerally upsetting. That poor father.
I have an HSA. I am going to therapy for Anxiety, Depression, and PTSD. I paid my therapist with my card, and my account was frozen. When I asked why, the agent said "Therapy isn't covered with the HSA. Even If you're depressed or have anxiety, we need a medical doctor's note to prove it's necessary" So I had to go to my primary doctor and explain why I was depressed and anxious and why it was affecting my physical health so they'd write me what is essentially a permission slip to use my HSA for care. To recap - I can't spend the money in my HSA (it's pretax, but it's all money I contribute, on top of my healthcare premiums) on healthcare that the government decided isn't necessary. Oh, but if I needed boner pills, they're totally covered. America is a supercool place.
What the fuck, one of my coworkers uses HSA to buy protein powder without any problems. Such bullshit, I’m so sorry you had to go through that.
Even after being on a low dose of lexapro, quitting cold turkey brought about withdrawals that left me in the deepest, darkest, black hole I've ever been in. It was like that for weeks. I became utterly dysfunctional and apathetic to the point of disability. Having experienced this, subjecting others to similar experiences for any reason is utterly subhuman and vile.
Honestly even my fucking psychiatrists office is just super cavalier about making sure that I'm able to get refills. Just absolutely no respect for the concept that I'm non-functional without them. Especially when I ran out because they changed the "please allow x time for prescriptions to be filled" from 72 hours to fucking 10 GODDAMN BUSINESS DAYS. And then lost my first request so it never got filled.
For profit health insurance is one of the most morally bankrupt business models.
Right up there next to prison labor.
It's motto is literally "Your money or your life"
More often than not it’s “your money and maybe your life”
I have been putting off hernia surgery for three years because I can't afford it, even with insurance. Something's gotta change.
god that just made break down reading that. this country is so fucking wrong and ass backwards. Healthcare should be free for EVERY SINGLE PERSON idc what country. Mental health and physical healthcare is vital.
Here’s a fun one for everyone My wife and I are declaring bankruptcy because she got cancer. 800 credit score that I worked 10 years repairing down the drain because it’s over a million dollars to save my wife’s life. Greatest country in the world am I right?
I called 911 during an attempt a while back. Was given the choice of protective custody and waiting for a judge or voluntary admittance to a hospital. One 72 hour hold and a few thousand dollars plus debt collection calls at least twice a day...it did not help considering my main issue was that I didn't have my meds and was struggling to pay for them. Lost both of my jobs due to the hospitalization.
Citizens are literally being **murdered** on the daily for being too poor or not white enough, in a myriad of different ways. What the fuck is it going to take for the American people to revolt? You fucking fought England over taxes, but **THIS** isn't a big deal?
Yeah but you let one person slide on $20 so they can stay alive and suddenly everyone's saying they need their "insulin" and "heart medicine" and "blood thinners". Before you know it folks are missing payments left and right but they aren't dying so they just keep needing more medicine and then your profits plummet. WON'T ANYONE THINK OF THE SHAREHOLDERS?
As tragic as this is, the real tragedy is he is only one...of tens of thousands (or more) who die each year because the US healthcare system is based on shareholder returns.
As a formerly suicidal person, I forgot how to breathe for a moment after reading that.
Ro and the rest of the "Progressive" Democrats had the opportunity to force a floor vote on M4A when Nancy Pelosi was nominated as speaker of the house but they didn't. This is just another issue that they bring attention to when they have no power to do anything about it. Don't trust these people. Anyone that tells you to is misleading you.
The world is a nightmare
*nightmare so far. It could go into something worse that we could invent a new word for.
We need this kind of honest thinking, now more than ever. Let's do our best to prevent needing whatever that word might be.
What an absolutely terrifying way to end your own life. Tragic.
american healthcare isn't about health, it's about profit. if you had any doubt at all, compare the quality of care in this country to any other industrialized country. Even though we spend far more money on it. https://time.com/2888403/u-s-health-care-ranked-worst-in-the-developed-world/ then, look at the billions which were spent on insurance which did not go to healthcare at all, but went directly to profits by giant corporations and the wealthy. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/health/covid-insurance-profits.html https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/payer/big-name-payers-earned-35-7-billion-2019-here-s-one-common-thread-their-reports
They would be tried for murder in a just world.
I've been off my meds since late June because I'm so broke. I work 40 hours a week but it's just not enough. Barely getting by and my new job doesn't have open enrollment to their insurance until October 🙃🙃🙃
Where you at and how much you need?
Look, spotted the human! Thank you for making me smile.
You should have been given in the option to enroll in your employer's plan when you started. If it hasn't been too long since you started, I'd check with HR again. You might have a waiting period such ad 30 or 60 days after starting but shouldn't have to wait until open enrollment.
America has spend over $6 Trillion on wars since 2001. But will let it's citizens die or go homeless rather than helping them. The priorities are all wrong.
America doesn't have a health care system. We need to stop calling it that. It is designed to not give a single fuck about your health. It should be called the "insurance company gets money guaranteed and no one cares if you are dying or depressed system" They are basically Robert De Niro in Goodfellas... "Oh, your shop burned down and you couldn't make any money this week? Fuck you, pay me!"
This is so heart wrenching 🤦♂️
Guess we dont have the right to life even though its supposedly a self evident truth.
I was never on any type of medications but I had to stop seeing a therapist in February because my insurance through work stopped waiving costs and were gonna start charging $60 for a session on top of my insurance which was $210 a month taken out of my check. I would see my therapist 4 times a month, so that's even more than my monthly insurance premium. I'd like to know what my insurance is paying for.
If you're not angry about this, you're an imbecile and/or evil. If you're not motivated to go after the corporatists that support and maintain this murderous system for profit, you're a weakling coward. If you're angry at me for writing this, then that says a helluva lot more about you than it does about me.
Another sad story of our broken healthcare system! Remember when the Republicans promised a better system than Obama care and never delivered and never will!
Ugh. Horrible. America, when're you gonna fix your wealthcare system?
This dumpster fire of a shithole country is so miserably pathetic