Happily Into The Abyss

“Prozac ‘found in drinking water'” reports the Environment Agency – in minute doses, they re-assure us. Fluoxetine gets into the rivers and water system via treated sewage water. Still, the “safe” dose level of practically every drug is frequently revised and almost always downwards.

Whatever the effect on adults, writing as someone who was medicated as a child on an improvised dose of adult tranquilisers over a period of years, and having lived with the consequences, I can say with some authority that no levels of pychoactive drugs are safe for children.

In 2004, the Department of Health called for more research into drugs that are given to children. Around 40% of medicines prescribed to children have never actually been tested on children. For newborn babies, the figure is 65%.