Unfortunately, millions of Americans currently suffer from the debilitating effects of stress, anxiety, and depression. In the pharmaceutical industry, anti-anxiety medications and antidepressants are among the best-selling medications on the market.

The everyday stressors faced by Americans have simply become too much for many to bear, and reasonably so. In recent years, taking an anti-anxiety medication or antidepressant has become as common as taking a multivitamin. However, the side effects and long-term effects of such medications were for the most part unknown until recently.

In the past year, some of the drastic negative effects of such medications have come to light, much to the horror of patients and physicians alike. Anti-anxiety medications and antidepressants have been linked to addiction, severe withdrawal, weight gain, vertigo, and even suicide and death. To treat the symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, without negative health implications, many are now turning to natural supplements — safely and with much success.

Most consumers are confused about which natural stress, anxiety, and depression supplements to take. Fortunately, there are now a few promising natural supplements on the market which offer truly effective results, safely. The challenge lies in distinguishing the effective products from the one’s that are based more on marketing hype. It is critical that the product you choose contains those ingredients proven effective for treatment through clinical study, and that those ingredients are of the highest grade and included in the proper dosage in the product. This is the key to getting the results you desire - freedom from stress, anxiety, and depression.

After researching nearly every available natural anxiety product on the market today I can tell you that many products contain low-grade ingredients in amounts far too small to be truly effective. There are a few, however, with clinical research behind them that also contain quality ingredients in efficacious doses.

These products offer the definite potential to counter your emotional and physical responses to stress, anxiety, and depression. After review of the products and the available scientific literature only those products that met the criteria were recommended, Here is a list of the Top The Top 10 Stress, Anxiety and Depression Supplements On The Market Today:

1) Anxietol 7
2) Welatonin
3) Pinadol
4) Seredyn
5) Prosera
6) Amoryn
7) Euphorx
HerbVal Supra
9) Clarocet-NRI
10) Relora

Tess is a contributing consultant, columnist, and writer for various health, fitness. and medical publications. Her new book “Natural Relief For Anxiety and Depression” is scheduled for release in June 2005.

The ‘experts’ have tried to evaluate me as a sufferer of this
but found no such evidence or behavior. The same was true for
all other mental or medical conditions, so they think ‘witch’
covers my condition in life; because I refuse to participate in
the materially managed environment any more. We will not explore
the horrors of the current forms of Inquisition in great detail
in this book as it relates to me. That would definitely be too
serious and intense, as I would explain society’s role in
tortures such as I witness all around me every day. I have been
thwarted in devious gambits by those who have something even
worse than the strait-jacket as we have seen Drs Breggin and
Cohen describe in ‘Science’. They call it (appropriately)
‘pharmacological lobotomies’. ECT is even more disgusting and
joins Ritalin in a campaign which social forces are developing
in this control paradigm. It seems relevant to point out enough
of the matter of my experience so that you will know you are
getting it pretty close to what they say when they use the
phrase ‘the horse’s mouth’.

Even the pharmacological and psychiatric conglomerate
acknowledges the physical elements of depression. Some are
cluing in to nutrition and massage or simple caring. The effects
of education and alienation are massive, but bad parenting and
the lack of enabling nutritive support in early life establish
character and behavior traits that stubbornly resist real
therapeutic methods. These obsessions often are far too
time-consuming for high-paid ‘professionals’ to offer assistance
- so we just drug and deceive! This medical model as some call
it makes a great deal of money and keeps the public at large
thinking something humane is going on in the life of the
care-givers and victims of a society without true spiritual
awareness and far too little compassion. The buzz words and
catchy phrases like ‘informed consent’ are not anything more
than deceit, as they still give lobotomies. In one case they did
it without informing the person who just died in 2005.

Francis Mark Mondimore writes a book called ‘Depression, The
Mood Disease’ updated in 1993 by Johns Hopkins University that
presents the lies of this machine that Ivan Illich (in ‘Limits
To Medicine’) identified as ‘mechanistic and
over-professionalized’ in the mid 70s.Here is the overstatement
of the century from its inside flap:

“The revised ‘Depression, the Mood Disease’ tells readers
exactly what they need to know about the causes, symptoms, and
treatment of depression: *How antidepressant drugs were
discovered, how they work, and with what side effects. {I’m
biting my tongue!} *What Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) and
panic attacks are, and how they are treated. *How
electro-convulsive therapy has changed for the better–and why
it now works for up to 90% of those treated. {And all the
professions involved in continuing to provide this fearsome
horror that is necessary to repeat as it continues frying brain
cells. Now randomly due to a drug cocktail, so that people’s
libido and zest is burned out too.} *How the special problems of
depression in children and older persons are handled. *How to
deal with a depressed friend or family member. *How such
disorders as hormonal imbalance and even lead poisoning can
‘mimic’ the symptoms of depression. *Why depression is sometimes
misdiagnosed as ‘PMS’, drug abuse, or Alzheimer’s disease…”
(2)

The future holds promises and terrors galore in the application
of ‘easy’ answers like drugs developed for specific genetic
make-ups and nanites to monitor and deliver targeted drugs or
shocks to the system in order to make us behave as we should.
The ever-increasing ‘big brother’ that allows the growth
industries associated with the management of people will lead to
full employment if we allow it to continue down the current
path. There will only be one benefit as the unemployable grow in
number and the employment roles show full employment. The
statistics will show the economy is productive and there is
little unemployment or reason to worry about an economic
depression. That is the end of the excerpt from my encyclopedia.
I will be including some other more recent writings as we
proceed.

I had returned from the Caribbean and a failed business
experience in Mexico and Belize in the month of March 1998. My
last wife and I had purchased a yacht, which we hoped to be able
to build a party boat/tourist business around. My wife had named
the boat ‘Champagne Dreams’ after the motto of Robin Leach’s
show ‘The Rich and the Famous’. It was her idea that we put a
Jacuzzi on the front deck, of this 47 foot fiberglass yacht that
we purchased in Fort Lauderdale, and our partner (Captain
Crunch) Jerry had taken with me to Cancun. His nickname had not
been established until we were leaving Key West. He destroyed
the fueling station of the marina while hitting three other
boats. We were still married though it was never a real marriage
as most people think of it. The relationship was already
complicated with another man named David.

It is not the purpose of this book to try to describe the
trials and tribulations of a relationship between myself and a
young Vietnamese exotic dancer who had been one of the ‘boat
‘people’. Suffice it to say there were many exciting times that
had lead me to the point where I was ready to leave this world
before I even met her. I had been a self-made millionaire at the
age of thirty. My travels and business had allowed me to meet
some of the most interesting people. By any standard of
measurement most would agree I had enjoyed life FULLY. My
interest in psychology due to having grown up with a
schizophrenic mother had long before gotten into the realm of
Eastern mysticism and parapsychology.

My wife was just twenty-two and I was forty six years old. We
had gone to Cancun in early September of 1997 to further
research a stele that I had found at Chichen Itza four years
before with my previous wife. This event had ended with my being
thrown off the site, and having to sign a document giving the
Mexican authorities the right to throw me in a Mexican prison,
without any recourse to the courts and Canadian law. This is
truly a story of oppression of the Mayan and native people of
Central America that includes a deceit of history which is
IMMENSE! We had been doing a non-invasive charcoal rubbing of
this ’stele’ (stone for heavenly worship, or library in stone).
It had been painted over twice and it seemed the white surface
would have made the pictures provide insufficient clarity. So we
had some paper we were using over the stone to capture the
alphabet that had not ‘come out’ in the previous photos I had
taken four years earlier when the granite ‘rock’ had its
original shiny surface.

This alphabet I believe confirms the work of Col. Churchward,
the author of ‘The Lost Continent of Mu’, who documents the
Cara-Maya language is the translational medium through which the
Greek alphabet on the other side of the ’stele’ tells the story
of the destruction of the civilization that originally colonized
South America some sixty thousand years earlier. I believe Col.
Churchward would agree with my statement that the original
colonization had started during the Riis-Wurm geologic Ice Age,
and was finalized during the last Ice Age; if he had the benefit
of recent geologic and archaeologic evidence. A fellow
researcher and good friend named Brenda found this in Islam and
Sufism which applies to my personal quest.

Dear Brenda:

Was this the result of Jeffrey mentioning the Language of the
Birds is the Language of the Bards and the alchemist (like this
person) Fulcanelli? This whole thing is very much from the
Keltic Creed. I draw attention to these parts - “The Hoopoe says
that it is better to lose your life than to languish miserably.
The Hoopoe says,

So long as we do not die to ourselves, and so long as we
identify with someone or something, we shall never be free. The
spiritual way is not for those wrapped up in exterior life.5

You will enjoy happiness if you succeed in withdrawing from
attachment to the world. Whoever is merciful even to the
merciless is favored by the compassionate. It is better to agree
to differ than to quarrel. The Hoopoe warns the sixth bird
against the dog of desire that runs ahead. Each vain desire
becomes a demon, and yielding to each one begets a hundred
others. The world is a prison under the devil, and one should
have no truck with its master. The Hoopoe also says that if you
let no one benefit from your gold, you will not profit either;
but by the smallest gift to the poor you both benefit. She says,

Good fortune will come to you only as you give. If you cannot
renounce life completely, you can at least free yourself from
the love of riches and honors.6

A pupil becomes afraid in facing a choice between two roads,
but a shaikh advises getting rid of fear so that either road
will be good. The Hoopoe tells the eighth bird that only if
death ceases to exercise power over creatures would it be wise
to remain content in a golden palace.” (3)

Christmas can be a nightmare for people with bipolar disorder. As the philosopher Posidonius observed in the fourth century, ‘Melancholy occurs in autumn whereas mania in summer.’ Here downunder in Australia, Christmas is summer time, party time, spending time, hurry time, family time. This is a potent mix of triggers and seasonal vulnerability and many of us do fall over with mania. Friends and family don’t always recognise Christmas mania, because symptoms such as excessive drinking, lavish spending, staying up late at functions, and being in a hurry are features of the season. The stress involved with ‘having’ to buy Christmas presents and ‘having’ to get together with family, along with summer-time vulnerability make Christmas a bipolar nightmare in the southern hemisphere.

It’s not much better up north. Since the fourth century we haven’t come much further than Posidonius except to declare there is such a thing as Seasonal Affective Disorder. It seems the number of hours of daylight you experience is related to your likelihood of getting depressed in winter. The closer you are to the poles, the better your chances.

Then there are seasonal triggers, such as figuring out how to buy presents on a tight budget. If you’re depressed, the ubiquitous expectation to be happy (just because it’s Christmas) only makes things worse.

Short of walking around with a sunlight-emitting lamp strapped to your forehead, or cutting up your credit card, what can you do about seasonal episodes of bipolar? Here are some quick tips to rescue Christmas.

1. Maintain your daily sleep/wake routine. Use medicine if you have to;

2. Keep in control of drinking. If you suddenly start a binge, it could be a major alert of an episode;

3. Make a Christmas shopping list and don’t buy anything not on the list!

4. Ask your partner or friend to help you stick to a budget;

5. Keep up medication;

6. Check in with your doctor or mental health worker as soon as you or someone close notices symptoms;

7. Keep away from any ‘toxic’ family members (you know who they are).

No plan is failsafe, but then again, having no plan is like going out without an umbrella on a stormy day. You can live well with bipolar, and Christmas doesn’t have to be a nightmare. Plan ahead and have a healthy, happy Christmas.

Madeleine Kelly is the author of the prizewinning book Bipolar and the Art of Roller-coaster Riding (Two Trees Media ISBN 0-646-44939-7). More information about managing bipolar disorder can be found at beatbipolar.com