Drug Roll

[Guest [Be...]]

He's a great pill pusher ihope. Thanks,  I'm currently fighting a deep wave 

[[pr...]]

can't even remember all of them right now.

 

klonopin

valium

ativan

suboxone

subutex

vistaril

benadryl

soma

 

3 types of MS drugs--can't remember names right now

vicodin

serquel

stuff for back and neck pain that made me almost unconscious--can't remember any of this.

trileptal

baclofen

lunesta

hydromet (hycodan cough syrup)

cogentin

neurontin

wow!

 

 

[Guest [...]]

I forgot Cymbalta.

 

It had just been approved in 07' and I think the drug rep had been round handing out free packets to the Doc who was treating me. He gave me some to try out.

[[sp...]]

Hello Everyone,

 

This is a horrifying thread. I can't think who would be daft enough to start it.

 

In defence pf Pyschiatrists, and for me this is a hell of a stretch, I should say that many of the drugs I was prescribed came from Gastroenterologists not them. The worst they did was ignore any other medication, just blithely continue it as "not their problem".

 

My experience of all drugs however is that to divide them into the "psychoactive" and "others" is wrong. Virtually ALL of the medications I was prescribed had gross "psychological" effects, particularly after my CNS was sensitised by antidepressants and benzodiazepines. ALL had the potential to interreact with psychiatric drugs, and not in a good way.

 

I remember in particular the early signs of Parkinson's from metoclopramide, the depression from domperidone and the foul toxic headache on lansoprazole.

 

Polypharmacy assaults the organism in ways that are individual and entirely unpredictable. No double-blind, random, controlled trials, supposing there was the will to undertake them, could ever shine much of a light on this darkness. So, when I finally searched the literature, I found little to help me extract myself from the quagmire.

 

I then found Benzobuddies and lots of help, all of it unavoidably anecdotal and all therefore routinely questioned and often discounted.

 

Whether driven by Big Pharma, a determined misguided attempt by psychiatrists to make their "Art" a "Science", or by the wilful disregard of other specialties for the side-effect profiles of medications they prescribe, it's the reason our time will be remembered as another Medical Dark Age.

 

It's the reason many of us find ourselves here. We are all...

 

spartacus.

 

 

 

[[...]]

I can't remember all the names, but I do know that the amount of psych meds I took must be around 30 different types. I would always have at least three different meds to help me with sleeping, of course good old Xanax next to it and something against depression or pain now and then. During university exams I would get some Ritalin to help me focus.

 

But something's bothering me. I can't really blame that doctor for prescribing that stuff, apart from crossing the line with the huge amounts of Xanax (he knew he was doing something wrong, hence his advice to go to different pharmacies across the city). I came to a that man, a psychiatrist/neurologist, for help with sleeping, anxiety and depression. You can't expect a man in his profession to help you without prescribing drugs. He's testing whether a combination of pills will help you, and if it doesn't he's going to try another set of medication.

 

Did I feel like a guinea pig? Yes. But was he doing something wrong by prescribing medication that, according to literature, would help me with my problems? I don't think so.

[[sp...]]

Hello Nema,

 

I'm not blame laying, just trying to understand.

 

In the blame stakes I always give myself headline billing. I still don't understand how or why I let all this happen.

 

I do however take issue with, "You can't expect a man in his profession to help without prescribing drugs" and go on to describe apparently acceptable empirical experimentation...experimentation founded on arguable diagnoses that disregard the side-effects from one set of drugs before going on to compound any diagnostic error by prescribing another.

 

This flawed approach led me from "psychogenic vomiting" through hypomania, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, depression, agitated depression, major depression, bipolar disorder?, early-onset dementia etc with all the usual sub-headings, insomnia, agoraphobia, social phobia, bulimia, anorexia, hypochondriasis, somatoform disorder.

 

I'm afraid this is THE paradigm of our times. My contention would be that it needs to shift. It isn't remotely acceptable or even successful. The awful rise in psychiatric morbidity in recent decades speaks not of modern man finding the twentieth century compellingly awful but of Medicine's growing tendency to attempt to medicate life.

 

The question would be how this tendency has arisen...because I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't acceptable at all. The answers could range from Big Pharma's profit line to patient expectation of a quick, effortless fix with a side order of political or managerial interference with clinical autonomy.

 

All I'm really sure of is that it's a question that isn't addressed in the literature, a somewhat suspect body of knowledge, and that it needs to be asked...now.

 

Take care,

 

spartacus

 

 

[[...]]

Hello Nema,

 

I'm not blame laying, just trying to understand.

 

In the blame stakes I always give myself headline billing. I still don't understand how or why I let all this happen.

 

I do however take issue with, "You can't expect a man in his profession to help without prescribing drugs" and go on to describe apparently acceptable empirical experimentation...experimentation founded on arguable diagnoses that disregard the side-effects from one set of drugs before going on to compound any diagnostic error by prescribing another.

 

This flawed approach led me from "psychogenic vomiting" through hypomania, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, depression, agitated depression, major depression, bipolar disorder?, early-onset dementia etc with all the usual sub-headings, insomnia, agoraphobia, social phobia, bulimia, anorexia, hypochondriasis, somatoform disorder.

 

I'm afraid this is THE paradigm of our times. My contention would be that it needs to shift. It isn't remotely acceptable or even successful. The awful rise in psychiatric morbidity in recent decades speaks not of modern man finding the twentieth century compellingly awful but of Medicine's growing tendency to attempt to medicate life.

 

The question would be how this tendency has arisen...because I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't acceptable at all. The answers could range from Big Pharma's profit line to patient expectation of a quick, effortless fix with a side order of political or managerial interference with clinical autonomy.

 

All I'm really sure of is that it's a question that isn't addressed in the literature, a somewhat suspect body of knowledge, and that it needs to be asked...now.

 

Take care,

 

spartacus

 

I think its a little bit of both, but it has started with people complaining about everything all the time. I seriously believe that. We've evolved into a bunch of pussies - forgive me my language. And, like always, people who saw that benefit from it. If there wasn't a huge platform for psychodrugs, Big Pharma wouldn't make so much money. Of course it works the other way around as well, psychiatrists or doctors telling their patients they are unfit for life and should take drugs ASAP.

 

Most people want a quick fix and I have experienced that my generation and the one after it really like to be sick or handicapped. It's such a perfect excuse for not reaching certain goals in life. How many times I've heard people say 'I can be a second Einstein, of only I didn't have severe disease X' , it's unbelievable. It's easier to be 'sick' than to have to work hard to change yourself.

 

So I do loath doctors who diagnose childen with psychiatric issues (but their parents are equally to blame!) and hand out pills like candy, it's - especially in western countries - the spirit of the age as well.

[Guest [...]]

Cost is the biggest factor in this. I think I read somewhere that in the UK ~ 40% of complaints to GPs relate to mental illness now, however it receives just ~ 14% of NHS funding.

 

The vast majority of these complaints aren't "severe" (i.e Unipolar depression, not a personality disorder or schizophrenia etc.) and would ideally be treated with a course of psychotherapy and the need to introduce psychotropic medication avoided. But, the average cost of CBT treatment is around £1500, whereas the cost of Valium is ~ 2p a tablet and antidepressants a few pounds a prescription.

 

GPs are therefore put under pressure by their Clinical Commissioning Groups to avoid referrals to your local Mental Health Team for counselling and instead are encouraged to treat their "non-severe" patients "in-house" and give them tablets, rather than genuine treatment. This obviously resolves nothing, or, with benzos/poly-drugging, exacerbates the patients problems. But at least they can keep you at bay for a few years, upping your dose or switching meds etc., creating a false image of "savings" being made.

 

 

[[Th...]]

Our brains and psychological minds aren't meant to handle the obstacles that we have to face in these modern days. 

 

For example, our fight or flight response is suppose to turn off after we fight our attacker or successfully flee from it.  In these days, the fight/flight response never usually gets turned off fully from all the strange new stressors we have to face, which could lead to an anxiety disorder.  And when fighting or fleeing is futile, and there is no escape, this can lead to depression. 

 

We need a way to escape these strange stressors.  A very demanding boss, paying the rent, supplying the food, violence in the news, threat of gangs, and all the demanding pressures that society puts on you is not healthy for the brain.  We have become unactive, and unfit from our busy hectic lives.  Our bodies are meant to be exercised.  And we eat some pretty unhealthy stuff as well for the price of convenience.  Overtime, this all adds up and hurts us mentally, and this is where our psychiatrists come in. 

 

We all need long vacations, fishing trips, hobbies, and time with good friends/community. Lots of things that turn on the 'rest/digest' system.    These are just as important as eating good food and getting lots of exercise.  We need to convince our limbic system that everything is ok,  that you can overtake challenges, and that you are in good hands. 

 

Really, if that was the reality, there would only be a very small minority of people who get mentally ill. 

 

And I agree, this toxic brain candy is being handed out way too frequent than it should be.  But my point is, I don't believe  that we are running too frequently to our doctors for nothing.  I think we are really not well, and today's pressures, society, and lifestyles is the cause. 

[[sp...]]

Hi Nema,

 

You are right...the reasons for the present pill-pushing paradigm are likely to be multiple. I don't agree that it started with people complaining about things all the time and then drug companies taking advantage of preformed bunches of pussies...though it's an appealing image.

 

Skilful marketing would be about creating bunches of pussies.

 

About 40 years ago now, the retiring CEO of Glaxo told his captivated audience that the future of the industry lay not in treating sick people...they had an annoying habit of dying or getting better...but in mass-medicating targeted demographic groups of largely well people.

 

This philosophy was wholeheartedly embraced...preventative medicine was born, the infant prodigy that became the monster that took over the known world. It has given rise to protocol-driven, tick-box medicine for morons, largely based on drug company funded "research".

 

Take statins...and at some stage in your life you will probably be advised to...if all the criteria were rigorously applied in Norway, one of the fittest populations in the world, 50% of 21 year-olds and 100% of 50 year-olds would be treated for life. This disregards the fact that statins have many known side-effects...50% of Americans started on them will stop taking them within a year...and that the effect of taking them for 50-60 years is totally unknown.

 

Closer to home for those of us here...the wonderful SSRIs. Two things to know...there isn't  a shred of evidence for the serotonin theory of depression and that might possibly explain why they don't work.

 

And why should they? Prozac, the poster child for this drug class was originally developed as a treatment for high blood pressure. When it sadly couldn't be made to work, a second sizeable group was needed for treatment. It didn't take much thought for Big Pharma to light upon obesity as their ideal...a HUGE group of largely well people who were never going to get better but were not generally going to die of their disease either. Trialled at the coal face again Prozac lucked out, until...someone noticed that the fat people, though staying fat, were quite happy with that...and a new range of antidepressants was born.

 

The theory came later...with the usual skilful marketing. The diagnostic boundaries of depression spread to include anyone who looked sideways at the moon. Doctors were found to be "missing" this diagnosis all over the place. Industry was found to be losing zillions of man-hours to untreated depression. Untreated depression was found to shorten lives, ruin relationships, break up families. And...teenage angst was found to be previously unrecognised depression...

 

And that, as you say Nema, is where it all takes a turn for the worse...children. We adults may volunteer for the victim society you allude to...the card-carrying might-have-beens...but it's a different ball game when we sacrifice the young.

 

Normal teenage brains undergo remodelling. This is clearly visible on MRI scans of their frontal lobes. A delicate process that used to be known as growing up. it would take several sorts of fool to medicate this...we do. Worse, I recently read that the newest fashionable diagnosis, bipolar disorder, now the inalienable right of celebrities everywhere(a very clever marketing ploy), is being diagnosed in 2 and 3 year-olds...

 

Yes, a paradigm shift is called for...as is the end of this rant. Sorry, a bad day at the mill

 

Take care,

 

spartacus

[[pa...]]

i thought, i was polydrugged at the beginning. but after seeing all those posts, i am just too damn angry.

 

[[Wh...]]

Epival

Lithium

Lamictal

Tegretol

 

Xanax

Ativan

Clonazepam

Zopiclone

 

Nardil

Prozac

Wellbrutrin

Effexor

Celexa

Trazedone

Tofrinil

Buspar

 

Seroquel

Risperdal  (briefly)

 

Synthroid

Dessicated Thyroid Hormone (only med on now)

 

That's only 20 in 20 years, not as bad as some others I've seen here.  No damn wonder I hurt so much. 

[[pr...]]

i agree with what Nema says about 'it's easier to be sick than to work hard to change yourself" i may have fallen into that category and totally sick of it.

at some point you're going to have to come now or you can come later. i'm doing that later and right now.

 

i also agree with TheCity that we need to convince our limbic system that everything is okay. i think that benzo withdrawal does some damage to the limbic system and needs to be repaired and healed somehow. i think it's injured and received faulty messages about everything.

 

and i bet there isn't a shred of evidence about the serotonin theory of depression. i have been reading many articles that suggest too much serotonin isn't a good thing and is considered an endotoxin in the brain and body and needs to be balanced. that it's not the 'happy chemical' that the medical culture wants us to think.

 

and i do believe the paradigm shift is called for. so then,

when?

[[sp...]]

Hello pretty,

 

When?

 

Three years ago would be nice. It would save me a lot of trouble and pain

 

"Learned helplessness" would be the phenomenon you and Nema are talking about. The perception that change requires expert input from outside oneself, that the locus of control is not within a given individual.

 

This assumed victimhood would be the origin of many of the peculiar stresses that City is referring to as causing mental ill health in modern man.

 

As I've mentioned I dont quite buy this "stressful modern life" theory. I certainly don't buy a remedy that includes more cossetting. Give people more leisure time, retire them early, and the evidence is that this impacts negatively.

 

Each age has its own peculiar stresses and ours is no different in that. Each age also shows a reliable, precipitous decline in mental ill health in response to natural disaster or war. Londoners were never saner than during the Blitz.

 

Give people something real to worry about, rather than increased R and R, and it certainly does change their mind set.

 

Rats, I seem to be suggesting we go to War

 

Take care pretty. May your next window stay open forever. The last gave us all hope.

 

With love, spartacus xxx

[[sp...]]

PS It occurs to me that withdrawal is the archetypal condition where the locus of control really does seem to be outwith the individual. It's what drives us all round the twist. It's the reason we all strive so hard to change the pattern of events and the reason we are so downhearted when this proves to be impossible. 

[[sp...]]

Cost is the biggest factor in this. I think I read somewhere that in the UK ~ 40% of complaints to GPs relate to mental illness now, however it receives just ~ 14% of NHS funding.

 

The vast majority of these complaints aren't "severe" (i.e Unipolar depression, not a personality disorder or schizophrenia etc.) and would ideally be treated with a course of psychotherapy and the need to introduce psychotropic medication avoided. But, the average cost of CBT treatment is around £1500, whereas the cost of Valium is ~ 2p a tablet and antidepressants a few pounds a prescription.

 

GPs are therefore put under pressure by their Clinical Commissioning Groups to avoid referrals to your local Mental Health Team for counselling and instead are encouraged to treat their "non-severe" patients "in-house" and give them tablets, rather than genuine treatment. This obviously resolves nothing, or, with benzos/poly-drugging, exacerbates the patients problems. But at least they can keep you at bay for a few years, upping your dose or switching meds etc., creating a false image of "savings" being made.

 

Hello HM1,

 

And thank you for your reply.

 

Cost may have been a consideration when the pill pushing first began but we are now well into second or third generation Med-heads.

 

The learned helplessness is being handed down through the generations. And it's being endlessly reinforced by our political masters...a frightened electorate is so much easier to handle...and more importantly, by the relentless rise of the cult of managerialism. Managers depend for their very existence on entire populations believing they are unable to manage themselves.

 

Both ruling groups are beginning to realise that short-term economics applied to health have their difficulties. The snowball effect is well under way...sticking-plaster symptom relief will hold the dam for a short while, though at the cost of medication budgets well exceeding that for all doctors put together, but eventually, as the histories of most here demonstrate,"...things fall apart, the centre cannot hold...".

 

And then you get hordes of harmed and helpless people assaulting the system, "clogging it up"...see any doctor's surgery or A/E department near you. You get people like me, therapeutic casualties who spend months in hospitals eating resources like sweets. You get a situation where up to one in five hospital admissions are iatrogenic.

 

You get trouble. You begin to wish you had never started the whole thing.

 

And that is where I came in

 

Take care,

 

spartacus x

[[Is...]]

Spartacus,

 

I just love to read your writings. You amaze me ever time with your eloquence and command of the English language. Thanks for being you.  Heal fast....

 

 

[[De...]]

What is the point of this post

[[sp...]]

Does there have to be a point Dexter?

 

spartacus

[[De...]]

No I guess not I just found it strange sorry for questioning the mighty

[[sp...]]

Sleep well Dexter.

 

spartacus

[[No...]]

Spartacus,

 

I just love to read your writings. You amaze me ever time with your eloquence and command of the English language. Thanks for being you.  Heal fast....

 

Me, too.

 

I so enjoy your posts, Spartacus. You write well and you're funny. Love, love, love the funny. As they say: "Laugh and the whole world laughs with you. Cry, and you cry uncontrollably for like an hour in the bath where you hope no one can hear you alone.

 

I prefer to laugh--even (especially) when it hurts. 

 

 

[[pr...]]

i so wish i had bathtub! i wish i could cry for two days as well.

if not now, then when?

and yes it sure does seem to have the archetypal condition of victimhood, especially when you do to the doctor and tell him "my brain is bouncing around" and he can actually see your head be-bopping all over the place and in the next breath says

 

"benzo withdrawal only lasts 2 weeks" "you're gonna get your life back soon"

 

i have often wondered why i had to play the victim role all my life and also wondered who i needed to be sick for?

 

there comes a time--enough is enough!

[[IG...]]

    I don't have the energy to dig out my prescription list in the last 3 years but there was about 12 of them, at one time my psychiatrist change my antidepressant 7 times in 2 months. 

That's when I developed serotonin syndrome...and i was put on Valium to relieve the symptoms..then c/t'd off that after 6 weeks. 

 

    They say serotonin syndrome is rare but I'm starting to wonder with all this poly-drugging if it doesn't happen more often then they realize.  The experts also say it leaves no lasting affect but I'm starting to wonder about that too.

 

I originally went to see a psychiatrist because I believed they would help me work through my step-daughters battle with cancer but that wasn't the case, after a 20 minute visit I had a handful of prescriptions and was sent on my way.

 

Molly

[[pr...]]

after a 20 minute visit I had a handful of prescriptions and was sent on my way.

 

that is really too bad that they see things like this and think that it's going to be the thing that is helpful.