It seems that the first television advertisement for medical marijuana has hit the California airwaves without a whimper. The first TV commercial just ran on a Sacramento station.
Having experience in many clinics from the Oregon border to the Mexican border, I can confirm that in most of California, medical marijuana is commonplace. It does not seem to be tremendously difficult to obtain, and I have attended many patients have valid prescriptions for it.
There is a list of conditions for which it is alleged to help, which is as long as your arm. Hearing about these conditions where cannabis is the preferred treatment usually causes me to smile, and I suspect that the list continues to grow with each new patient who wishes to use this remedy. Read more on Marijuana–The Only Drug Without FDA Approval…
Filed under Alternative Medicine by on Sep 10th, 2010. Comment. 
She was in her thirties and had miscarried, again. Proof that the universe is infinite in its wisdom, she had failed to carry past three months a child conceived while she was hooked on crack. To say I was relieved was to put it mildly.
She already had two children in her care, aged 9 and 7. I had sent Child Protective Services to check them out. Her mom and extended family seemed to be participating in their care. They seemed to be doing pretty well.
She was not only unhappy; she was angry. I had been so careful. Taken her off any medications that had a serious chance of causing malformations in an unborn child. Keeping her on just enough to keep her from hearing voices and “body-slamming” herself into a wall. Something the voices, she said, told her to do. Not a very good thing for a woman to do who was pregnant, so we kept her on a little medicine. Always checking with the California Board of Teratogenicity, a wonderful place where both patients and doctors could find out from the published medical literature just how dangerous prescriptions could be to unborn children. Those who did not believe in abortion could work with their doctor about advantages and risks and being careful and trying to do the right thing. Good God, this was a woman who had used crack. Read more on “The Abilify Doesn’t Work!”…
Filed under prescription drugs by on Jun 16th, 2010. Comment.
Before you read this, I want to warn you – at any moment, I can veer off into an emotional rant. And after you read this, you should be outraged, also.
There is a prescription form of Omega-3 fish oil being marketed by a major pharmaceutical company. It costs about seven times more than the same amount of Omega-3 fish oil you can buy as a dietary supplement.
If I had no other reason to dislike “Big Pharma” this would suffice. Everything I learn about pharmaceutical companies makes me think less of them. They are stealing our effective and useful natural substances without adequate science, creating patentable molecules, and making more money than any of us can imagine off human suffering and death. Read more on Fish Oil For $100 A Pill…
Filed under big pharma by on Jun 11th, 2010. 2 Comments.
She was 32 and she looked tired. She told me she had been abused in childhood. A general physician whom I trust and who does a good job had sent her to see me, thinking she could be a little more relaxed and doing better with pharmacology. We had not even talked about what kind. This young woman was not sleeping well. She made the interview easy as she already knew her diagnosis – post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
She said the abuse had been both physical and sexual. She still had an occasional dream or daytime thought about it. She did her best to avoid the people who had done these horrible things to her. Also she was “high strung.” She confirmed that she tended to hyper-react to loud noises. “I jump ten feet in the air,” she said. So she had the three hallmarks of the diagnosis. I am a woman with little faith in colleagues, so I always confirm the diagnosis.
I noticed, to my horror that the only medication she was receiving was Klonopin, also known as clonazepam, a half mg. twice daily. Now she had been on nothing but this for many months. I have a lot of troubles with drugs of this class: they are addictive, abusable, and at higher doses, which many people take sometimes, they can cause shakes or even seizures with withdrawal. If she ever skipped a dose she would feel it. Besides, they are central nervous system depressants, so they can actually cause someone go get more depressed. Read more on Informed Consent Is Your Legal Right…
Filed under informed consent by on Apr 7th, 2010. 2 Comments.
At a study done in Austria they looked at a University hospital, a general hospital, and a psychiatric clinic. They found a BIG problem – and not just in Austria: People are taking too many psychotropic drugs, even though there are no systematized justifications for prescribing patterns. This seems to happen the most in folks who have a diagnosis or either depression or schizophrenia.
Although some people take only one psychotropic drug, most are on many. A study by our own government agency (a noble attempt to trace psychotropic prescriptions in a general hospital in the United States) decided this was a general pattern. All right, this is what happens. Read more on So Many Pills And So Little Progress…
Filed under prescription drugs by on Feb 25th, 2010. Comment.
As far as I know, every antidepressant has the same “black box” warning on its package insert, as reported by a reputable academic psychiatrist in a reputable journal a while ago.
Incidentally, he has, in this editorial type piece, effectively logged most of the “attacks” recently made upon psychotropics. He advises the readers, presumably other psychiatrists or at least physicians of some sort, to do “nothing.” This is the common way of academics, to wait and gather data. It is not a common way of doctors, at least ethical or idealistic ones, who still scramble at any chance to save people.
For now let’s look at the warnings about antidepressants that have merited the special FDA attention. Except that it is in a “black box” (has a black border like a funeral announcement) and there may be a couple of things added on relative to an individual brand, this is the disclaimer: WARNING: SUICIDALITY AND ANTIDEPRESSANT DRUGS Antidepressants increased the risk compared to placebo of suicidal thinking and behavior (suicidality) in children, adolescents, and young adults in short-term studies of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders.
Anyone considering the use of (Brand Name) or any other antidepressant in a child, adolescent, or young adult must balance this risk with the clinical need. Short-term studies did not show an increase in the risk of suicidality with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults beyond age 24; there was a reduction in risk with antidepressants compared to placebo in adults aged 65 and older. Depression and certain other psychiatric disorders are themselves associated with increases in the risk of suicide. Patients of all ages who are started on antidepressant therapy should be monitored appropriately and observed closely for clinical worsening, suicidality, or unusual changes in behavior. Families and caregivers should be advised of the need for close observation and communication with the prescriber. Read more on Black Box Warnings — Read Carefully!…
Filed under prescription drugs by on Feb 4th, 2010. Comment.
After all the tragic news the past year or two about celebrities who have died after using a combination of legal prescription drugs, it’s enough to make someone wonder how you can avoid becoming a victim, yourself.
Today — with the internet — it is relatively easy to find out which drugs can be dangerous if mixed. And if you get your drugs from a pharmacist, you can accept the “counseling” offer and ask specifically about interactions.
I hate to say it, but asking your doctor may be a distant third place in finding out the right information.
I don’t claim to have invented the internet, and I doubt I could be considered a pioneer of the ‘net, but wherever I have traveled to help out clinics and institutions over the past ten years, I insisted that I needed internet access to practice medicine. At the time, I only needed access to one site. It was a database sponsored by a major drug company and it had drug-drug interactions. Now it charges a fee for access and the data isn’t as good. Read more on Take Steps To Avoid Drug Interactions…
Filed under prescription drugs by on Jan 29th, 2010. Comment.
Last summer, there was a movie, called “Snakes on a Plane“ which I think my husband wanted to see. The “plot” (which obviously fell a little short of classic Shakespearean construction) has something to do with a witness transported on a plane and somebody tries to “whack” him with a bunch of snakes. I absolutely did not want to see it. (To my husband’s credit, we still have not. Yes, there are men who love their wives THAT much.) I don’t much like snakes. I tend to avoid them. I do not run screaming if I see a garter snake.
Incidentally, they say the film initially did quite well, probably because of a lot of internet hype. It went on to do less well than expected. I cannot help but wonder if that had something to do with the way a lot of people feel about snakes.
In college when I took comparative vertebrate zoology, they called it “herpetophobia,” which literally means fear of reptiles. The more correct term is “ophidiophobia,” more specifically meaning fear of snakes. Read more on Getting Rid of Phobias Without Drugs…
Filed under Psychotherapy by on Jan 25th, 2010. Comment.
When I heard shortly before Christmas that another Hollywood star died of suspected prescription drug interactions, I thought, “Here we go again…”
Brittany Murphy — young, beautiful and only 32 was the latest rider on the Fame-Drugs-Dysfunctional lifestyle carousel. A month later, still no official cause of death has been issued although rumors abound. The death certificate said “natural causes” and “cardiac arrest.” In the absence of congenital defects or some type of disease, cardiac arrest in a 32-year-old female is not natural. Read more on Brittany Murphy — Another Victim of Prescription Drug Abuse?…
Filed under Celebrities by on Jan 15th, 2010. 1 Comment.
I looked at her, better dressed than most of the folks at the clinic where she was seen, with an open mouth. I had to take a few extra minutes to figure out what I was going to say next. In case you have not guessed, that is pretty far from my usual state.
“I have a chemical imbalance,” she said. She looked a little like Sharon Osbourne, hip and trendy but expensively dressed. “He gave me some medicines that really helped, like Xanax and Ativan, and either of those would be just fine.”
I freely admit that psychiatric diagnosis and treatment have a long way to go to meet either the organic precision of the surgical specialties or the subjective enthusiasm of the non-prescribing mental health professionals, such as psychologists or psychotherapists. But there are practitioners out there who are either so indifferent or so pressured that they rattle off words without meaning and give prescriptions that hinder more than help.
Filed under Diagnosis by on Jan 12th, 2010. Comment.