I always ask patients about alcohol.
They always minimize their use.
Mostly all of the patients who have psychopathology and make it in my door name “stress” as the causal factor in their illness. Read more on Alcohol? Who Are They Kidding?…
Filed under Alternative Medicine, News by on Nov 8th, 2019. Comment. 
I remember my final day as a neurosurgeon. “Washing” a human brain with two humongous syringes of sterile physiologic saline, the same way my mother of blessed memory used to baste a chicken.
I thought maybe as a psychiatrist I had a chance, at least a fighting chance, of preventing a disaster like the one I was standing there trying to treat. Read more on The Decisions You Make…
Filed under Brain, Doctors, Family, life, News, Substance Abuse by on Jul 18th, 2018. Comment.
He was 50 and he told me right up front, “I need more of the medications the other doctors give me. You can just renew them for me; that is why I am here.”
That’s probably the second most common thing a patient says to me. The most common is, “Why didn’t my other doctors tell me that?” No, I don’t just renew prescriptions, I explained to him. I told him that I need to get to know my patients, so that I can make sure that I give them the correct medications.
“I don’t want you to do that,” he said to me. “All the other doctors just give me renewals.” I told him I didn’t much care, that was not how I worked, and if he wanted renewals he would have to tell me how he was doing. Read more on Self-Medicating On Pot And Booze As A Life Plan…
Filed under Substance Abuse by on Sep 14th, 2010. Comment.
She was a 33 year old raven-haired exhausted woman who had probably been a beauty before she bore children, now aged 9, 6, and 4. She wanted a renewal on her sleeping pills. She did not want the antidepressant or anything else, just sleeping pills. She said that since the children all slept through the night, now she could, too. She had not only a tubal ligation at her final pregnancy, but an ex-boyfriend who was no more than a distant memory.
Her last doctor, apparently a rarity, had actually started by prescribing the sleeping pills every third night. That had not lasted more than four weeks or so. She wanted, and felt she “deserved,” sleep every night. She was convinced that was what the insurance doctors gave the rich people, so she was not going to let anybody skimp on her. Sleeping pills every night. She would not have to think about anything other than keeping a bottle by her bed and getting it into her mouth. Sleep would be automatic and life would be sweet.
The last doctor had been, to his credit, assertive enough to tell her that if this was what she wanted, she would be coming in every three months for the rest of her natural life on planet earth, to get sleeping pills. She thought that was just fine; that it was what everyone did and should do, since we had something as wonderful as sleeping pills in the world. Read more on Pharmaceutical Companies Are Stealing Our Dreams…
Filed under prescription drugs, Sleep, Substance Abuse by on Jul 1st, 2010. Comment.
Thanks to modern technology and “time-shifting” I was able to watch the brief apology speech Tiger Woods gave to his wife and children, his fans, the employees of his charitable foundation and – probably most importantly – his sponsors.
Some critics question the sincerity of the greatest golfer ever – noticing his lack of emotion or even passion when apologizing, his unfamiliarity with the text he was reading from and his lengthy wait to even appear and give such an apology.
My concern was the total lack of mentioning a very serious aspect of the whole Tiger Woods fiasco – driving while intoxicated. The whole incident erupted on the world news scene when Tiger smashed his luxury SUV into a fire hydrant and a neighbor’s tree and was dragged unconscious from the vehicle by his wife.
Filed under Substance Abuse by on Feb 23rd, 2010. Comment.