Paxil

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My preceptor — the professor who was responsible for teaching me about psychopharmacology — continuously complained about “polypharmacy.”

I would roll my eyes heavenward and give him one of my usual “clever” retorts like,”Who the heck is she? Your cleaning lady, maybe??” Read more on What We Do With Antidepressants…

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Primary care doctors as well as psychiatrists give out antidepressants more than other kinds of medicine.

At the time I started training in psychiatry, we memorized the antidepressant side effects for early chemical classes derived from antituberculosis drugs and became overjoyed when the SSRIs came out.  Actually something safe and effective and pretty “clean” of risks and side effects and interactions!  First Prozac, which was FDA approved a day I was getting off call and grabbing a few hours of shuteye to be awakened by the morning news proclaiming that the new “safe” antidepressant would be a “wonderful advancement for psychiatry.” Read more on …

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If there is one time to get scared, it is when  a drug company, a government agency, a popular magazine article or – heaven forbid – your doctor says a metabolite is “better” than the drug it came from.

A metabolite is the substance that is left after the body breaks down (metabolizes) a medication.
  
Everyone in this picture know that oxycontin — read “morphine” — has lots of addiction-type problems.  Synthesized by the Germans in 1914, it has been around for quite a while, although not terribly commercially exploited until the folks at Endo Pharmaceutical started pushing it. Read more on Pain Killers Can Be A Prescription For Disaster…

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He was in his mid-fifties and seemed pretty clueless.  What’s more, he had more abnormal movements than any 20 people and looked like he was dancing with an invisible partner.

Prescription Drugs Should Not Be Shared

It's Dangerous To Take Drugs Prescribed For Someone Else

He sat at home all day trying to get himself involved in things like doing laundry and watching television so that he could get himself tired enough to sleep, focused enough to avoid the voices. He was safe — no forced hospitalization was necessary or even possible here. He promised that he would not harm himself no matter what the voices said, but it became clear that he lived in a world where devils and demons gave him a continuous commentary on everything from why Obamacare would never help him to — the size of his wife’s behind. There may have been some exhortations to harm self or others in the distant past, but they were indeed distant.

He said he had no medicine for the past ten years.  I asked how he lived and he said his family was no help, but his woman was. He was married to someone else but this woman was the only person who knew his day-to-day life and she had brought him to the clinic, so I got a release signed and got her in there. I told her he said he had no medicines in say, the past ten years or so.  She started laughing.

“He ought to be telling you the truth.  He gets his Mama’s old Seroquel whenever he can. Makes the voices shut up so he can sleep a little. ” Read more on Taking Mama’s Pills…

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