Posted by Alan on October 20, 2002, at 19:31:11
In reply to Re: My Klonopin (Clonazepam) isnt working Alan » Alan, posted by Squiggles on October 20, 2002, at 17:06:11
> If you took so many benzos for so long,
> and yet your experience is so different,
> there must be a reason. We must differ
> somehow - maybe another drug, maybe the heat;
> i don't know. I wrote my whole story to
> Lou. I do feel lucky to be alive.
>
> Squiggles
===========================================
I'm sure that you do. And there is a segment of the population that have bad reactions to drugs of all sorts and are stuck by lightning it seems when it comes to being hit with a confluence of events that are difficult at best to tease out.But this gets back to the essential complaint that I have about relating these types of unfortunate stories....and the notion that contradictions to those stories are only that of drug reps or phar. houses (of which I am neither).
And that is:
One can not logically extrapolate or generalise for an entire population about any medication risk based on their own personal experience. It's a generally and widely accepted axiom in the world of science and medicine.
The anti-benzo movement is quite skilled at doing this and the www.benzo.org site is a leader in advancing their scare tactics in this regard...especially now that they have the opportunity to use the www and reach millions to spread their unsubstantiated half-truths for moral and especially political purposes (to effect NHC systems, prescribing patterns, lawsuits, etc).
Serious physicians treating and specialising in the anxiety disorders that may take a short visit to these websites and a couple other like them may be laughing at the mere glance of such psudeo science but what's troubling is that many are unaware of the influence that typically med phobic anxiety sufferers are reacting to these website's exaggerated statement of risk, therefore believeing that bzds are not an option to ask their physician about.
PS. Actually I've been comlimented many times for my bedside manner. I'm hopefully a diplomat of some stripe to some people.
That is why I feel obligated to correct misunderstandings about bzds that are out there in the ether somewhere - most especially about the extrapolating part.
Otherwise, at the risk of peoples well being, their jobs and family risk being unnecessarily being put into "detox" centers simply because they show a "level and sustained medical dependence" on a medication that they are doing well on.
Benzophobia is to psychiatry what Opiodphobia is to pain management.
It's slowly evolving but has a long was to go based on the half-truths and psudeo science I see on these tabloid sites.
Again, this is not to say that a population of all kinds of folks do not have bad reactions to all kinds of drugs. But to place the barrier of stigma and guilt between the already crowded relationship between patient and doctor where commercial interests are already intruding to such a breathtaking degree through their promotion of AD's over the less profitable but more effective bzds is one of the biggest problems facing psychiatry today IMO.
Otherwise, where has the patient's freedom to choose treatment about their anxiety disorder gone?
End of rant.
Alan
poster:Alan
thread:124171
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20021019/msgs/124427.html