Posted by Chairman_MAO on January 27, 2004, at 17:23:56
In reply to Re: informing the public of withdrawals DOES help!, posted by flyingdreams on January 27, 2004, at 15:25:32
> I can NOT believe you stated that informing the public wouldn't help. Because I would not have gone thru great pain or been on these stupid antidepressants for 14 yrs if the media had informed me!
I think you misunderstood the point I was trying to make. The media is not the ideal forum for promulgating the effects--including withdrawl effects--of drugs. The ideal forum is the MONOGRAPH and PATIENT INFORMATION that should be distributed with every drug as well as the PRESCRIBING PHYSICIAN! If you made your physician aware of how you were feeling upon discontinuing the drugs, and he/she did not see that you were experiencing a withdrawl reaction, he/she was acting in BAD FAITH. Think about it: if antidepressants take 4-6 weeks to work, it's quite obvious that some adaptive changes are occuring in the brain. Is it reasonable to assume that one's brain should function optimally immediately upon cessation of the drug? It may be reasonable for a patient to believe this, as they're not supposed to be familiar with BASIC FUNDAMENTALS of the drugs they're taking (although I personally like to know as much as possible about the chemicals I put in my bloodstream)--but the physicians are!
This whole antidepressant withdrawl fiasco seems disturbingly analogous to the benzodiazepine dependency fiasco of decades past. Researchers "in the know" speculated and quickly figured out (in the late 60s, I believe) that benzodiazepines, due to their EFFECTS ALONE (not even the mechanism of action, because, afaik, that wasnt even known at all until decades after they were employed in clinical practive), would have a rather severe withdrawl syndrome. That doctors could maintain that a drug which was capable of HALTING A GRAND MAL SEIZURE IN AN EMERGENCY SETTING would not have a withdrawl syndrome amounts to ill-willed hubris.
The media would do far better in chastizing the FDA (Why was Strattera approved and Edronax denied ... I doubt it was efficacy ...), DEA (who considers marijuana more dangerous than haldol), and medical establishment (who pushes these drugs) than it would reporting about drugs--after all, the drugs are just chemicals. The people are the ones that use them.
-cm
poster:Chairman_MAO
thread:305636
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040127/msgs/306159.html