Posted by emmanuel98 on June 14, 2011, at 23:01:40
I am reading Scott Turow's new novel, Innocence. It is well-written and a page-turner, as are all his novels. In it, a husband is accused of killing his wife by poisoning her with Nardil. Among the implausible premises: (1) The wife, who suffers from severe depression, takes nardil on a prn basis; (2) She takes nardil only when she is severely depressed. Otherwise she just takes SSRIs and other anti-depressants on a regular basis -- a total of 17 prescriptions she has in total; (3) he crushes 4 tabs of nardil and slips it into a glass of red wine, which she doesn't realize she shouldn't drink, because she was not depressed that day and didn't take the nardil herself; (4) the combination of nardil and a glass of red wine causes the wife to have a heart attack in the middle of the night. He delays calling 911 so that the contents of her stomach (they had dinner with son and girlfriend and also served cheese and salami)won't be discovered in an autopsy.
When I started taking parnate, I said to my p-doc, maybe the reason MAOI's aren't prescribed much is because a depressed person with suicidal ideation could drink a bottle of red wine with some cheese and salami and just check out. He said these are tendencies, not certainties. And in any case, you don't just check out, but get a terrible headache and spike in BP. If MAOIs were that dangerous, they would never be prescribed. And I have found that I can have the occasional slice of pepperoni pizza, some parmesan cheese on pasta or blue cheese in a salad, the occasional glass of beer or red wine, with no ill effects whatsoever.
Anyway, thought people might find this interesting.
poster:emmanuel98
thread:988155
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20110610/msgs/988155.html