ya, i just heard a commercial for some new miracle anti depressant that warned if you feel an increased desire to kill yourself you should probably consult your physician, good call.

>> ^jwray:
A good reason to legalize it is that there is no evidence that marajuana is any less safe than prescription antidepressants.

A good reason to legalize it is that there is no evidence that marajuana is any less safe than prescription antidepressants.

Okay, I watched it in bits and pieces, and though it is worth viewing, I still find myself largely in agreement with what snoozie said. People who who claim that the FDA is suppressing effective therapies usually have market-driven agendas of their own. The natural and herbal supplements industry is a multi-billion dollar one. Maybe they're not as big as the pharmaceuticals industry, but they're no underdog. How have "natural" supplements gone unregulated for so long if it weren't for the clout they have in lobbying?

Antidepressants are a sticky wicket. Though what snoozie said about eating right, exercising, etc. holds true for a large segment of the population, there is also a small segment of the population that battles chronic depression even with doing everything right. I am one such person. Though living well can help my mood a lot, even then I still have days when I see the world through blue-colored glasses. I'm pretty sure it's a genetic predisposition, as there are a disproportionate number of family members on my mother's side of the family with mood disorders, with most of those cases being depression. My depression has gotten severe a couple of times in my life, and both times it happened after I went off my meds for a while. Getting back on them was the only thing that brought me out of the darkness. I've stayed on antidepressants ever since my son was born, because he deserves a dad who isn't teetering on institutionalization.

I believe I understand snoozie's point though about antidepressants being bad for some people, in that if a bipolar patient is misdiagnosed with unipolar depression the outcome could be catastrophic. Hopefully a good clinician can recognize the difference, but that's not always the case. Doctors make mistakes too.

Now I've rambled on too long as well. My friend's going to wonder why I came to visit if I stay on the computer much longer. Ciao.

Chogster,
I didn't have time to watch it either, but I did anyway. This is a tough one. I'll try to keep it brief, but that may be hard.

On vitamins and minerals;
If you eat a healthy balanced diet (raise hands please)you get all the vitamins and minerals you need. That's SO not the case in many undeveloped countries, as they rarely eat balanced diets. Taking extra water soluble vitamins, i.e. Vit C, will not hurt you, but it will give you expensive urine. Taking extra fat soluble vitamins can be outright dangerous. Vit A is hepatotoxic in high doses. I recall seeing a patient with end stage liver cirrhosis from chronic cod-liver oil (rich in Vit A) ingestion (how someone can get addicted to that is beyond me.)

There is little credible evidence to prove "extra" amounts of vitamins, above what your body really needs, is of any benefit to your health. Selenium supplementation has been associated with decreased prostate cancer. (So has rapid turnover of spermatozoa and it's more fun than taking selenium.)

The problem with "natural supplements" is several fold. (1) They are still chemicals and, therefore, are not easily differentiated from standard pharmaceuticals, many of which come from plants as well. (2) There is VERY lax quality control in the production of many of these drugs. Assays on potency have shown up to a 100 fold difference between brands that supposedly have the same amount of drug in one pill. (3)Taken in excess, drugs like ephedra are dangerous. It's amphetamine. It will give you a boost in energy, but it also may give you a hypertensive crisis or a fatal arrhythmia.

Medicine is science, and like any scientific endeavor, the proof is in the pudding. There are very few credible studies that demonstrate much benefit to "natural supplements." One speaker in the video, Jim Turner, laments that some of these drugs fall victim to "systematic cause and effect mentality" of the pharmaceutical companies and their "huge, expensive studies." That statement is intellectually bankrupt and I don't think I have to point that out. It takes huge expensive studies to achieve the power of analysis necessary to detect a benefit a drug might have on a relatively rare condition. Say for instance, a drug reduces by 50% the incidence of a complication that happens only once in a thousand patients. You will need to enroll thousands and thousands of patients to reach a power of analysis that will approach statistical significance. It takes, on average, almost a billion dollars to get a typical pharmaceutical drug from synthesis to the US market and that's, in part, due to the rigorous process the FDA requires.

On antidepressants;
Eating right, getting enough sleep, regular exercise and playing in the sunshine are as effective as marketed antidepressants. The side effect of "activation" of SSRIs has been understated. Patients with bipolar illness, rather than typical depression, can experience mania or hypomania, with increased anxiety, racing thoughts and insomnia. That's not what a depressed person needs. While not proven, my personal opinion is that this heightened sense of anxiety may play a possible role in the risk of suicide. Please remember, mentally ill people can hide their illness well. Unforeseen suicides are not uncommon and it's easy to pin the blame on a new medicine, or some other unrelated factor.

I told you it would be difficult for me to be brief. I've practiced for 25 years now.
(1) The FDA is NOT suppressing effective therapies.
(2) All drugs, natural supplements included, should undergo systematic randomized prospective studies to assess their efficacy before being labeled as effective (sadly, that's not always the case)
(3) The drug companies are shamelessly pandering to the public and downplaying side-effects. They have been successful in creating a herd mentality in the U.S. of "I don't feel right, I need a drug." Direct advertising to the public should be BANNED.

Is that a painting of L. Ron (what a hack) they salute? What is it he says right before?

BTW, after they put the "black box" warning on antidepressants, use of antidepressants among children went down while suicides went up. It's still too early to make a firm correlation, but the early evidence is not good.

Maybe L. Ron should have stuck to bad sci-fi and left psychology to the real "experts on the mind."

Eric,
Thanks for this post. Mental Illness is still not well understood in this country.
Sorry if I sound like Sanjay Gupta, but I feel compelled to comment on these medically related posts.

Contrary to the implication of the video, Major Depressive Illness is quite common. The life-time risk of having an episode is about 10% for men and 15-20% for women. My internal medicine buddies tell me they think about 1/3 of the patients they see every day in their office are having symptoms related to depression. Pain is very common, and it's not imagined, it's real. (We don't fully understand why depression intensifies pain) About 80% of patients with depression experience significant anxiety as well.

Antidepressant medications are marginally effective. SSRIs provoked mania in this lady, just like they did in me. My family tree is full of depression, and when mine hit at age 40 I went on SSRIs. MAJOR anxiety, racing thoughts, and insomnia ensued.
We were more likely to have this reaction because we weren't suffering from typical unipolar depression, we had bipolar illness. Many people with bipolar illness don't have much in the way of manic spells. Many times the illness is primarily depressive. So many times the diagnosis is not made because the illness is atypical. I consider this a real risk of SSRIs.

Interestingly, the only pharmacist I personally know who developed major depression declined antidepressants based on what she knew about their side-effects and efficacy.

So what does work? If it's a mild case, I would be hesitant about antidepressants, just eat right, get sleep, exercise out in the sun, and quit obsessing about conflict.
If it's a bad major depression, you need help and you need to see a professional. The normal course of a major depression is 6 to 9 months. That's a long time to be in the crapper, believe you me. Don't let people scare you away from getting treatment. There are options other than meds.

Gordon Brown, the new British PM has said on the record that he wants to extradite drug dealers from the UK. Canada and the UK are importing these disasterous US drugs laws.

These drug laws are more harmful than all the drugs you can imagine added together and multiplied by the first number you can think of.

Government definition of what constitutes a 'drug' is extraordinarily broad and not based in reality. When a drug is listed illegal, it is defined in law as having no medicinal or pharmaceutical value - and no research can be done on a listed drug.

Psychedelics are not drugs. Marijuana is the oldest medicine known to mankind.

LSD was used during the 60s to treat alcoholism with a success rate in the high 90%s - this essentially makes it a CURE for alcoholism.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-10/uoa-ltf100606.php

MDMA has been used in psychotherapy to treat post-traumatic stress disorder with a success rate in the high 90%s - this essentially makes it a CURE for traumatic stress. American soldiers are starting to receive this treatment.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/feb/17/usnews.drugsandalcohol

Pharmaceutical companies aren't interested in cures.

Antidepressants like Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, Paxil CR, Effexor, Remeron, and Serzone DOUBLE the suicide risk in young adults.

This is a HUGE political issue. For god's sake it's the 21st century and it's about damn time people started to waken the fuck up.

Incredibly painful, Mixaster, one of those, "why end the skit, after we have achieved the equivalent, of the effects of long-term, antidepressant use with the medium of comedy", kinna painful.....

Perhaps while legalizing all drugs in their purest forms, while simultaneously making all prescription controlled substances obsolete through right living and thinking.....folks who have never programmed their bodies to rely on sugar, for instance, become ill if they eat too much.....same with antidepressant addicts.....seen folks tolerances that were violently scary...same dose, would put some in an emergency room...and WHY again is it that anti-depressants were developed and manufactured???...why were there more heroin addicts in the US after the civil war?? Pain-killer addiction, morphine, heroin.....fast forward to now, we traded drugs that have been here since Methusela's day, for some pay-to-the-man, legal addictive synthesized shinola that renders the post-industrial prole, a simpering, passive-aggressive, robot.....HAH! the prospect of the alternative to the republican party in the US's next go-round, make ya wanna just scream from yer spaceship, -Silly, pathetic humans, soon you will meet your own insanity head-on!!.....(got any popcorn???let's watch that shit!!)

Election 08' vote same, vote lame, pick the most-used, paid-for name, just make sure, it don't say it's the same....red team blue team, rah rah rah..

(damn, did we vote yet???)

Another week, another scandal. Worst. President. Ever.

They're also filling troops up on antidepressants and sending em back into service.

The Decider don't need no stinkin advice from no stinkin generals.. he was a pilot once, kinda, real stealth like.. no one even remembers seeing him.
Just take some antidepressants and do what the man in the sky tells you.

"A prune-size bit of tissue tucked under the frontal lobes, it controls gut feelings and habits; it's what drives a recovering smoker to yearn for the feel and taste of cigarettes. The "reward circuitry," a network of neurons at the core of the brain, also plays a role. Nicotine boosts the brain's levels of dopamine, the "feel good" neurotransmitter. Another, as yet unknown, chemical in tobacco smoke acts like an antidepressant, blocking an enzyme that breaks down dopamine. So smokers get a double dose of the stuff—and about half end up addicted, essentially, to their own brain chemicals.

Remove the nicotine, though, and the body can't maintain the high dopamine levels on its own. In the brain of a smoker who's trying to quit, receptors start "screaming," says Dr. Norman Edelman of the American Lung Association, "crying out to be satisfied." Smokers often say a cigarette calms them, but by the time they're addicted, the nicotine rush simply halts the first symptoms of withdrawal. "The addiction is why you're nervous in the first place," says Edelman. Longtime smokers also have to end a behavior that's "entrenched in their daily lives," says Corinne Husten, head of the CDC's Office of Smoking and Health. Add in the stresses of, say, running for president, and it's all too easy to slip.

It may seem drastic to call a smoker an "addict" but, says Chris Cartter, who runs QuitNet, the world's largest quit-smoking program, "a lot of doctors view this as on par with overcoming a heroin addiction." The withdrawal isn't as ugly, but it's not pretty, either: shortly after quitting, the typical longtime smoker becomes cranky, has trouble sleeping and making decisions, and gains weight. Usually, the first weeks are the worst, but for some people the symptoms can drag on for a year or more.

That's assuming, however, that the smoker is taking the cold-turkey approach, which there's little reason to do these days. Nicotine gum, approved in 1984, is the oldest anti-smoking aid. (Obama chews it throughout the day.) It's about as effective as the newer patches, inhalers and nasal sprays, all of which placate those screaming receptors without being addictive themselves. Other options include Zyban, which is also marketed as an antidepressant, and Chantix, introduced last year, which eases withdrawal and blocks nicotine's effects."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17193908/site/newsweek/

Yowsah! Hey did you like the way I busted yer balls on that antidepressants post???.....had I been paying attention to yer soon to be status, it may have been pre-meditated instead of synchronistically timely....cheers!!!

Why did I post that list? Because you said, "More die and are killed by pharmeceuticals than any thing else", and the list I put up directly contradicts your statement. And no, I'm not claiming to be an expert of any kind - the list, as I cited where I got it from, is readily available, as is most scientific research, which is why I put it there. I'm not asking you to trust me, but I'm trying to at least put some evidence behind what I say. Heck, even throw in antidepressants as a category in there, it's still not a leading cause of death.

And yes, as a matter, of fact, WHO has done quite a lot of good for all mankind. Not always, and it's not always the shining example it could be, but it does good work.

..and why would there be any connection between these conditions above listed and pharmaceuticals at all???? ...rattle off another list for us, seem to sound like an expert emough and we can all believe you and go back to sleep....the prozac was originally used in the tag, as a catch-all name, that all may relate to with regard to antidepressants of all kinds....of whicjh I am sure some perky little worm could find a complete list of....