The drugs don't workFollow

And I don't mean the good ones.



I'm really not a fan of the drug industry: the trials in India and South Africa, the ridiculous prices, the obscene profits, the amount spent on flea treatment for pets... I'd even go further and say that health care and treatment should not be left solely in the hands of people who's only objective is to make money out of it.

In my old job, I was a financial investigator for the Serious Fraud Office. For 3.5 years I worked on a single case, this one. 4 of the biggest drugs companies made a cartel, fixed prices of common drugs (warfarin, amoxycillin, etc...), made them shoot up by 2000%, and defrauded the NHS, and therefor the taxpayer, of over £400 million pounds over a couple of years. And it's not like they were suffering financially or anything, it's pure greed. Well, allegedly.

So what's you anti-depressant?

These days, mine's a joint on the balcony whilst listening to Nina Simone.

Tare is my anti-drug.


And now for some crazy Barkingturtle speculation!

Personally, I haven't taken anything but Tylenol since i had a sever allergic reaction about fifteen years ago, and I haven't had as much as cold since. I can only speak from personal experience and an innate distrust of industries which profit from prolonged illness, but I don't really think any thinking person could feed pharmaceutical companies and believe that anything they're selling will make one "better" or "healthy".

But hey! I'm fUcking nuts!


Of course, as a child, when I was constantly prescribed medication I was sick as hell. I was perpetually suffering from assorted ear nose and throat illness, and as soon as I was unsuitable for further consumption of their product I have literally never been "sick" again.

To me, the same applies to psychoactive medication.



Edited, Feb 27th 2008 2:52am by Barkingturtle

Clinical depression is simply hyper-diagnosed.

I mean, if you're a human with even a modicum of empathy and a television or an interweb connection, well, you'd better be rather depressed by the state of our world.

Deal with it by cutting yourself or drinking too much, you fUcking pUssy.

I know nothing about antidepressants aside from what I read in the news. So, nothing reliable.

My favorite prescription drug story is this: when I had strep throat several years ago the doctor prescribed the newest thing, a high-powered Nth generation antibiotic. The culture came back saying that this drug should work on the bug I had, blah blah.

A week later I was still sick, had been assiduous about taking the (by the way, enormous and hard to swallow) pills on time every day.

I went back to the doctor and he wanted to give me another week's worth of the same drug. I asked what else the culture showed as effective to this particular bug, and he said "Well, penicillin but we don't prescribe that much anymore."

I asked, "Why not? I'm not allergic to it."

He didn't really have a satisfactory answer, so I asked if there were a reason NOT to switch me to plain old penicillin, and he reluctantly agreed there was not.

The prescription for the penicillin cost me about 5% of the other one, and it worked. Granted, maybe I was on the mend anyway. I dunno. I still had fever and pain and spots in my throat and trouble swallowing, so I wasn't THAT far down the convalescent path.

I think doctors are pushed to prescribe the newest, most expensive silver bullet for whatever condition they're treating. I think (in the U.S.) both the FDA and drug companies are complicit in this, as well as the internal pressure to give people the most modern treatment you have.

My only direct experience with anti-depressant came a few years ago, when my dad was given Tranxene (like Prozac). He took it for three months or so, and he wasn't the same when he was on it. Almost as though half of his brain wasn't there. He was "happy", but kinda "brain-washed" happy. But it did have an effect, that's for sure.

I heard the "bath bombs" are a real treat.


My main problem with the article is that it makes it even more difficult for people that actually need the drugs to view them as an option.

Granted, most people that are severely depressed are not likely to go get help, but why would they start/continue their meds if they hear on the news that the meds don't work?

If the government invested more money in pharmaceutical research as well as remove the ability for the companies to make massive profits, you wouldn't find companies trotting out new medications that are slight tweaks of old medications with new indications so they can both market it effectively and avoid seeing their money lost when it becomes generic. The trouble is that in America, people have the fantasy that somehow, the market is self-correcting and more efficient with better results than government owned facilities and programs.



But you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater--there are people who benefit from medication and you know this, my brother has a severe mental illness and if it weren't for medication, I can't imagine what his life would be like. It's just overprescribed.

It also drives companies to figure out what kind of indications they can get on medications so they can repackage it in response to the reality that after 10 years, a medication becomes generic. It drives them to take results that aren't especially vigorous and use that as a pretense to market something as effective when it's not effective for that particular symptom. That's why you see SSRIs marketed towards things like weight loss and restless leg syndrome. Realistically, research and development would be better served through non-profits, particularly research driven educational institutions.

Edited, Feb 27th 2008 10:36am by Annabella

Left in the hands of academia, medical research would grind to a halt. The fact is that firms have the money, and are willing to spend it, to get that lucrative new patent.

I'm not saying that their motives are pure as the driven snow, just that it's in their own self-interest to develop new treatments, and they'll do so at a much faster pace than any bureaucratic government agency ever could.

As far as evaluating the effectiveness of the treatment, well, that's what the FDA is supposed to be doing.

just one more reason to not to trust big corps.

That is very naive. There are so many brands of SSRIs on the market, often marketed solely because of minor indications that are found through the drug companies sponsored research and development divisions. There are reformulations and extended releases. This is definitely market driven. And it is an effective strategy.

And I'm one who believes in SSRIs.

Edited, Feb 27th 2008 11:37am by Annabella

Correction. If the drugs don't appear to work, they won't obtain FDA approval.

This research was based on data not made available to the FDA, as is often the case. A number of drugs which are in use for years prove to be ineffective once we have data from a large number of patients over time. In those cases, it often transpires that the Pharma Company had data that showed this, but kept it to itself, only showing FDA (USA) and NICE (UK) selected data that made it look good.

And Ari, "The results showed the drugs were effective only in a very small group of the most extremely depressed." is half of the statement. "People with severe symptoms appeared to gain more clear-cut benefit - but this might be more down to the fact that they were less likely to respond to the placebo pill, rather than to respond positively to the drugs."

This raises two main issues that our health systems have failed to address.

1. The ability of Pharma Co.s to gain approval on selective evidence without a requirement to hand over 'all' trial data.

2. The overwhelming evidence that a significant proportion (some say up to 60%) of prescribed medications do more harm through side-effects and adverse interactions than they do good.

On that second point, it's win-win for the Pharma's. Drug A helps your headaches but causes sweats. Dug B eases the sweating but causes swelling of the ankles. . . Onto Drug C, D etc.

Independent Medical Research shows that >80% of conditions are self-limiting (I.e. they'll go away on their own), so all that's needed is alleviation of severe pain or symptoms. The aggressive marketing from drug manufacturers (and medics in 'for profit' organisations) means that people still expect drugs, take them, and enter a spiral of dependency.

Look on accredited (I.e. independently evaluated) medical sites and you'll soon find case studies of people living in misery caused by medication to ease the side-effects of an initial medication, which was initially prescribed for a condition that went away years ago.

Unfortunately, as it has been mentioned, pharmaceutical companies are all about business- increasing profits and minimizing costs. This means staunch competition to, as Nobby stated, marginally approve drugs, get it approved by the FDA, then shove it at the market as "new".

Now I will speak from a social worker's perspective (my profession). I work in the mental health field and am consistently dealing with people who are on or off medication, and every case seems about different. For some, antidepressants work great, for others, not at all. Treatment of straight-up clinical depression, most often that not, can be rectified through therapy alone. It's not that depression is over-diagnosed, it's that it's over-medicated. Many people who meet the clinical criteria for depression are, in fact, clinically depressed. There are some people who require medication to overcome depression, but not nearly as many that are actually prescribed SSRI's, MAOI inhibitors, and the like.

Bipolar disorder, however, certainly has marked success in treatment with medication; but unfortunately expensive medication with many side effects are usually what's prescribed. Bipolar disorder specifically can be hit-or-miss with medication, and I've seen people have to get hospitalized a couple times a year to "readjust" medication. Seroquel and Geodon are some of the most effective medications, which unfortunately have no generic equivalents and are highly expensive, and as a result many of my clients cannot even afford it and are at the whim of government help or PAP programs to get their medication. With that said, I also have a few clients where lithium works great...so I agree with Samira's account that doctors need to be more willing to take into consideration some of the older, reliable medications.

However, what I really think is over-prescribed and also potentially very harmful are anti-anxiety medications. Xanax, Klonopin, and their ilk (benziodiazepines) are so highly addictive (both physically and psychologically), that my clients experience worse bouts of anxiety if they ever happen to run out, even to the point of becoming suicidal (seen this in more than one person); not to mention acute withdrawal is downright life-threatening (risk of seizures, heart attack etc...most people I've seen actually have to be hospitalized). The drug's effects are much stronger if a person drinks alcohol with it, and many people have died from overdose this way (including an old friend of mine). I have seen this prescribed drug ruin quite a few people's lives, who went to the doctor hoping to find help for anxiety and wind up helplessly addicted. I've seen the drugs work well for anxiety when everything is perfect- but should we expect clients to be addicted to this dangerous drug for the rest of their lives? The pharmaceutical companies are eating it up, I'm sure (at the very least, all of those drugs have generics now). Vistaril is a non-addictive anxiety medication which, by the way, is really only a glorified Benadryl. Ugh. So, unfortunately, benzos are what work best...and are also now one of the most widely used drugs recreationally.

Anti-psychotics are another whole breed, as well. For the most part, they're pretty much required for someone with schizophrenia to be able to somewhat function in society.

Finally, what's my anti-depressant? Music, talking with trusted friends and loved ones, and journaling my thoughts. I was "clinically depressed" as a teenager, never complied with taking my Wellbutrin, and instead sorted myself out in therapy. Now, this necessarily does not work for everyone, but it worked for me.