This was sent to me today and I thought it might be worth a read.

Hugs,
Deborah aka Tenacity
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"I need a pill RIGHT NOW
Do users know the risks of popular antidepressants?"
Patricia Pearson
National Post
Wednesday, September 18, 2002

I note with interest that a U.S. federal judge in Los Angeles has ordered
the maker of the antidepressant Paxil to pull some television ads. What the
judge called "misleading" commercials claimed that Paxil wasn't
habit-forming, and had not been associated with dependency or addiction.

Au contraire, GlaxoSmith-Kline's popular little happy pill allegedly creates
such severe withdrawal symptoms that a class action suit has been filed by
35 Americans, who claim to have become addicted to the drug. All parties are
due back in court on Oct. 7, to decide whether the California suit can be
expanded to include plaintiffs nationwide.
One reason I note this with keen interest is because a week ago Monday, when
most of my colleagues in journalism were preparing their opuses and photo
essays about Sept. 11, I was scrabbling around on my hands and knees trying
to see if a single, last dose of the antidepressant Effexor might possibly
have rolled under the fridge.

My prescription -- which I, like thousands of North Americans, was offered
after the trauma of Sept. 11 -- ran out on the weekend. I couldn't get hold
of my doctor. As a result, my head was doing this weird, pulsing, samba-like
thing that some Effexor users describe as "brain shivers," but that I find
similar to how one feels under a strobe light.

I'm talking spacy, dizzy, very woo-woo. One also looks forward to
gastrointestinal upset, chills, blinding headaches and bizarre dreams.

All this, after missing one dose, which is why I remain on the drug. Like
Paxil, Effexor gets metabolized by the body as quickly as Chinese food, and
then relentlessly attacks you with withdrawal symptoms. A friend of mine
forgot to take his pill one day this summer, for example, and had to
interrupt his commute to the office, swerve into a Shoppers Drug Mart
parking lot, blunder inside and beg the pharmacist for a single pill.
Without it, he was unable to drive.

This is a problem. Antidepressants -- which are nowadays marketed for
everything from classic depression to anxiety, smoking cessation,
post-traumatic stress disorder, back pain and PMS -- are enjoying
blockbuster sales.

By blockbuster, I mean more than $1-billion in retail pharmacy business in
the year 2000 in Canada alone. Prescriptions for antidepressants jumped 62%
in this country between 1996 and 2000, partly due to the drug companies'
successful push for widening definitions of treatment.
All of this increase came before 9/11, which precipitated an additional
boost in sales. Prescriptions for antidepressants in New York City, for
example, increased by 17% last autumn.

So we have these very popular drugs beginning to show some rather disturbing
effects. There is trouble brewing here. My psychiatrist did not warn me
about the withdrawal effects of my medication. Nor, by his own admission,
does he know how the drug works or what the long-term impact on my body
chemistry might be.

Last winter, a study funded by the Canadian Breast Cancer Research
Initiative and published in the British Journal of Cancer suggested that
some antidepressants are increasing women's risk of breast cancer by 70%, an
incidence rate that doesn't show up for 10 years after treatment.

I am hazarding the guess -- based on my own experience and the California
lawsuit -- that psychiatrists and physicians are not presenting all
information to patients and allowing them to weigh the risks.

This would be in stark contrast to the risks associated with, and blared
over loudspeakers about illicit drugs. This month, controversy erupted in
Britain when Doctors John Cole and Harry Sumnall of the University of
Liverpool published a critique of studies examining the harmful effects of
the drug ecstasy, or MDMA. Given that this is an illegal street drug, a
great deal of hue and cry inevitably arises around its use. According to
Cole and Sumnall, the cause and effect of ecstasy-related health problems
has not, in fact, been properly established. Of the 72 deaths in the United
Kingdom attributed during the 1990s to ecstasy, the psychologists argued
that none were definitively connected to the drug, by first ruling out
dehydration and other factors. The critique provoked an outcry of indignant
retorts.

While the controversy remains unresolved, my point in bringing it
up is that we do not even approach this level of righteous scrutiny when it
comes to the mood-altering drugs controlled by the medical establishment, as
opposed to the mind-altering drugs that go underground.

In his recent book, Synthetic Panics: the Symbolic Politics of Designer
Drugs, social historian Philip Jenkins makes an important observation about
the difference between ecstasy and Prozac, both of which were designed in
labs for therapeutic use in altering serotonin levels in our brains: "In the
burgeoning atmosphere of the drug war, ecstasy was condemned as much by its
name as by its cultural connotations ... we can only imagine how Prozac
would be regarded if the drug had been popularized through unofficial
networks of therapists and had developed a reputation among non-specialists
for its pleasurable effects."

More than 200 lawsuits related to the class of antidepressants called SSRIs,
which include Prozac, were settled out of court in the same time period that
ecstasy was generating panic in parents and lawmakers. Most of the lawsuits
claimed that users committed suicide or violently attacked their families.

These were the most extreme cases. Lesser problems involving the broader
group of antidepressants, including physical side effects, a risk of
seizures, risk of addiction and elevated breast cancer risks, rarely come to
public attention.

What, exactly, is the deal here? The merest hint of a prospect of legalizing
marijuana or MDMA sends every bully to their pulpit to squawk about health
and morality, and meanwhile, millions of people are swallowing happy pills
with unknown or undisclosed risks, because their doctor says "Take two, and
call me in the morning."

One culprit lurking behind all of this is our continuing trust in our
shrinks, and our sense of vulnerability in their presence. We're disordered,
and they know better. We've created a culture in which it is so acceptable
to be mentally ill that new disorders are invented and treated each year.
Many of them are treated with pharmaceuticals.

We deserve to know the risks of these drugs, and to make informed decisions
about whether "excessive worry" is worth trading for worrisome drugs.

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© Copyright 2002 National Post

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