Posted by boB on April 5, 2000, at 19:48:48
In reply to Re: Let's take drugs, NOT, posted by KarenK on April 4, 2000, at 9:21:46
> My late ex-husband had a similar philosophy. Several pdocs diagnosed him as bipolar in his many stays at rehab. He didn't want to become addictive to lithium. In the meantime, I don't think he missed one street drug and believe me, he kept current. He died of a drug overdose May 5, 1998, trying to bring himself out of a manic state.
Karen, sorry about your late husband. My sincere condolances. I doubt, however, if he used street drugs he was making an informed choice about the etiology of hypermania and psychoparmaceutical agents that might resolve the condition.
Your response to my post hints at what I believe to be a fundamental element of a collective social fascination with drugs. I am talking about a narrowminded tendency to stereotype. Even the best educated practitioners of medicine have reduced the variety of human conditions to a nomenclature, which becomes a model they must stereotype whatever real-world condition they encounter to conform with.
In your case, your stereotyped me in the model of your late husband, presuming that I am advocating uninformed recreational use of street drugs, when instead I am searching for common conditions that might lead to the use of both legal and illegal neurotropic substances.
Read "Power to Harm" It is the account of how Prozak's maker beat litigation in the civil trial stemming from the Standard Gravieur mass shooting in Louisville, Ky.
The trial was held before much data was available on serotonin syndrome, and the maker allegedly paid the plaintif not to introduce evidence of the drug makers prior misdemeanors or their incomplete FDA testing process.
I've heard strong anecdotal information suggesting that a large number of recent mass shootings, and workplace killings have involved people on SSRIs. The standard apologetic is that these drugs are given to the people most likely to snap, but the drugs don't always work.
How many people die each year on the highway trying to be happy? Cars are deadly and often misused, but we let people use them recreationally, even if they are a leading contributor to global warming.
Yes, yes, many of those deaths are alcohol related.
I am not an advocate of taking street drugs. I am making a rude comparison, and confronting the drug culture represented in this discussion with its dark underside.
Maybe Lithium would have saved your husband's life. Maybe lifestyle choices no therapist dared recommend would have helped.
Maybe cultural forces are driving pervasive depression and anxiety.
My perspective is that most neurochemistry reseach is funded for the purpose of developing new drugs and not with the intent of explaining things that might require our society to collectively make an admission of guilt.
It seems to me, psychopharmacology and gentic explanations of deviate personality are all the rage, while study of environmental and experiential factors is increasingly taboo.
I trust most readers of this site are adults and will not be harmed by my barbed humor, and I think humor makes it easire to swallow a difficult pill.I doubt if your husband shared my philosophy entirely or he would not have been taking so many drugs. He probably shared some of your philosophy, or you would likely have not married each other. If he were like me, he would be doing what I am doing, and the risk would be one of offending vested interests in the drug war, not dying as a result of the drugs.
poster:boB
thread:28725
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000401/msgs/29010.html