Big Pharm is messing up my life

[Faith No More]

Yeah, your problem is that you have a shit doctor. Unfortunately, the mental health world is full of them. The hallmark of a good doctor is one that listens to their patients, especially about how medications affect them. The reality of seeking treatment for mental health is that you have to shop around to find a doctor that works for you. There's no single agreed upon method to treat mental issues, so the doctors are going to vary quite a bit in their approach.

And unfortunately, as Min. pointed out, there is quite the relationship between the docs and the pharm. companies. If you have a doctor pushing a drug on you without listening to your input, that's a red flag that you have a doctor with money on the mind and not your best interests.

[ignoramus]

I'm a little surprised that there aren't dedicated forums where people can chat about all this stuff and share experiences...

Lastly, to beat the bastards at their own game, can't you fake some symtpoms needed to be put on the drug of choice? Desperation requires desperate measures...

Good luck matey ...hope you get some relief soon...

After watching the untold story of psychotropic drugging, I've become a litt more cynical about all this shit...

[rexbeccarox]

Aroura, I work for my mom who runs a directory for independent healthcare advocates. They do some wonderful work with patients and their doctors, and they can even help find a suitable doctor. If you'd like, you can PM me, and I'll send you some details on how to hook up with one.

You are a perfectly capable person, from what I've seen (I remember you from the *other* forum, too), but sometimes we need someone in our corner; someone who either sees the forest or the trees- whichever we're not seeing. I totally understand if you don't want to go that route; just thought I'd bring it to your attention. Either way, I hope it works out for you

[Aractus]

Of course, she also once told me that marijuana causes schizophrenia, so I'm not sure I even trust her as a doctor right now, but I'm on Medicare and she's the only doc in town that takes it, so I'm stuck.

Marijuana is well known to trigger schizophrenia and psychosis; and if you're particularly at risk for those disorders then that's why she would mentioned that to you. It isn't known why marijuana can cause psychosis, but it is known that it does - your doc certainly didn't make that up. The other medically significant effects of marijuana are cancer and long-term memory loss (after a lag of about 20 years or so). Some of its therapeutic benefits though include slowing the effect of Alzheimer's.

Good luck with progesterone/your ongoing treatment. By the way, the doc is probably right that it won't hurt to try a few other things if she thinks they'll have less negative effects; but she should return you to your former medication if you aren't happy with the alternative medications offered.

[Faith No More]

Not quite, Aractus.

Although it is well known that using cannabis can induce temporary psychotic/hallucinatory symptoms this accumulating body of evidence has suggested that there is an association between some youth who use cannabis regularly and enduring psychosis. Several recent studies suggest that frequent cannabis use during adolescence is associated with a clinically significant increased risk of developing schizophrenia and other mental illnesses which feature psychosis.

http://cannabisandpsychosis.ca/more-info...o-we-know/

[Aractus]

See Kuepper et al.'s 10-year study: Continued cannabis use and risk of incidence and persistence of psychotic symptoms: 10 year follow-up cohort study.

[Aroura]

Even if it heightens risk of those predisposed to mental illness, that isn't the same as causing it. Saying that is just irresponsible, and an oversimplification.
Note, I don't, to my knowledge, have any psychosis risk. There is none in my family. Whatever I'm suffering from isn't getting worse over time, nor have I ever hallucinated or anything extreme like that, again, to my l knowledge.
I don't even smoke pot (it makes me nervous), so my doc was just tossing that thought out there. And her claim that progesterone causes heart attacks is truly unfounded, as well.

At any rate, there have been a number of things she's said and done that make me question her as a doctor. She's a nice enough person, and I think she means well, but she also told me, for instance, that benzo's CAUSE Alzheimers. I went right home and researched that, because it scared the crap out of me.
And again, there is a know link between dementia and benzo's, but the link isn't necessarily causal. As a matter of fact, since the link only appears to happen in people taking it over age 50 and within a few years of developing dementia, it looks much more likely that that link really is a case of people suffering from early dementia signs suffering anxiety and depression and seeking help, but not yet diagnosed with the dementia.

She just seems to always say drug A causes disease B, even when that has never been show to be the case, but she's more than willing to give me these designer drugs that so often turn out later to ACTUALLY cause things like stroke, cancer, etc. She's bandwaggoning, IMHO.

Anyway, sorry, getting off topic there a bit. She's agreed to see me again next week and discuss putting me back on the progesterone. I have articles to show her and am prepared to advocate for myself now. I think it'll be ok, now.

I do appreciate all of your concerns and caring, I really, really needed it the last few days. I'm so glad I joined this forum. I haven't been very social the last 10 years, losing ones religion can be a bit isolating, and the people here are really great. Thank you all.

[Minimalist]

The objective of Kuepper's study was:

Objective To determine whether use of cannabis in adolescence increases the risk for psychotic outcomes

Aroura seems to be a bit beyond the adolescent phase.