Posts tagged - antidepressant

Had Enough of BigPharma? Here’s More

Posted on: July 03, 2019, in: , , , , , , ,

Scott Gottlieb jumps from top FDA regulator to big bucks with Pfizer

Here we are in the middle of a BigPharma crisis — with people dying of opioid addiction, prices on pharmaceuticals skyrocketing, Congress raking in BigPharma campaign money and one-sixth of the American public taking useless  and dangerous antidepressants — and Scott Gottlieb, who served less than two years as FDA Commissioner and who resigned because he “wanted to spend more time with his family” has, predictably, two months later, passed through the “bigpharma revolving door” and joined Pfizer’s Board of Directors. He’ll now make the really big bucks and help the drugmaker speed new drugs through FDA approvals in the “good old boy” network.

Elizabeth Warren, one of the Democrats running for president, has called for him to resign. How about just making it illegal for the director of a federal regulatory agency to jump ship to a regulated industry or vice-versa? One of the perks of FDA employment, for example, is that drug companies often hire FDA staffers who approve their drugs.

Gottlieb will make a minimum of $335,000 a year if last year’s salaries hold, probably much more for his prize stash of FDA intelligence and inside information. Time to stop this stupidity and corruption! Block the revolving door and vote against anybody who takes big money from BigPharma!

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The Drug Addiction Crisis is Your Fault

Posted on: October 09, 2018, in: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Uncle Sam PixabayBy now, everyone is convinced we are in a drug-addiction crisis, and there’s plenty of blame to go around. Such as pharmaceutical companies that invented street drugs to begin with. Bayer once touted heroin for headaches,  Abbott Labs promoted methamphetamine as a remedy for alcoholism, Sandoz invented LSD, Merc invented morphine, distributed cocaine, and invented MDMA, and Purdue convinced doctors to prescribe OxyCodone for pain by assuring them that chances of addiction were very slim. And we can blame the doctors who ignored evidence to the contrary.

We can point the finger at pharmacies that order thousands more opioids than will be needed and fill prescriptions far above what makes sense. Pharmaceutical distributors that ignore huge orders for opioids from small pharmacies, and pressure legislators to pass bills that make the DEA impotent to enforce existing rules. DEA and FDA executives who jump ship to work for big pharma at huge increases in salary so they can help build strategies to circumvent legal restrictions on their activities. Psychiatrists and physicians who take money from big pharma and go on to promote medication assisted treatment not for detoxification, but as a permanent opioid-fueled future which will benefit pharmaceutical firms and their stockholders, who put addicts on naloxone and methadone which is much harder to detox than heroin, but has the advantage of diverting money from the street drug dealer to the pharmaceutical drug dealers and their investors. The pharmaceutical companies who invent drugs to block addiction to all but their own drugs, that block death on the street and then – aping the strategies of the most venial drug pushers – raise the prices multiple times, crying that “shortages exist, you’d better hurry!” Correctional institutions who embrace medication assisted treatment to medicate inmates instead of using incarceration as a period of drying out for later life, and did anyone mention investors in big pharma stocks because wow, riches await from more and more addicts using more and more pharmaceuticals?

And there’s plenty of blame for all those judges, doctors, lawyers, psychiatrists who help close the gap between prescription drugs and street drugs. For the military exhuming the abominations of MKULTRA by experimenting on those with PTSD, trying a little of this LSD, a little of that marijuana, some wires in the brain – who knows? We might find a way to create a new and better Manchurian Candidate, make robots out of soldiers, make mass murderers out of troubled spirits. And we can blame “non-profit organizations” like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, who are spurring interest in using drugs to swap neuroses for outright insanity, organizations who secretly channel millions to legalize marijuana, to companies like Coca-Cola which once contained cocaine for a little boost, which is now going back to its roots, putting marijuana in its product. We can blame the legislators who get swept along in this tsunami of cash and influence, passing bills and listening to drug pushers in suits who convince them that it’s all good, and “here’s a little donation for your next campaign.” Psychiatrists who contend that everyone is basically nuts, so a little drug, a little electroshock, a little wire in the brain certainly couldn’t make you any worse…

But for all the blame to hand around, what about you? Do you know people who have their kids on speed (called ADHD medication by the shrinks)? Do you have a family member who is using marijuana or drinking too much? Are you on an anti-depressant because you feel bad sometimes? Do you get drunk on the weekends to unwind, or smoke a little weed, because after all, it’s legal now? Is your aged mother on “happy pills” so she won’t complain so much about the food, the loss of independence, the minimum-wage helpers telling her what to do in her assisted living facility? Do you nod sympathetically at people who start every conversation with “I’m ADHD” or “Since I was diagnosed with PTSD,” or “I’ve been depressed for some time now.”?

So what are you doing to help make things better? Is it all too big for you? Are you just one person? Are you in agreement with those who try to make addicts poor victims of the system? Who say that addiction, mental illness, criminality is all just a brain disease, not a choice, that we are all just victims of circumstance? We should all just go down the drain together and let the greatest country the world has ever seen evaporate like bong smoke.

Well, grow a pair why don’t you? Do something useful. Someone says. “I’ve got ADHD,” you can retort, “Who gave you that idea?” Someone says “I’m on an anti-depressant,” you can reply “What can you do to handle the situation that’s depressing you?” Someone says “marijuana is legal now, so it’s fine,” you say “So now the government has your best interests – and the taxes on weed – at heart?” Be blunt, invalidate those stupid ideas and self-victimization. Stigma is a good thing – it might help deter a kid thinking about drinking, or using meth or shooting up. Might keep him or her from ending up as a shit-stained twist of laundry in an alley somewhere, or a numbed-out methadone or pharmaceutical junkie for the rest of his or her life.

Do you vote a straight Democratic or Republican ticket, because you’re too lazy to read the voter guide? Or just not vote because there’s nothing you can do about it? Find out who’s taking money from big pharma, from the American Psychiatric Association, from the American Medical Association, the PACs and special interests and vote against them. Vote for those you think might not be in step with a stupider society.

Support religion and spiritual awareness and don’t fall for the efforts to pit one group against another. Support groups that help families, that repair marriages, that support kids and adoption and good education and a prosperous future – and beware of the “everybody-will-agree-with-this” PR and feel-good empty words of the campaign trail. Evaluate the politically correct movements to see if they lead to a better life and a better society, if they do, join, and if they don’t, oppose them even if you get hammered for it on social media.

There’s an old statement to the effect that “You get the government you deserve.” Look at what we’re getting and take some responsibility for it. It’s up to you not to your neighbors or your representatives. The left, the right, the middle, all political stripes have their own agendas, their own railroad tracks leading to their own little utopias. Do you want to travel with them? They make it easy, and they will appeal to your stupider self that thinks life consists of food, sleep and sex, and getting high can handle the rest, all funded by insurance, by taxes on “the fat-cat one percent” or the tiny fines on multi-billion-dollar drug firms.

So what can you do? Join up with effective organizations fighting stupidity and drug-induced dreaming not doing. Check out Foundation for a Drug-Free World, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights and other effective anti-drug and anti-stupidity groups. Sure, the organizations I mentioned above are related to the Church of Scientology, and all the crap you’ve heard about Scientology? It’s a measure of just how effective these organizations are in enlightening people on the drug and psychiatric agenda. Those lies and smears in the media? A badge of honor. If they were ineffective, they would be ignored by the psych-drug-media cartel, or perhaps even supported by it.

OK, so this mess is not all your fault, but if everyone woke up and went into action, this drugged-up country could reboot and get back to some basic principles. There are 21 of those principles, and here’s a link to them. Good luck.

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The Medicalizing of America

Posted on: January 19, 2018, in: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Photo by Benjamin Combs on Unsplash

Photo by Benjamin Combs on Unsplash

I’ve been plowing through news feeds for a few months now, and the issues I’m interested in – which focus on the spreading influence of BigPharma, psychiatry and the medication of America – have sort of settled into a number of issues. Here are some of the more prominent ones:

1.   The marketing of psychedelic drugs to cure most everything from depression to crime. The Military is pushing it, as well as anonymous donations to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). LSD is good for you, magic mushrooms are a spiritual tonic, and taking psychedelic trips will make you a good person, empty the prisons, and you can tune in, turn on and drop out like last time.

2.   Along with number 1 above, is the first official admission that anti-depressants are no more effective than placebos and have wildly variant effects on individuals. One in six Americans takes an antidepressant, and about $150 billion is spent per year on such medications and related costs. So BigPharma will take a huge hit unless alternatives such as psychedelics and electroceuticals take hold.

3.   Electroceuticals, the implanting of electrical devices into the brain to deliver electricity or drugs, are back – back from MKULTRA where they were covertly tested on unwitting subjects along with other stuff like LSD as a way to brainwash people and control their behavior. This time it’s out in the open – credit Wikileaks and the revelations about NSA spying for that – under cover of “this will help you.” Might be of some use in Parkinson’s disease, but now the claims are that it cures everything, and BigPharma, like GlaxoSmithKline and the military are funding research in microshocking brains directly or through magnetic stimulation. Electroshock of the type seen in “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest” is also back, with the FDA recently lowering the risk factor so children can have their brains zapped too.

4.   Legalization of marijuana began with medical marijuana and transitioned to what we all knew it was for — to get high. Liberal billionaires such as George Soros funded state legalization efforts even though Democrats have mostly stayed silent and let the potheads carry the ball. Liberals want the tax money for social programs, conservatives want the tax money for war, and so opposition has been wimpy. With THC at over 30 percent – up from 3 percent in the 1960s – marijuana induced paranoia and mental illness is on the rise which will be a windfall for the shrinks. Meanwhile, BigPharma is gearing up to produce marijuana, LSD, and so forth. They’ll drop the prices to squeeze out the competition, then control the formerly-illicit-but-now-FDA-approved drug market.

5.   On the tail of marijuana legalization are other measures to mainstream hard drugs through “harm reduction” “decriminalization” and outright legalization. Turns out marijuana was a “gateway drug” and the marketing always starts with “The war on drugs has been lost,” which is a lie. Just turns out that drugs are big money and government wants in on the trillion-dollar BigPharma economy. If it really heats up like it did in Colombia, BigPharma and lots of Pablo Escobar lookalikes will end up running the United States. Some states are going to use the tax money for drug treatment programs which leads to number 6:

6.   “Medication Assisted Treatment” is now being heavily promoted as a treatment for addictions of all kinds: opioid addiction, sex addiction, videogame addiction, food addiction, ad infinitum. And while most of these addictions don’t exist, the psychs say addiction is a chronic brain disease and there’s no cure so addicts must be put on other drugs like methodone, which are paid for by medical insurance, and maintained on those drugs for the rest of their lives. So BigPharma, — which controls the FDA and will soon control Congress, the POTUS, political PACs and so on – will control the solution to the problem of addiction.

7.   The polarization of politics, fights of religious freedom vs. gender equity, and other nasty infighting will most likely be resolved when the parties stirring it up are uncovered, but in the meantime, the stirring up is most likely a distraction to pull attention away from the medicalizing of America and the growth of BigPharma, the psychs and the economic systems fueling it.

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Female Viagra a Sales Flop

Posted on: November 07, 2017, in: , , , ,

Back in 2010, the FDA was considering approving something dubbed “female Viagra.” The drug, flibanserin, was originally developed as an  antidepressant, but it didn’t work and in fact had depression as a side effect. So with the bright idea to market it as a female aphrodisiac, Boehringer Ingelheim tried to get it approved by the FDA for that purpose. But the FDA said no two times, development stopped, and the drug was sold to Sprout Pharmaceuticals.

Sprout began a marketing campaign painting it in gender-equity colors with the slogan “Even the Score,” and the FDA approved the drug in 2015. Two days later, Sprout sold out to Valeant Pharmaceuticals for a cool billion dollars.

But the drug didn’t do so well, as efficacy was small compared to placebos, and had side effects of nausea, dizziness, sleepiness, depression, etc., and while flibanserin should be taken daily, it could not be taken with alcohol. It sold a measly $10 million, which in the pharmaceutical game is peanuts. Now, the question is why did the FDA approve it in the first place?

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Depressed? Antidepressants an Expensive Scam

Posted on: October 03, 2017, in: , , , ,

According to Scientific American, one out of 10 Americans take anti-depressants, and they are the most commonly taken prescription drugs in America.

But antidepressants are a scam. “An in-depth analysis of clinical trials,” said the Scientific American story subhead “reveals widespread underreporting of negative side effects, including suicide attempts and aggressive behavior.”

Other studies established that antidepressants are only slightly better at dealing with depression than placebos, and the slight difference might be because of the “placebo effect” of the antidepressants. The more it costs, the better it should work, right?

Another report said that cutting down on sugar reduces depression.

Exercise PixabayA number of studies say that exercise reduces depression. A Duke University study back in 2000 for example, found exercise just as effective as Zoloft for kicking clinical depression and better than Zoloft for keeping it away. But 17 years later, doctors are prescribing antidepressants instead of exercise because — well, it’s easier and there’s big money in it. What’s the actual cost for a hit of Zoloft? $169 for 30 25 mg tablets. Maybe your copay is much less, but somebody is paying the difference, and that’s why bigpharma keeps pushing this stuff.

And then there’s death. Antidepressants significantly increased the risk of death, according to a study.

A recent report from the National Institute of Mental Health showed that one of the better treatments for those who have attempted suicide is written and verbal communication and cognitive behavioral therapy.

And finally, if you’re pregnant, a 16-year study of one million Danish children found that use of antidepressants during pregnancy increased the probability of mental illness in the children.

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How to Get All Americans on Drugs

Posted on: September 22, 2017, in: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The problem we psychiatrists and pharmaceutical CEOs face is how to hook more than 323 million people in the United States.  Those 323 million people are living their lives and many don’t realize they should be on drugs. Fortunately, one in six are already taking psychoactive drugs, so the problem might not be so tough after all. That leaves some 270 million more to go. And a year ago, ABC News reported that: 21.5 million people aged 12 and older had a substance use disorder in 2014.

OK, so that leaves about 248 million total that aren’t on regular psychoactive drugs. About 40,000 people died last year of opioid overdoses, so that helps trim the odds, but it’s a slow process, and about 4 million babies were born in the same period, and even though from .06 percent to .34 percent of them were born addicted to opioids, they keep arriving and most are born clean. Luckily, kids – especially boys – don’t like to sit still and thus they drive teachers crazy, so we put at least 10 percent of the teachers on antidepressants and about 11 percent of children aged 4-17 are on ADHD drugs. As they get older, well, you know how teenagers love drugs!

By the time they get to be teenagers, 15 percent have all the indicators of lifetime alcohol abusers, and 16 percent are confirmed drug abusers. But even though drugs are easy for them to access — 81 percent have the opportunity to use illicit substances, unfortunately only about 42.5 percent actually tried them. So we’ve got to do better at getting them to try drugs, and then lace them with opioids or Fentanyl to make those kids permanent users.

Once we’ve got those low-hanging fruit, though, the tough part starts, and we need a plan, as there’s a lot of people still resisting psychoactive drugs and cutting into our profits and our control. Medical offices are doing their part, asking patients if they have pain and prescribing heavy opioids for it. But “the opioid crisis” as the whiners call it, is giving opioids a bad name. Luckily we’ve got “direct to consumer” ads for prescription drugs so that bumped our sales up 30 percent or more, but we’ve got a lot more to do. So the next step is a bit of a detour, but stay with me, it will all make sense in a moment.

The first step is to legalize street drugs, starting with marijuana. About 20 states have legalized it for medical use which is pretty easy to establish for most people. “Ow! My back hurts,” is about all it takes. Eight states have legalized marijuana for recreational use, and there’s not much push-back on it, surprisingly. Luckily, parents and grandparents from the 1960s – who smoked weed with 1-3 percent THC – don’t realize that the THC in these new varieties can be as high as 37 percent. And very bright marijuana dispensaries are putting THC in gummy bears, cookies, candy and berry smoothies, to draw in the younger crowd.

The next step is to legalize heroin, methamphetamine, etc. Now if you don’t think that’s possible, hold on to your hat. Oregon has already decriminalized possession of small amounts,  and a California ballot measure would legalize psychedelic mushrooms, and that’s just the beginning.

So with marijuana legalized, opioids all over the place, the next step is something called “Harm Reduction.” This is where we really scoop up the undrugged. Here’s how it sounds, goes something like this: “The war on drugs is lost, you can’t keep people off drugs, the kids are going to experiment, so we might as well legalize everything, and make it safe to use. Give the kids clean needles, drugs that aren’t laced with other stuff, give them a safe place to use. Kids are going to experiment, so let’s make it safe for them to do so. Keep government out of things we do to our own bodies, follow the libertarian ideal, use drugs if you want. Stuff like meth that makes you crazy, well just be careful, you know.”

So here’s our opportunity. Drugs are going to hook millions of people. Couple shots of meth and bang! We have a psycho who needs lifelong maintenance care. Kids on opioids just trippin’ away, everybody smoking powerful weed. We’re already discovering – surprise surprise – that marijuana use causes psychosis, which should bring in lots of visits to psychiatry, during which they can prescribe “Medication Assisted Treatment” or MAT. So what you do with MAT is switch the user from an opioid or meth or weed to methadone, buprenorphine or naltrexone. Those are legal drugs that we manufacture, and with the Affordable Care Act’s parity between physical and mental health, it’s all paid for by the taxpayers. And by the way, methadone is super addictive as well, and the psychiatrists have deemed drug dependence an illness that is lifelong,  so we have a lifetime income for every customer we treat.

But now comes the beautiful part. Our pharmaceutical companies can now produce ecstasy, heroin, oxycontin, methamphetamine, codeine, all that lovely stuff. We’re all rigged up to produce billions of pills, and make trillions of dollars, and we are all legal, so people trust our products. Then we drop the prices to squeeze out all the other competitors, then we own the drug business, and almost all of those 323 million people are our customers, paying us trillions of dollars.

But wait, there’s more! With all those overdoses, we also have a drug for that! Evzio, for example, will save those dying of overdoses, and costs $4,500/dose. With everyone on opioids, every first responder, cop, teacher, parent, doctor, nurse, bartender, drill sargeant, minister is going to need one! Bonanza!

Right now, in 2017, BigPharma — I think we’re justified in calling ourselves that, don’t you? — BigPharma is making more than $1 trillion a year in revenue on drugs, with a 21 percent profit margin, and some 7,000 new drugs in development. Oh sure, we have our detractors, the Scientologists, drug abuse organizations, parents, law enforcement, but we alone practically support the media networks with direct to consumer drug ads, we support state and local governments with taxes on drug sales, and in a few years we will run this country. We’ve been spreading lies about Scientology since 1950, but more needs to be done.

Pablo Escobar controlled the government of Colombia with cocaine drug money, but he’s small potatoes compared to what we will do to Planet Earth! Viva Farmaceutico! Viva Psiquiatria! Viva Mucho Dinero!

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Only Minor Difference Between Antidepressants and Placebos Says Study

Posted on: September 17, 2017, in: , , , ,

A study by the University of Basil on children and adolescents revealed only “minor differences” in efficacy between placebos and antidepressants.

“…the difference is small and varies according to the type of mental disorder,” says an article in Science Daily.” However, the results also showed that the placebo effect played a significant role in the efficacy of antidepressants. The study also found that patients treated with antidepressants complained of greater side effects than those who received a placebo.”

Placebos are significantly cheaper than antidepressants and have no black box warnings such as the warnings by the FDA of “suicidality” in young adults on antidepressants.

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