WONDER DRUG? http://health.dir.groups.yahoo.com/group/SSRI-Crusaders/message/7971
IRISH TATLER, ISSUE DATED DECEMBER 2002
distributed by Ramo Kabbani
Some alarming stories about side effects from wonder drug Prozac and related
anti-depressant drugs are now emerging
REPORT BY TOM FARRELL
Drug dependency nearly ended Ramo Kabbani's life. But the drug she battled
was handed out by a qualified GP, is being taken by 40 million other people
and is still lauded as a 'wonder drug.'
On 16 February, she will celebrate her fifth 'clean' year and a full decade
has passed since her descent into an anti-depressant-poisoned hell. Not
that she has yet fully escaped.
"It's taken me a long time to put back on the weight that I lost, my weight
plummeted to five stone," she says.
PROZAC NATION
"I also still have the seizures. I'd say it averages out at about nine in a
day although I have the odd day where I've not had any."
Ramo is chair of the UK Prozac Survivors Support Group (PSSG), founded in
March 198 to advise and help people prescribed antidepressants in the
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) class. This is the class that
has seen some atrocious side effects.
For the majority of people taking Prozac and similar medications, the impact
of these drugs on their lives has been positive. But Ramo's experience
serves as a grim medical parable. Where the use of medicine hinges upon
theories of 'chemical imbalances', and where drug companies are not fully
open about their possible side effects, a minority of patients are at great
risk.
"I'm no longer battling with anxiety-depression, that's the ironic thing,"
she says. "I've developed seizures through being prescribed these drugs.
I've no longer got the problem for which these drugs were prescribed but I'm
still battling with the problems that the drugs caused."
In August 1991, Ramo's fiancé died suddenly, one month before their wedding.
"I was never offered any bereavement counselling or any alternativeŠI was
just put on tablets and it was downhill from there."
Some months later, while working at Manchester's Fountain Street Employment
Service, she broke down. A visit to the GP led to the instant prescription
of fluoxetine (Prozac). Initially, she was transfused by an unnatural
'high', a manic sense of exaltation. Six weeks later, Ramo crashed,
becoming actively suicidal and haunted by insomnia, anxiety and dread.
Over the next few years each worsening side effect was met with one
response: another prescribed drug. She made several suicide attempts.
"There was one particular one which to be honest, I can't believe how close
I'd come," she says. "Looking back, I can see that I was in a trance-like
state. What actually brought me back to reality was I had Spot my dog who
was a little puppy at the time and he literally jumped up at me as I stood
in front of the bathroom mirror with a knife against my throat, ready to
slit my throat. My first thought was not 'Oh my God! What am I doing?' It
was 'Oh my God! I can't do this in front of Spot."
Ramo recalls the various cocktails of alcohol and pills she would take in
overdose: Sometimes, I'd be unconscious for about a week. The only way I'd
know I'd been out of it was that I'd go into the newsagent, look at a
newspaper date and I'd go 'Oh my GodŠ'
"I'd even started looking into my own funeral arrangements. And this is
somebody who used to live life to the full. I'd never felt down. I thought
'depression' was a case of the Monday morning bluesŠ"
A CHEMICAL IMBALANCE?
It was an angry encounter at the Royal Oldham Hospital in Manchester, with a
psychiatrist who was referred to as a neurologist (Ramo had previously
suffered 23 seizures in a day) that compelled her to research her own drug
therapy. Reading up on Prozac and other case studies set her towards
setting up the PSSG and weaning herself off drugs.
For millions of people, Prozac and its sister anti-depressants are very
helpful, releasing them from much psychic pain. But they are now being
handed out across GPs' desks, for everything from post-natal depression to
menopausal problems. Moreover, they are being marketed with a not fully
proven theory of 'chemical imbalance' that is based on the theory that
topping up the brain's supply of a chemical called serotonin will alleviate
depression.
Just as happened with the earlier so-called 'minor tranquillisers' of the
1960s, the benzodiazepines, including Atavan, Xanax and Miltown, a backlash
may now be imminent. In its own way, this could prove as unhelpful as the
current vaunting of SSRIs as 'miracle drugs', causing them to acquire an
unnecessarily sinister ring.
"It's going to be a replay of the benzodiazepine story." This is the
prediction of UCD -educated psychiatrist Dr David Healy, now based at the
University of Wales, Bangor. "Part of the problem with this will have been
caused by the pharmaceutical industry. The way they handle these things,
trying to deny there are problems means that when people get disenchanted,
they really do get very disenchanted and it's very hard for someone like me
who thinks that SSRIs can be useful to actually prescribe them. So they
move from a situation where they're being overused, to one where they're
being underusedŠ"
BLOWING IN THE WIND
Certainly, the drug companies, previously hailed as the saviours of millions
of depressed people, are now feeling an increasingly chill wind blowing.
The high point so far came in June 2001, when the Glaxo Smith Kline company
had to give $6.4 million to the family of a man who had shot to death his
daughter and grandchildren before turning the gun on himself, while put on
Seroxat (paroxetine) for sleeping problems.
Cases like this, involving aggression or suicide are extremely rare.
However, Seroxat, whose sales match those of Prozac, now looks as though it
could emerge as potentially highly addictive for some people. Last year,
America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered Glaxo Smith Kline to
warn GPs that for some people, Seroxat packaged as 'Paxil' in the US) could
be as addictive as Valium.
Mark Harvey, a solicitor with the Cardiff firm Hugh James Ford Simey, has
something to say on the subject: "My feeling is GSK knew, and they
certainly know damn well now, their drug had the capacity to cause a lot of
harm to a small number of people. In particular in relation to coming off
it and they're not being honest to either prescribing doctors or patients."
Hugh James Ford Simey has already been contacted by over 120 people,
complaining of problems with Seroxat. They're coming in, says Mark Harvey,
at a rate of nearly three a week. In order to facilitate these people, the
firm is setting up a 'User Group' to form the focus for future litigation
against the drug companies. Many of these people have experienced 'cold
turkey-like symptoms while coming off the drug.
"I've seen an advert in the States. It actually says "Talk to your doctor
about non-habit forming Paxil," says Harvey. "That's outrageous, that's
clearly designed to catch patients and it deals with what they want to know,
which is if it's non-addictiveŠ"
Far from being a zealot against the use of drugs to treat psychological
distress, Dr Healy researched serotonin effects at Addenbrooke's Hospital in
Cambridge, after leaving Ireland.
But as the author of The Antidepressant Era (Harvard Press), he is candid
about the pitfalls of SSRIs, such as Prozac, Seroxat, Lustral and Cipramil.
"The estimates are that one in 20 of us gets so agitated on a SSRI that we
have to stop treatment," he says. "One in 100 of us going on a SSRI will
make a suicide attempt. One in 1,000 might commit suicide. There are other
hazards: probably 30-50% of us going on a SSRI will have problems trying to
withdraw. The withdrawal symptoms will be severe; for some people they may
continue for a year."
MOTHER'S LITTLE HELPER
"It's hard to know how many. It may be only five percent who really have a
severe problem. But if 40 million have gone on Prozac and 100 million have
gone on a SSRI, five percent is five million people so it is a major
problemŠ"
The relentless marketing has apparently repackaged not just the medicines,
but the condition they are used to treat. Depressed people lose serotonin
through 're-uptake' between the brain cells: take an SSRI and you get more
serotonin. But the biology of the brain is barely understood: serotonin
might not be the key to mood and the drugs may not even work by stimulating
it.
Anti-depressants were invented in the mid 1950s and the majority of people
who these days get Prozac or Seroxat would have once been given minor
tranquillisers. Thus when SSRIs were launched, the companies' emphasis was
on 'depression' as a chemical deficiency to avoid association with the minor
tranquillisers, by then known to be addictive.
BEYOND PROZAC
Limerick-based psychiatrist Dr Terry Lynch, author of the book Beyond
Prozac, is highly critical of the way a theory about depression has become
accepted wisdom. This he believes, reflects the doctors' relationship with
the drug companies.
"Certainly, I think psychiatrists and GPs to a certain degree need to feel
that they're the ones driving the whole thing. They're the ones with the
knowledge and the patient's job is to follow the doctor's advice," he says.
"I also think that the pharmaceutical companies are involved here because
over the past 50-60 years, medicine in general but maybe particularly
psychiatry has become very closely aligned to the pharmaceutical industry.
"Psychiatry has allowed itself to become very dependent on the industry for
funding of its meetings, of its research, of its ongoing education. I'm
guessing, but my sense is that the majority of psychiatric post-graduate
meetings are funded by drug companies and I think that that's unhealthy."
Among those people who have approached Hugh James Ford Simey regarding legal
action is Glenys (not her real name), a grandmother with no previous history
of depression. When she suffered her first panic attack, she was showing
symptoms that may well have been hormonal and associated with the menopause.
She did not meet the traditional diagnostic criteria for depression when
given Seroxat.
Previously, she had been given HRT, then Valium and Prozac; the Valium had
caused withdrawal problems, something that is a recognized risk. But Glenys
was not warned about problems coming off Seroxat. It seems she belongs in
the five percent Dr Healy warned would have severe withdrawal. Now off
Seroxat for 18 months, she has been told she may have to wait up to five
years for the physical and mental effects to clear.
"I have never had headaches really, until I started the menopause," she
says. "All I can say it's like it's crushing my head like an eggshell.
After the head, the face will burn, my body will shake and I'll get pins and
needles in my arms. It's just horrendous and the agitation is terribleŠ"
She plans to contribute to the 'Seroxat Users' Group' soon to be set up. In
the meantime, she waits for her problem to clear.
"I just feel it's taken part of my life away. I want to be normalŠI just
hope it hasn't done any permanent damage".
Contact the Prozac Survivors Group by e-mail at Pssguk@aol.com.
Alternatively, their helpline number is 0044 161 682 3296
IRISH TATLER, ISSUE DATED DECEMBER 2002
distributed by Ramo Kabbani
Some alarming stories about side effects from wonder drug Prozac and related
anti-depressant drugs are now emerging
REPORT BY TOM FARRELL
Drug dependency nearly ended Ramo Kabbani's life. But the drug she battled
was handed out by a qualified GP, is being taken by 40 million other people
and is still lauded as a 'wonder drug.'
On 16 February, she will celebrate her fifth 'clean' year and a full decade
has passed since her descent into an anti-depressant-poisoned hell. Not
that she has yet fully escaped.
"It's taken me a long time to put back on the weight that I lost, my weight
plummeted to five stone," she says.
PROZAC NATION
"I also still have the seizures. I'd say it averages out at about nine in a
day although I have the odd day where I've not had any."
Ramo is chair of the UK Prozac Survivors Support Group (PSSG), founded in
March 198 to advise and help people prescribed antidepressants in the
Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) class. This is the class that
has seen some atrocious side effects.
For the majority of people taking Prozac and similar medications, the impact
of these drugs on their lives has been positive. But Ramo's experience
serves as a grim medical parable. Where the use of medicine hinges upon
theories of 'chemical imbalances', and where drug companies are not fully
open about their possible side effects, a minority of patients are at great
risk.
"I'm no longer battling with anxiety-depression, that's the ironic thing,"
she says. "I've developed seizures through being prescribed these drugs.
I've no longer got the problem for which these drugs were prescribed but I'm
still battling with the problems that the drugs caused."
In August 1991, Ramo's fiancé died suddenly, one month before their wedding.
"I was never offered any bereavement counselling or any alternativeŠI was
just put on tablets and it was downhill from there."
Some months later, while working at Manchester's Fountain Street Employment
Service, she broke down. A visit to the GP led to the instant prescription
of fluoxetine (Prozac). Initially, she was transfused by an unnatural
'high', a manic sense of exaltation. Six weeks later, Ramo crashed,
becoming actively suicidal and haunted by insomnia, anxiety and dread.
Over the next few years each worsening side effect was met with one
response: another prescribed drug. She made several suicide attempts.
"There was one particular one which to be honest, I can't believe how close
I'd come," she says. "Looking back, I can see that I was in a trance-like
state. What actually brought me back to reality was I had Spot my dog who
was a little puppy at the time and he literally jumped up at me as I stood
in front of the bathroom mirror with a knife against my throat, ready to
slit my throat. My first thought was not 'Oh my God! What am I doing?' It
was 'Oh my God! I can't do this in front of Spot."
Ramo recalls the various cocktails of alcohol and pills she would take in
overdose: Sometimes, I'd be unconscious for about a week. The only way I'd
know I'd been out of it was that I'd go into the newsagent, look at a
newspaper date and I'd go 'Oh my GodŠ'
"I'd even started looking into my own funeral arrangements. And this is
somebody who used to live life to the full. I'd never felt down. I thought
'depression' was a case of the Monday morning bluesŠ"
A CHEMICAL IMBALANCE?
It was an angry encounter at the Royal Oldham Hospital in Manchester, with a
psychiatrist who was referred to as a neurologist (Ramo had previously
suffered 23 seizures in a day) that compelled her to research her own drug
therapy. Reading up on Prozac and other case studies set her towards
setting up the PSSG and weaning herself off drugs.
For millions of people, Prozac and its sister anti-depressants are very
helpful, releasing them from much psychic pain. But they are now being
handed out across GPs' desks, for everything from post-natal depression to
menopausal problems. Moreover, they are being marketed with a not fully
proven theory of 'chemical imbalance' that is based on the theory that
topping up the brain's supply of a chemical called serotonin will alleviate
depression.
Just as happened with the earlier so-called 'minor tranquillisers' of the
1960s, the benzodiazepines, including Atavan, Xanax and Miltown, a backlash
may now be imminent. In its own way, this could prove as unhelpful as the
current vaunting of SSRIs as 'miracle drugs', causing them to acquire an
unnecessarily sinister ring.
"It's going to be a replay of the benzodiazepine story." This is the
prediction of UCD -educated psychiatrist Dr David Healy, now based at the
University of Wales, Bangor. "Part of the problem with this will have been
caused by the pharmaceutical industry. The way they handle these things,
trying to deny there are problems means that when people get disenchanted,
they really do get very disenchanted and it's very hard for someone like me
who thinks that SSRIs can be useful to actually prescribe them. So they
move from a situation where they're being overused, to one where they're
being underusedŠ"
BLOWING IN THE WIND
Certainly, the drug companies, previously hailed as the saviours of millions
of depressed people, are now feeling an increasingly chill wind blowing.
The high point so far came in June 2001, when the Glaxo Smith Kline company
had to give $6.4 million to the family of a man who had shot to death his
daughter and grandchildren before turning the gun on himself, while put on
Seroxat (paroxetine) for sleeping problems.
Cases like this, involving aggression or suicide are extremely rare.
However, Seroxat, whose sales match those of Prozac, now looks as though it
could emerge as potentially highly addictive for some people. Last year,
America's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered Glaxo Smith Kline to
warn GPs that for some people, Seroxat packaged as 'Paxil' in the US) could
be as addictive as Valium.
Mark Harvey, a solicitor with the Cardiff firm Hugh James Ford Simey, has
something to say on the subject: "My feeling is GSK knew, and they
certainly know damn well now, their drug had the capacity to cause a lot of
harm to a small number of people. In particular in relation to coming off
it and they're not being honest to either prescribing doctors or patients."
Hugh James Ford Simey has already been contacted by over 120 people,
complaining of problems with Seroxat. They're coming in, says Mark Harvey,
at a rate of nearly three a week. In order to facilitate these people, the
firm is setting up a 'User Group' to form the focus for future litigation
against the drug companies. Many of these people have experienced 'cold
turkey-like symptoms while coming off the drug.
"I've seen an advert in the States. It actually says "Talk to your doctor
about non-habit forming Paxil," says Harvey. "That's outrageous, that's
clearly designed to catch patients and it deals with what they want to know,
which is if it's non-addictiveŠ"
Far from being a zealot against the use of drugs to treat psychological
distress, Dr Healy researched serotonin effects at Addenbrooke's Hospital in
Cambridge, after leaving Ireland.
But as the author of The Antidepressant Era (Harvard Press), he is candid
about the pitfalls of SSRIs, such as Prozac, Seroxat, Lustral and Cipramil.
"The estimates are that one in 20 of us gets so agitated on a SSRI that we
have to stop treatment," he says. "One in 100 of us going on a SSRI will
make a suicide attempt. One in 1,000 might commit suicide. There are other
hazards: probably 30-50% of us going on a SSRI will have problems trying to
withdraw. The withdrawal symptoms will be severe; for some people they may
continue for a year."
MOTHER'S LITTLE HELPER
"It's hard to know how many. It may be only five percent who really have a
severe problem. But if 40 million have gone on Prozac and 100 million have
gone on a SSRI, five percent is five million people so it is a major
problemŠ"
The relentless marketing has apparently repackaged not just the medicines,
but the condition they are used to treat. Depressed people lose serotonin
through 're-uptake' between the brain cells: take an SSRI and you get more
serotonin. But the biology of the brain is barely understood: serotonin
might not be the key to mood and the drugs may not even work by stimulating
it.
Anti-depressants were invented in the mid 1950s and the majority of people
who these days get Prozac or Seroxat would have once been given minor
tranquillisers. Thus when SSRIs were launched, the companies' emphasis was
on 'depression' as a chemical deficiency to avoid association with the minor
tranquillisers, by then known to be addictive.
BEYOND PROZAC
Limerick-based psychiatrist Dr Terry Lynch, author of the book Beyond
Prozac, is highly critical of the way a theory about depression has become
accepted wisdom. This he believes, reflects the doctors' relationship with
the drug companies.
"Certainly, I think psychiatrists and GPs to a certain degree need to feel
that they're the ones driving the whole thing. They're the ones with the
knowledge and the patient's job is to follow the doctor's advice," he says.
"I also think that the pharmaceutical companies are involved here because
over the past 50-60 years, medicine in general but maybe particularly
psychiatry has become very closely aligned to the pharmaceutical industry.
"Psychiatry has allowed itself to become very dependent on the industry for
funding of its meetings, of its research, of its ongoing education. I'm
guessing, but my sense is that the majority of psychiatric post-graduate
meetings are funded by drug companies and I think that that's unhealthy."
Among those people who have approached Hugh James Ford Simey regarding legal
action is Glenys (not her real name), a grandmother with no previous history
of depression. When she suffered her first panic attack, she was showing
symptoms that may well have been hormonal and associated with the menopause.
She did not meet the traditional diagnostic criteria for depression when
given Seroxat.
Previously, she had been given HRT, then Valium and Prozac; the Valium had
caused withdrawal problems, something that is a recognized risk. But Glenys
was not warned about problems coming off Seroxat. It seems she belongs in
the five percent Dr Healy warned would have severe withdrawal. Now off
Seroxat for 18 months, she has been told she may have to wait up to five
years for the physical and mental effects to clear.
"I have never had headaches really, until I started the menopause," she
says. "All I can say it's like it's crushing my head like an eggshell.
After the head, the face will burn, my body will shake and I'll get pins and
needles in my arms. It's just horrendous and the agitation is terribleŠ"
She plans to contribute to the 'Seroxat Users' Group' soon to be set up. In
the meantime, she waits for her problem to clear.
"I just feel it's taken part of my life away. I want to be normalŠI just
hope it hasn't done any permanent damage".
Contact the Prozac Survivors Group by e-mail at Pssguk@aol.com.
Alternatively, their helpline number is 0044 161 682 3296
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