“the following is reprinted word for word from the side-effects ‘medication guide’:
‘After taking AmbientSP, you may get up out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activity that you do not know you are doing. The next morning, you may not remember that you did anything during the night.
Reported activities include:
driving a car (“sleep-driving”)
making and eating food
talking on the phone
having sex
sleep-walking‘Call your doctor right away if you find out that you have done any of the above activities after taking AmbientSP.’ ” [Of Two Minds]
Quick show of hands: who recalls when the first drugs were marketed to the public instead of practitioners within the healthcare industry?
In the early 90’s I recall a TV commercial during the nightly snewze (pick your (yawn) network) where something (only later was it revealed to be a drug) was being advertised to attract, it would seem from it’s psychedlic tinged cgi graphics, hippies, lsd users, potheads, or Grateful Dead fans. Clairitin it was, IIRC, and it was for allergies.
Yeah, that approach makes no more sense today.
To combat depression twelve or so years ago I heard on commercial AM radio (of all places) about a study being conducted at UCLA involving Paxil. Inerested, and having been influenced by the advice/opinions of people I was friendly with that SSRI’s were truly a wonder drug (‘Prozac is the new black’), I became part of the study. It was all very scientific. I was interviewed and tested for depression by phsychology interns and lab-coated clinicians. I was interviewed about my test, and PETscanned, CAT scanned, even MRI’ed. Prescribed Paxil in first 40Mg per day doses until I was up to 80 at the end of the year long trial.
Was that a lot? I don’t know.
All I recall now from that experience was sleepless nights (but I felt so good I didn’t really mind, as my life 24/7 was sot of a dream-state anyway, a sleep-waking hybrid). Plus there is nothing so enjoyable as late night radio (Art Bell) when your enjoying such a state of sub-consciousness. I didn’t even seem to mind, a the time, the sexual dysfunction, or the weight gain (75 lbs.). To label my state of mind at that time, put it down as ‘don’t care.‘
Still, ten years later, I retained a few of the after-effects. Most of that weight is still around. Strangley, I lost most of my sense of smell. Too, my work ethic (heh) suffered as a result (I do not consider an entirely neg).
I’ve learned since that (mis)trial I can self-manage depression through a combination of cognitive and physical exercises.
The sleep disruption and sexual dysfunction returned to a state of normalcy a few months after the trial ended. Thank Ged for that.
If you knew me and my skepticism and aversion to any obvious commercial corporate ruse masquerading as useful or having any real value to the purchaser, you might well consider asking, “Paco, with your hardcore belief against the evils of pharmacology and awareness of the ‘placebo effect and concept of the pill as panacea,’ why would you, of all people, submit to a corporate-sponsored drug trial?”
My answer is, sometimes, we all get desperate. We are able to talk ourselves out of our own well-founded and deeply instilled objections, and find ourselves knocking on the very door we never imagined we ever would in order to ask for help.
Targeted advertising has broken through to appeal to the self-medicating cynic inside each of us, and from time to time we all find ourselves in vulnerable states.
That’s when should be relying on a knowledgeable professional, say, a physician, to guide us through the pharmacological (and other treatment) maze, with our best interest in mind, and not defer the decision solely to the ‘informed consent’ of a patient in or out of his depth.
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“Everytime I get close to something it runs away.” -Johnny Vegas
