4 ms·

What concerns me as much as the initial side effects is your last paragraph, and the sentiment surrounding it. Benzos have been known to have some additional s

What concerns me as much as the initial side effects is your last paragraph, and the sentiment surrounding it. Benzos have been known to have some additional significant neurological consequences in the long term, and have always felt to me like a rather large sledgehammer for the problems they often treat. As such, "your behavior-modifying drugs give you a side effect so we'll shove more powerful drugs in your face" was an attitude that I've seen multiple times and NEVER to good effect. (I'll be very candid that I was part of the "you have ADHD so we'll treat you with pills" generation, at a much younger age, but will leave it at that it didn't end as planned.) I hope I'm not a total tin foil hatter by looking askew at this trend, but being married to a neurologist and the son of a behaviorist, I'm VERY aware of how little we understand what we're doing when we muck around up there.

derefr 11y ago
> As such, "your behavior-modifying drugs give you a side effect so we'll shove more powerful drugs in your face" was an attitude that I've seen multiple times and NEVER to good effect. I don't see why that couldn't make perfect sense, though: someone can be neurochemically imbalanced along multiple axes, but one imbalance can mask the other. For example, if I have ADHD (for real) and depression, then that'll look like I just have depression. If I'm not getting out of bed, you're not going to observe me being very impulsive or notice when I fail to desire to practice things. But now, if I take an anti-depressant and the depression goes away enough for me to get out of bed, it looks to the study like "in some people, a side-effect of treatment X for depression is [the symptoms of ADHD]." What it really was is that I had a comorbidity.
- existencebox 11y ago
  Let me give a (probably very leaky) programming analogy: You have one library, and it solves 1 class of problems. You use a second library on top of it to try and address some bits introduced by library 1. This may well move the core metric needle to get you what you want, but you will undoubtedly incur unforeseen interactions, and additional potential edge cases. When you add the brain into the equation, it removes all of the (comparatively flawless) understanding we have of the system the libraries are running within, and then when you add benzos, one of your libraries is now an enraged bobcat. In a perfect world, I'd agree with your statements. I do not think we have an effective enough understanding of either the compounds we're using, or the systems we're impacting, to be as laissez faire with cocktails as we often are.
AJ007 11y ago
How many studies check the effects of patients taking two, three, or more medications?

derefr 11y ago

> As such, "your behavior-modifying drugs give you a side effect so we'll shove more powerful drugs in your face" was an attitude that I've seen multiple times and NEVER to good effect. I don't see why that couldn't make perfect sense, though: someone can be neurochemically imbalanced along multiple axes, but one imbalance can mask the other. For example, if I have ADHD (for real) and depression, then that'll look like I just have depression. If I'm not getting out of bed, you're not going to observe me being very impulsive or notice when I fail to desire to practice things. But now, if I take an anti-depressant and the depression goes away enough for me to get out of bed, it looks to the study like "in some people, a side-effect of treatment X for depression is [the symptoms of ADHD]." What it really was is that I had a comorbidity.

existencebox 11y ago
Let me give a (probably very leaky) programming analogy: You have one library, and it solves 1 class of problems. You use a second library on top of it to try and address some bits introduced by library 1. This may well move the core metric needle to get you what you want, but you will undoubtedly incur unforeseen interactions, and additional potential edge cases. When you add the brain into the equation, it removes all of the (comparatively flawless) understanding we have of the system the libraries are running within, and then when you add benzos, one of your libraries is now an enraged bobcat. In a perfect world, I'd agree with your statements. I do not think we have an effective enough understanding of either the compounds we're using, or the systems we're impacting, to be as laissez faire with cocktails as we often are.

AJ007 11y ago

How many studies check the effects of patients taking two, three, or more medications?