4 ms·

Drug abuse is such a fascinating and frustrating thing. I think in 500 years they're gonna look back at how we handled this and shake their heads at the inhuman

by md224 9y ago

Drug abuse is such a fascinating and frustrating thing. I think in 500 years they're gonna look back at how we handled this and shake their heads at the inhumanity of it all. Here's something interesting I learned the other day: if you give stimulants to kids with ADHD, they're actually less likely to have substance abuse problems later on. Source: http://csam-asam.org/sites/default/files/pdf/misc/DeAntonio_-_ADHD.pdf http://csam-asam.org/sites/default/files/pdf/misc/DeAntonio_... So here's my wacky theory: maybe a lot of people who have a "substance use disorder" or "addictive personality" just have undiagnosed ADHD and would live much better lives if they took consistent doses of amphetamine on a regular basis.

FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
Its not that wacky a theory. A large number of people use narcotics as self medication, perhaps without knowing it, for conditions other than ADHD. Bipolar individuals do as well
- epmaybe 9y ago
  As far as I'm aware, no bipolar patient should be on narcotics. Standard of care is mood stabilizer plus atypical antipsychotic.
  - tcj_phx 9y ago
    Investigative journalist Robert Whitaker wrote a book about how the medications commonly used in the psychiatric 'standard of care' actually seem to make the patients worse. Some psychiatrists wrote a response that can be summarized as, "shut up we know what we're doing." Whitaker responded to his critics with a blog post titled The Evidence-Based Mind of Psychiatry on Display - https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/05/the-evidence-based-mind-of-psychiatry-on-display/ https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/05/the-evidence-based-mind... Your comment here seemed to indicate that you're in the medical field, and indeed your comments from 3 months ago indicate that you're a medical student. Psychiatry needs help. None of the psychiatrists who've been treating my girlfriend are able to tell the difference between substance-associated/withdrawal psychosis, and iatrogenic psychosis, so they keep her on the drugs that actively prevent her from recovering. She was originally turned into a drug addict with depo provera, which is known to make women suicidal. This was about 10 years before I met her. Medicine is deeply infected with ideas which have actually been falsified by physiologists, but which persist because they're seductively simplistic. edit: Inconvenient Truths About Antipsychotics: A Response to Goff et al was published yesterday - https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/05/inconvenient-truths-about-antipsychotics-a-response-to-goff-et-al/ https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/05/inconvenient-truths-abo...

by md224 9y ago

FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago

Its not that wacky a theory. A large number of people use narcotics as self medication, perhaps without knowing it, for conditions other than ADHD. Bipolar individuals do as well

epmaybe 9y ago
As far as I'm aware, no bipolar patient should be on narcotics. Standard of care is mood stabilizer plus atypical antipsychotic.
- tcj_phx 9y ago
  Investigative journalist Robert Whitaker wrote a book about how the medications commonly used in the psychiatric 'standard of care' actually seem to make the patients worse. Some psychiatrists wrote a response that can be summarized as, "shut up we know what we're doing." Whitaker responded to his critics with a blog post titled The Evidence-Based Mind of Psychiatry on Display - https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/05/the-evidence-based-mind-of-psychiatry-on-display/ https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/05/the-evidence-based-mind... Your comment here seemed to indicate that you're in the medical field, and indeed your comments from 3 months ago indicate that you're a medical student. Psychiatry needs help. None of the psychiatrists who've been treating my girlfriend are able to tell the difference between substance-associated/withdrawal psychosis, and iatrogenic psychosis, so they keep her on the drugs that actively prevent her from recovering. She was originally turned into a drug addict with depo provera, which is known to make women suicidal. This was about 10 years before I met her. Medicine is deeply infected with ideas which have actually been falsified by physiologists, but which persist because they're seductively simplistic. edit: Inconvenient Truths About Antipsychotics: A Response to Goff et al was published yesterday - https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/05/inconvenient-truths-about-antipsychotics-a-response-to-goff-et-al/ https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/05/inconvenient-truths-abo...