D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
March 2010
Over-Reliance on Drugs?
Page: 2
It is also greatly ironic that I just hung up the phone after my stepmother called with some belated holiday greetings. As it turns out, her sister, whom I remember as being friendly, alert and active during our last visit, has suffered some health issues of late herself. Now 75, she was diagnosed with dementia and given a litany of medications.
"It's been hell for the last four months," stepmother "Geeg" said. "She kept getting worse, and the worse she got, the more medications or increased dosages of current medications they gave her."
"Carla," the patient, was soon pretty much completely incapacitated, and Geeg, who has her own health issues at 80-plus, was having a hard time caring for her (they share a condo). It was suggested that more medication would help, along with a professional caretaker.
But it was here that Geeg's intuition kicked in. "Even though I'm old, I'm not stupid, and I could see that she was always getting worse, not better," she related. "It was to the point where she couldn't even take a bath by herself, and I was unable to help her get out of bed."
So Geeg decided on her own to start eliminating some of the drugs, and cutting back on others. The result was immediate and amazing.
"She was getting 400 milligrams a day of this one prescription, and I just cut that in half. A couple of others I remembered as being used for side effects of OTHER prescriptions, so I dropped those completely."
Geeg was ecstatic as she reported to me that Carla had teased her prior to her telephone call to me because she (Geeg) had promised to call me before noon, and it was now 12:05. "She didn't even know my name at times a week ago, and now she remembered me and you and that I had said I would call by noon. Last night, although I sat in the bathroom while she did it in case she had trouble, she took a bath by herself, and on New Year's Eve, she even played poker with us for a while."
In what might be one of the most unreported stories of 2009, Dr. Scott Reuben — who, until last spring, was considered a respected and influential clinical researcher, one who said he had done many studies on various medications — turned out to be the Bernie Madoff of the medical world.
Not only did he not do any of the nearly 20 studies that he claimed to have done on various pharmaceuticals, Reuben also "invented" patients and was on the payroll of such pharma-giants as Pfizer.
Reuben's "research" concluded that substances such as Bextra (anti-inflammatory drug, since withdrawn from the market due to false marketing claims), Lyrica (anti-epileptic) and the anti-depressant Effexor all had painkiller qualities. Reuben had received several research grants, was on the Pfizer speakers bureau, was on the payroll of Merck, another drug conglomerate, and also wrote to the FDA about the positive qualities of these drugs, citing his own nonexistent research for these in a total of 21 papers.
My stepmother calls back a short time later, something she rarely does, since we are usually in touch only on holidays. But she is mad, mad as hell about the treatments prescribed by her sister's now-"fired" doctors. She is taking Carla to her new physician tomorrow — one who has so far agreed with Geeg's "diagnoses."
"I thought you might want to know what Carla was taking," she starts. I can hear her fumble a bit as she reaches for the pill vials.
"She's off this Dilantin [anti-seizure] stuff now. There was 75 millihrams of Plavix [anti-coagulant] along with 350 milligrams of aspirin. We took her off of that, but kept her on the aspirin. It worked."
She continues, "200 milligrams of Tegrotol [anti-seizure], 10 milligrams of Aricept [to improve the function of nerve cells in the brain — oddly, there is a caution about giving this stuff to anyone who has seizures]. This one is Exelon [prescribed for dementia patients], which she still does, but with a patch. It is 4.6 milligrams per day. But I took her off the Depakote [another seizure medication], but she still gets 250 milligrams of Keppra [still another anti-seizure medicine]."
Geeg concludes the call be proudly announcing that it was Carla, not she, that remembered the procedure that Carla was having tomorrow, an MRI.
I conclude that my computer's spellcheck will never be the same, since none of these manmade cures make the cut.
According to a report from the Florida Medical Examiners Commission, "An analysis of 168,900 autopsies conducted in Florida in 2007 found that three times as many people were killed by legal drugs as by cocaine, heroin and all methamphetamines put together. According to state law-enforcement officials, this is a sign of a burgeoning prescription-drug abuse problem."
The Florida report continues, "In 2007, cocaine was responsible for 843 deaths, heroin for 121, methamphetamines for 25 and marijuana for zero, for a total of 989 deaths. In contrast, 2,328 people were killed by opioid painkillers, including Vicodin and Oxycontin, and 743 were killed by drugs containing benzodiazepine, including the depressants Valium and Xanax.
"Alcohol directly caused 466 deaths, but was found in the bodies of 4,179 cadavers in all. Across the country, prescription drugs have become an increasingly popular alternative to the more difficult to acquire illegal drugs. Even as illegal drug use among teenagers has fallen, prescription drug abuse has increased. For example, while 4% of US 12th graders were using Oxycontin in 2002, by 2005 that number had increased to 5.5%."
So why should anyone bother to go to the neighborhood illegal drug peddler, when we, as a nation of morons, can go to the doctor, cry "mustache ache" and get four prescriptions to make it all better for us, and have it be perfectly legal?
And while some people may believe that such medicines' legality makes them less dangerous than illegal drugs, Tuolumne County, Calif., Sheriff's Office Deputy Dan Crow warns that this is not the case. Because everybody reacts differently to foreign chemicals, there is no way of predicting the exact response anyone will have to a given dosage. That is why prescription drugs are supposed to be taken under a doctor's supervision.
"All this stuff is poison," Crow says. "Your body will fight all of this stuff." Tuolumne County Health Officer Todd Stolp agrees. A prescription drug taken recreationally is "much like a firearm in the hands of someone who's not trained to use them," he says.
My family generally has enjoyed and been thankful for good, if not great health. My father, despite being a heavy smoker for years, was never sick until he suffered a stroke (eerily, after he quit smoking), and lived to be 82. His mother lived to her 90s, remaining active until a fall concluding in a broken hip took her to the hospital, where, eerily, she got pneumonia and died.
My maternal grandmother was never sick a day in her life, but again it was self-induced suicide that did her in, as she, too, was a heavy smoker for many years, finally falling victim to emphysema at 85.
Mom remains active at 83 (this month) in spite of her two pack of cigs per day habit, and she is rarely ill, other than the "tickle" in her throat that she will always claim comes from sinus issues rather than Virginia Slims.
I also enjoy good health, and will always remember the advice of Grandmother Emily, who never took a prescription drug, but did love her occasional whiskey sour: "If you can't pronounce all of the ingredients, don't take it."
Senior writer Jeff Berg lives in Las Cruces.
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