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from the Antidiarrheal-overdose?-Oh,-crap! dept.
NPR is reporting on the latest drug scare, involving an over-the-counter antidiarrheal drug that is being used for its opioid-like effects by addicts:
Some people addicted to oxycodone and other opioids are now turning to widely available diarrhea medications to manage their withdrawal symptoms or get high. The results can be dangerous to the heart — and sometimes fatal — warn toxicologists in a study [open, DOI: 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2016.03.047] recently published online in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
The researchers describe two case studies where people who were addicted to opioids tried to ease their withdrawal symptoms by taking many times the recommended dose of loperamide, a drug commonly used treat diarrhea. Both patients died.
"Because of its low cost, ease of accessibility and legal status, it's a drug that is very, very ripe for abuse," says lead author William Eggleston, a doctor of pharmacy and fellow in clinical toxicology at the Upstate New York Poison Center, which is affiliated with SUNY Upstate Medical University.
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4/20: Half-Baked Headline
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 04 2016, @06:07PM
am not persuaded is going to work
Unfortunately the situation is even more horrifying in that its widely understood that AA / NA and most other treatment programs basically don't work, like 90%+ failure rate.
So what we have is extremely expensive and profitable faith healing as an industry sector that exists primarily to funnel money to providers knowing that the treatment will have little to no effect other than making some people richer. It really is a horrible racket, profiting off suffering. I'm sure that type laughs all the way to the bank.
Doctors and the medical profession don't understand stubbornness. They understand that you have a tumor in there and the surgeon slices it out and its not in there anymore and the patients stubbornness doesn't matter much one way or the other. But WRT mental health ranging from slight obesity to lack of exercise to some mental health issues docs just don't understand all that matters is the patients desire, its the only thing that matters.
There is a class of diseases, where drug addiction is one, where the victims are incredibly stubborn and nothing in the outside world will have any effect... they'll get the outcome, good or bad, that they want and the external world doesn't much matter.
If it were not for that pesky biochemical link between body and mind, there would be a good argument for completely disconnecting mental health issues from the doctors. Docs just don't know how to think about mental health because physical health is too deeply ingrained. Nice people, just not trained for that kind of work on a deep philosophical level. Like making me a computer programmer and a plumber, I'm just not seeing the synergy and naturals at one are unlikely to be good at the other.
The two useful things incredibly expensive treatment programs provide, are medical monitoring for the detox and a low-ish stress environment so they can chill and not worry as much about daily life. Some kind of all inclusive resort could provide the same for a tenth the cost / profit of course.