What is Digg?146 Comments
- BlockedUser, on 08/20/2008, -0/+31I totally thought this was going to be a different article...
http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000DMFM.01.PT ... - granolajoe, on 08/20/2008, -2/+30"Playing doctor." That phrase has soooooo many different interpretations.
- fluidfoundation, on 08/20/2008, -0/+26especially if Dateline is around..
- BXRWXR, on 08/20/2008, -1/+23Paxil is a helluva drug.
- Kleep, on 08/21/2008, -0/+17I totally thought this was about kids playing doctor... and I can definately say that when a 6 year old girl plays doctor on you (when you the same age)... you don't come out the same and it is very dangerous...
- pe5t1lence, on 08/21/2008, -0/+16What?
- socalftw, on 08/20/2008, -0/+15It's only dangerous if she doesn't approve.
- Narcism, on 08/21/2008, -0/+12Hmm... in her defense, she can't get much through with duct tape over her mouth...
- Wargalas, on 08/21/2008, -1/+10Why don't you go ahead and have a seat right over there?
- Zipko, on 08/21/2008, -1/+10I still don't get it. If I find a weasel I'm not keeping it whether I owe someone one or not.
- thescimitar, on 08/21/2008, -0/+8I dugg you entirely because I had no idea what you were talking about. If I could memorize this confusing story, I would use it at every opportunity.
- Residents, on 08/21/2008, -0/+7Yeah this stuff always aggravates me. Reminds me of my grandmother. "Oh well I'm not feeling bad so I'll take half a pill"
- ZackScott, on 08/20/2008, -4/+11I think there should really be more study into the "art" of going off of a medicine. If we're going to live in a world where drugs have directions on the label of how to take them and how often, there should also be directions on how to stop taking them. It sucks that going off of a drug can take months. It's like the old saying where it's own zero weasels and owe someone one than to merely own zero weasels; if you find a weasel, then you won't have to keep it. Going off of drugs should be like that.
- RetlawST, on 08/21/2008, -0/+7And in all honesty, weasels are like ferrets. You might be able to sucker somebody into buying a "ferret".
- GuitarHeroDenn, on 08/21/2008, -0/+6I'd like to play Doctor but I don't have a sonic screwdriver.
- simonbp, on 08/21/2008, -0/+6I really dislike Reader's Digest. It's full of so much alarmist goo that I have trouble taking anything they say seriously.
- serif69, on 08/21/2008, -1/+7Really? Because I can only think of two.
- vman81, on 08/21/2008, -0/+5Do prostitutes avoid doctors?
- OneLess, on 08/21/2008, -0/+5I was hoping this article was about David Tennant.
- gizram84, on 05/30/2009, -0/+5"Why Playing Doctor Can be a Dangerous Game"
as if we needed to be convinced... - pintomp3, on 08/21/2008, -0/+5sadly, a lot of people do. kevin trudeau makes millions of of those people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Trudeau - Albear89, on 08/21/2008, -0/+5Reder's Digest = Meddiling mom weekly.
- sevvo, on 08/21/2008, -0/+5"I picked a hell of a time to quit shooting heroin!"
- inactive, on 08/21/2008, -1/+5Some medication does have very serious side effects that need to be analyzed before even BEGINNING treatment. I'm on psychiatric meds for bi-polar disorder, and discussed the side effects of various meds with my doctors, and chose one with the least. Also, doctor's are partly to blame on this. I used to be taking extremely high doses of Seroquel along with other meds by an incompetent psychiatrist, so when I finally switched to a new one, took me a year of tapering off my dose to finally get rid of it completely without suffering consequences.
A little bit of personal research and discussion with your doctor before beginning or ending treatment with medication goes a long ways.
Although some of this stuff in the article was just common sense, such as taking ALL of your antibiotic prescription, and not stopping it after you feel better. No one to blame but yourself in that case for being stupid, especially after you did it two times and got sick again each time (according to the one article).
As for new studies, you have to have the facts about the study and then take it up with your doctor. In some cases, they are using insanely high doses to measure the risks. Also, many studies can be contradicted by other studies totally clouding and confusing the issue. - patch6, on 08/21/2008, -1/+5Getting off of drugs should be like owning zero weasels and owing someone one, which would be [better/worse] than merely owning zero weasels; since, if you find a weasel, you wouldn't have to keep it.
- BIGHED, on 08/21/2008, -0/+4My mom eats Klonopins like they are sex covered candy. If she ever went off of them I would have to invest in a taZer
- Whackly, on 08/21/2008, -0/+4So you drive around the south side looking for doctors?
- CharlesSaint, on 08/20/2008, -0/+4"Water on the knee??? Operation!" ....(something something something) Operation! ...........I'm the doctor for you! (80's commercial Jingle).
- trickyt, on 08/21/2008, -0/+4He means to say he goes to the doctor regularly, just like he regularly visits prostitutes.
- matthewinDRO, on 08/21/2008, -0/+4last time I played doctor, I didn't know what getting laid was . . .
- BoneheadFarker, on 08/21/2008, -0/+4Don't forget that he also advocates Dianetics. Does everything make sense now?
- chrissku, on 08/21/2008, -1/+5Hi, I'm Doctor Christopher Hanson with Dateline M.D. Have a seat right there.
- TheUngod, on 08/21/2008, -0/+4Kevin Trudeu doesn't play doctor, he hates doctors! He claims doctors aren't necessary as cancer can be cured by drinking vinegar. He's a little um..."special."
- sindex, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3This is not at all the article I hoped it'd be.
- PrinceMissile, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3When I play doctor, I play to WIN.
- ncc74656m, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3I know so many people who do this stuff. Just stopping your meds is about the dumbest thing you can do, especially without at least telling the prescribing doctor. At a minimum, you can always call a pharmacy if your doctor or another isn't available and ask about your concerns or side effects, etc, with the pharmacist. They are often more knowledgable than most doctors about medications, interactions, and side effects.
One friend tapered himself off anxiety meds despite his doctor's warning, and has since gotten himself completely straightened out on his own, and has had no ill effects. Another one stopped them cold turkey and became deeply depressed to the point of having to keep her on the phone for hours at a time to keep her balanced and make sure she wasn't going to hurt herself. - Ellipsys, on 08/21/2008, -0/+3I agree with what you say, especially about how drug companies are willing to profit at any cost. However, most physicians don't act as you say (from personal experience). Drug reps come in and drop a host of samples, and at least in my state they can't "entice" doctors with anything more than pens and coffee mugs (I admit, I have an awesome heavy ceramic mug collection). Good physicians generally know to look beyond the drug company "OMG this cures/treats X better than older drug Y" pamphlets. For anything they are looking to prescribe frequently, they crack open the PDR and generally gain a full understanding of the positives and negatives of the drug. Dependence on a drug is something that has to be monitored frequently by any competent physician, so it behooves one to inform the patient of any special protocol (ie. You have to step this down, or else you're going to be calling me in the middle of the night because you're tearing your hair out and sweating profusely) to help ensure compliance beforehand. Drug companies do all the slimy underhanded things you speak of, but many doctors aren't complacent enough to let them get away with it.
- joeanon, on 08/21/2008, -1/+4The problem isn't 'playing doctor' at all. In fact most of the best data is from people who take the time to 'play doctor' and not from actual doctors themselves who've never used the drugs.
Just ask your doctor and he'll tell you, either he doesn't know or there is nothing to worry about.
Either statement is a profession of his sheer ignorance to such a topic.
If you think doctors really go out of their way to educate themselves on withdraw, you don't understand the process of creating new drugs and marketing them to doctors via high end drug 'representative'.
These are the guys who give your doctor all that free stuff. Like the tissue contains that say Nexium on them or the clip boards that say Claritin or the doctors table paper that says Cialis on it.
Much of that represent visits from drug or medical equipment representatives or salespeople. They come turn your doctor on to the latest greatest version of their drugs, show them their privately funded studies, promise this or that and give them some free trinkets. This effectively causes doctors to recommend their drug and therefore creates demand. Sometimes people just come in and ask their doctor about some drug they saw on TV or even demand them.
It's just a way marketing pharmaceuticals and in today's market drugs are coming out so fast no doctor can really keep up with them all no less bother to research withdraw.
The companies that sell him on the drug use data from their self funded clinical studies which clearly show no major withdrawn symptoms. Who is he to try to setup a study on his own. Chances are the drug company would try to sue you if they didn't like your findings.
The doctor is just one guy in the big chain of people who decide what treatments you get. Your doctor certainly isn't privy to any of that private clinical study data which the drug company doesn't let him see. He just sees what the drug companies put out in their own self funded studies which are the same ones the FDA use to approve the drug, basically under the same premise that the drug company need only release the data it wants.
So, once you get your head around how drugs are made to be sold and then marketed directly to your doctor and you, you can grasp that there is NO WAY doctors have much info about withdraw effects.
Then just to be sure, start asking your doctor just for fun. He won't have much in the way of details, even if he does admit there is some withdraw. He will almost always play down the risk and happily sign you up as more reoccurring income for you and the drug companies.
The worst part is you doctor might not even be a bad guy, but he is shown the same limited and tightly controlled private data to 'prove' a drug's effectiveness and not particularly focus on the negatives. From the drug companies perspective, too much study on drug side effects is bad for business. They need but meet the minimal legal and common sense standards.
So, what do you expect when everything is motivated by profit, not by product effectiveness or long term effects on patients.
Reagan killed third party clinical drug reviews which used to be mandatory. Now the clinical reviews are all done by the same companies that make the drugs. Dumb ass American's got sold that with the guise that we needed to speed up drug approval.
So we just .. eliminate drug reviews and told the companies to do it themselves. Even better Bush managed to get class action law suite pay offs greatly reduced, so now we have no control over drugs via any democratic means including being able to really hurt a company for pumping out half asses, made to sell not to heal medicine.
The stockholders control the medical market, not people's health needs, because, it doesn't take sick people to make new drugs, it takes money. - BoneheadFarker, on 08/25/2008, -0/+2That's NIH, and yeah...it's a US agency, so it's biased as hell. This is a repeatedly demonstratable fact. But if you want a government study that I will acknowledge, why not try reading the one that Nixon commission and then threw away without reading due to the fact that it recommended legalization.
It's funny you should mention the CIA, considering their extensive history with the Columbian coke trade. And by that, I mean as their importers.
And you know what...if you legalize, then you remove the consequences of getting caught selling and using. You reduce the jail population, make less criminals, take away the black market and the incredibly lucretive opportunities and gang violence caused by it, and allow the police to investigate real crimes with real victims. On top of this, you allow real research into pot, rather then this quasi-research propaganda that the US government spews for people like you... - sgvprelude, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2All playing doctor did for me was give me a cheap excuse for looking at breasts.
- Ajd9784, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2I work at a pharmacy and we have programs where we have to monitor profiles that don't fill their medications and ask why. And when we get an answer like, "Well, I feel better so I just stopped taking it." We can have a Pharmacist counsel them over the phone.
Most of the time that isn't the answer, but it's worth it to have helped that hand full of patients. It makes the doctors live easier. - quiggibub, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2I'm glad stuff like this happens. I've heard of transplant patients losing their organs because they stopped taking their meds because they felt fine. While unfortunate for that person, it's great for the rest of the people waiting for an organ, since that patient has disqualified themselves from future transplants. People with high blood pressure stop taking their blood pressure meds because their blood pressure is fine, then have a stroke or a heart attack. Yay. Stop taking your antipsychotics because you haven't had an episode in a while? Enjoy going nuts. Retards like this don't realize the reason their symptoms are gone is because the meds are doing their job at regulating something their body can't on it's own. I know if I stop taking my blood pressure meds when my bp is 110/70, it'll shoot back up to 190/130 the next day.
Digg me down if you must. I can't feel sorry for people who make a conscious decision to stop meds because they're feeling fine. I DO feel sorry for the people who stop taking their meds because they can't afford them. Maybe when idiots die from stopping their meds against doctors advice, the leftover pills can be given to those who need them and would actually use them. - trickyt, on 08/21/2008, -1/+3I don't get it either. Does that mean if I find a pill and owe someone a pill, I don't have to take that pill? wtf?
- herohue, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2Last time I played doctor i got arrested.
- inactive, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2I'm digging you up because it's pretty much the only serious comment here, and you speak the truth.
Seroquel - NOT for tripping. Widely popular in prisons, for you know, knocking you down into sleep (walk).
Paxil - My "withdrawal" started at day 2. BRAIN ZAPS. Believe me, I don't wish it on my worst enemy. Well, maybe Hitler.
Wellbutrin - Makes you stop smoking pronto, but it's a ***** up med. It gave me boners, actually, unlike all the other psych meds.
Benzos - OK, better than Barbs, but insaely overprescribed. DO NOT MIX WITH ALCOHOL. That is, unless you plan on killing yourself in an embarrassing way. I have a tolerance, and withdrawal is not a problem... for now. I don't wanna think about it.
Ambien - Ah... Three months of bliss. 10 mg on an empty stomach, fight 5 minutes of sleep and you're tripping. Ask McCain about it, it's a blast. Also, don't drink while on it, please.
Weed - This plant saved my life, and keeps me sane. LEGALIZE IT. No OD's, side-effects being that you no longer care about society. Nice enough trade-off in my book, and much better than freaking BRAIN ZAPS! - SDM187, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2I had friggen heart palpitations for 3 days after quitting. that was some scary *****. my dad thought they were xanax and flushed em. stupid pills off the internet sent from namibia all look the damn same! some of you know what i'm talkin about!
- forsight, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2Sorry to hear about the misconstrued previous doctors.
how'd you know you had bp? - beatleman, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2You'll probably be happy to know that most hospitals are setting a deadline after which the drug reps aren't allowed to bring us lunch, give us free pens, etc (I'm not a doctor, but I say "we" because the rule will apply to med students, too). One of the residents on my rotation today put it an interesting way and said, "They think we're smart enough to save lives, but too stupid to avoid prescribing certain drugs just because someone buys us a chicken sandwich." Speaking from personal experience, I have a huge collection of drug rep pens and honestly can't recall ever looking at what drug is advertised on each one. I couldn't care less.
- mBrutis, on 08/21/2008, -1/+3Seen two people have a helluva time coming off it.
- Llanowar, on 08/21/2008, -0/+2Neither did seventhc.
He never said it was a good experience. -
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