Bill Lichtenstein, Infinite Mind producer, has left a comment

On November 25, 2008 I wrote this post:

The Infinite Mind - disease awareness campaings?

As always I'm informed by Philip Dawdy and it was on Furious Seasons that I became aware of the radio show "The Infinite Mind" hosted by Fred Goodwin. According to this post the radio show reached 1 million listeners a week. You are all aware that Sen Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) went after Goodwin because he has received support of eight labs and the radio show is going off the air - read this post by Philip Dawdy.
I cannot help myself asking how is it be possible that a show on mental illness can reach 1 million listeners a week. Why on earth are people so concerned with it?
Depression is the first subject that comes to my mind. I've noticed that people are no longer sad or tired. We are depressed and stressed and both words are already part of daily vocabulary.
Words are powerful. Putting these words in circulation to describe normal feelings is of great help to turn them into diseases and make people think that there's something that could help them. Not fearing disease's name and even making them being repeated over and over again creates a culture where it's easy to believe that it's not a big deal being sick.
Almost the same has happened with bipolarity. So many celebrities are being claimed to be bipolar that the old manic-depressive psychosis lost it's sense and the division bipolar 1 and 2 is not known. Being bipolar sounds to be glamorous and cool.
I'm asking myself how many of those who have listened to "The Infinite Mind" have searched a GP or a psychiatrists because they thought they were depressed.
Perhaps "The Infinite Mind" has helped, without the intention, what is described on "The Influence of Pharmaceutical Industry" on the topic they approach Disease awareness campaigns:
(continue reading)

Today I've got this comment:

1 comments:

Bill Lichtenstein said...

I am writing as executive producer of The Infinite Mind regarding your posting on the show's audience size.

The Infinite Mind was not a mental health show. It focused on the art and science of the mind, mental wellness, neuroscience and the mind body connection.

Most of our 200+ programs over 10 years had little to do with mental health, with show topics including Satisfaction; Hearing; Body Clocks; Altruism; Perfect Pitch; Genius; Animal Companions; Multitasking; Writers' Block; and Weather and the Mind, among many others.

Guests on the program included leading neuroscientists and clinicians, as well as notable public figures, including authors John Updike, William and Rose Styron, Fran Lebowitz, Annie Lamott, Robert Bly, and Joyce Carol Oates; actors/actresses Carrie Fisher, Stanley Tucci, Anthony Edwards, Margot Kidder, and Lily Tomlin; comedians Robert Klein, Eddie Izzard, Margaret Cho, and Richard Lewis; batting champ Wade Boggs; former First Lady Rosalynn Carter; business writer James Cramer; mental health advocate Tipper Gore; Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman; and musicians Aimee Mann, Jessye Norman, Judy Collins, Suzanne Vega, Black Eyed Peas, and Emanuel Ax.

It was this combination of topics and guests that resulted in the program being the most listened to and honored health and science show on public radio.

Bill Lichtenstein
LCMedia.com

January 4, 2009 1:55 PM

I want to thank Mr. Lichtenstein for the comment.
I love William Styron not only because of "Sophie's Choice" but also because of his book "Darkness Visible" which is a wonderful book on how he has recovered from depression. It was on 1985, before Prozac, that his disease started and he explains how terrible was his experience with Halcion. He was prescribed a high dose of this benzodiazepine plus Valium and Ativan.
Halcion has affected him deeply and had a huge contribution to his suicidal ideations one of the reasons he went to hospital. He was so depressed that ECT was considered as a treatment but fortunately he started recovering.
It's a great book and is written with wit and an astonishing comprehension on the depression condition and it's treatments. I hope he's in peace. He died in 2006.
Good to know that Jessie Norman was on the show. I like her performing Carmen and Seiji Ozawa is a great conductor. But I prefer Tatiana Troyanos and Plácido Domingos.
It's a pity that in ten years Infinite Mind has hosted five authors, five musicians, four comedians and so little actors and actress.
Creative people have a lot to say about fighting demons. Sometimes more than neuroscientists do.

This is the man...

I had in mind when I've wrote yesterday's post. It's explaining psych-drugs harms to people who have no connections with psychiatry and has never been prescribed any drug.
Never heard about a family member or a friend who has been on a benzodiazepine.
Okay! Benzodiazepine is too much to ask.
Only took it once in his life.

Try to explain psych-drugs harms without looking like a paranoid

From time to time I catch myself trying to explain the problems we are discussing about psych-drug*.
I look like a lunatic. When I listen to what I'm saying and put myself on the place of who I'm addressing my speech I can understand that it's hard to believe what I'm saying.
Physicians receiving money to prescribe; a drug that has made a healthy 19 years old girl hang herself during clinical trial and has also killed four other volunteers is on the market; people have to search the internet to find help to withdraw because their physicians don't know how to withdraw;
antidepressants don't help major depression, are being over prescribed and have side effects that are hideous; these drugs are highly addictive and people who got out off them report feeling they still feel side effects; clinical trials reports are manipulated by pharmas and they conceal all side effects; teenagers are being prescribed dangerous drugs; a baby has been diagnosed...
Wow!
It's hard to believe. I would not believe that it's possible and would think that a person making such statements is not trustworthy. I would think that this person is quite paranoid.
Have you ever felt the same?
*TO PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT PATIENTS OR PHYSICIANS and know nothing about it.

I'm feeling great!

It's a miracle. Desperate times, desperate measures. I've tried something totally out of the withdrawal protocols. I've already said that since I started the Effexor XR instead of the tablets I'm feeling side effects. I had to do something. I decided not to take the morning pill once a week and now I'm not taking the morning pill on Wednesdays and on Thursdays.
It seems it's working.
Yesterday I started to feel good. Today I'm in heaven! I cannot believe. I'm jumping. Yep, jumping like a child. I love to dance and I love jumping since I was a little girl.
I'm not dizzy. Wow! I'm not dizzy.
Better: I'm not suicidal! I'm not depressed, I'm not feeling urges to burn my skin with cigarettes or through myself out of the window and the fog that detached me from reality has disappear. My legs are not jelly and now I feel them on the ground and coordinated to my hip. Sounds don't bother me. I can sing.
Better: I can concentrate now, I'm reading and I can understand what I'm reading. I thought I was getting stupid. Really, I'm a bluestocking and without reading I'm not myself. I thought that I was never be able to read again.
For the last 9 months I was feeling terrible and now I realize that it was really Effexor side effects.
I'm not feeling that my brain was kind of moving, something very strange. That kind of ataxia, my right side not connected to my left, has disappeared.
I'm responding to music! I can dance again. I'm happy for no reason.
I'm alive. I hope it last, Jesus let me be like this!
Today is my grandma's birthday. I don't know the day she passed away in 1998. I was withdrawing so it was easy not to check the day and I did all the effort not to do it so I don't even know which month she died. Since I was a girl I thought that I didn't want to know about this day.
I didn't go to her funeral and I have already said to my family I will not go to any funeral except mine and I don't want any kind of this stuff. I want to be cremated, Period. A body means nothing and I don't fear my own death.
So I can celebrate my grandma's birthday today jumping.
"Grandma, as you can see I've had my nails done just like you used to do. I can focus now and I promise I will never let my nails be that way again.
Happy birthday grandma!"

The right path?

Trask: Sir, you are out of order!

Slade: Outta order? I'll show you outta order! You don't know what outta order is, Mr. Trask! I'd show you but I'm too old; I'm too tired; I'm too fuckin' blind. If I were the man I was five years ago I'd take a FLAME-THROWER to this place! Outta order. Who the hell you think you're talkin' to? I've been around, you know? There was a time I could see. And I have seen boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there isn't nothin' like the sight of an amputated spirit; there is no prosthetic for that. You think you're merely sendin' this splendid foot-soldier back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say you are executin' his SOUL!! And why?! Because he's not a Baird man! Baird men, ya hurt this boy, you're going to be Baird Bums, the lot of ya. And Harry, Jimmy, Trent, wherever you are out there, FUCK YOU too!

Mr. Trask: Stand down, Mr. Slade!

Slade: I'm not finished! As I came in here, I heard those words, "cradle of leadership." Well, when the bow breaks, the cradle will fall. And it has fallen here; it has fallen. Makers of men; creators of leaders; be careful what kind of leaders you're producin' here. I don't know if Charlie's silence here today is right or wrong.

I'm not a judge or jury. But I can tell you this: he won't sell anybody out to buy his future!! And that, my friends, is called integrity! That's called courage! Now that's the stuff leaders should be made of. Now I have come to the crossroads in my life. I always knew what the right path was. Without exception, I knew. But I never took it. You know why? It was too damn hard. Now here's Charlie. He's come to the crossroads. He has chosen a path. It's the right path. It's a path made of principle -- that leads to character. Let him continue on his journey.

Happy New Year

This is where people go to celebrate the new year in Rio de Janeiro.
Every year is the same.
Boring, boring and boring.
I used to go when there were not all these lunatics and all these fires.
We could even see other people because it was not so crowd. We could walk along the beach. Then the thing became... market.
I guess you all know damn well the power of money.
In 2009, Chinese New Year will begin on January 26th. This is the year of the cow.
Happy New Year. I don't know why all this fuss about it all but that's the way we were told time has to be counted and I don't know why we have to start counting on the day the earth starts another orbit around the sun or is it the end?
This is immaterial. Why not celebrate while it is on the middle of the orbit?
I believe humans are too obsessed with beginning and end.
What about the middle? What about in-between? Why not a daily celebration to the earth's orbit? Why not celebrate every day?
Give me a break.
Happy new year....
Addendum: It's 11 pm. The new year has just arrived and everybody is happy. Daylight saving time. You see? Now it's a little more clear what I'm trying to say.

AstraZeneca and Nobel Prize Organization

I don't know why I'm shocked. Anyway...

December 19, 2008
David Charter

"The integrity of the Nobel prize was called into question last night after it emerged that a member of the jury also sat on the board of a pharmaceuticals giant that benefited from the award of this year’s prize for medicine.

Prosecutors were studying whether AstraZeneca, the London-based multi-national pharmaceutical company, could have exerted undue influence on the award.

The joint winner of this year’s Nobel Prize for Medicine, Harald zur Hausen, was recognised for his work on the human papilloma virus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer. AstraZeneca has a stake in two lucrative vaccines against the virus.

Two senior figures in the process that chose Mr zur Hausen have strong links with the pharmaceutical company, which has also recently begun sponsoring the Nobel website and promotional subsidiary. The company strongly denies any wrongdoing."
(continue reading)

Perhaps one day we'll be hearing about the Nobel Pfizer.

Mind UK - Making sense of coming off psychiatric drugs

Gianna has post today Making sense of coming off psychiatric drugs that has some good informations:

Making small reductions
If you find you have to withdraw very slowly, it can be difficult to make small enough reductions in your dose, especially if your drug comes in capsule form. Sometimes it’s possible to break open the capsule and remove some of the content to lower the dose. You should always take care doing this, though, as the contents (for instance, fluoxetine) are sometimes irritating to the skin or the eyes. A pharmacist should be able to tell you if it’s safe to do so. Some drugs are obtainable in liquid form, which can be diluted to make small reductions in dosage. You would then need to be very sure what the concentration of the liquid is, and how much water to add to achieve the dose you wish. You may want to ask a pharmacist to help you with this. Drugs that are available in liquid form are listed on p. 31. (The lowest available doses in solid form are also in the tables on pp. 26-30.)

What sort of support should I look for?
Loss of self-confidence is very common among people who have been taking drugs for a long time, partly due to the effects of the drugs themselves, and partly due to being in ‘the sick role’ and dependent on a doctor’s prescription. This can make it difficult to make the decision to come off the drugs and to stick with it. The support of friends who have been through the same process and know just how it feels can be immensely valuable.
There are only very few organisations with expertise in coming off medication. (See Useful organisations, on p. 34, for more
details.) If you are very lucky, you may have a local group near you – for example, in a local Mind association. The majority of people will find that the best source of support and information is the Internet, particularly for SSRI antidepressants, although less so for those coming off antipsychotics or mood stabilisers. (emphasis mine)

Trust your own perceptions
If you feel that something you are experiencing is a side effect of medication or a withdrawal effect, take your perceptions seriously. Doctors may tell you that ‘it’s your illness’, but you know your body and its responses better than they do. If you are following a programme of slow dose reduction, and you reach a difficult phase, don’t be afraid to slow down, or to stop at the dose you are on for longer than you had planned; adapt your plans to fit your experience. (emphasis mine)

Wyeth tablets are not on Brazilian market since 2007

Effexor tablets

I used to take the tablets and all I need is to take them again.
Since October 2007 the tablets are no longer available in Brazilian market.
I was forced to use the XR version.
Side effects got worse and now
I'm feeling dizzy which is the worst of all symptoms and is affecting my life. I've send another e-mail to Wyeth in Brazil with a copy of this e-mail I wrote and Gianna was kind enough to send it for me.
The two versions are available in US, UK, Canada and I believe that in other countries.
I know what's going to happen: nothing. I'm the only one who is complaining and I'm the only one who felt side effects get worse and is feeling these new side effects.
I have no idea how Brazilians are getting off of Effexor XR and I guess I will have to feel this way for the rest of my life.
Who cares about patients?

My SSRI withdrawal hell - Repost

These are two posts I wrote on my Effexor withdrawal:

This is another comment that I left on SocialAudit during the 19 months I was tapering off Effexor.
It was written on July 29, 2005:

"Just to give you an idea that there's an end after this long and winding road that leads to Our door.Today I'm feeling fine. Now I have to taper the last 3/4 of 75 mg last pill. I cannot believe.
After 1 year and four months tapering 225 mg I have overcome the hell I was. For the first time I can believe I'll reach the end of the process. If everything goes right I hope next week I'll be able to taper another tiny little bit. So, I will finally be tapering half the pill.
The funny thing is that ours lives became this fight against this drug. My parameters are totally different from other people at the moment. When someone says to me that is tired I feel like laughing. I remember the days while on Effexor and when the tiredness was not because I had worked a lot or played a lot or anything a lot.
I could not wake up from bed. When someone says that is sad I also want to laugh for after being on chemical sadness that let me in total despair, the chemical suicidal ideation and all the sorrow, pain and strange feelings I felt and perhaps will still feel, everything connected to feelings that has a reason, that is part off living became almost irrelevant. Of course I suffer from my own problems but the priority is side effects, withdrawal symptoms when will I have my mind and body back, how many time will I have to wait after the last day off Effexor and so on…
Guess I’m getting after all…. crazy. I feel like asking: “ – Do you really know what sadness is?”
“ – Do you really know what tiredness is?” “ – Do you really know what it means the world is falling apart?”
Let me give you an address where you will find out: www.socialaudit.org.uk . There are others but here you will have a large number off testimonies.
I believe that maybe we get traumatized by all these. I keep on wondering when my life will start again. As if we could divide before SSRIs/after SSRIs. Only those who are here or somewhere else trying to get help knows what I’m talking about.
Everybody think that we are doing nothing. They have no idea what kind of work we are doing to save ourselves. Searching the Internet, having to find a way to get out off the drug for most off us had no help from physicians. Suffering the hell under the drug and the hell off side effects and withdrawal symptoms.
I started to write a message of optimism but it turned out into something else. But I guess it is important to realize that this struggle made us a little bit apart from the world.
But I believe that human beings are at the same time very fragile and very strong.
Now I was watching the news and the financial market reported that GlaxosSmith shareholders can sleep in peace for they are selling a lot. And ironically it appears these pills, millions of pills being manufactured.
And I keep on wondering when will it stop? Still naïve. But the question is still in my head: “All this suffering because others have to make profit?” Maybe the Pope could help. Perhaps he is also a shareholder. Surely he is."

__________________________________________________________________

My withdrawal story is on SocialAudit discussion board as I have already explained here. I've found out this outburst after three months off Effexor. The last 35 mg was the hardest do withdraw which caused me a lot of anguish because I thought that it was the contrary.
I could never imagine that reaching the end of the withdrawal it would be more difficult and that 3 months after being off the drug I was going to feel so many withdrawal symptoms that living was no longer possible and I had to go back to the drug.
Perhaps if I kept on with the 35 mg for a long time... I don't know. Neither did the psychiatrist that at the beginning of the process, when I told him that I was tapering off he first 35 mg, said:
"-Good you're withdrawing because Effexor is what makes you feel all you're feeling."
He forgot he said this.
I did it all by myself and with the help of Socialaudit friendship.
Here is a comment - it's more an outburst because I was feeling terrible and was diagnosed... depressed by the same psychiatrist who said the above.
It was written on March 2006. I've read it now and I feel amazed how terrible I was feeling. I don't remember it clearly. I only remember that it was hell.

"I went to a psychiatrist for I have quit Effexor three months ago and I'm experiencing some withdrawal symptoms. I am apathetic, despair crisis in the morning that are unbearable, still feel dizzy and headaches and other "ailments". He said I was... depressed. He asked me if I would like to try another SSRI. I asked him about all the testimonies of Persistent Adverse Neurological Effects and about people reporting having all kind of terrible problems after years off SSRIs. He did not say a word and shacked his head saying "No". But this "No" meant to me: "We do have anything to do with it; we are aware but we are supposed to prescribe these drugs; we do not know what to do; don't you dare to mention this... and many other things".
I went home and felt like... I do not have words to express the feeling.
I keep on asking myself: "What on earth is this? So a bunch of people come here in this site and many others to say all these lies? Is it a new disease a kind of collective neurosis that is making people have the same symptoms? Am I crazy, finally I have reached dementia and it has affected my reading comprehension and all I read here are wonderful testimonies but my craziness makes me read the opposite?"
For those of you who have experienced this kind of inconsiderateness, and there are many reports here, trust yourself.
It hurts like hell. I was talking to a psychiatrist, someone whose duty is to help people being healthy, give support, comfort and above all listen to their patients and, at least, give an answer aloud "-No, never heard about that. Never saw that on the Internet and in my clinical experience never had a single patient who had this kind of problem. I do not know where you find these sites and these reports. All my patients on SSRIs are very happy and having a great life."
As you can see I'm very indignant. Every time I read someone reporting that their physicians answer "It is all in your head... 'That's not the way it is...' 'You must accept that...'" it makes me feel as if… I do not know what to say.
The right word for me to describe it is hypocrisy. But when it comes from a physician… I really do not know what values are left in this world in which we live.
I'm sorry for this long outburst. But I believe it express of what many people feel.
For how long this silence about this huge problem will last? How many people will have to suffer? How big is the greed and how much money will it take till they at least stop prescribing these drugs? I no longer believe that this will ever be unfold for it involves many people and issues. But nobody else should be expose to these drugs that causes much more harm than benefits."

Effexor XR side effects are hard to endure

I'm feeling dizzy, migraine and my ears are buzzing. Impossible to concentrate.

Dr. Daniel Carlat reflexions 6 years after speaking for Wyeth

This is an amazing article Dr. Daniel Carlat wrote in November 25, 2007 about his experience when...

"On a blustery fall New England day in 2001, a friendly representative from Wyeth Pharmaceuticals came into my office in Newburyport, Mass., and made me an offer I found hard to refuse. He asked me if I’d like to give talks to other doctors about using Effexor XR for treating depression. He told me that I would go around to doctors’ offices during lunchtime and talk about some of the features of Effexor. It would be pretty easy. Wyeth would provide a set of slides and even pay for me to attend a speaker’s training session, and he quickly floated some numbers. I would be paid $500 for one-hour “Lunch and Learn” talks at local doctors’ offices, or $750 if I had to drive an hour. I would be flown to New York for a “faculty-development program,” where I would be pampered in a Midtown hotel for two nights and would be paid an additional “honorarium.”
(...)

"How many doctors speak for drug companies? We don’t know for sure, but one recent study indicates that at least 25 percent of all doctors in the United States receive drug money for lecturing to physicians or for helping to market drugs in other ways. This meant that I was about to join some 200,000 American physicians who are being paid by companies to promote their drugs. I felt quite flattered to have been recruited, and I assumed that the rep had picked me because of some special personal or professional quality."

(...)

"Naïve as I was, I found myself astonished at the level of detail that drug companies were able to acquire about doctors’ prescribing habits. I asked my reps about it; they told me that they received printouts tracking local doctors’ prescriptions every week. The process is called “prescription data-mining,” in which specialized pharmacy-information companies (like IMS Health and Verispan) buy prescription data from local pharmacies, repackage it, then sell it to pharmaceutical companies. This information is then passed on to the drug reps, who use it to tailor their drug-detailing strategies. This may include deciding which physicians to aim for, as my Wyeth reps did, but it can help sales in other ways. For example, Shahram Ahari, a former drug rep for Eli Lilly (the maker of Prozac) who is now a researcher at the University of California at San Francisco’s School of Pharmacy, said in an article in The Washington Post that as a drug rep he would use this data to find out which doctors were prescribing Prozac’s competitors, like Effexor. Then he would play up specific features of Prozac that contrasted favorably with the other drug, like the ease with which patients can get off Prozac, as compared with the hard time they can have withdrawing from Effexor.

The American Medical Association is also a key player in prescription data-mining. Pharmacies typically will not release doctors’ names to the data-mining companies, but they will release their Drug Enforcement Agency numbers. The A.M.A. licenses its file of U.S. physicians, allowing the data-mining companies to match up D.E.A. numbers to specific physicians. The A.M.A. makes millions in information-leasing money.

Once drug companies have identified the doctors, they must woo them. In the April 2007 issue of the journal PLoS Medicine, Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman of Georgetown teamed up with Ahari (the former drug rep) to describe the myriad techniques drug reps use to establish relationships with physicians, including inviting them to a speaker’s meeting. These can serve to cement a positive a relationship between the rep and the doctor. This relationship is crucial, they say, since “drug reps increase drug sales by influencing physicians, and they do so with finely titrated doses of friendship.” "

(...)

I still allow drug reps to visit my office and give me their pitches. While these visits are short on useful medical information, they do allow me to keep up with trends in drug marketing. Recently, a rep from Bristol-Myers Squibb came into my office and invited me to a dinner program on the antipsychotic Abilify.

“I think it will be a great program, Dr. Carlat,” he said. “Would you like to come?” I glanced at the invitation. I recognized the name of the speaker, a prominent and widely published psychiatrist flown in from another state. The restaurant was one of the finest in town.

I was tempted. The wine, the great food, the proximity to a famous researcher — why not rejoin that inner circle of the select for an evening? But then I flashed to a memory of myself five years earlier, standing at a lectern and clearing my throat at the beginning of a drug-company presentation. I vividly remembered my sensations — the careful monitoring of what I would say, the calculations of how frank I should be.

“No,” I said, as I handed the rep back the invitation. “I don’t think I can make it. But thanks anyway.”
(read the whole article. There are valuable informations)

Letter to Santa

Dear Santa,
This is the first time I write to you. I understand it was not possible this year. I hope that along the next year you can help our voices be heard. All we want is preventing people to be hurt by taking medicines that are causing too much harm. I don't think it's too much to ask. Look at all the side effects these drugs are promoting; look how difficult it's to withdraw and how seriously these medicines are affecting people's lives. Some people take theirs lives and the lives of others due to drug-induced violent behavior. We are telling it over and over again but it's been so difficult! I hope that by the end of the next year at least children can be saved from taking antidepressants, antipsychotics or benzos while they are developing.
Next year Santa, next year.

Unhappy Christmas

Yep! You've read it right.
Some people don't like this time of the year, Period.
You don't have to be happy.
We have the right not to be happy on Christmas. The idea of a family united and happy looks like science fiction or a Seventh Heaven episode to you?
You're not alone.
Are you alone? You are not alone.
Let yourself go, relax and join the club.

Merry Christmas

So this is Christmas
And what have you done
Another year over
And a new one just begun
And so this is Christmas
I hope you have fun
The near and the dear ones
The old and the young

A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear

I wish you all a very merry Christmas. This is the song that is always in my heart during this time of the year.
Let's hope 2009 is a good one
Without any fear

I am grateful...

... happy and very moved.
I've received a lot this year from all of you. Last Saturday I've started to write a post on it:

"Today was a great day and I'm feeling happy.
First it was Fiddy who made a Tribute to the Lady Campaigners to fourteen amazing women. I was one of them.
It was A Hoy's

soulful sepulcher

Comments:
Ana inspires me every day, with her passion for humanity based on her own struggles. Because of what she has lived and witnessed, she advocates for others with compassion.

Radagast

Comments:
Determination, Indomitable spirit, and no small intelligence. It takes a great deal to keep going when one is complaining about something that people have a vested interest in not changing - there's nothing very satisfying about talking to a brick wall!
A wealth of information, is Ana's blog, and a thoroughly decent person, is Ana."

I didn't finish the post. The two comments above are two votes to Weellsphere. I don't care about the votes. I never thought I was being seem this way and it makes me... I don't know.
I'm starting to have some amazing people coming to my blog.
I have to confess that the blog New York on Time by Jorge Pontual - the last on my A Hoy list - is very special for me. He's a Brazilian journalist who lives in New York for 10 years. I'll talk about him later. I thought that it would take months to hear from him. He answered on Saturday.
Yesterday Susan called me.
Her sweet voice is still in my mind and soul.
I'm so overwhelmingly moved that once again I'll not finish this post.
I'll publish it this way and try to catch up later.

PSSD - SSRI-sex group - I urge psychiatrists to join

I've joined SSRI-sex group. I would like to ask psychiatrists to join the group and study. If their clinical experience is not enough to make them see that something is going wrong perhaps by reading these testimonies and seeing patients trying to find a cure for their iatrogenic condition they can start to have some questions.
This is one of the polls. If people are reporting these kind of symptoms and their physicians close their eyes and remain silent I believe that something quite strange is going on.
Take a good look at this:
(To have real access to this poll you have to be here at SSRI-sex group. It's just a copy.)
Question

This is a poll to determine how common specific sexual symptoms are. If you are suffering from a symptom, please check the box to the left of that symptom. You may check more than one box. Please do not answer if you are still taking SSRIs.

• Genital pain
• Loss of libido
• Testicular shrinkage or absence of/irregular periods
• Genitals feel "disconnected" from head or body
• Painful orgasm
• Reduced semen volume or vaginal dryness
• Orgasm only after prolonged or intense stimulation
• No sexual dreams
• No nightime or morning erections/lubrication
• Erection or lubrication without arousal
• Genital anesthesia (no senation in genitals)
• Continuous genital arousal depsite absence of libido and desire
• Lack of response to visual sexual stimuli (i.e. no response to sight of naked partner, porn etc.)
• Lack of pleasure associated with sexual touch
• Difficulty becoming sexually aroused or maintaining sexual arousal
• Inability to feel love and romantic feelings
• Change in sexual orientation
• Pleasureless orgasm
• Inability to to have an orgasm
• Erectile or lubrication difficulties
• Penile or vaginal changes
• Reduced emotional range
• Gynecomastia or changes in breast tissue
• Reduced intensity of orgasm
• Lessened response to sexual fantasies

You can change your vote until the moderator closes this poll.

Responses

Inaugural A Hoy Awards

(Ok!

Well...

There I go.

Oh! My accent!
breath, breath, breath...)



"I want to thank Matthew Holford for creating this award and for inviting me to be a co-founder and Tracy for the great artwork.
I'm very excited because I believe it's a great idea to unite people and make them see that their work is being appreciated.
I'm delighted to announce my contribution to the first raft of A Hoys to be awarded:

1. Reading Adventures by Marg
2. A Daily Dose of Architecture by John Hill
3. Pmokeefe by Patrick O'Keeffe
4. Artversussport by Yrsa R. Fannberg
5. People and Nature Journal by Steve Chase
6. New York on Time by Jorge Pontual

Now it's time to say why I've chosen these blogs. Instead of giving details of each one I rather stress what they all have in common:
they are passionated by their work.
Thank you for being so damn good!"
(I just hope this teardrop doesn't show)

"Congratulations!"

Rules for Making an Award

1. Pick five blogs that you consider deserve this award based upon any criteria - for example, the quality of the commentary, wit, humour, artwork, overall design, value to you of the information being provided, and so on.

2. The awarding blogger should choose at least two blogs not on his or her own blogroll, the purpose being to encourage variety of reading matter, and to have the person making the award think about what they like to see and read.

3. Your five choices must be published in a dedicated post on your own blog. This post must contain the name of the author (which may be their logon name), and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone. This post should contain brief details of what attracted you to the blog. Details may also be posted in the comments section of "What is a Hoy?"

4. In the same dedicated post, each winner has to show the award and acknowledge the blog that has given him or her the award.

5. Both those awarding and receiving A Hoy must show the link to A Hoy blog, so that everyone will know the origin of this award.

6. When publishing details of the blogs to which you have made your awards, these Rules must be published for recipients to follow.

Loneliness

As strange as it may seems I never realized how lonely I've been.

US blog friends - Help me addressing a message to US Wyeth

Dear blog friends,

I would like to ask for your help. As I've already reported here I'm feeling terrible side effects because Effexor tablets are no longer available on Brazilian market and last year I was forced to take the XR capsules. At the beginning side effects I already felt got worse. Now I'm feeling more side effects. The worse is the dizziness. It's almost impossible to know when it's going to happen and I've already done all kind of exams and my GP can't find a way to help me. My psychiatrist agrees that I have to low the dose I'm taking -150 mg - but he doesn't know how to help me taper it without the tablets.
I've already tried to talk to Wyeth in Brazil but it's useless.
I would be very grateful if any of you could send the message below through this page of US Wyeth.
Thank you very, very much.


Dear Sirs,

I have already wrote to Wyeth in the Brazilian site but I'm finding difficulties to have answers. So I'm trying to talk to US Wyeth not asking for medical advise but to raise this serious problem Brazilians consumers are facing not because of any Brazilian regulatory issue but because Wyeth has decided to take away from the Brazilian market Effexor tablets.
I'm relying on some US citizens to help me and using the only contact that US Wyeth have on it's site.
Last year my psychiatrist informed me that Effexor tablets were going out of Brazilian market and that I was forced to change to the XR capsules.
I've started taking the XR version and not only old side effects got worse but I started felling new side effects. For the last ten months I have migraines, tinnitus and constant dizziness which is affecting my life in a terrible way as well as other side effects.
I have to low my dose but it's not possible to taper the XR capsules.
Wyeth has already advised the Brazilian regulatory agency, ANVISA, that Effexor tablets are no longer be on the market.
Since the withdrawal from Effexor has to be done very slowly and it's impossible to withdraw 37,5 mg without cutting the tablet I would like to know what is the method Wyeth has planned for Brazilians for the withdrawal process because me and my physician don't know how to do it.
The tablets are available on US market, UK and other countries. I cannot buy it online from an US pharmacy because it would cost me the double and I don't have credit card.
Sincerely yours,
Ana Lima

An Analysis of Use of SSRIs in USA 1988--2002 - FDA and Suicides

You can download this paper "An Analysis of Use of Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft in USA 1988--2002" by Graham Aldred here. Some excerpts:

Long Term Use
"Although the majority of patients are forced to drop out during the first year of use, many patients remain on SSRIs for many years, some out of choice, but some become dependant and cannot withdraw. GSK have now been forced to admit that 25% (not 2% as they previously claimed) of patients will have “difficulty” in withdrawing (June 2003).

Other long term patients confuse their drug induced withdrawal symptoms and believe that these are their own original condition and that therefore the drugs must be making them well. The lack of thoroughness of coroner investigations and the inadequacy of post-mortem analyses means that there is no data to indicate how many suicides may be triggered by attempted SSRI withdrawal."

(...)

Table1 shows that, in 2002, 7.8 million Americans became new users of either Paxil, Prozac or Zoloft and therefore they faced a net risk of induced suicide that is not likely to be lower than 32/100K and very probably is higher than 104/100K. Nevertheless, even using these cautionary rates, somewhere between 2500 and 8200 excess suicides may have occurred in 2002 alone due to these drugs. Whatever the value of the suicide rate, it was not zero. At least two thousand Americans may have died in 2002 who were not warned of the possible lethal outcome of their SSRI medication. This is the consequence of a dysfunctional drug safety regulation system in which the drug manufacturers have not only failed to disclose evidence of great harm but also have infiltrated virtually every organisation that could criticise, study and report on their drugs with scientific objectivity. This is compounded by the doctors who continually fail in their duty to report possible adverse effects, (i.e. suicide within days of starting the drug), associated with the dangerous drugs that they prescribe so frequently and so readily for virtually all the problems of life, culture and society.
But the spotlight must now fall on the FDA (together with the other national regulators,) to explain why it has been so unreactive, unaware and in such positive denial of the possible harm and deaths caused to the American population by the drugs that it has approved since 1988.