RxISK blog

Cis- and Trans-Drug Wrecks
July 15, 2019 | One Comment

After a Montelukast Withdrawal Syndrome post two weeks back, we had more comments than after any previous post – so much so that this seemed worth noting in a Post in its own right. After last weeks Transgender Meds, we have had fewer comments than after any previous post.  This also seems worth noting in […]

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Transgender Meds: A Call for Reports
July 8, 2019 | 4 Comments

This post is an invitation to report on drugs prescribed to transgender people. These include cross-sex hormones – testosterone for women, estrogen and progesterone for men, hormone-blocking agents like Lupron given to children with gender dysphoria to stop the physical changes of puberty, and other drugs like finasteride, spironolactone and birth-control pills prescribed to manage […]

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Montelukast, Fluoroquinolone, Psychotropic Withdrawal & Toxicity
July 1, 2019 | 36 Comments

Last week’s post on Montelukast Withdrawal Syndrome has attracted comments at a higher rate than any prior post in 7 years of RxISK posts. It followed a post on Asthma causing Suicide and Homicide two weeks previously, which had links to the QuarterWatch 2015 report of adverse events in children fingering montelukast and suicidality as […]

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Montelukast Withdrawal Syndrome
June 24, 2019 | 108 Comments

When my happy, full-of-life, adventure-seeking 11-year-old son experienced severe, debilitating neuropsychiatric symptoms after stopping his asthma medication, I embarked on a journey in a desperate search for answers. How could a medication that acts on the respiratory system reduce my healthy child to a lifeless shell? How could our beloved doctor not discuss the potential […]

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EMA Acknowledges Persistent Sexual Dysfunction After SSRIs & SNRIs
June 11, 2019 | 46 Comments

The European Medicines Agency has just concluded a review into sexual dysfunction after the discontinuation of SSRIs and SNRIs. Before we discuss their findings, it’s worth looking back over the events of the past year. RxISK petition In 2018, we put together a petition requesting changes to SSRI and SNRI product labels to warn about […]

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When Asthma leads to Suicide or Homicide
June 3, 2019 | 15 Comments

  It seems like it’s all happening in Wales at the moment.  Wales Online last week reported on two children who developed suicidal behaviour and change of personalities on montelukast – Singulair. It was two mother who pieced the story together in the case of their children and confirmed the link to the drug by […]

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Antidepressant Withdrawal Welsh Senedd Debate
May 24, 2019 | 35 Comments

Editorial Note:  For context see Welsh Government Response to Withdrawal Petition.  The image is of Janet Finch-Saunders. The cover image is of the Senedd building. Debate on the Petitions Committee Report: Petition P-05-784 Prescription drug dependence and withdrawal—recognition and support Motion NDM7053 Janet Finch-Saunders To propose that the National Assembly for Wales: Notes the report […]

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Welsh Government Response to Withdrawal Petition
May 21, 2019 | 10 Comments

  For Context to this post – See Welsh Senedd Withdrawal Seminar and Welsh and Scottish Petitions on Antidepressant Dependence. From Stevie Lewis Dear All, At the back end of last week I received the Welsh Government’s response to the Petitions Committee’s recommendations – see HERE. As you’ll see from the attached, they have accepted […]

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Neutered Britain: Sex and Drugs
May 14, 2019 | 31 Comments

An article in the BMJ last week triggered a flurry of newspaper interest.  Sex is a surefire generator of column inches as it were.  Stories appeared in all the major broadsheets. Rather surprisingly I didn’t put two and two together until the Daily Mail took the tried and trusted tack of talking about one of […]

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Xarelto and Sex
April 22, 2019 | 12 Comments

Editorial Note: This extraordinary post from Spiros might help explain the very similar problems that follow SSRIs, Finasteride, and Isotretinoin.  There have been several other reports to RxISK of comparable problems on rivaroxaban – Xarelto.  This drug causes many more problems than the sexual one described here.  We would be interested to hear from anyone […]

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RxISK Rorschach: Do not Go Gentle
April 9, 2019 | 47 Comments

Last week’s RxISK post on Assisted Dying proved something of a Rorschach test.  People read diametrically opposite messages into it. It was written at the same time as Something Stupid This Way Comes and cross-referenced this.  This I thought made it clear that there is no such thing as Treatment Resistant Depression (TRD).  TRD is […]

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Assisted Dying: Going Gentle or Not so Gentle
April 1, 2019 | 52 Comments

Assisted dying has become a hot topic. For large parts of human history when people came toward an end, they might have been left in an outhouse by relatives or consigned themselves to a hut in the woods. Children too. When born, Spartan children were taken outside and their hands placed on the eaves of […]

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Welsh and Scottish Petitions on Antidepressant Dependence
March 21, 2019 | 8 Comments

Scottish and Welsh Parliaments Debate Psychiatric Drug Dependence and Withdrawal Over the last decade, the UK has seen dramatic increases in the number of people prescribed psychiatric drugs. In the British National Formulary, the prescribers bible, Chapter 4 represents Central Nervous System drugs including antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, antiepileptics and sedatives. The total numbers prescribed have increased […]

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Encountering Doctors
March 18, 2019 | 9 Comments

Editorial Note: The image goes with a study headlined Doctors stop listening to patients several seconds into a conversation.  This post is from one of the many PSSD sufferers who behind the scenes has been helping push research on this awful condition forward.  It would be a lot easier if doctors did listen. Just as […]

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Ketamine: What’s God got to do with it?
March 11, 2019 | 20 Comments

The fuss about ketamine has generated interest in where it has come from. There were probably multiple beginnings. One was with Stan Grof, who moved from Prague to Baltimore in 1967.  His interest in therapy led him to a focus on early life experience. This stemmed from work with LSD and psilocybin in the 1950s […]

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Bait and Switch: the Great Ketamine “Breakthrough”
March 4, 2019 | 10 Comments

  Post by Johanna Ryan Maybe you heard the exciting news last month about a game-changing new treatment for depression.  It offered new hope to millions who were not helped by existing drugs, the headlines said – the first real breakthrough in depression treatment since Prozac, some thirty years ago. The product was Janssen’s esketamine […]

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Could your Stimulant or Antidepressant cause Dementia?
February 26, 2019 | 23 Comments

Quixotic Challenge A few years ago, a friend, Alan Baumeister, embarked on an interesting journey.  Alan had been Head of Psychology in Louisiana State University. He has been actively involved in the history of the mental health field and psychological inputs to it for a  long time. Louisiana is the state that hosted Robert Heath […]

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Is there such a thing as Adult ADHD?
February 18, 2019 | 12 Comments

After a variety of incarnations – Minimal Brain Damage – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) came on the radar in the 1970s in the US and exploded with its codification in DSM-III in 1980. The general sense in most of the world in the 1980s – aside from a developing ADHD-mania in the US – […]

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Fluoroquinolones: Not so Carte-Blanche
February 6, 2019 | 10 Comments

Last June, in “Historic Summit: Flox and Tox Get Together”, I told you about the European Medicines Agency’s Review and Public Hearing into the side effects of Fluoroquinolones. It was only the second time in the EMA’s history that they’d decided to hold a Public Hearing (because of the amount of public interest in this […]

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Serotonin Syndrome
February 1, 2019 | 12 Comments

It is commonly recognized that certain medications should not be administered with some others. What is not well known is that several over the counter (OTC) medications and herbal supplements can be lethal if taken with SSRIs. I have a patient who was taking fluoxetine and, experiencing some difficulty with sleep, decided to take one […]

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RxISK’s Ten Threats to Global Health 2019
January 23, 2019 | 6 Comments

WHO’s Ten Threats to Global Health in 2019 have been much in the news lately – a kind of collective New Year’s Resolution list.  The 10 resolutions can be seen below.  They have prompted an alternate RxISK list of threats.  These are not listed in order of importance. RxISK’s Threat List Sequestration of Clinical Trial Data. […]

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Fake News and the Great Purple Pill
January 14, 2019 | 14 Comments

Editorial: This post by Johanna Ryan is one of several that will pick up on the Fake News theme.  But we also want anyone who has PPI stories to get in touch.  And to pick up Dee Mangin’s legacy prescribing issue, do PPIs lead to SSRI use or is it the other way around?  There […]

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Silent Night – in the Vatican
December 24, 2018 | 22 Comments

There is no intention in this piece to cause offence.  But there seems to be no point in being anything other than blunt.  Two thousand years ago, Aristotle could argue that politics should be moral – that we should govern the polis in a manner that fostered virtue in its citizens.  There wasn’t then the […]

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Welsh Senate Withdrawal Seminar
December 17, 2018 | 28 Comments

Last week a seminar on dependence on and withdrawal from antidepressants took place in the Welsh Senedd, overlooking Cardiff Bay. It was the initiative of and organised by Aled Jones of Prescription Drug Awareness, Support and Treatment, under the auspices of Mark Drakeford – the First Minister.  The Senedd building was a stunning setting for […]

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Lawyer Needed
December 5, 2018 | 10 Comments

Lawyer Needed For a job that will offer no pay. The case will be in the family courts and involves a divorce petition but its not clear that the lawyer needs to have any family law experience as this will be like no prior family law case. A number of posts on RxISK and davidhealy.org […]

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Emotionally Unstable Brand Disorder
November 28, 2018 | 15 Comments

Editorial: James Moore on his Let’s Talk Withdrawal site has recently posted the following.  The reason to reproduce here is that it seems to overlap so much with the Peter Goetzsche Affair – see below.  In both instances we have an ex-Collaboration in one case and almost ex-College in another more concerned with their brand […]

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Emotionally Unstable Society Disorder
November 22, 2018 | 18 Comments

The news today in the UK is that nearly a quarter of young women have mental health problems – Here. A similar message appeared in this article from New Zealand a few days ago – Demand for university counselling services grows 25 per cent in two years – the text without photos and videos is below. […]

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Isotretinoin petition
Post-Retinoid Sexual Dysfunction (PRSD) Petition
October 29, 2018 | 21 Comments

There are long-standing reports of sexual dysfunction linked to the use of isotretinoin, a retinoid drug used in the treatment of acne. FDA and MHRA received the first reports of sexual dysfunction involving isotretinoin in 1983 and 1985 respectively, and according to a publication in The Lancet, Roche had received 150 reports of problems affecting the […]

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Skin and Drugs and Sex
October 25, 2018 | 6 Comments

Editorial Note:  This post returns to PSSD – post SSRI sexual dysfunction – PRSD – post retinoid sexual dysfunction – PFS – post finasteride sexual dysfunction and PGAD – persistent genital arousal disorder.  See our RxISK PSSD page for the many prior posts on these conditions There is also post on davidhealy.org – Khashoggi and […]

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Can Antidepressants Make You Less Attractive?
October 15, 2018 | 27 Comments

In recent years, there has been increasing concern about the problem of antidepressants finding their way into the environment. These drugs aren’t fully absorbed by the body and are present in human waste. Small concentrations are then flowing into rivers via wastewater treatment facilities where wildlife can be affected. In August 2018, several media outlets reported […]

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