RxISK blog

RxISK Prize: How you can help

September 18, 2017 | 84 Comments

As will be clear from some of the helpful comments on the first post about a RxISK Prize, you are going to have to work with us to make this work. Your input can take several forms. The greatest need The biggest block to making the Prize work is the same block everyone suffering from […]

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Launching the RxISK Prize

September 12, 2017 | 76 Comments

This Prize is part of a two-pronged attack on the unwillingness of the medical and regulatory establishments to listen to people with adverse events in general – not just the sexual dysfunctions mentioned here. The second front in the attack will be unveiled in a few weeks’ time. The problem The idea for a RxISK […]

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After the Rot Sets In: Teeth on Treatment

August 28, 2017 | 32 Comments

Editorial Note: In the midst of recent posts about SSRIs and homicide and other events, there has been a continuing input of reports of changes in hair on drugs or skin and this one on teeth. All of these can have an impact on confidence but there is another worry – the treatment is […]

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Prescription for Murder ABCD

August 8, 2017 | 42 Comments

If you look at the adverse events section of the sertraline – Zoloft – label you will see in small print that sertraline has been linked to psychosis, hallucinations and aggressive reactions. Its there in small print. These links have been there since the mid-1990s. Vanishingly few doctors understand what is going on here. […]

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Prescription for Murder

July 26, 2017 | 49 Comments

Editorial: This evening a Panorama program aired on the issue of antidepressants and violence. The driving forces behind this were Andy Bell and Shelley Jofre, prompted in the first instance by Katinka Newman. The story is to my mind compelling. There have been considerable efforts to cloud the picture – see Honey I Shrunk the […]

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Withdrawal & PSSD: Terminal Diagnoses?

July 17, 2017 | 96 Comments

There has been something of a hiatus on posts on DH and RxISK in recent weeks. There are a few reasons – one of them outlined here and one to come next week. Part of the problem has been knowing what to say to people with PSSD and severe withdrawal. I have been swamped with […]

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Malignant Alienation

June 26, 2017 | 21 Comments

Gaming is becoming one of the biggest areas of human activity on the planet – bigger than movie-making, newspapers and most other media. Its power to shape the way we view things is clearly huge and likely to increase with Virtual Reality. Some weeks ago, a group released a new Escape from the Asylum game. […]

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I Took Antidepressants and I Still Feel Medicated

June 18, 2017 | 38 Comments

I suffered from a pretty bad biological anxiety that runs in my family and was very difficult to control without medication. Prior to the timeline of events below, I have taken other medications (Paxil, Effexor, Cymbalta) each causing sexual dysfunction at the lowest possible dose and genital numbness almost immediately upon taking them. I stopped them […]

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What a Surprise: RxISK taking entrepreneurs

June 12, 2017 | 7 Comments

It is worth wading through some slow moving stuff at the start of this post to get to the juicy bits. The Things Drugs Do Drugs do things. Company marketing divides these things into the one good thing the company wants you to focus on – good for a company bottom-line and the ninety-nine other […]

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Shipwrecked by the Cure

Drug Wrecked: Where Does Change Come From?

April 24, 2017 | 51 Comments

Editorial Note: There are two elements to RxISK. One is identifying adverse events in order to keep people safe and to widen our knowledge about what drugs do. But just as important is taking on a power structure that some of us get a glimpse of when we raise the possibility of an adverse event […]

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The Sheriff of Nottingham

April 6, 2017 | 13 Comments

On Friday March 31st, British airwaves were full of news about a significant change in Britain’s National Health Service. Bleeding Obvious? After its 8 AM news headlines, Radio 4’s flagship news program, Today, featured the boss of the National Health Service, Simon Stevens, explaining how the new system would be better even though long-established targets […]

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The Pills That Steal Sex

March 23, 2017 | 48 Comments

This post is the original piece written by Katinka Newman, author of The Pill That Steals Lives: One Woman’s Terrifying Journey to Discover the Truth about Antidepressants, by Katinka Blackford Newman (John Blake £8.99), thepillthatsteals.com. A slimmed down version appeared in the Daily Mail. Its unusual for a day to go past when I don’t utter […]

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You’ll Come a Taltzing Matilda with Me

March 6, 2017 | 21 Comments

Editorial Note: This post links to Are you Aware that Siliq causes Suicide and Otezla: Birth Defects and Suicide. Pharma companies have a great deal of skin in the dermatology game at the moment – perhaps more than in any other area of medicine. Taltz, aka ixekizumab, is yet another new drug for psoriasis. Others […]

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Otezla: Birth Defects and Suicide

February 27, 2017 | 12 Comments

We’ve been here before – a woman in come hither mode or able to plunge into come hither mode at a moment’s notice without the worry of being compromised by a minor skin blemish just below her hairline. See Stacy London and Welcome to Troy. AbbVie pioneered advertising like this for Humira, a hugely costly […]

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Injectable Psoriasis Drug

Are You Aware Siliq Can Cause Suicide?

February 20, 2017 | 12 Comments

There are a host of new drugs coming to market for respiratory and skin problems. These include Brodalumab, aka Siliq, Apremilast, aka Otezla, and Daliresp. Prepare to hear a lot more about Phosphodiesterase antagonists and drugs acting on Interleukin 17 or 23. These drugs can cause suicide. The companies have made strenuous efforts to hide […]

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Illnesses Worse than Side Effects?

February 13, 2017 | 21 Comments

This extraordinary image is from an advert for Clozapine. Mental illness can unquestionably bring distress – it can be haunting, dislocating and deeply disturbing. But the side effects are often more severe. Drugs like Clozapine are used by the military for torture purposes. Healthy volunteers commit suicide after a few days exposure to them. Treatment […]

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Come Back When You Have a Medical Degree

January 30, 2017 | 46 Comments

From Johanna Ryan: Who among us has not heard that at least once during a doctor’s appointment? Say you report a problem with the prescription drug the doctor put you on. Or, perhaps, that the drug is just not working. Maybe you even give him a RxISK Report, created on this website, or an article […]

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Sherlock Holmes concept

The Early History of PSSD

January 12, 2017 | 10 Comments

When did it begin? Post-SSRI Sexual Dysfunction (PSSD) officially made its debut in the peer-reviewed medical literature in 2006. Case reports were published that identified treatment-emergent sexual dysfunction that persisted after the antidepressant was stopped. The condition was given a name and its features were defined. This new literature also noted the significance of a […]

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Roche and The Perfect Circle

December 19, 2016 | 83 Comments

Editorial Note: This is part 2 of the post by Heather and David Roberts – See RoAccutane and The Perfect Circle. Ever since in 2012 our son Olly died after using it, we have tried to learn what it does to the body and the mind. For the most terrifying thing about it, apart from […]

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RoAccutane and the Perfect Circle

December 12, 2016 | 29 Comments

Editorial Note: This post by Heather and David Roberts is about their son Olly and the struggles he and they had with the health system, acne and its treatments. Our son Olly had RoAccutane prescribed for him aged 21, getting ready to celebrate his birthday at Bristol University and wanting to look his best. He […]

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Heartattack and Vine – and Plavix

December 5, 2016 | 8 Comments

Editorial Note: The first RxISK story was about Plavix – Fiona’s Story. This anonymous account has striking overlaps with that. Plavix is clopidogrel. The grel group of drugs include 1tazigrel, dimetagrel and others. They function like expensive aspirins. They cause problems on withdrawal and can be lethal. But medics and nurses will bat the problems […]

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Doctors: What do they know?

November 28, 2016 | 35 Comments

Editorial Note: This is an anonymous guest post. I started teaching in the early 1970’s, when to be a teacher was to be a professional, like a solicitor or a doctor. A few years later the Minister for Education, Margaret Thatcher, managed in one short speech to downgrade the status of teachers. At the time, […]

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Dilemmas: advising others

November 21, 2016 | 36 Comments

Editorial Note: This post is by Sally Macgregor. I left a comment on: Stopping Antidepressants: Kenny’s dilemma, which contained this statement: ‘I think acknowledging that coming off the pills can end badly is absolutely crucial. For one thing it’s honest, and without honestly how can people begin to cope with the situation they find themselves […]

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Transgender, Asexuality and SSRIs

November 7, 2016 | 12 Comments

Last week, there was a post Asexual, Transgender and SSRIs about possible links between antidepressant use in pregnancy or early childhood and a later development of asexuality. In recent weeks RxISK has had several emails asking about possible links between transgender issues or Gender Dysphoria and antidepressants. In one a woman wondered about a brother […]

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Asexual, Transgender & SSRIs

October 31, 2016 | 10 Comments

Last week’s post about Antidepressants and Autistic Spectrum Disorder came with an article attached. This article was first sent to and first turned down by BMJ Open because it contained references to a set of animal studies. BMJ Open it turns out is a human studies only journal. The interest in the animal studies listed […]

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Autistic Spectrum Disorder and SSRIs

October 25, 2016 | 14 Comments

Five years ago, the Croen et al article in the Figure above appeared suggesting that antidepressant use in pregnancy can cause Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Pharmaceutical companies rushed to manage the risks – to them. What you do is you convene your experts and you put them in boxes, a teratology box, an animal studies […]

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Bruce Springsteen: Born with an Inner Restlessness

October 17, 2016 | 46 Comments

Further excerpts from Bruce Springsteen’s Born to Run. Bruce looks like he had a dependence syndrome and perhaps even organic damage or dysfunction linked to an antidepressant – See Born to Withdraw. Did he also have akathisia? Akathisia (restlessness, agitation & turmoil): A disorder characterized by an uncomfortable feeling of inner restlessness and inability to […]

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Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen: Born to Withdraw?

October 10, 2016 | 20 Comments

Editorial Note: These excerpts from Bruce Springsteen’s new book Born To Run were picked out for us by a colleague who is a lifetime Bruce fan. Zero to sixty in nothing flat The blues don’t jump right on you. They come creeping. Shortly after my sixtieth I slipped into a depression like I hadn’t experienced since that […]

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September 12, 2016 | 18 Comments

Editorial Note: This post is a review by Johanna Ryan of Alan Schwarz’s just released ADHD NATION: Children, Doctors, Big Pharma, and the Making of an American Epidemic. Watching the triumphant final chapter of Michael Phelps’ Olympic swimming career last month, you couldn’t help admiring certain strengths that went beyond the merely muscular. The rigorous […]

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The Pill that Causes you to Steal Someone Else’s Life

September 4, 2016 | 52 Comments

Katinka Newman’s The Pill that Steals Lives brings out the hazards of being put on a treatment that then becomes the problem that other treatments are used to treat. In her case she could have easily killed herself – or her children. The website 100Families.org lists 1250+ cases where mental health is linked to homicides. […]

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