The American Geriatric Society has set new guidelines apropos of pain management in the elderly; according to these guidelines, NSAIDs (nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) such as aspirin and ibuprofen should be used with extreme caution, and in most cases should be superseded by opioids when treating pain in adults over the age of seventy-five.
The New York Times reports:
“Few people think twice about taking aspirin or ibuprofen. But for those 75 and older, the high doses needed to treat chronic pain may be so dangerous that patients may be better off taking opioids instead, an expert panel has found.”
— The New York Times
Advil more deadly than morphine? Go figure!
Rockin’ “second generation antipsychotics” song!
DOCTOROFMINDMD presents round 2 of “Psychojeopardy.”
(By the way, he gets the first one wrong; Cymbalta® [duloxetine} as well, has not yet gone generic.)
How well did you do this time?
DOCTOROFMINDMD, the loony but sometimes insightful psychiatrist, presents round 1 of “Psychojeopardy.”
How well did you do?
— Le Petit Parisien, “Une fumerie d’opium en France.”
• “tu possèdes les clefs du paradis, ô juste, subtil et puissant opium!” •
— Charles Baudelaire citing Thomas de Quincey, in Les Paradis artificiels.
“Throughout our nation’s colleges, particularly among white male students in the competitive schools of the Northeast, Talbot wrote, such behavior is now common. At one small college, a 2002 study found that more than 35 percent of undergraduates had abused prescription stimulants in the preceding year.”
— Judith Warner (From a New York Times post).
Let’s say that, hypothetically, modafinil (Provigil®) is as innocuous as caffeine; would you assert that a student who uses modafinil, instead of coffee, to pull an all-nighter is more of an abuser than those who opt for caffeine?
I’ll withhold my opinion for now.
But, I would like to point out that, for a reason of which I’m not aware, most Americans’ rhetoric tends to be vehemently antagonistic whenever an argument arises apropos of a pill (A pill? oooohhhh! aaaaaahhhh! Scary!!!).
What if there were a student who didn’t like the taste of coffee? What’s s/he supposed to do? It’s not fair! S/he as to work on a more “natural” and more “normal” schedule than the students who “artificially” boost their nervous systems.
Well…hmm…there’s got to be some other means of helping yourself get through the night… Oh yeah! No Doz®!
But that’s a pill!
Bummer.
Can’t take it; it’s obviously a super dangerous drug—to which I can do nothing but ABUSE!
(Image via flickr)
In the seventeenth century, doctors would stick your head in an oven to purge it of the folly inside. As you may note, after having carefully observed all of the horrible things of which this man’s mind is being cleansed, you would have been considered severely ill if you partook in such activities as dancing, playing tennis or backgammon, enjoying music, wearing masks, or donning feathered hats.
(Nota bene: the artist may have produced this image with the intention for it to be taken as satire.)
Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid whose potency is about 80 times that of morphine, is commonly used as an adjunct analgesic during general anaesthesia.
It also comes in a berry-flavored lollipop form—great for children!
Modafinil (Provigil®)
I wrote a short post about this substance on saperlipopette, but because I’ve created this new site, devoted exclusively to topics of this nature, I thought I’d discuss it more in depth here.
For the most part, I agree with doctor in the risible video above. Although, I think he might be a bit too dismissive of the drug. Nonetheless, his circumspect approach is decidedly more responsible than that of journalist Margaret Talbot, outlined in her recent New Yorker article about “neuroenhancers.”
My main problem with the article is that it seems to pretend that no adverse effects might result from the usage of these “neuroenhancers.”
First of all, if we were to pretend that modafinil causes no harm to the body proper, as Talbot seems to imply, the behavioral effects resulting from chronic usage of the drug could be disastrous. People using modafinil to stay up at night and work nonstop will eventually be bitten in the ass by the effects of sleep deprivation:
— immune system depletion
— fat growth rather than muscle growth
— potential harm to brain cells
— acceleration of the aging process
— memory impairment
— increased risk of depression
Secondly, modafinil is a relatively new drug, and although it’s chemically unrelated to the more popular stimulants (amphetamine and methylphenidate), the simple fact of its being a stimulant makes it extremely dangerous for individuals with a genetic predisposition to mania, schizophrenia, psychosis, and Tourette’s syndrome, all of which modafinil could trigger.
