Posted on 12/27/2004 10:53:11 AM PST by shrinkermd
For some, the diagnosis comes out of the blue. For others, it arrives after a long battle. Either way, the news that death is just a few months away poses a daunting challenge for both doctor and patient.
Drugs can ease pain and reduce anxiety, but what about the more profound issues that come with impending death? The wish to resolve lingering conflicts with family members. The longing to know, before it's too late, what it means to love, or what it meant to live. There is no medicine to address such dis-ease.
Or is there?
This month, in a little-noted administrative decision, the Food and Drug Administration gave the green light to a Harvard proposal to test the benefits of the illegal street drug known as "ecstasy" in patients diagnosed with severe anxiety related to advanced cancer.
The drug, also known as 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA, has been referred to by psychiatrists as an "empathogen," a drug especially good at putting people in touch with their emotions. Some believe it could help patients come to terms with the biggest emotional challenge of all: the end of life.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
So does good old fashioned 90 proof bourbon. They spent money on this research?
That's what the "d'oh" was for.
Don't give the left any ideas.
Are you saying that it is better to let someone die frightened and in pain, just on the off-chance they get scared enough to want to go to heaven? Convert in the manner which you believe?
I think God would rather have you come to him in joy than in terror. But that is just my opinion.
Yep. After all, that's what Prozac's for.
Are the Coors girls "real happiness" or "medical happiness?"
Last time I had some kind of happiness state related to medicine it was VERY unhappy - I barfed the Tylenol w/ Codeine all over the wall. The pain was still there and the wall now needed cleaned up. Medical happiness states can be bad.
Ecstacy originated from a legal anti-psychotic drug. Of course the current manufacturers are not regulated by the FDA so who knows what it is cut with now.
I understand. I guess it is because in the movies we see fluffy bunny death bed scenes with the person passing on their last bit of wisdom before passing. They don't show the other side of it.
There is a madness that comes with chronic pain. There are often so many changes in personality and temperament (not to the positive either) that they no longer resemble the person they were in the beginning. But that is just my experience.
Let me tell you something from personal experience. My Mother was a typical Jewish mother. She was naggy, she complained, at times she made our lives miserable with her negative attitude.
All who know me knew that when it came down to it, I would have my Father live with me if it was needed, but I couldn't bear to live with my Mother. It would just be too difficult for everyone involved.
In October of 1999 my Mother fell and broke her hip and my Father was diagnosed with Cancer. THEY BOTH MOVED IN WITH ME. I had to quit my job. Fortunately I have the best husband on Earth and I don't have children, or else we wouldn't be talking about this.
Anyway, we started treatment with my Dad while my Mother was recuperating from her fall. As always, she was negative and demanding, but I was too busy concentrating on my Father to think of anything else.
Dad passed away February 7th of 2000. THAT DAY I put my mother on anti-depressant medication and I cry with joy that these medications exist. She became the woman I knew she could be. She laughs and she NEVER complains. Five years later she still lives with us and we have no problems. I actually have a better relationship with her than I ever did.
She has home health workers come and they tell me horror stories of women my age who take care of their mothers and their mothers are still the naggy bitches they had always been.
So I've destroyed her brain, huh? Because of these pills she has had probably the best five years of her life. She has people who actually come and see her because the WANT TO , not because the HAVE TO. I am so passionate about this subject because of the way it has effected all our lives.
If I thought like you, my mother would be living in a nursing home, with strangers changing her diapers. Today, she thanks me and tells me she loves me.
I wish I had insisted she take this medication while my Dad was alive. I think his last years would have been alot better too.
I do believe there are worse evils than euthanasia. That is not however not what I was referring to in my reply. Beware of "post-creep"!!!!!
My point was that just because you feel this is not an option doesn't necessarily mean it's not an option for others.
Shh. You're ruining peoples' rants.
The poster said nothing about ethanasia. What you just did was called creating a strawman. It's a dishonest debating technique.
The poster's point was for you to keep your big fat meddlesome nose out of other people's business.
I think you are overreacting, because of your personal experience.
I think it's all a matter of degree. I can see how some people are helped by tranquilizers, anti-depressants, etc.
But I have also seen people so overmedicated, that they literraly lost their memory and were just sitting around as zombies, pretty much not even knowing what is going around them. I can even see, how this state may even be preferable for someone who is in some excruciating pain.
But as I said, some people do abuse it, and medicate people, who could spend some peaceful months or years, but instead, they even take that away from them, for the convenience of the caretakers, who are very happy to inherit a million dollar home, but not very interested in looking after the person, from whom they are getting their inheritance.
i've seen that as well, herion is a good one to watch too. After seeing that i'm not sure i'd want to wish it on anyone else, or even perhaps letting them choose that path. The funny thing about my friend who was destroyed by mdma, she couldn't even be happy that she was clean.
So many posters here who have no idea how one is affected by MDMA and psilocybin. Unfortunately, they won't let that lack of knowledge get in the way of a glib comment.
"The problem with this is that by medicating terminally ill patients, be it with Ecstasy, Heroin, Morphine or any other substance which distorts clear and rational thinking, is that it makes it much more difficult if not impossible for that person to focus upon their spiritual state.
As the body physically begins to die, we are forced to consider our spiritual condition. For those of us who know Jesus Christ as our Saviour, we have that Blessed Assurance of knowing that when we breathe our last, our destination is not one we need fear."
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You said it so well. I had the same thought, when I read the article. Best medicine against fear: prayer and faith.
I submit that people who strongly fear dying, have significant issues to resolve before that death. Perhaps with others. Perhaps with God. In any event, relieving physical pain is one thing. Tinkering with fear is another. I'm way suspect on this one.
MM
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