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 ...
The young kids are usually Ecstacy and marijuana.
And alcohol?
In that particular constellation I don't see prominent alcohol use.
No, no, don't try using the truth as a defense. We all know you're evil and wicked for drugging up your mom. Just try to live with it. /sarcasm
2-3 doses of X causes permanent brain damage? Could we see a link to the study that produced that conclusion?
Good grief. So how much pain should someone else have to suffer, in your opinion, before some kind of relief is made available to them? Who should be the one to decide how much pain is too much? You? Them? Somebody else?
Its a little hard to tell from your posts, but are you actually arguing that *all* medication for pain is wrong?
Aldous Huxley called it Soma.
I don't buy this psych ward "X-and-pot-cause-dain-bramage" story for a second, to the point it's not even worth bothering with. I've never heard of such a thing, ever, and I would defy anyone alleging it to produce a shred of evidence thereof. Your challenging the poster about alcohol and other drugs are silly--because the poster is making the story up from whole cloth.
That's not to say young drug users are unlikely to be institutionalized. They are, but because of the illegal use of LEGAL products like glue and gasoline!
Why not?
See post #59. If the Johns Hopkins study is what our psychopharmacological researcher is basing his claim on, he may not realize the findings were invalidated.
He actually was happy before he was not happy.
It worked for Kerry ;-)
I was on a morphine drip for nearly a week. Without it I would have lapsed into shock and died, just from the pain.
Morphine is GOOD very very GOOD.
I don't crave it or miss it, but I do recall feeling wonderful, a sharp contrast to the pain and fear of having one's insides digested out from under their skin.
Who on this thread would have denied me comfort and indeed, life itself because of their phobia for an opiate?
Do our grandparents and great grandparents deserve less?
Why is their suffering so important to your sensibilities?
Re your post #90: I'm with you.
Some time ago my father was dying of cancer. Fortunately, he wasn't in too much pain, and his hearing had gone. However, his room-mate was in a much worse state, screaming for the next painkiller because the last one had worn off (being nearly deaf at that point made it a lot easier for my father to be his roommate on the other side of the curtain). The staff didn't care. He had a schedule; they weren't going to bother to call the doctor to alter it.
If and when its me, I hope medical science has progressed to the point where the trials can be made easier, and that my family and doctor will make it happen.
I don't know where people come off essentially saying "its for your own good" to withhold psychological and physical pain relief if that's what the patient needs and wants. Its none of their damned business.
I think different groups use different substances. I have not found Ecstacy/marijuana users to be big alcohol users.
You may be right, but I think you're generous to give the poster the benefit of the doubt. Most researchers who are into a particular field are very up on the latest in that field. That study is what, two years old? The corrections came only a month or two later. I don't think that a researcher so specializing in that arena would have missed them. In fact, I recall the corrections being more noisily trumpeted than the study.
Well said. The poster was way out of line and you are owed an apology.
I have yet to meet a drug user who doesn't drink. Sure, they might not be drinking while doing x, but otherwise...
I'm not sure that you or others on this thread realize that MDMA was used as a theraputic tool among pyschologists for YEARS before it was outlawed in an emergency action by the FDA in response to its use on the party scene. There's a series of interesting books published posthumously and anonymously by pyschologists who continue to use the substance for counseling.
MDMA is Schedule III in Canada and thus considered suitable for medical trials. It's commonly used for post-traumatic rape victims. The substance allows an individual to deal with particularly painful situations that can take literal years of therapy to overcome.
Speaking as a close friend of someone who was counseled in an MDMA trial (for post-traumatic rape), it is a miracle drug and it is a crying shame that it remains schedule I in America (no medical use recognized). Even Cocaine is listed as a schedule II. They put some in my eye when I had lasic surgery.
Thanks. The poster A) made a wrong assumption and B) would have a very different opinion if he had any experience with a loved one's terminal illness. I hope he never does.
I know plenty about the MDMA. Was created in early 20th century as a diet drug.
Hey, the suffering of those who need a medicine is a small price to pay for preventing unauthorized fun. If partiers want mind alteration, let them get violent and cirrhotic on alcohol like good Americans!
Incorrect.
MDMA was discovered in 1914 as part of a manufacturing process and noted as a curiosity. It wasn't experimented with again until mid-century. It was first called "Adam" by pyschologists, because they felt it put the user in touch with a more innocent state of mind. Some dealer, some where called it ecstacy and the name (because it's a good one) stuck.
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