Of Oliver Sacks and the Horrid reality of PD& ADHD

[Guest guest]

- a Brain Damage Timebomb --> over 3 million USA kids

are taking ADD/ADHD drugs!!!

 

" The list of dopamine-enhancing drugs includes

> antianxiety

> and antidepressant drugs (SSRIs and tricyclics),

> most

> anti- ADD/ADHD drugs, as well as antiparkinson's

> drugs.

> Tardive adverse effects from these drugs may not

> appear until years after a person has stopped taking

> the drugs. It appears as if the brain changes set in

> motion by these drugs continue to build upon

> themselves; as a consequence of drug use (of

> dopamine-enhancing drugs), the brain moves

> inexorably,

> relentlessly, towards parkinsonism even after the

> drugs have been stopped. That march towards

> ever-increasing immobility and ever-increasing

> tremor

> may very likely continue for the rest of one's life.

> The drug warnings for nearly all dopamine-enhancing

> drugs note the risk of developing tardive tremors,

> tardive dyskinesias, tardive slowness of movement

> and

> the other tardive symptoms that constitute

> drug-induced parkinsonism. "

 

 

http://www.pdrecovery.org/patient_info/warning-addendum-10-2005.htm

 

Our program very effectively treats idiopathic

Parkinson's disease, a disorder in which brain cells

fail to produce or release dopamine, and in which

dopamine-producing brain cells revert to a dormant

(non-dopamine producing) format. We have no effective

treatment for the drug-induced cell death that causes

parkinsonism, a disorder that outwardly resembles some

of the symptoms of idiopathic Parkinson's disease.

 

The problem

 

People who have used dopamine-enhancing drugs for more

than three weeks have the following problem if they

enter our program: in the beginning, they undergo some

distinct, pleasant or sometimes unpleasant symptoms of

recovery, and many of their Parkinson's symptoms

disappear.

This is consistent with recovery from

Parkinson's. However, at some point in the process,

they find that, once their adrenaline is turned off,

they are unable to focus their minds on either

movement initiation or the mental processes required

for full recovery.

 

Their behaviors suggest that the

brain centers that regulate mental focus and will

power from the dopamine mode (as opposed to regulation

via the adrenaline mode that has been in use during

most of the PDer's life) have been damaged by the

drugs.

 

Therefore, even after many Parkinson's symptoms

are gone, the PDers who did use antiparkinson's drugs,

even for a short while, find themselves, within a few

months or a few years, in a new type of very

unsatisfactory condition.

To ameliorate this problem,

they or their loved ones often hope that the

medication, at very low dose, might solve the

remaining difficulties.

 

However, because during recovery, even partial

recovery, their bodies have switched from a state of

pure adrenaline dependency to a healthier state of

dopamine reliance, drugs that were previously

appropriate or even seemed to " do nothing " become

highly dangerous.

 

Those PDers who have tried to resume

even small amounts of medication to address the

lingering, somewhat milder problems of drug-induced

parkinsonism have had horrible problems:

death,

insanity, and, in two cases, violent thrashing that

requires the drug user to be permanently strapped to a

bed.

 

This issue, the problem of using antiparkinson's drugs

after the adrenaline system has been turned off and

recovery has started, was addressed in the medications

book.

What was not addressed in the first edition of

that book was the problem of drug-induced parkinsonism

in people who stopped taking the medication or used

the medication only briefly (more than three weeks).

We have learned that this problem is a significant

one.

 

Questions that arise

 

Some issues that were not addressed in that book are

these: what happens if these partially-recovered

people, whose recovery is stalled because of brain

damage from drugs, refuse to take any antiparkinson's

medications?

 

What will their condition be like if, after their

idiopathic symptoms are gone, they just " suffer " along

with those symptoms that have come about from drug

use?

Will they be better off than if they'd never been

in the program? Is a person better off staying on the

medication or getting off the drugs, recovering, and

then dealing with the milder symptoms of drug-induced

parkinsonism?

 

These are very good questions.

Because every case in our experience has been unique,

we cannot answer these questions with specifics. A

medical statistician who visited our program with the

hope of creating a model for prediction left us saying

" Each person's situation is so different. Until you

have treated at least a thousand patients, it will be

impossible to generate any meaningful data. "

 

Also, it is important for the reader to understand

that the motor, mental, and emotional problems of

drug-induced parkinsonism are not static.

A person

with these problems will continue to decline over

time. Many of the parkinson-like symptoms that can be

caused by dopamine-enhancing drugs are tardive.

( " Tardive " means that the adverse effects set in

motion by these drugs may not appear immediately.)

The

list of dopamine-enhancing drugs includes antianxiety

and antidepressant drugs (SSRIs and tricyclics), most

anti- ADD/ADHD drugs, as well as antiparkinson's

drugs.

 

Tardive adverse effects from these drugs may not

appear until years after a person has stopped taking

the drugs.

It appears as if the brain changes set in

motion by these drugs continue to build upon

themselves; as a consequence of drug use (of

dopamine-enhancing drugs), the brain moves inexorably,

relentlessly, towards parkinsonism even after the

drugs have been stopped.

That march towards

ever-increasing immobility and ever-increasing tremor

may very likely continue for the rest of one's life.

 

The drug warnings for nearly all dopamine-enhancing

drugs note the risk of developing tardive tremors,

tardive dyskinesias, tardive slowness of movement and

the other tardive symptoms that constitute

drug-induced parkinsonism.

 

Historical precedent

 

The earliest research on this subject, written up by

Oliver Sacks in his book Awakenings, shared the

unexpected results of administering,

for just a

" short " period of several months, dopamine-enhancing

drugs to people with sleeping sickness, people whose

physical immobility had not changed significantly in

decades.

After it was determined that the drugs were

causing these people more harm than good, the drugs

were stopped.

 

The truly unexpected part of the

experiment was the after-effects: those people who had

used the powerful dopamine-enhancing drugs for a

relatively short time were no longer in a static

condition of immobility.

 

Their post-drug condition,

for most of them, was much worse than their pre-drug

condition.

Also, their condition continued worsening,

even after all the withdrawal effects from the drugs

were finished.

 

** In other words, short-term use of

dopamine-enhancing drugs had set in motion a new brain

pattern than caused dynamic, steady worsening of their

condition even after the drugs were no longer in

use.**

 

This is a pattern that we are beginning to recognize

in people who used antiparkinson's medications,

stopped using them, and got into our recovery program.

A person who has ever used dopamine-enhancing

antiparkinson's drugs may well have created a

drug-induced condition in his brain that will, at some

point, render him depressed, immobile, and tremoring.

If he has recovered, meanwhile, from idiopathic

Parkinson's, he will not be able to use

antiparkinson's medications to treat these symptoms of

drug-induced parkinsonism.

 

I repeat: it will not be

safe for him to use antiparkinson's medications ever

again,

if his idiopathic Parkinson's is gone.

 

As our

book on medication demonstrates through hellish case

studies, a person with the above symptoms who no

longer has the adrenaline-dominance of idiopathic

Parkinson's cannot tolerate the antiparkinson's

medications at any level.

 

Therefore, we now recommend the following:

 

People who have ever used any dopamine-enhancing

antiparkinson's medications for longer than three

weeks should not enter into a recovery program...

cont'd