Troubling news from my doc about new FDA/DEA guidelines
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/10029780538
Sorry in advance for the length of this post…
The basics about my situation: Bad depression. Hospitalized once for it. Full-on panic attacks and many trips to the ER thinking I was dying. That was about 12 years ago. It took me a couple of years to get the right balance of Zoloft and Xanax that have made me live a fairly normal life, and I have been for a little over a decade now.
So today I go to my doc for the routine med check and new prescriptions for a few months.
She tells me I’m taking too much Xanax. (For the record it is a low dose: .25mg up to 3x daily as needed – I sometimes don’t even take that much – and 1mg when I go to bed.)
New FDA/DEA guidelines, she tells me, and gives me the form pictured below. She explains this is practice-wide and anyone taking opioids or benzodiazepines is getting this. (I later confirm this when a nurse tells me it’s been hard dealing with patients who are stressed about it, and then I hear another patient at checkout expressing concern.)
So after ten years of living a fairly normal life, the new plan is to get me off the Xanax. Right.
I wonder how the FDA and DEA are going to deal with the doctor shopping, pharmacy jumping, and illegal market they’re going to create with this?
The fill-in-the-blanks nature of the form is suspicious to me, as well as the blanket “should not be used for more than four weeks” statement.
I kind of wonder whether this practice is under some kind of scrutiny.
Anyone else getting this news, specifically about benzodiazepines? Has this already BEEN news and I just missed it?
Filed under: General Problems
OMG! I’ve been taking Xanax for many years. Up til a few years ago i was prescribed.50. My doctor changed it to .25. Then reduced the number each month by half. I have never been told i shouldn’t take it. Thank you for your article. I guess i need to taper down
I’m struggling through all of it with the chronic pain, depression and anxiety and the pharmacy played doctor and refused my scrip after 5 years with same dr. No one cares. I had to go on suboxone and the withdrawals were horrible. The med makes you tired and ill so how I sleep all day and night instead of living a normal life on my normal meds that I didn’t abuse.
Why didn’t you go to other pharmacies ? Did your pain management doctor stop prescribing pain meds because you were being prescribed anti anxiety meds ? Or was your pain doctor prescribing all of your meds ?
The best way around this is to have a psychiatrist prescribe the Xanax. Xanax is prescribed for psychiatric disorders. Psychiatrists treat these disorders
Again,it’s the quintessential Faustian deal. The average American has had enough with the manifold injustices perpetrated on their fellow human being in this nation by the Federal Leviathan and the prevaricative excuse to create the foundation of the Police State that is simply known as the War on Drugs. The average American finally had enough of the Reefer Madness Era fantasies that were told and retold by the Punitive High Priesthood of enforcers known as the DEA. Why?
Because the anecdotal and common individuals’ observational studies called day-to-day living demonstrate that a humble plant, daemonized by the Sacrosanct body of Freedom usurpers, is not only not anything as has been pontificated from the public pulpit of the MSM, it is apparently pretty useful in numerous applications.
As my professional walk is in the world of utilizing various and sundry molecules to treat disease and at times to actually heal, to cure those suffering from any number of maladies, this humble, reasonably hardy plant has amazing and yet not well understood medicinal qualities. Unlike its synthetic, conceptually related cousins in the healing arts, it’s amazingly free from the serious, damaging and often fatal adverse effects that the synthesized molecules seem to be afflicted with. Given free market economics, free from artificial regulation and taxation, this plant is also just pennies on the dollar in terms of expense to produce, market and utilize as a medicine. To my knowledge, no legitimately well designed study with no other agenda than to establish the truth has ever been able to document the LD 50 of the Cannabis sp.
Even the humble aspirin tablet has killed. In fact if Aspirin had been discovered in the recent modern era (let’s say in the last 25 years for discussion sake), it would not be an OTC drug. It has too many liabilities that would not make it suitable for the layperson to use without some sort of continuing medical oversight. That’s the basic difference between an Rx and an OTC medicine. Yet Cannabis sp was listed right next to Heroin, LSD, MDMA, and a number of other “Highly addicting” substances that have been determined by a Law Enforcement Agency to have no legitimate medical use.
Wait, WTF, a group of cops has the power to make that determination. That’s like leaving the decision as to which donuts are suitable for these cops to consume up to the Zen Buddhist Council of Liberia. What’s that? You don’t see the connecting logic in my analogy? You shouldn’t. There is none. That’s the point. The decision to leave such medical science-type investigatory discoveries and decisions up to a group of professionally trained Brute Squad personnel is equally bereft of any logic. It’s purely a demonstration by hyperbole of the logical fallacy termed non sequitur.
So the DEA has lost their cash cow, their primary Raison D’être. That is a plant of course, and given to its own abilities to propagate, an entirely ubiquitous plant in the near future as there will be an explosion of Cannabis Sativa,Indica and Ruderalis. So what is the DEA and its handlers (who have grown addicted to the power and money that is this Ponzi scheme with a badge) to do in order to keep the Executive Branch’s Plebiscite Thumpers and Ordinary Productive Citizen Mass Incarcerators on the payroll and not have to invest loads of re-education and retraining funds to do so (because frankly we need to face the fact, there is only so much job opportunity for a knuckle-dragging direct descendent of the Neandertal available). Here is the braintrust grade idea they came up with.
Let’s grab the next branch of low-hanging fruit, the Scheduled prescription drugs that are legal. The goal, the end game is to create an even larger black market right in the middle of suburbia. No longer will the War on Drugs be confined to the hood. Nope, Mr and Mrs White America in the burbs…welcome to the War in Drugs right in your front yard and the 3 a.m., no-knock warrants on your home. Get used to strangers rooting through your garbage cans at oh-dark-thirty looking for prescription vials that formerly held Xanax, Soma, Norco, Tramadol, Tenuate, etc. That’s the new evidence promised land right there. If there is no ready connection between the information on an empty vial and a “legitimate by DEA standards” pharmacy, well get used to the feel of cold steel rings on your wrists and smelly, ill sized cages with actual criminals for roommates. This is the new hunting grounds for the DEA, because they now have renewed their sacred vows that require them to exclaim…” Dammit, we will make the public safe, no matter what we have to do, even if we have to protect and serve the shit out of you.”
I’m not crazy or or an anti-government anarchist type. I’m an average American who loves Truth more than a lie and who values Freedom above everything. Mark my words…this is a deliberate, albeit lame assed attempt at creating a black market and suffering humans who will risk breaking what are reinterpretations of existing laws from the CSA of 1970. These new interpretations will be used in an attempt to continue the illusion that the DEA and its mission are legitimate and we need them to save us. The fatal flaw in their logic is that the targeted folks are not ignorant, and they have support groups that naturally exist around them that are equally intelligent and educated. They also tend to be connected to a fair degree too.
These are not your disenfranchised young, poor, uneducated urban Americans. The DEA does not really understand who they are declaring war on and it will backfire. the tragedy is that there will be injustices, injuries and deaths in the unwinding of the latest clown car parade and it would be hilarious if there were not so much suffering entailed by the innocents. Just be forewarned and use common sense to not make yourself an easy target. This is an inherently lazy and ill conceived last ditch plan. Just try and stay out of the way.
Agree THIS WHOLE THING WAS PLANNED!!!!!maryw
Amen fellow patriot! Leviathan is a PERFECT description of our overbearing, over reaching government!
Yes, I got put out of a clinic for over this very thing. They showed me non compliant with treatment plan even tho I had a script form my reg dr. and was told NOT to move the script to BY the Pain clinic ! I didn’t find out until I insisted on my records about being listed as non-compliant.