The Drugs That Changed Our Minds

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The Drugs That Changed Our Minds Page 38

by Lauren Slater


  The six major antidepressants beat the placebo less than half the time: Gary Greenberg, ‘Is It Prozac? Or Placebo?’, Mother Jones, November–December 2003.

  antidepressants outperform placebos, but only minimally: Ibid.

  Difference in performance between antidepressants and placebos ‘trivial’ and ‘clinically meaningless’: Irving Kirsch, quoted ibid.

  The FDA approved fluoxetine after just six to eight weeks of clinical trials: Thomas Insel, ‘Antidepressants: A Complicated Picture’, National Institute of Mental Health blog, 6 December 2011. See also Andrea Rossi, Alessandra Barraco and Pietro Donda, ‘Fluoxetine: A Review on Evidence Based Medicine’, Annals of General Hospital Psychiatry 3, no. 2 (12 February 2004); Nili Buchman and Rael D. Strous, ‘Side Effects of Long-Term Treatment with Fluoxetine’, Clinical Neuropharmacology 25, no. 1 (January 2002): 55–57.

  Few studies on the long-term side effects of serotonin boosters: Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash, 10.

  ‘I think the industry is concerned about the possibility’: Donald Klein, quoted ibid., 105.

  Bolo was told that taking a serotonin booster: Personal interview with Ann Bolo, 25 January 2015.

  Psychiatric disorders are not tied to a chemical imbalance: Irving Kirsch, Ph.D., The Emperor’s New Drugs (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 5–6.

  Lilly package insert for fluoxetine: Prozac package insert, Eli Lilly and Co., Indianapolis, 2017.

  60 to 75 per cent of people experience sexual dysfunction: James M. Ferguson, ‘SSRI Antidepressant Medications: Adverse Effects and Tolerability’, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 3, no. 1 (February 2001): 22.

  As serotonin rises, dopamine decreases: Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash, 122.

  Fluoxetine caused facial and bodily spasms: Ibid.

  Dexfenfluramine damaged the serotonin neurons: Ibid., 95.

  Hoehn-Saric reported on a 23-year-old man with obsessive-compulsive disorder: Ibid., 102.

  Fluoxetine makes it difficult to maintain an erection: Lauren Slater, ‘How Do You Cure a Sex Addict?’, New York Times, 19 November 2000. See also Drogo K. Montague et al., ‘Pharmacologic Management of Premature Ejaculation’, American Urological Association, Journal of Urology 172, no. 1 (July 2004): 290–94.

  Surprisingly conventional existences: Ibid.

  Dependency on a drug causing vulnerability: Alvaro Alonso et al., ‘Use of Antidepressants and the Risk of Parkinson’s Disease: A Prospective Study’, Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 80, no. 6 (2009): 671–74.

  Statistics on American women: Laura A. Pratt, Ph.D., Debra J. Brody, M.P.H., and Qiuping Gu, Ph.D., ‘Antidepressant Use in Persons Aged 12 and Over: United States, 2005–2008’, National Center for Health Statistics Brief 76, October 2011.

  antidepressants can be responsible for ‘emotional blunting’: H. E. Fisher and J. A. Thomson Jr, ‘Lust, Romance, Attachment: Do the Sexual Side Effects of Serotonin-Enhancing Antidepressants Jeopardize Romantic Love, Marriage, and Fertility?’, Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience, eds. S. Platek, J. Keenan and T. Shackelford (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 245.

  ‘serotonin-enhancing antidepressants can jeopardize one’s ability to fall in love’: Ibid., 245–65.

  Women will be more orgasmic: B. Fink, N. Neave, J. T. Manning and K. Grammer, ‘Facial Symmetry and Judgments of Attractiveness, Health and Personality’, Personality and Individual Differences (2001): 491–99.

  Oxytocin is tightly tied: Michael D. Breed and Janice Moore, Animal Behavior (Cambridge, MA: Academic Press, 2015), 3–4. See also Milt Freudenheim, ‘The Drug Makers Are Listening to Prozac’, New York Times, 12 January 1994.

  Over a billion dollars in sales of Prozac in 1993: Peter Breggin and Ginger Ross Breggin, Talking Back to Prozac: What Doctors Won’t Tell You about Prozac and the Newer Antidepressants [e-book] (Open Road Media, 1 April 2014).

  ‘intense, violent suicidal preoccupation’: M. Teicher, M.D., Ph.D., C. Glod, R.N., M.S.C.S, and J. Cole, M.D., ‘Emergence of Intense Suicidal Preoccupation during Fluoxetine Treatment’, American Journal of Psychiatry 147, no. 2 (February 1990): 207–10.

  ‘Death would be a welcome result’: Ibid.

  She banged her head repeatedly against the floor: Ibid.

  The drug agitated them: Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash, 146.

  Wesbecker on fluoxetine: Ibid., 137.

  Account of Wesbecker massacre: Mark Ames, Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion from Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2005), 7–8.

  ‘like a zombie, an automaton’: Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash, 181.

  Account of the Wesbecker trial: Ibid., 170–74. See also Richard DeGrandpre, The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World’s Most Troubled Drug Culture (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 35–38.

  ‘My profession now practises’: Jeffery Lieberman, Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry (New York: Little, Brown, 2015), 310.

  Scientists have searched for evidence: Kirsch, The Emperor’s New Drugs, 4–5.

  Happy subjects do not necessarily: Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic, 72–73.

  ‘Several weeks later’: Ibid., 81.

  The likelihood of relapse: Ibid., 158, 169.

  Rats’ neurons were ‘swollen’ and ‘twisted like corkscrews’: Ibid., 170. See also S. K. Kalia et al., ‘Injury and Strain-Dependent Dopaminergic Neuronal Degeneration in the Substantia Nigra of Mice after Axotomy or MPTP’, Brain Research 994, no. 2 (2003): 243–52.

  Helen Mayberg reported in 2013: Helen Mayberg et al., ‘Toward a Neuroimaging Treatment Selection Biomarker for Major Depressive Disorder’, JAMA Psychiatry 70, no. 8 (2013): 821–29. See also Richard Friedman, M.D., ‘To Treat Depression, Drugs or Therapy?’, New York Times, 8 January 2015.

  Long-term exposure to cortisol: Christopher Bergland, ‘Cortisol: Why the “Stress Hormone” Is Public Enemy No. 1’, Psychology Today, 22 January 2013.

  Depressed ‘patients showed significantly more decline’: T. Frodl, M.D., et al., ‘Depression-Related Variation in Brain Morphology Over 3 Years’, Archives of General Psychiatry 65, no. 10 (2008): 1156–65.

  Possibility that antidepressants are neurotrophic: M. Sairanen, G. Lucas, P. Ernfors, M. Castrén and E. Castrén, ‘Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor and Antidepressant Drugs Have Different but Coordinated Effects on Neuronal Turnover, Proliferation, and Survival in the Adult Dentate Gyrus’, Journal of Neuroscience 25, no. 5 (2005): 1089–94.

  Elizabeth Loftus on inducing false memories: E. F. Loftus and J. E. Pickrell, ‘The Formation of False Memories’, Psychiatric Annals 25 (1995): 720–25.

  Diazepam another instigator of diagnostic drift: Erik MacLaren, Ph.D., and Amanda Lautieri, eds., Sober Media Group, ‘Valium History and Statistics’, DrugAbuse.com, 21 December 2016.

  Time magazine’s report on patient Susan: Anastasia Toufexis, ‘The Personality Pill’, Time, 24 June 2001.

  Psychiatrists prescribe fluoxetine: Ashley Pettus, ‘Psychiatry by Prescription’, Harvard Magazine, July–August 2006.

  ‘Dial-A-Prozac’: Glenmullen, Prozac Backlash.

  Distinction between the solid science involved: Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry: From the Era of the Asylum to the Age of Prozac (New York: Wiley, 1998), 324.

  Pharmacological hedonism: Carlat, Unhinged, 104–5.

  Serotonin boosters cause subjects to become peppier: Simon Sobo, ‘Psychotherapy Perspectives in Medication Management’, Psychiatric Times, 1 April 1999.

  Fluoxetine reduces frequency of ultrasonic cries in baby rats: Ibid.

  Ann Bolo on going off of fluoxetine: Personal interview with Ann Bolo, 18 December 2016.

  ‘A profession undergoing intellectual rejuvenation’: Lieberman, Shrinks, 234.

  ‘hard to think of a single truly novel psychotropic drug’: Richard A. Friedman, ‘A Dry Pipeline for Psychiatric Drugs’, New York Times, 19 August 2013.

  Sufferers complaining of a light head: Solomon, The N
oonday Demon, 288.

  Cauliflower as a cure for depression: Ibid.

  Patients of Rufus of Ephesus: Ibid., 305.

  Sexual stimulation of genitals as treatment: Ibid., 291.

  Depression was seen as a sin: S. S. Asch, ‘Depression and Demonic Possession: The Analyst as an Exorcist’, Hillside Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 7, no. 2 (1985): 149.

  Rufus’s ‘sacred remedy’: Solomon, The Noonday Demon, 290.

  5. Placebos

  ‘Placebos are extraordinary drugs’: Robert Buckman and Kark Sabbagh, Magic or Medicine? An Investigation of Healing and Healers (Toronto: Key Porter, 1993), 246.

  ‘febrile, gasping for air, completely bedridden’: B. Klopfer, ‘Psychological Variables in Human Cancer’, Journal of Projective Techniques 21, no. 4 (December 1957): 331.

  X-rays showing that the tumours had shrunk: Ibid.

  Mr Wright’s tumours reappeared: Ibid., 333.

  Ancient medicine consisted almost entirely of placebos: Arthur K. Shapiro and Elaine Shapiro, ‘The Placebo: Is it Much Ado about Nothing?’, The Placebo Effect: An Interdisciplinary Exploration, ed. Anne Harrington (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 12–36.

  Theriac was an especially popular placebo: Ibid., 13.

  In the 1970s endorphins were discovered: J. Hughes, T. W. Smith, H. W. Kosterlitz, L. A. Fothergill, B A. Morgan and H. R. Morris, ‘Identification of Two Related Pentapeptides from the Brain with Potent Opiate Agonist Activity’, Nature 258 (December 1975): 577–80.

  Most patients were given a placebo: Daniel Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect’ (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 103–4, 125.

  How placebos might work, colour correlation: Ibid., 104.

  Sumatriptan versus placebo: Ibid., 52.

  People with Alzheimer’s: Robert Trivers, The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 73.

  Diazepam affects a person: Steven Poole, Rethink: The Surprising History of New Ideas (New York: Scribner, 2016), 214. See also Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, ‘Knowingly Taking Placebo Pills Eases Pain, Study Finds’, ScienceDaily, 14 October 2016.

  No definitive profile of a placebo person: Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect’, 33–34.

  Outcome of sham surgeries: Ibid., 59.

  67 per cent reported subjective improvement: Ibid., 33–34.

  Patient estimates that he is 95 per cent better: Ibid. For statistics on later treatment, see also Daniel Moerman, ‘Explanatory Mechanisms for Placebo Effects: Cultural Influences and the Meaning Response’, in Science of the Placebo: Toward an Interdisciplinary Research Agenda, eds. Harry Guess, Linda Engel, Arthur Kleinman and John Kusek (London: The BMJ, 2002), 86.

  ‘Electrical machines have great appeal’: Alan G. Johnson, ‘Surgery as Placebo’, The Lancet, 22 October 1994, quoted in Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect’, 64.

  The belief in the surgery sparks an increase of dopamine production: Jo Marchant, ‘Parkinson’s Patients Trained to Respond to Placebos’, Nature, 10 February 2016.

  Making medications so strong they trump placebo: Gary Greenberg, ‘Is it Prozac? Or Placebo?’, Mother Jones, November–December 2003; see also Irving Kirsch, The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding The Antidepressant Myth (New York: Basic Books, 2010), 78.

  Psychotherapeutic treatment in the United States: Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect’, 89.

  People respond similarly to all types of psychotherapy: Ibid., 90.

  those who receive psychotherapy: Ibid., 90–92, 96–97.

  Pennebaker’s experiment with college students: Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect’, 96–97.

  Use of ‘causal words’ improves health: Jessica Wapner, ‘He Counts Your Words (Even Those Pronouns)’, New York Times, 13 October 2008.

  Correlation of the effect between experience of therapist and outcome is 0.01: Moerman, Meaning, Medicine and the ‘Placebo Effect’, 92.

  Study involving skilled therapists and kindly non-therapists: Ibid., 93.

  ‘healing effects of a benign human relationship’: Hans H. Strupp and Suzanne W. Hadley, ‘Specific vs. Nonspecific Factors in Psychotherapy: A Controlled Study of Outcome’, Archives of General Psychiatry 36 no. 10 (1979): 1135.

  Account of overdose on placebo antidepressants: Joseph Stromberg, ‘What Is the Nocebo Effect?’, Smithsonian.com, 23 July 2012. See also R. R. Reeves, M. E. Ladner, R. H. Hart and R. S. Burke, ‘Nocebo Effects with Antidepressant Clinical Drug Trial Placebos’, General Hospital Psychiatry 29, no. 3 (2007): 275–77.

  Voodoo death accounts: Walter Bradford Cannon, ‘ “VOODOO” Death’, American Journal of Public Health 92, no. 10 (2002): 1593.

  Researchers believe that nocebos precipitate: W. Häuser, E. Hansen and P. Enck, ‘Nocebo Phenomena in Medicine: Their Relevance in Everyday Clinical Practice’, Deutsches Ärzteblatt International 109 no. 26 (2012): 459–65.

  When a newspaper releases a story about a suicide: Daniel Goleman, ‘Pattern of Death: Copycat Suicides among Youths’, New York Times, 18 March 1987. See also Madelyn Gould, Patrick Jamieson and Daniel Romer, ‘Media Contagion and Suicide among the Young’, American Behavioral Scientist 46, no. 9 (1 May 2003): 1269–84.

  When an accident is reported: Harrington, The Placebo Effect, 65.

  Account of Frau Troffea and the ‘dancing plague’ of Strasbourg: Jennifer Viegas, ‘ “Dancing Plague” and Other Odd Afflictions Explained’, Discovery News, 1 August 2008; and F. Sirois, ‘Perspectives on Epidemic Hysteria’, in Mass Psychogenic Illness: A Social Psychological Analysis. eds. M. J. Colligan, J. W. Pennebaker and L. R. Murphy (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 1982), 217–36.

  The more care you lavish on a person: Ted J. Kaptchuk, John M. Kelley, Lisa A. Conboy, Roger B. Davis, Catherine E. Kerr, Eric E. Jacobson et al., ‘Components of Placebo Effect: Randomised Controlled Trial in Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome’, BMJ 336 (2008): 999. See also Elaine Schattner, ‘The Placebo Debate: Is It Unethical to Prescribe Them to Patients?’, The Atlantic, 19 December 2011.

  6. Psilocybin (Magic Mushrooms)

  Carol Vincent found a strange swelling: Personal interview with Carol Vincent, 14 April 2016.

  He believes meditation ‘opened up a spiritual window’: David Jay Brown and Louise Reitman, ‘An Interview with Roland Griffiths, Ph.D.’, https://www.maps.org/­news-letters/­v20n1/­v20n1-22to25.pdf. See also Olga Khazan, ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Mushrooms’, The Atlantic, 1 December 2016, Web.

  His landmark study of the drug: Roland Griffiths et al., ‘Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance’, Psychopharmacology 187 no. 3 (27 May 2006): 284–92.

  Huxley’s written request to inject him: Laura Huxley, This Timeless Moment (San Francisco: Mercury House, 1991), 320.

  Kast’s statistical analysis: Stanislav Grof, The Ultimate Journey: Consciousness and the Mystery of Death (Santa Cruz, CA: MAPS, 2006), 204–6.

  Kast went on to study 128 cancer patients: Ibid., 205.

  Kast’s study with eighty people: Ibid.

  Wasson hated mushrooms: R. Gordon Wasson, ‘Seeking the Magic Mushroom’, Life, 10 June 1957. See also Valentina Pavlova Wasson and R. Gordon Wasson, Mushrooms, Russia, and History, vol. 1 (New York: Pantheon, 1957), 22.

  Wasson had heard stories: Wasson, ‘Seeking the Magic Mushroom’.

  ‘they cried out in rapture over the firmness’: Ibid.

  ‘I am a cloud person, a dew-on-the-grass person’: Ibid.

  The mushrooms were sacred to them: Ibid.

  ‘everything took on a Mexican character’: Michael Pollan, ‘The Trip Treatment’, The New Yorker, 9 February 2015.

  Timothy Leary learning about the magic mushrooms: Jim Parker, ‘Intelligent People Keep Growing and Changing: The DSN Interview with Dr. Timothy Leary’, Drug Survival News, part 1 (Septembe
r–October 1981): 12–19.

  Grof’s description of ‘psychedelic therapy’: Grof, The Ultimate Journey, 207.

  ‘all our patients transcended the realm of postnatal biography’: Ibid.

  ‘fear of their own physiological demise diminished’: Ibid., 209–10.

  ‘I was taken to a fresh windswept world’: Ibid., 213–14.

  Untimely death of Walter Pahnke: Ibid., 196–97, 215.

  Method and process of Grof’s psychedelic sessions: Ibid., 215–28.

  Case study of Matthew: Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax, The Human Encounter with Death (New York: Dutton, 1977), 66–68.

  On Matthew’s psychedelic session: Grof, The Ultimate Journey, 239–41.

  Case study of Jesse: Grof and Halifax, The Human Encounter with Death, 80–81.

  On Jesse’s psychedelic session: Grof, The Ultimate Journey, 253.

  ‘The perspective of another incarnation’: Ibid.

  ‘I don’t really have altogether a definitive answer’: Personal interview with Charles Grob, 3 February 2012.

  ‘On psychedelics you have an experience’: Personal interview with John Halpern, 8 February 2012.

  Pahnke’s Good Friday experiment: Thomas B. Roberts and Robert N. Jesse, ‘Recollections of the Good Friday Experiment: An Interview with Huston Smith’, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 29, no. 2 (1997): 99–103.

  Eight said they had a mystical experience: Pollan, ‘The Trip Treatment’.

  Psilocybin high shared many aspects: Ibid.

  Doblin finding methodological flaws: Ibid.

  Patient thinking he was meant to announce the next Messiah: Rick Doblin, ‘Pahnke’s “Good Friday Experiment”: A Long-Term Follow-Up and Methodological Critique’, Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 23, no. 1 (1991): 1–25.

  Critiques of ‘chemical mysticism’: Grof, The Ultimate Journey, 222.

  The counterargument, ‘chemical mysticism’: Ibid.

  Psychedelic plants at the root of all religions: Richard J. Miller, ‘Religion as a Product of Psychotropic Drug Use’, The Atlantic, 27 December 2013.

  Leary’s prison experiment: Ralph Metzner, Ph.D. ‘Reflections on the Concord Prison Experiment and the Follow-Up Study’, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs 30, no. 4 (1998): 427–28. See also Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, Madison Presnell, Gunther Weil, Ralph Schwitzgebel and Sarah Kinne, ‘A New Behavior Change Program Using Psilocybin’, Psychotherapy 2, no. 2 (July 1965): 61–72.

 

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