Drugged Warriors: Sharp Rise in U.S. Military Psychiatric Drug Use and Suicide
Soldiers deployed in combat zones are taking quantities of psychiatric drugs -- and military suicides are on the rise.
April 5, 2010
One in six service members is now taking at least one psychiatric drug, according to the Navy Times, with many soldiers taking “drug cocktail” combinations. Soldiers and military health care providers told the Military Times that psychiatric drugs are “being prescribed, consumed, shared and traded in combat zones.”
The Navy Times reporters Andrew Tilghman and Brendan McGarry also noted that there has been a large increase in military suicides. From 2001 to 2009, the Army’s official suicide rate increased from 9 per 100,000 soldiers to 23 per 100,000. During that same period, the Marine Corps suicide rate increased from 16.7 per 100,000 soldiers to 24 per 100,000.
A Military Times investigation of records obtained from the Defense Logistics Agency revealed that the DLA spent $1.1 billion on psychiatric and pain medications from 2001 to 2009, and that there was a 76 percent increase in psychiatric drugs. DLA records show:
• Antipsychotic drugs spiked most dramatically — orders jumping by more than 200 percent.
• Orders for anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills such as Valium and Ambien increased 170 percent.
• Orders for antiepileptic drugs (also known as anticonvulsants) such as Depakote, routinely used as psychiatric medications, increased 70 percent.
• Antidepressants showed a 40 percent increase.
Investigators found that antipsychotic and antiepileptic drugs, approved for bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, are now commonly used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms such as nightmares, nervousness, and anger outbursts. The use of antipsychotic drugs for non-psychotic conditions such as PTSD is called “off-label” prescribing. The general public is also subject to off-label prescribing, which is considered legal.
In February 2010, Brig. Gen. Loree Sutton, the Army’s highest-ranking psychiatrist, reported to Congress that 17 percent of the active-duty force and as much as 6 percent of deployed troops are on antidepressants.
Just how insane is it to prescribe psychiatric drugs to deployed troops? The Navy Times piece tells us about Spc. Mike Kern who enlisted in 2006 and spent a year deployed in 2008 with the 4th Infantry Division as an armor crewman, running patrols out of southwest Baghdad. Suffering from nervousness, sleep problems and depression, Kern was given the antidepressant Paxil. A few days later, while patrolling the streets in the gunner’s turret of a Humvee, Kern said he began having serious thoughts of suicide for the first time in his life. Kern said:
I had three weapons: a pistol, my rifle and a machine gun. I started to think, ‘I could just do this and then it’s over.’ That’s where my brain was: ‘I can just put this gun right here and pull the trigger and I’m done. All my problems will be gone.’
The Food and Drug Administration now requires that antidepressants must be labeled with a warning about increased risk of “suicidality” (which includes suicidal thoughts as well as attempts). This “black-box” warning is a result of research concluding that antidepressants double the risk of suicidality in depressed children, teenagers, and young adults as compared to equally depressed young people who are not taking antidepressants. Given meta-analyses (that I cite in Surviving America’s Depression Epidemic) which show that antidepressants are often no more effective than placebos, the potential risks of giving these drugs to soldiers in a war zone clearly outweigh any potential benefits.
Many of these psychiatric drugs prescribed to service members can also impair motor skills, reduce reaction times, and generally make one more sluggish -- or what soldiers call “stupid.” So in addition to antidepressants potentially resulting in increased suicidality, other psychiatric drugs can make deployed soldiers feel less capable of protecting themselves and their buddies. While being slow or “stupid” is not going to cost a general or politician his or her life, it can cost soldiers the vigilance necessary to keep themselves and their fellow soldiers alive.
Title: Not Feeling Well? Perhaps You're 'Marijuana Deficient'
Link: http://www.alternet.org/drugs/146151/not_feeling_well_perhaps_you%27re_%27marijuana_deficient%27/?utm_source=feedblitz&utm_medium=FeedBlitzRss&utm_campaign=alternet_drugreporter
Abstract:
Scientists have begun speculating that the root cause of disease conditions such as migraines and irritable bowel syndrome may be endocannabinoid deficiency.
March 24, 2010 |
Content:
Scientists have begun speculating that the root cause of disease conditions such as migraines and irritable bowel syndrome may be endocannabinoid deficiency.
March 24, 2010 |
For several years I have postulated that marijuana is not, in the strict sense of the word, an intoxicant.
As I wrote in the book Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? (Chelsea Green, 2009), the word ‘intoxicant’ is derived from the Latin noun toxicum (poison). It’s an appropriate term for alcohol, as ethanol (the psychoactive ingredient in booze) in moderate to high doses is toxic (read: poisonous) to healthy cells and organs.
Of course, booze is hardly the only commonly ingested intoxicant. Take the over-the-counter painkiller acetaminophen (Tylenol). According to the Merck online medical library, acetaminophen poisoning and overdose is “common,” and can result in gastroenteritis (inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract) “within hours” and hepatotoxicity (liver damage) “within one to three days after ingestion.” In fact, less than one year ago the U.S. Food and Drug Administration called for tougher standards and warnings governing the drug’s use because “recent studies indicate that unintentional and intentional overdoses leading to severe hepatotoxicity continue to occur.”
By contrast, the therapeutically active components in marijuana — the cannabinoids — appear to be remarkably non-toxic to healthy cells and organs. This notable lack of toxicity is arguably because cannabinoids mimic compounds our bodies naturally produce — so-called endocannabinoids — that are pivotal for maintaining proper health and homeostasis.
In fact, in recent years scientists have discovered that the production of endocannabinoids (and their interaction with the cannabinoid receptors located throughout the body) play a key role in the regulation of proper appetite, anxiety control, blood pressure, bone mass, reproduction, and motor coordination, among other biological functions.
Just how important is this system in maintaining our health? Here’s a clue: In studies of mice genetically bred to lack a proper endocannabinoid system the most common result is premature death.
Armed with these findings, a handful of scientists have speculated that the root cause of certain disease conditions — including migraine, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, and other functional conditions alleviated by clinical cannabis — may be an underlying endocannabinoid deficiency.
Now, much to my pleasant surprise, Fox News Health columnist Chris Kilham has weighed in on this important theory.
Are You Cannabis Deficient?
via Fox News
If the idea of having a marijuana deficiency sounds laughable to you, a growing body of science points at exactly such a possibility.
… [Endocannabinoids] also play a role in proper appetite, feelings of pleasure and well-being, and memory. Interestingly, cannabis also affects these same functions. Cannabis has been used successfully to treat migraine, fibromyalgia, irritable bowel syndrome and glaucoma. So here is the seventy-four thousand dollar question. Does cannabis simply relieve these diseases to varying degrees, or is cannabis actually a medical replacement in cases of deficient [endocannabinoids]?
… The idea of clinical cannabinoid deficiency opens the door to cannabis consumption as an effective medical approach to relief of various types of pain, restoration of appetite in cases in which appetite is compromised, improved visual health in cases of glaucoma, and improved sense of well being among patients suffering from a broad variety of mood disorders. As state and local laws mutate and change in favor of greater tolerance, perhaps cannabis will find it’s proper place in the home medicine chest.
Perhaps. Or maybe at the very least society will cease classifying cannabis as a ‘toxic’ substance when its more appropriate role would appear to be more like that of a supplement.
Read more at www.alternet.org
