Doctors, evil doctors

[Motivation_Follows_Action]

I was brought up to respect the education and expertise of people who had put themselves through years of education and hard work to learn their trade, namely doctors and lawyers. Boy was that a naive way to think.

I am interested to know how people were first prescribed adderall by their doctors, and then because of their addiction, became dependent on their doctors to prescribe it. It seems like there is a lot of bad practice out there.

For me, my experience was this: I was first prescribed adderall by a friend and colleague who was also a psychiatrist. Fair enough to him, he only prescribed it a few times and not for a large amount, but he probably never should have done it because he knew I didn't really have ADHD. I don't blame him for my addiction, but I kind of wish he'd never prescribed it to me.

When I needed (or wanted, really) to take more, I went to a doctor I'd found through connections at work, and this guy was bad news. Total penny pincher. He was never a good therapist, used to clock watch the whole time during my weekly or biweekly sessions, and in the end, when I said to him I didn't think the therapy was helpful or working, he said to me, "you don't need to be in therapy. I can continue to work on your psychopharmacology needs but we don't need to meet every week... so long as you continue to pay me for each prescription I write". Therefore, I continued to pay him $600 a month for him to write me prescriptions. I would pick them up from his office at a time that suited him. This meant leaving the office early, fitting in to his schedule, doing whatever I needed to do to get the thing in my hands. Finally, when I needed still more, I found another doc. I just said to him during my first meeting that I needed a prescription for 3 x 20mg IR per day and he wrote it without blinking. He took my bloodpressure, and so long as that was ok he was ok. He asked if I needed anything else.

Point is, doctors have a vested interest in getting you addicted. The more you need, the more you'll see them, the more they can charge you for visits (or prescriptions, as was my case). This may sound cynical, but it's my experience. Not all doctors are like this of course but you have to sort through the crap to find a good one.

[Cassie]

Some doctors are idiots, just like there are idiots in every profession. A college education certainly doesn't guarantee intelligence. My doctor wasn't stupid or evil though. She prescribed me SSRIs and Wellbutrin for at least a year before Adderall. Adderall was only offered up after many things were first tried for my general complaints of fatigue and lack of focus and I reported that none of them worked. And it's not like I ever gave her any indication of my addiction along the way - I just told her they were working so that I could continue to get them filled every month. I believe she was genuinely trying to help, and I didn't have a history of addiction or anything.

WTF, you paid $600/month for a doctor's appointment? Mine was a psychiatric nurse practitioner. She charged $50 for an appointment every three months, $20 with insurance. My scripts were always written for three months at a time (I couldn't refill more than a few days early at the pharmacy). I think most doctors are just ignorant of the addictiveness of amphetamines, because the drug reps tout their safety, when used in small doses for the short term. There are virtually no long-term evidence based studies for amphetamines or any other psychotropic prescription drugs. FDA approval only requires two 8-week positive trials proving drug effectiveness compared to placebo. They can go through as many negative trials as they want until they get two positive ones, and no regulatory body has to know about the negative trials that didn't work. Once the drug is approved, there is no financial incentive for a drug company to perform a costly long term study. Every psychiatric drug you ever take, it's been tested for 8 weeks of use in adults. (If you really want to talk about guinea pigs, look at the kids who take this shit. Children aren't part of drug trials). So, much of the ignorance in the medical profession stems from the lack of evidence based studies on these meds. The evidence is anecdotal, but holy shit there are a lot of anecdotes, aren't there?

[Kyle_Chaos]

This post brought my favorite "evil" doctor to mind, so I had to post this..