Posted by radish on February 24, 2019, at 18:11:22
A "real" drug works in virtually everyone. Morphine, caffeine, alcohol, for example,
will all produce their intended effects on everyone, assuming one does not have a tolerance and is not
a medical anomaly with a physiological inability to process it.For many (most?) antidepressants, only some people respond. This makes it seem like the drug is "fake."
I don't mean to imply conspiracy, just that it boggles my mind how drugs so statistically
weak got market approval. Indeed the SSRI class has a track record of performing no better, or only
very very slightly better, than placebos, which means in my definition that it is placebo. The
knowledge of various mechanisms exist for making perhaps universally effective anti-depressants, e.g.
mu-opiod pathways and novel dopamine pathways. But we continue to dispense placebo-like drugs?Everyone has and can expect to to experience physical pain. Hence the development of universally
effective pain-killers. If drug developers had first-hand experience with severe mental
suffering, would there be a sense of urgency towards research and development
of more effective drugs for attacking the various expressions of extreme psychological suffering?
The pharmaceutical industry has profit incentive to produce better drugs, so why don't they?
Is it more difficult to research and create effective psychoactive drugs than other types? I suppose
science has barely begun to scratch the surface on learning how the brain works. Maybe psych
treatments need time to catch up because mental illnesses are "invisible" and the medical
community only relatively recently acknowledged their existence?SP/SA
AvPD
TRD
Maybe GA
poster:radish
thread:1103378
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20190206/msgs/1103378.html