Psycho-Babble Medication | about biological treatments | Framed
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Re: Doctors underestimate our intelligence/knowled

Posted by Racer on November 18, 2006, at 13:37:30

In reply to Doctors underestimate our intelligence/knowledge ?, posted by ronaldo on November 18, 2006, at 7:58:00

From reading here, I've gotten very interested in neurotransmitters -- so much so that I've started taking classes to learn more about neurochemistry. Fascinating stuff.

But I very much doubt it will do anything towards teaching me which medications will be most likely to help me.

What has been helpful to me is seeing a pattern to the drugs that have been helpful to me: they have all had significant effects on NE, along with effects on DA and 5HT. Beyond that, though, it's a crap shoot.

The new pdoc I just started seeing asked a question I'd never been asked before, though, which I thought was pretty inspired: he asked me about recreational drug use, and I told him I'd been to high school, where it was pretty much mandatory. He asked me what drugs I'd liked! He said that often told him what sorts of drugs might be helpful. Makes sense, if you think about it. "When you self medicated, what drugs did you find helpful?" Yeah, uh huh, OK, that makes sense to me. (Answers: speed and heroin. Heroin being why I stopped taking drugs -- it scared me to enjoy it, since I'd seen what it could do to people.)

As for the whole thing with doctors, it does depend on the doctor, of course, but there are a lot of doctors out there who don't necessarily seem to see an informed patient as helpful to treatment. This is an older model of psychiatry, for the most part, and it's not helpful for a lot of people like those on this board. There are, though, a lot of people walking into psychiatrists' offices who want the doctor to tell them what to take and how it's going to make them feel, who don't want to have to participate beyond taking a pill every day. It gives them comfort to think that The Doctor will make them better. It must be hard for doctors to have to adjust between the two sorts of patients, you know? On the one hand, they have to be The Doctor who is in charge; on the other, they have to avoid insulting patients like us who want to be involved. Especially when you get into the whole "is there time to see the patient AND do the paperwork for the insurance AND earn enough to pay the office staff" thing, it's got to be hard to be a doctor these days.

Then again, considering some of my own experiences with doctors, it's awfully hard to be a patient, too...


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Psycho-Babble Medication | Framed

poster:Racer thread:704811
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20061117/msgs/704896.html