Posted by Solstice on February 29, 2012, at 14:24:36
In reply to Lou's response- what are the chances- goakur, posted by Lou Pilder on February 29, 2012, at 7:40:31
Lou, I think the logic you are using here is faulty.Even with respect to side effects, it's a roll of the dice with an accumulation of risk based on how many times you take the medication. Side effects (or death or life-runiation) do not work like that.
Side effects, large or small, as a rule are generally based on your unique body chemistry. For example, I am not allergic to penicillin. A fair number of people are. My 'chance' of having an allergic reaction is not a roll of the dice every time I take it, and my chances of having a reaction do not increase as I increase the number of times I take it. It's simply a matter of am I, or am I not, allergic to penicillin. If I'm not, then the chance of me having a random future allergic reaction is so remote that it's not even worth considering.
Same with side effects from drugs. Admittedly, there are often side effects that are related to dosage.. and some, for example Tardive Diskenesia, where that side effect and the permanence of it seems to be tied to the dosage and length of time it's taken.
But for the most part, if you don't experience a side effect of a certain medication, you will likely never experience the side effect in question unless other factors are changed (additional meds that interact, other health conditions that interact, changes in dosing, etc.). So it really isn't logical (it's a lot of generalizing and exaggeration) to say that each time you take a medication, you are putting yourself at risk for the whole range of possible side effects, and if it starts out as a .01% chance, then as you accumulate quantity of doses, you exponentially increase your risk to the point that you're just about guaranteed to have a life-ruining or death-causing side effect.
It just doesn't work that way.
Solstice
>
> Friends,
> Scott has brought up a good issue here as to {risk} in relation to taking mind-altering drugs of getting agranulocytosis. But there are many more life-ruining conditions or death or addiction that one can get from psychotropic drugs.
> What I would like for members here to know is that when you are taking a psychotropic drug, the dice are being rolled as to if you will get a life-ruining condition or death.
> Now when one rolls the dice, and let's say the odds in one roll of getting snake-eyes is 1 out of 36, or .028. But now let's say that you want to know the chances of getting snake eyes OR box cars in one roll of the dice. The chances for box cars is also 1 out of 36, but the chances of getting either of the two is the sum the chances, or in this case 2 out of 36 . And let's suppose that you roll the dice 100 times. Now the chances of getting one of them id mutiplied by 100. So in this case, in one roll the chances are 2 out of 26 or .06. But in 100 rolls, the chances are 6.00 which is greater than one.
> Now this is because when people take drugs, they take them usuually 2 or 3 times a day. So they roll the dice twice a day, let's say.
> so what I am getting at is that they take the drug for years or for life and could roll the dice thousands of times.
> Then there is that there are more than one life-ruining conditions to get. Suppose the chances of a blood disease is .03 and TD is .04 and addiction is .9 and sudden death is .01 and NMS is .12. If you add those up you get 1.01 which is greater than one. And if you take the drug each day for years, you multiply that by the number of days. You see, when one picks a card out of a deck of cards enough times, it approaches a certainty that they will pick the Joker.
> Lou
poster:Solstice
thread:1011122
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120221/msgs/1012021.html