Influence your thoughts and feelings

[Guest]

Okay, so what's your position?  Usually you can get away with simple links to humor, but this is something that seems like a discussion might be in order.  Not sure if your new alias will suffer the same fate as your previous one, but this topic is actually one that might stay open.

Personally, I wouldn't be so quick to believe everything you read.  As the article mentions, the introduction of SSRIs seemed to be a new thing in pharmacotherapy because they carried rather benign side-effect profiles (fluoxetine - Prozac, paroxetine - Paxil, and sertraline - Zoloft are the biggest names in the class).  However, after years of use, we understand more about the less noticeable, though sometimes more bothersome events that go along with the SSRI treatment.  The next step has come in antidepressants and we now have drugs like duloxetine (Cymbalta) and venlafaxine (Effexor) that moderate the effects of serotonin as well as nor-epinephrine (or nor-adrenalin depending on where you are in the world).  The problem is that our bodies use a relatively limited number of chemicals in a huge variety of ways that you'll always be affecting more than just one reaction in the body.  Take the class of anti-hypertensive meds referred to as alpha-blockers: not used very frequently in moderate patients, but they occupy a certain position in the management of difficult to treat high blood pressure.  You know where Viagra (sildenafil) Levitra (vardenafil), and Cialis (tadalafil) came from? The same class of drugs as the alpha-blocker anti-hypertensives.  This class of drugs also fostered the selective alpha-blockers used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH - non cancerous enlarged prostate).

Bottom line of my position: no matter what new classes of drugs promise, given enough treatment experience, the unintended effects of the drugs will come to light, and many of them will be serious (NSAIDS for example).  Meds are not the answer to every non-problem the human race comes across.
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There is an answer to every problem (with enough experiments; failures and successes). I believe many people would be willing to invest in a drug that increased their processing speed, memory formation as well as retainment, and possibly motor skills. Making for interesting stock options.:whistling:
These aren't options that your kids can see, if you are around in 2 decades many of them will be a reality for the average consumer.