Problematic Stuff

[Seabass]

Republicans are problematic as fuck. Hell, they're downright fucking monstrous!

[Seabass]

[DRSB]

Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit

“Most people are put on these drugs in primary care, after a very brief visit and without clear symptoms of clinical depression,” said Dr. Allen Frances, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University. “Usually there’s improvement, and often it’s based on the passage of time or placebo effect.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/heal ... 80409&te=1

[Svartalf]

I dunno, I quite for a few months last year, and then fell down the slope again, badly... I suspect that only the chemicals hold me together at the current point and I'd collapse into a heap of fairly small and weepy pieceds without the meds... at least that's how I was shortly b efore I started taking them again.

[pErvinalia]

Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit

“Most people are put on these drugs in primary care, after a very brief visit and without clear symptoms of clinical depression,” said Dr. Allen Frances, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University. “Usually there’s improvement, and often it’s based on the passage of time or placebo effect.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/07/heal ... 80409&te=1

This doesn't seem relevant to the thread, but I'll give my take on it. ADs are way overprescribed, particularly in the US where they are allowed to advertise them to people as if they are all potential consumers of their product. I don't think ordinary GPs should be able to prescribe them. You should have to go to a head quack to get them. Regarding quitting them, the SNRIs (the newer type of ADs) are particularly nasty in terms of withdrawals. I had a horrible 5 days or so getting off duloxetine (cymbalta), and it would have been longer had I not got the serotonin boost from the SSRI I took to replace it. I'm currently on Effexor which is considered the hardest one to get off. There's been law suits in the US about it (that's probably covered in the article). I'm going to have to get off that soon. I'm only still on it so that I don't introduce any unnecessary symptoms while I'm trialling medication for bipolar disorder. I'm really not looking forward to getting off it, particularly if it is worse than the cymbalta and that I won't be replacing it with another serotonin reuptake inhibitor.

[Rum]

As mentioned elsewhere I started to taper off Mirtazipine a few weeks ago. The first couple of reductions were a bit too fast and I experiences some symptoms as a result - mostly very unpleasant spikes in anxiety. I'm now down to a quarter of my prescribed dose and will stay on that for another week or so. Yesterday was 'uncomfortable'. Today is better.

The article is helpful and informative and raises a lot of questions about how drugs like these - partly let out into the wild on the understanding they aren't addictive - which strictly they are not in the sense that opioids can be - are not more closely tested and monitored in terms of long term use.

You only have to google 'mirtazipine' to see how common these issues are. And the issue is complicated to unravel because what people are experiencing with withdrawal could be a number of things - not least a return of the symptoms that led them taking the stuff in the first place.

[Svartalf]

good for you Rum, me, I don't think I'm ready yet to stop the stuff, my last fall is too near and was too hard.

[Scot Dutchy]

I have reduced my oxazepam by half. Feel a bit panicky now and again but I will keep reducing. Taking them has just become a habit.

[Forty Two]

The US descends further and further into bigoted, ultranationalist fascism in the vein of 1930s Germany and Italy,

Oh, sure, I was escorted to work by brownshirts and blackshirts, and the camps are opening down the street....

The Sinclair issue is concerning, sure. A single public service announcement that goes through more than half of the local news stations shows, to me, that Sinclair should not be permitted to get bigger and we have had enough mergers and acquisitions. We need a vibrant competitive market in the media, and what has been allowed to happen from 2010 to 2016 was quite extreme, as Sinclair basically bought up large chunks of the industry.

Now, there is talk of them going after still more -- with a purchase of Tribune Corporation that is under review of the FCC. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... bune-media The FCC is carefully reviewing the matter, and is requiring Sinclair to divest itself of various broadcasting outlets in order to meet broadcast ownership limitations.

If you'd like to, we can look all the national news stations, and show them repeating the same news talking points over and over again. It's a big problem, but it's not some sort of bias in favor of Donald Trump. Have you watched CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, ABC, and the like? They wouldn't have a positive story about Trump if you paid them.

Look at the media talking points on the latest Syria thing over the weekend. You want to know a real danger of the media? All of a sudden every media pundit is in line, and the Democrat and Republican mainstream guys are agreeing with each other! War with Syria is a moral imperative now! I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but the consistency of reporting yesterday about Syria is rather disconcerting. Every news outlet is positive that Assad used chemical weapons and that it is the job of the United States to wage all out war with Syria.

[pErvinalia]

Didn't Trump criticise Obama for drawing a line in the sand and then letting Assad to cross it fully without any consequences? It would seem to me that if he lives up to his rhetoric, he should be all systems go for an attack on Syria.

[Forty Two]

Republicans are problematic as fuck. Hell, they're downright fucking monstrous!

Typical John Oliver over-hype. These are private clinics set up to offer certain lawful services, and nobody is forced to see them. It's not hard to find a place to get an abortion. There are about 3/4 of a million abortions in the US annually, and that figure is 18% of births. Not quite sure who is having a huge problem getting an abortion if they want one.

Here is the website for the Sunrise clinic which Oliver first discusses -- http://www.sunrisepregnancy.org/Home.aspx

It doesn't state or imply that they give abortion. And, they offer free pregnancy testing, free ultrasounds, etc., and then they provide abortion information as well as alternatives to abortion. It seems to me that Oliver's hysterical ranting is at bottom a criticism that they give out information which argues against the need for an abortion or in favor of not getting an abortion. He doesn't want that, and he thinks that it's a "lie" for someone to say that they think abortion is a serious matter, which can have psychological consequences to the mother.

Now, I'm pro choice - I think that having abortion legal for any reason or no reason in the first trimester or up to even 20 weeks is a necessary public policy. I am neither in favor of nor against these Sunrise clinic type places. I don't want them government funded, though.

Other than that, I'm not sure what the problem is here. It's not like they're setting up inquisition tribunals to ruin the academic careers of people who are pro-abortion, and it's not like they are equating being pro-abortion with violence, harassment and hate speech. They're simply advocating their own view of it. They aren't interfering with abortion clinics, pulling fire alarms, and throwing bricks through window, hitting people in the head with bike locks, throwing urine on people, punching police horses, blocking traffic and setting fires.... not like the "few soy boy SJWs..."

[Forty Two]

Didn't Trump criticise Obama for drawing a line in the sand and then letting Assad to cross it fully without any consequences? It would seem to me that if he lives up to his rhetoric, he should be all systems go for an attack on Syria.

Except, he didn't draw a line in the sand...

And, the reality is, no evidence is being presented that Assad committed the attack. I hope Trump holds the reigns in on this and demands that it be shown to be Assad's doing. Both sides over there have chemical weapons, and it doesn't seem to me that Assad had anything to gain by using them. He was winning the war against the insurgents over there. The only advantage to come of Assad using chemical weapons is as a pretext to war.

We fell for it in Libya. Let's not fall for it here.

And where are the cries from the media of "Syria wasn't involved in 9/11?" Where are the cries that "Syria did not attack us?" Where is the reporting of the 10,000 bodybags that might come back from a ground war in Syria? Why is all of a sudden ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC -- all of them, reporting that there is now justification for war, and we must do something about it?

I hope Trump smells the bullshit.

[pErvinalia]

Didn't Trump criticise Obama for drawing a line in the sand and then letting Assad to cross it fully without any consequences? It would seem to me that if he lives up to his rhetoric, he should be all systems go for an attack on Syria.

Except, he didn't draw a line in the sand...

Who, Obama? Yes he did, concerning chemical weapons use in Syria.

[Forty Two]

Didn't Trump criticise Obama for drawing a line in the sand and then letting Assad to cross it fully without any consequences? It would seem to me that if he lives up to his rhetoric, he should be all systems go for an attack on Syria.

Except, he didn't draw a line in the sand...

Who, Obama? Yes he did, concerning chemical weapons use in Syria.

Trump didn't.

Look at the tenor of CNN's articles on this. https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/09/opinions ... index.html

They are urging Trump to go to war, and for the first time now we're getting them making statements that Obama's failure to go to war in Syria was a big foreign policy "blunder."

So, now there is no need that our use of military force, especially ground troops, be in response to an attack on us. Preemptive self defense? The policy they lambasted Bush over - heck, nowadays the press are fine with it even if there is no "imminent threat." We don't even need self defense. All that has to happen is a dictator has to be accused of using a chemical weapon, and it is a moral imperative for war.

The big key here, too, is that apparently France wants us to fight this war. France is in it, so, well, CNN, of course, views this as an "international" thing and not a "unilateral" thing. The right countries are for it...

But, remember Libya - and it was Sarkozy who helped get that shit show started.

There is no reason to go to Syria. We don't even know for sure this was Assad who did this. Trump needs to resist the all-out pressure for war in Syria. His language, though, over the last 2 days does not bode well. He's calling Assad an animal, and blaming Putin, and saying that Obama should have acted and this would have all been taken care of.

Well, I'm not so sure Obama should have acted. He shouldn't have blurted out about "red lines," but I think not getting involved in a new war at the time was the correct decision. His "blunder" was to declare the red line. Owning the mistake of doing that and not going to war was not the blunder.

Now we have Trump, who seems to be swallowing the unified party-line that this was Assad who dunnit. But, frankly, after the endless stream of lies about wars over the past 15 years, I want some proof in the pudding before we start shooting people in Syria. We went in to nail ISIS and they're basically gone. Good job.

France, if you want to go into Syria - go in. Handle it. I don't know what exactly is going on in Syria, of course, but I saw Lindsey Graham and Howard Dean both in lock-step beating the drum for war, and I saw all the CNN pundits making the moral case for war and daring Trump to act. Something doesn't smell right. When you've got the Democrats and the Republicans and CNN etc all on the same page -- there is something wrong. Tread carefully, Donald.

[Seabass]

It's not hard to find a place to get an abortion... Not quite sure who is having a huge problem getting an abortion if they want one.

You need to get your head examined. You are a sick man. You are delusional. You are completely detached from reality. At the very least, you should try to break out of your insane right-wing media bubble.

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gqm4 ... n-abortion
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the ... this-year/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017 ... n-abortion
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/aborti ... hest-laws/
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/ma ... -by-state/
http://www.remappingdebate.org/node/806
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... on/283254/