eGADs: Seroquel for Anxiety? What’s Next?
So Astra Zeneca is seeking to get EU approval to use Seroquel XR for Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which actually seems far better than using it for depression given that it zonks you out, which will certainly cure anxiety (sleep often does).
But it continues to amuse me how AZ wants to use Seroquel for everything. The next news release is going to be: “AstraZeneca Seeks Approval for Seroquel XR As Solution for Frizzy, Won’t-Behave Hair” or “AstraZeneca Seeks Approval for Seroquel XR As Solution for Busted Propane Tanks.”
Create your own. It’s a fun game.
liz | 1:27 PM | Uncategorized
Funny or Offensive?: McCain Is Insane
From the folks at Print Liberation
liz | 12:48 PM | Uncategorized
Think You’re Not Depressed? You Will Be Now.
Is this headline not the most savagely depressing thing you’ve ever read?
Suicide Rate Rises in U.S. as More Middle-Aged Die [Bloomberg.com]
What could be worse? Maybe “Children, Kittens and Puppies Die As World Collapses.” Otherwise, I think that one’s pretty bad.
liz | 3:14 PM | Uncategorized
Dawdy’s Back
Sending good wishes to Philip Dawdy of Furious Seasons. He’s got a bad back and is out of commission. Feel better, Philip!
Of course, his absence should make me feel obliged to switch gears and be the serious muckraker while he’s down. It’s a shame that’s not going to happen.
liz | 12:25 PM | Uncategorized
Head Case
I went to the doctor yesterday, and because of some migraine mishegas, I have to get an MRI. I can’t say strongly enough how terrified I am of MRIs. I have pretty bad claustrophobia, and I find the experience unbearable. Sometimes I can get through it, and sometimes I can’t.
I know there are many people who don’t understand phobias, and it seems strange to them. Like, what’s the big deal? Even for those of us who have phobias, other people’s fears can seem odd. For instance, many people have phobias of snakes and rats, whereas I view both as friends. Instead, I have severe and sometimes disabling fear of vomit — in particular, other people throwing up but fear of myself doing it too. Even a fear of the actual stuff. Just writing those sentences makes me feel afraid of my own computer. How bizarre is that?
Yesterday at the doctor I was practically hyperventilating about the MRI, but when they told me I had to get two painful shots, I was completely fine. I have no fear of shots — I even like them a little — but others are utterly phobic about that or having their blood drawn. So it’s all relative, and the most important thing we can do for friends or loved ones who have phobias is to respect their fears and understand that they’re absolutely real for them.
One approach is NLP, or Neurolinguistic Programming. I haven’t tried that yet, but here’s an interesting recent story of someone who did. From Devon24.co.uk:
A SIDMOUTH dog groomer with a deep-seated fear of spiders, has had her life transformed by an Ottery St Mary woman using neuro linguistic programming.
Clipping a Rottweiler’s nails is a doddle for Suzanne Hoare, of Yardelands, but she was so terrified of spiders she couldn’t even watch them on TV or in books, let alone let them in her house.
Her work led her to Vanessa Hudson of St Anthony’s Close, Ottery, who recently qualified as an NLP life coach, using the same techniques as hypnotist Paul McKenna to deal with such issues as marital problems, phobias, obesity and smoking.
Vanessa offered to help Suzanne overcome her phobia after she spoke about it while grooming Vanessa’s 18-year-old collie-cross Max.
Now, six weeks after her first session, Suzanne can look at spiders without coming out in a cold sweat.
[Photo by Liz Spikol, wildlife photographer]
liz | 9:44 AM | Uncategorized
I Screwed Up
Poor Becca Trabin. Here she is, working so hard on being a blog intern, and I don’t even give her the props she deserves. She sent me two — count ‘em, two! — posts last week, and I received the emails and then forgot to read them. Lame of me, I know. Here was her first one. It’s a little snarky, but hey, that’s how it is when you’re young. You’ve got attitude. This was about Brokaw hosting the debate.
Last night’s debate was alright. Maybe for the next one, though, we could do away with Tom Brokaw continuously chastising our future Commander-in-Chief for trying to explain his economic policy in greater length than a sixty-second sound byte will allow, since we have a collapsed economy and a $10 trillion debt. Maybe it would help.
I’d be interested in hearing the logic train of the mainstream media that lead to a sacred pact between the candidates and Tom Brokaw, which forbade either man to speak beyond ONE minute. Being as our democracy is sort of at stake here, I wonder if next time I might get to hear each man give us his views in full instead of having to hear a self-inflated member of the press paternalistically remind them about a sacred pact.
The debate was good, but I wonder if Abraham Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas wouldn’t have told their friend Tom to shut the fuck up.
This post is more … evolved.
I was having breakfast and watching Joe Scarborough’s show this morning, and I couldn’t help but notice that he said something awesome. He told liberals to stop acting like we’re somehow better than McCain supporters. He said it’s off-putting, it makes conservatives want to vote the other way, and then they win every four years.
It’s intuitively true: don’t act superior to others. But it’s easy to forget that when it happens on a broader scale. If I were to call an Australian aborigine unevolved, anthropologists would rightly call me ignorant. But if I say that fat suburbanites who shop at Wal-Mart and vote Republican are unevolved, then I’m considered cool and smart. Granted, I don’t have to share a government with aborigines, but the cross-cultural criticisms within the U.S. are pretty judgmental from both sides.
Liberals who act pompous and self-righteous, who villainize conservatives by calling them “evil,” or who dehumanize them by calling them “Neanderthals,” misrepresent the true principle of equality that underlies Obama’s political platform. Equality doesn’t mean we each get good healthcare but I’m actually superior to you because you’re not smart enough to vote in your best interest. It means that on a fundamental level of human existence, neither of us is greater or lesser, and we deserve the same respect, wherever in the game of intelligence we may be.
Maureen Dowd begins her recent column on grammar and elitism:
I had hoped I was finally done with acting as an interpreter for politicians whose relationship with the English language was tumultuous.That’s not true, Maureen. If the President actually were smarter than you, there would be a lot less space for your gargantuan ego to flourish. She continues:
We could, following her strenuously folksy debate performance, wonder when elite became a bad thing in America. Navy Seals are elite, and they get lots of training so they can swim underwater and invade a foreign country, but if you’re governing the country that dispatches the Seals, it’s not O.K. to be elite? Can likable still trump knowledgeable at such a vulnerable crossroads for the country?She’s conflating the term. Being elite, as in doing something that not very many people can do, is wonderful. But being an elitist, as in taking the position that people who aren’t as smart as you are wrong for being intimidated by uppity smart people, and instead favor people who make them feel comfortable, is not okay. If you want people to like you, don’t act superior. If you want Republicans to like Barack Obama, don’t surround him with your elitist messages. He stands for an equality that’s much more powerful than the one you’re granting him.
Well done, Rebecca. Stay tuned for Becca’s writing about madness, the Great Schlep (she went, she saw, she conquered, sorta) and other stuff, including whatever you’d like to hear from a bespectacled Temple student.
liz | 4:56 PM | Uncategorized
Classical Gas/Autism Optimism
On deadline days I’ve taken to listening to radio stations through my iTunes, and though I love classical music, I find it quite annoying that classical DJs always talk in that whispery voice, as though they’re sharing an incredible secret. Speak up, DJs! I can’t hear you! SPEAK UP! Now I’ve switched to vocal jazz, and am just as annoyed by Carmen McRae. Maybe there’s no hope.
There are a lot of optimistic autism stories lately. The new US magazine features Jenny McCarthy and her son, who she says has recovered from autism by going on a special diet. He’s just like a normal boy, she says, except (as seen in the below photo) he’s always trying to feel her boobs. Otherwise? Fine.
In Newsweek, in an online exclusive, Claudia Kalb talks to a blogger with an autistic son, who was puzzled by John McCain’s citing of Sarah Palin of some kind of autism expert.
Spotlight on Autism
No, but seriously. On a more somber note, the New York Times magazine this weekend had an article by Melissa Fay Greene about the way some kids on the autistic spectrum can be helped by alternative schools and approaches. One of these schools has modest goals, but good-hearted intentions:
T.C.S. does not promise miracles. It does not promise to be a perfect fit for every teenager with an A.S.D. Dave Nelson does not invest great faith in the possibility of leaving the autism spectrum behind, no matter how much parents (like himself) would love to believe it. The breakthroughs at T.C.S. are subtle rather than headline-grabbing, noticeable at first only to the adults closest to the kids and to the students themselves. But for these families, any forward motion can inspire a moment of real hope and happiness, and quite remarkable progress happens every day.
Okay, back to deadline now.
liz | 12:53 PM | Uncategorized
Be Proud to Be Muslim
As people sensitized to discrimination, as so many readers of this blog are, listen carefully to the moving words of Colin Powell, who truly articulates the point the of view of the America I want to live in.
liz | 9:10 PM | Uncategorized
Paralyzed From the Chest Down: Right to Suicide?
Twenty-three-year-old rugby player Dan James (pictured) was paralyzed after a difficult scrum in March 2007. Obviously, he was devastated by this turn of events and ultimately couldn’t come to terms with it. His parents traveled with him to an assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland last month and are now being investigated by British police. They may end up charged with murder.
I guess the question about assisted suicide for people with non-terminal illnesses is always how much their mental status affects their decision to end their lives. Could depression have been a factor here? And if so, should medications have been tried first? Perhaps he had already gone down that road. Some people can be Christopher Reeve and some people can’t. Here’s an email his mother sent to a British newspaper:
Three weeks ago our son was at last allowed his wish of a dignfied death in the Dignitas apartment in Zurich. … He couldn’t walk, had no hand function, but constant pain in all of his fingers. He was incontinent, suffered uncontrollable spasms in his legs and upper body and needed 24-hour care. Dan had tried to commit suicide three times but this was unsuccessful due to his disability. His only other option was to starve himself.
Dan had been a lively and hugely active young man he was highly intelligent, lovable and so loved by his family. Whilst not everyone in Dan’s situation would find it as unbearable as Dan, what right does any human being have to tell any other that they have to live such a life, filled with terror, discomfort and indignity, what right does one person who chooses to live with a particular illness or disability have to tell another that that they should have to.
In response to someone calling the police, Dan’s mother wrote:
Our son could not have been more loved and had he felt he could live his life this way he would have been loved just the same, but this was his right as a human being. Nobody but nobody should judge him or anyone else.
What do you think?
liz | 1:06 PM | Uncategorized
