{"id":37654,"date":"2013-09-19T23:17:47","date_gmt":"2013-09-20T03:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=37654"},"modified":"2013-09-19T23:22:27","modified_gmt":"2013-09-20T03:22:27","slug":"over-medicating-in-the-vamilitary-health-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=37654","title":{"rendered":"Over medicating in the VA\/military health care."},"content":{"rendered":"

Well I have been looking for a reason excuse <\/del> to talk about this and this is about as good as any. This is about a Veteran that died from “over-medicated”. <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

“It just got out of control,” said Heather. “They just started pill after pill, prescription after prescription…and he’d come home with all brand-new medications, higher milligrams<\/strong>.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I have recently seen this in regards to the medication that I take for my ADD. <\/p>\n

Short history, diagnosed at the age of five. Was on Ritalin<\/a> for the better part of twenty years, and started taking adderall.<\/a> off and on since 2010. So I have a general idea of what to expect from the medication and the risks. <\/p>\n

For example, this medication is not a cure all. It will not make one have the mental discipline to do the needed tasks, it will just help you do it. A better way of saying this how vision glasses help people. It will help you see clearly, but it will not influence you on were you look. <\/p>\n

Second is the idea of taking “drug holidays” to prevent the body from becoming desensitized to the medication does. Also it allows the body to recover from the reduced appetite that comes with this type of drug. Just keep this in mind for the next part. <\/p>\n

I am going through school right now and I was having some trouble with my ADD and I wanted to talk to Behavioral Health about ideas for better coping mechanism for school. The first thing that I was told that I needed to be on a medication regiment. When I told them that I was already taking 1 20mg of Adderall XR (extended release) on weekdays, that it was not enough. That until I was on a working regiment that any coping mechanisms would be ineffective. <\/p>\n

So I wait for my appointment to talk to the doctor. We got some basic history about my ADD. He increases my dose to 30mg XR and that I need to take on the weekends when I study. Ok we get that out of the way and I was ready to talk about now coping ideas that I have been wanting to talk about for over two weeks. <\/p>\n

Nope, nothing. It seems that the Adderal will take care of everything and that i did not need to do anything else. Remember when I was talking about what these drugs can and cannot do earlier? Yea I was very surprised to hear that and was thinking about the newer patients who get Adderal and get told the same thing. I go about my schooling and about two weeks later I have a follow up. <\/p>\n

I told that the increased medication seems to have helped me in the hands on portions and helping with studying I was concerned about two things. The first one was the effects real or was this a placebo effect, and that I was unconsciously looking\/wanting to see better results. The second was with no drug holidays that what is there to prevent my body from becoming desensitized to the medication. <\/p>\n

His first answer was to evaluate for long term and if it was a placebo effect would reduce rather then maintain. The second was that if I become desensitized to the medication that we could just increase the dose. <\/p>\n

I asked him what happens if I keep finding myself having to keep increasing the medication dosage over and over to keep the same therapeutic levels. His answer was that there was a point that the body will not be desensitized to the medication and to remain on that dosage. <\/p>\n

The answer that I wanted to say was “you mean death”? Considering what the drug is and that it it highly abused in colleges and other schools that you would want to control the dosage by drug holidays (It is in the medication instructions) to keep the risk of becoming dependent on the medication. So I wonder when I see comments like this if anyone else has had similar experiences. <\/p>\n

“I have seen people that have not had an exam of that body part that they’re complaining of pain in for two years,” said a doctor who presently treats pain patients at the VA and had asked not to be identified. “It’s easier to write a prescription for narcotics, and just move along, get to the next patient<\/strong>.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well I have been looking for a reason excuse to talk about this and this is … Over medicating in the VA\/military health care.<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veteran-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}