Blue Dreams

Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds by Lauren Slater      Audio Book:  13 hours and 33 mins.       Hardback Book:  416 pages     

Excellent book – well written – well researched, and lived by the author.   Very real and down-to-earth look into how drugs have evolved from common natural ingredients found in nature into the big business it is today with giant multi-gazillion dollar pharmaceutical companies wining and dining the medical profession with trips, bonuses, even paying for the children’s education in some case all to get support for marketing NEW drugs to replace Old drugs that may still be fine for solving medical issues but as in the fashion industry giant pharmas roll out new medications on the red carpet to replace last years cheaper offering.    Drugs come and go and ones that work fine are often dropped completely from being produced in order to produce new and different offerings most times more expensive with several side effects which offer opportunities to prescribe more drugs to counteract the side effects brought on by the other drug.   Pharmaceuticals are a cash cow and the trickle down effect is bribing call it what you will but if a pharmaceutical rep is offering a doctor presents for promoting a particular drug, sounds like bribing a baby to eat its vegetables with the promise of icecream to come after.   I was witness to this when I overhead a conversation a doctor I was seeing had in another room outside the door of the room I was in waiting for a check-up.   The rep. spoke eloquently about the drug they were giving samples of and telling her the essentially “gifts”  trips, etc. for promoting their drug of the day to the doctor’s patients.   I noted this conversation so I was not surprised when the doctor came in and after a minimal amount of time began to discuss the benefits of this new drug and how I would be given a prescription for it to try but the doctor was pretty sure this new script would be beneficial for my health and I would continue on it.   “Really?”   Knowing what I knew I declined.   But, how often are we patients led like that?   Way more often than we know, I’m sure.   How many procedures are performed unnecessarily other than the medical practitioner receives a car from whichever company is pushing that procedure to sell their wares.   They make it very lucrative to the medical profession for setting it up, for getting patients on a regimen including their latest trendy chemical compound.   It’s a case of what the customer doesn’t see, the cook gets away with all over again.  YIKES!!!  Even the Food and Drug Administration isn’t the watchdog over our safety as much as we think.    Money talks and that other stuff walks.    And we the unknowing public are left at the ethical mercy of those we put our trust in as medical professionals.   As in all things not everyone is careful, not everyone is up on all the information available and not everyone truly cares when it comes to you or their being able to lie on the beach on someone else’s tab.  You lose.   The public needs to do its homework.   Remember, doctors are not gods they are people who took classes that we didn’t and they know enough about a field that we have not thoroughly researched to make their best guess and their best promotional behavior to get us to go along with what they say.  Do your homework people!    Author Lauren Slater is an entertaining writer, you will enjoy her writing style, also being a psychologist herself and a person who suffers from depression she has her own list of pharmaceuticals and herbs she has partaken of over the years whether prescribed by physicians or self-subscribed.   She knows of which she speaks.   Very light-hearted and enjoyable read while getting down and dirty with the history  and use of psychotropic drugs.   Statistic – 1 in 5 Americans now takes at least one psychotropic drug and usually a cocktail of a mix of them.   Science really doesn’t understand why these drugs effect our brains the way they do, they just know they do and the public reacts positively to it.  This book offers a no B.S. look at narcotics and the invention, history and science behind them.   She discusses many who’s names are familiar, Prozac, Lithium, Thorazine, Ecstasy, Psilocybin – yes, even those magic mushrooms!    Really Excellent book told by someone who knows of what she speaks.   I would definetly recommend this book.