Posted by BrittPark on April 18, 2003, at 1:37:49
In reply to Re: Please help with my list of promising future drugs » BrittPark, posted by Shawn. T. on April 17, 2003, at 23:13:36
Could I ask why you are biased against opioids? Tolerance is one reason to be leary, I suppose, but given an opioid formulation that didn't induce tolerance, would you still be biased? Without the tolerance opioids seem to be far better ADs than any of the ADs we have. The action is immediate, so one can tell whether the drug helps very quickly as opposed to the 6 to 8 weeks needed for traditional ADs, and if an opioid works, it works more completely than any of the ADs we have. The question I ask myself is why then has so little research effort been made to discover ways to block the habituation reaction to opioids. I except Pain Therapeutic's research, which is singular.
I've always been a bit puzzled by the psychiatric attitude towards opioids. Doctors are quite willing to prescribe stimulants, schedule II drugs like many opioids, to treat ADHD or as an augmentation strategy for the treatment of depression, but give patients a suspicious glare if the subject of opioids is broached. I know of no clinical evidence that amphetamines are in fact less habituating and addictive than opioids. In fact my psychiatrist considers cocaine (similar in effect to amphetamines) addiction the most pernicious of all addictions.
As a parting note take a look at this 1996 editorial from Biological Psychiatry. http://www.sciencething.org/Callaway.pdf
poster:BrittPark
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