Today I want to enter into a not widely appreciated topic which is on the face of it very controversial, the use of an abused drug/medication for intractable psychiatric depressions. This drug poses some very unique dilemmas for the psychiatric health care systems in the western world. First, it is in certain circles, e.g., the goofy idiotic rave club culture and its offshoots, an abused drug whose extent of use now may not really be known; but a few years ago it was getting enormous play in the 24 hour media and one would think that every young adult between 18 and 39 who danced in clubs or went to concerts was high on this stuff, getting raped and jumping off buildings, or going psychotic and “never coming back.” Second, it is a generic drug having passed of branded status decades ago and now cheap and offering the pharmaceutical companies no real inducement to develop as a new drug unless they blatantly did what they do with “me too” drugs as I call them: develop a known medication for a new use, bring it out under a new name and charge an unjustified sociopathic gazillion dollars a dose because it is able to patented and sold under a new idiotic name for a different indication or illness. Such is how our drug development system is perverted these days of hypercapitalism. Third, this drug has been used for a legitimate use and crucially and responsibly so for a few decades.
Pen and Psychiatrist 