My patient experiences....
Xanax 16mgs a day, with offers from Doctor to increase dose if I wanted to. At that point I needed about 8mgs to prevent withdrawals; I was taking around 10-12mgs a day. Nearly every appointment it would be, "So how are you on the Xanax, we can increase the dose if you want". Dude was my methadone prescribing Doctor, had this really odd idea that if he just pilled his patients out they'd be less likely to want to to score. I mean I suppose if you pill your patients into semi consciousness this could work?
😒🙄
Seroquel 1200mgs, off label, prescribed by a GP for anxiety and sleep problems. One of these 'saviour complex' situations, where when I didn't immediately respond to medication they just decided to keep upping the dose hoping something would work. Spoiler: it didn't.
400mgs Tramadol + 75mgs Effexor = Hello serotonin syndrome. Okay that one's not that extreme dose wise, but being rushed into the ER and ending up as a priority 1 emergency was not fun. 0/10 do not recommend.
Had a very close friend who was on about 7 different antidepressants at one stage (not sure what doses). Severe clinical depression + alcoholism. Didn't like it when his Psychiatrist would brooch the subject of giving up drinking, so he'd shaft one and move onto the next. Trouble was he kept taking the different antidepressants prescribed to him, and didn't inform future Doctors what he'd been previously been prescribed. This was in the 90s when they didn't have script tracking to counter stuff like Doctor shopping, or Psychiatrist shopping in this case. I sometimes wonder if he was attempting to passively commit suicide. He died from alcohol related liver failure a couple of years ago.
I get stupid medication doses if patients were prescribed like back in the 90s or earlier, but how are some of these other patients ending up on these sorts of doses you guys are talking about with stuff like computerised script checking in place now? Doesn't over prescribing like this send off some sort of electronic alarm bells or something?