life-amplifying drug

[oneeye13]

from http://articles.health.msn.com/id/10...te/100000000/:

One 52-year-old married man started gambling "uncontrollably" after raising the dose of his dopamine agonist. His wife phoned the neurologist to report that her husband had lost more than $100,000, was eating compulsively -- he gained 50 pounds -- and had an obsession with sex that resulted in him carrying on an extramarital affair. The man lost his excessive interest in gambling and sex when the medication was tapered off, according to the report.

Another man with no history of gambling started frequenting casinos for days at a time, exhibited an increased sex drive, drank more alcohol and ate excessively. When his medications were stopped, he reverted to having sex once weekly instead of four times a day.

can any docs on the forum get rxs for this?

[Hellmouth]

"The D3 receptor seems to be localized and more concentrated in the limbic areas of the brain, those areas of the brain that are tied to emotions and internal reward systems," Dodd explained. "It would be very interesting to see whether or not medications that have the opposite effect on D3 might curb some of these behaviors."

Sanberg added: "Does this lead to potential treatments for blocking D3? That's clearly something to look at."

I found this part much more interesting.
Greg

[William Wilson]

I saw this article, too. I imagined the commercial, hearing that friendly voice behind a smiling and laughing grandfather:

Side effects may include: Nausea, drowsiness, dizziness, diarrhea, trouble sleeping, constipation, betting a hard eight, playing the $5 slots, parlaying the Royals with the Rockies, capping to the river with king-eight offsuit ...

[BadBoyBenny]

Is agonist the commercial name of the drug? It seems like this would be a bad decision by someone's marketing department.

[Hoopster81]

[ QUOTE ]
Is agonist the commercial name of the drug? It seems like this would be a bad decision by someone's marketing department.

[/ QUOTE ]

A dopamine agonist is a compound that mimics dopamine and binds to certain dopamine receptors in the brain, eliciting an analogous response.

[mdplayah]

[ QUOTE ]
can any docs on the forum get rxs for this?

[/ QUOTE ]

are you talking about treatment for parkinson's, treatment for the named drug's side effects, or do you actually want a prescription for the drug??

Anyway, hopefully you are asking about one of the first two.

Looks to me like a drug induced manic episode (although you can't say for sure based on the article; you would want to know what runs in the guy's family, prior drug use and extent, past psychiatric history to name a few.)

bipolar patients have manic episodes based on imbalances of chemicals in their brains. A drug induced manic episode is when a drug (either prescription or street) causes the imbalance and the resulting crap that comes with a manic episode. Other drugs known to induce manic episodes are cocaine (thru blocking dopamine reuptake), amphetamines, and antidepressants (when given to a unknown bipolar patient presenting with depression)

lithium can work for a manic episode, but they sometimes need to be hospitalized if they have a true break with reality and given some big guns like haldol to knock them out of their psychosis. i just skimmed the article, but this guy probably needs to be hospitalized based on the behavior described.

If you want the drug in the article, you could do some MPTP, a synthetic derivative of heroin created in the 80's. It gives you permanent parkinsons as many unfortunate adolescents found out. You would then be qualified for a doctor to write you a prescription for levadopa or one of those other anti-parkinson's drug's. I don't think you want parkinson's though (you would find multi-tabling very difficult.)

-Bonuswhore, M.D.