Medications that change who we are

&gt;&quot;It turns out many ordinary medications don’t just affect our bodies – they affect our brains.&quot;<p>I feel like perpetuating this mindset is the ultimate sin of modern psychiatry and the entire industry of psychiatric pharmaceuticals - your brain <i>is</i> your body. It&#x27;s not some special thing that sits apart from it. It is an integral part of the whole, no different than your kidneys or liver. People think they can take an antidepressant and it just &quot;works&quot; on their brain somehow. It affects absolutely everything.

Definitely 100% true, first hand experience here.<p>I had mild medication prescribed for regulating blood pressure. Supposedly without psychological side effects. I found out a year later that it dramatically affected my personality. More or less like in the article, but in the opposite way.<p>The frightening thing is, I didn&#x27;t know !!!<p>I found out a year later when temporarily stopping the medication, my kids started to make remarks, alluding on my changed behaviour. Only that moment I started to realize what happened.<p>Also affected my profesional live: I heard years later that people &#x2F; collegues had noticed (but never mentioned it). I&#x27;m pretty sure it impacted my career. All without me knowing. For medication without any known psychological effects.<p>I took this medication for a year without realizing anything was wrong, that will probably also be the case for other people, and I&#x27;m pretty sure in many cases psychological side effects won&#x27;t show up in clinical trials.<p>I&#x27;m pretty sure if you take anything like anti anxiety &#x2F; depressants, psycho-pharmaceuticals, or just anything with known side effects, the impact must be dramatic.<p>When I found out, discussed it with (several) docters : one said &quot;impossible&quot;, another &quot;interesting, tell me more&quot;. It assume most doctors are clueless here. When you break a leg, they can set it and it heals. When you have a headache, they look in their book to see if there is a pill. But anything out of the ordinary, it may be hard to find good medical help.

Let&#x27;s also consider the other direction -- how fresh vegetables and fruit, plus whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, and herbs improve mood, behavior, resilience. Throw in some vigorous exercise, and for most people, drugs can&#x27;t do better, without the drugs&#x27; side effects and cost.<p>For many people, switching from a standard American diet to largely those ingredients would register as changing who they are.<p>I just finished reading a chapter on it in Dr. Michael Greger&#x27;s <i>How Not to Die</i> -- the chapter is &quot;How Not to Die From Suicidal Depression&quot; with plenty of footnotes to primary sources.

As the article mentions, this is a complicated, not-simple type of thing to filter out.<p>If it were anything other than the BBC reporting it, I would probably have a raised eyebrow.<p>One of the things that makes it difficult to develop a causative link, is things like someone may suddenly develop symptoms of heart disease or high blood pressure, but they are also going through a personally stressful time, and have taken to exercising less, worrying, and sitting around eating popcorn.<p>It may seem as if some medication or practice is the cause, but exercising less, and munching salt can throw the curve. Being worried about the future (or our own health -the reason we’re on the meds) can also have a fairly profound effect on things.<p>Animal testing will usually control for stuff, but real life is messy.<p>For example, alcohol is known to interact with all kinds of compounds. Rats don’t drink, so, unless the researchers deliberately introduce alcohol (in realistic dosage) in their regimen, they can be quite surprised, when unanticipated things start happening in human trials.<p>I’ve heard of unanticipated results manifesting, because a symptom only appeared within a certain dosage window, and testing had used extreme dosages.

I take gabapentin for a spinal issue (nerve damage in my spine) and it has a drastic and noticeable effect, I&#x27;m naturally quiet and introverted but when I take the higher prescribed dose that changes radically, I become outgoing and talkative, I have more confidence and I seem to be more creative (though that could just be the reduction in pain).<p>It definitely alters my mood and I can feel it happen.

I&#x27;ve had trouble falling asleep for a long time, and at some point years ago started taking ambien for it. It took a long time to realize just how strong an impact it was having on me (could write a long blog post about it). Stopping wasn&#x27;t easy, but now year+ later I&#x27;m basically back to normal, and feel like I have superpowers compared to the time when I was still on it.

This is basically the story of my mother.<p>About 15 years ago she was suffering from a panic disorder. Instead of trying to help her, her doctor prescribed a fairly high dose of benzodiazepines and be done with it.<p>These &#x27;medicine&#x27; only made matters worse and changed her behavior radically. She became very closed up, never wanting to do anything, never leaving the house and always finding excuses not having to do anything. The stuff is also terrible for her memory, so she can&#x27;t really remember anything since she has been taken these pills.<p>The worst part is that these medicine are highly addictive, and we have now passed to point where we had to accept that my mother will be on these pills for the rest of her life.

I’d be curious to hear the experiences of people who take&#x2F;have taken some of these drugs such as L-dopa. With alcohol, I feel <i>different</i> but I don’t feel <i>like a different person.</i> Is it like that, or is there a larger feeing of difference?

Tangentially (and anecdotally), not long ago I seem to have contracted what seems like a flu (or the like), and I remember feeling very healthy, social and unusually well—almost high—most of the day right until my brain went foggy and fever started.<p>In hindsight, I did not behave quite like myself that day, especially considering I felt somewhat overworked the preceding week.<p>This prompted me to first draw the analogy with taking and withdrawing from a substance, and then to imagine a possibility of some future human-made flu-like virus that preserves the incubation stage effects and lacks the “conventional” symptoms. Like a contagious mood boost, contractable for free by air!

Ironic that folks who work in CNS drug discovery spend much of their time worrying about how to get our molecules &#x2F;into&#x2F; the brain... and less energy thinking about keeping non-CNS meds out. For what it&#x27;s worth, though, these &#x27;off-target&#x27; CNS effects have also prompted a lot of enthusiasm for repurposing existing FDA-approved drugs for new indications, since their safety is already established.

I have long wondered about this. In the Asian world, traditional Systems of Medicine focus on &quot;holistic&quot; treatment and the general public often calls Western Medicine, &quot;Allopathy with side-effects&quot;. I had intuitively felt that these medicines must have an overall effect on behaviour which may always not be obvious to the observer unless the difference between the before and after were stark and noticeable.<p>We really need a lot more research on this aspect of all commonly used medicines. A lot of our mood-swings, irritability, anger, anti-social behaviour etc. might be explained by this.

It&#x27;s a worrying thought. My dad has become much less empathetic and more bitter over the past decade. I&#x27;d assumed it might have been the pain that was at least partially responsible, now I&#x27;m wondering if its actually the painkillers

Wow, turns out there&#x27;s a lot of studies into e.g. paracetamol out there too. e.g. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;31523834" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&#x2F;pubmed&#x2F;31523834</a><p>More here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;autismepi&#x2F;status&#x2F;1214388671752916992&#x2F;photo&#x2F;1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;autismepi&#x2F;status&#x2F;1214388671752916992&#x2F;pho...</a>

<i>The world is in the midst of a crisis of over-medication, with the US alone buying up 49,000 tonnes of paracetamol every year – equivalent to about 298 paracetamol tablets per person</i><p>Shocking, I knew it was bad but this is madness.

When I was younger, I believed that my spirit and thoughts and personality were somehow separate from my body. Like something uniquely me that was put in my body to animate it.<p>As I get older I began to think the opposite; that our thoughts, personalities, and everything original about us are a product of our physical composition and brain structure.<p>I began to really notice this after reading Principles where Ray Dalio observes that the way people think and approach and solve problems are largely fixed. I notice this in myself and the people around me.<p>There was a sort of inflection point for me after getting my first massage. My body was completely relaxed, resulting in my mind being completely relaxed. After the massage I went to a trader joes in columbia maryland during a saturday. This trader joes is a logistic nightmare that always stresses me out, so much so that I would usually avoid going during peak shopping. But this time I was completely unbothered, nothing about the experience was bothering, my thoughts were completely at ease. At that moment I realized that it wasn&#x27;t stress making me tight, it was tightness making me stressed. The dependency was completely backwards from the way I thought. Being self centered i thought my thoughts informing my physical, but it was actually my physical causing my thoughts.<p>I have genetically high blood pressure, and I have to consume low sodium in order to keep it under control. While I was learning this and my blood pressure was high, I was literally angry about everything. Road rage, meltdowns at home, being short and explosive with my wife and son. I thought it was stress or affect from work I thought it was thoughts&#x2F;personality -&gt; body. As soon as I experimented with reducing sodium, getting exercise and my blood pressure dropped, my mood completely rounded out and fixed itself. IT was actually my body -&gt; thoughts.<p>The same thing happens with hiking spending time outside. I used to feel like a connected, or spiritual relationship with the outdoors. I enjoyed drinking and camping, I thought that there was a spiritual relationship with the outdoors (personality -&gt; body) when, once again, it&#x27;s actually just physical -&gt; personality, dopamine is released, my blood pressure probably dropped my thoughts became more relaxed, my body was tired and relaxed from hiking.<p>I think that we really are a lot less conscious than we think we are, and that the way we think, our personalities, and pretty much everything about us is largely predetermined by our physical composition. I think we&#x27;re just more complicated animals and our personalities are just a response to physical input and reactions.

Everything that happens to us changes who we are. Every conversation we make. Everything we think. We are not the same person in any given moment.<p>Also, because we are shaped by the things that happen to us, we are literally actually not ourselves but rather &quot;everything else&quot;.

<i>&gt; with the US alone buying up 49,000 tonnes of paracetamol every year – equivalent to about 298 paracetamol tablets per person</i><p>Commonly sold as the brand Tylenol. How is it possible that the average across the US population is nearly one per day, the entire year? Max dose is 3900mg per day. Tylenol is not recommended for children with fevers as it can have bad side effects (Reye&#x27;s Syndrome). More popular than aspirin perhaps as less risk of ulcers. Not as safe as Advil&#x2F;ibuprofen. Even for people regularly taking pain meds, not all will be on paracetamol. Those taking it every day (perhaps 5% of the population?) must be taking 10-20 tablets a day?<p><i>&gt; – and the average American consuming $1,200 worth of prescription medications over the same period.</i><p>I know there are people taking pills that cost tens or hundreds of thousands, but this is still a pretty amazing average number across the population. This year I spent just over $100 on meds and that was probably one of the most med-intensive years of my life. Most years I have spent perhaps $10 for one round of antibiotics and $2 on advil, which I buy a $6 bottle every 3 years or so. So under $20. I wonder if the numbers are significantly less for most other countries.

I am very curious about how transgender HRT affects personality. In a sense, HRT is <i>supposed</i> to change who one is, but the personality changes people undergo on it seem underappreciated and not really understood or studied clinically. At least I have not been able to find a published study specifically about about how HRT changes personality. I think not all of it can be attributed to decreased gender dysphoria or people &quot;coming out of their shell&quot; and being able to live and socialize as who they want to be after transition.<p>If I had to make a $100 bet today on what future research will find, I would wager that<p>1. FtM HRT reduces Big Five neuroticism despite <i>increasing</i> aggression. The effect is permanent and persists after the person&#x27;s &quot;second puberty&quot; induced by HRT is over. It affects beliefs about how society should function. To a degree of approximation, it makes transmen more conservative or right-wing than they were before the treatment.<p>2. MtF HRT does <i>not</i> have the opposite effect to the above (but it may, and probably does, have other effects). Edit: The opposite effect on neuroticism and sociopolitical beliefs. It decreases aggression.

Probably all that&#x27;s going through the stomach has one effect or another... Ever watched kids behaviour before and after sugary and non-sugary meals?

I had never heard of this link between statins and aggression and Tylenol and lack of empathy before. Interesting. Maybe this is why Boomers act so strange now. “Former flower children lost their empathy and caring for the world and the next generation when their doctors put them all on statins and they started gobbling Tylenol” would be quite an interesting story. Both my parents are on statins, it seems every person past a certain age is, the doctors think statins are something everyone should be on. I have my doubts.<p>&gt;“Should people at low risk of cardiovascular disease take a statin?”<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bmj.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;347&#x2F;bmj.f6123" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bmj.com&#x2F;content&#x2F;347&#x2F;bmj.f6123</a>

Some of these examples given in the article are actually quite known. For example, many anti-asthma drugs available today have a leaflet informing the patient about possible side-effects, such as increased anxiety, nightmares, changes of mood and behavior, and even suicidal thoughts. Knowing this is extremely helpful as it allows the patient to distance oneself from these symptoms in case they occur.

Damn, this really hits home for me. My brother got prescribed statins and one day the family had found out he&#x27;d stopped because he didn&#x27;t believe in it and they didn&#x27;t feel like they were doing anything.<p>He&#x27;s one of the most scientific guys I know but began giving conspiracy theory&#x2F;anti vaxx sort of answers of how you can&#x27;t trust medical studies all the time. When asked why he still takes his hypertension meds and trusts the literature there, he couldn&#x27;t answer and he said it&#x27;s just a feeling. The family was pretty astounded. Honestly felt as if someone you know suddenly started believing antivax or say flat earth ideas is the closest way I can describe it.<p>I was explaining how inconsistent his thinking was, bordering on delusional. If the truth was that the statins affected him psychologically, I can see why he&#x27;d chose to hide it when his wife and parents are grilling him for it.

There&#x27;s a wee bit of me feels I need to ask the question, is this years later, the Andrew Wakefield effect rearing its head again[0]?<p>Very small samples of and affected medicated population being used to push an agenda? Sure I realise the brain and body are deeply interconnected, but until we invest time and money in valid studies, how can we possibly know the outcomes of prescribing statins, paracetamol etc in terms of human behaviour.<p>For the vast majority of the population taking these drugs are generally safe (yes I know about drug allergies, which is a different thing), but I imagine there will be in a minuscule percentage of a population, long term, there may be side effects. I think this should be researched, but this sounds like a scare story.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Andrew_Wakefield" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Andrew_Wakefield</a>

&gt; the US alone buying up 49,000 tonnes of paracetamol every year – equivalent to about 298 paracetamol tablets per person<p>I bet many of those expire and are never consumed. There is very little pricing difference based on quantity so people buy much more than needed.

Yeah, if you trust our &quot;institutions&quot; - still - you are in need of a serious, unsettling wake up. The 60&#x27;s slogan of &quot;Question authority&quot; is needed more than ever. Our &quot;institutions&quot; are predators and we are all its prey. Your mindset is the most valued, because one they have that they can feed you anything: any foods, any drugs, any laws and any shitty orange politician they want.<p>I go out of my way to not take any medications, as well as maintain my body with healthy foods and regular exercise. This is a responsibility we need to respect to maintain clear heads in this psychological war period we live.

Well this is our modern “moldy rye bread” situation folks so what to do? Let’s not forget disruption of the basal ganglia is responsible for the formation of delusions which could be in the same ballpark here.

All I can say is when I realized the only thing that prevents me from thinking negative thoughts about people and things around me, being frustrated at everything for petty reasons I end up forgetting shortly after and demolishing my productivity was whether or not I remember to take my medication, it became a major existential crisis for me. I felt powerless to actually change my situation through my own actions rather than chemical rebalancing which I can&#x27;t just will into existence.<p>Of course I only have this crisis if I forget to take my medication.

I&#x27;m interested that they did not touch on ADD medication there.

I am happy to accept that mass prescription of drugs will have unexpected side-effects, and the cholesterol&#x2F; anger &#x2F; violence link seems plausible.<p>My question is has anyone studied voting intentions with this as well?

This article provides no meaningful references (but some useless ones).<p>This is a really interesting question, but essentially left unaddressed.

Along with other commenters -- thank you for sharing! -- I&#x27;ve also had psychoactive side effects.<p>TLDR: Self reporting simply doesn&#x27;t work. We need better tools, strategies. We need before, during, and after assessments. We need to inform the people in our lives, so we can better monitor each other&#x27;s mental state and keep each other accountable.<p>Most recently: Started bupropion after a surgery, in hopes of mitigating impact. Got caught in a rut. Took myself off (all of my meds), just to reset. I felt zero difference on or off the bupropion. The only way I knew something was different was the activity monitor on my Apple Watch. (Just to be sure, I resumed bupropion for a week, and I became lethargic again. Again, I felt zero difference mentally.)<p>Ages ago: I was very high dose prednisone for a long time. Completely changed my personality. I was more or less completely out of control, a human wrecking ball. I reported mania, suicidal thoughts, etc. My team of doctors completely dismissed such possibilities. Of course, none of them, nor any of their patients, had received as much prednisone as me. Even after stopping prednisone, it took years to find a new normal. I was active volunteering afterwards. I advised both patients and their families what the prednisone (and other drugs like chemo) was going to do to do. Strongly encouraged seeking professional counseling, with their eyes wide open.

I suggest folks read the cited research. It&#x27;s eye-opening here, in a way that&#x27;s very irritiating. This does not seem like particularly good science journalism.<p>Because of the road rage story in the lede, a whole lot of people are going to walk away from that piece thinking Statins -&gt; Aggression.<p>The author even repeats it in a troubling way by linking to Golomb&#x27;s research (their main source for this article I imagine) on statins and aggression:<p>&quot;Since then, more direct evidence has emerged. Several studies have supported a potential link between irritability and statins, including a randomised controlled trial – the gold-standard of scientific research – that Golomb led, involving more than 1,000 people. It found that the drug increased aggression in post-menopausal women though, oddly, not in men.&quot;<p>You can see right there - it&#x27;s plain as day. Randomised controlled trial, gold standard. The really astute scientists now know statins make people aggressive!<p>Except, EXCEPT... the study that Golomb DID found that statins overall lowered aggression... in men, and did not raise it in pre-menopausal women.<p>Again, the paper the journalist linked to shows the OPPOSITE of what the BBC piece claims it does.<p>The only reason the author found a subset of people that statins increase aggression in: they sliced and dice their data a bajillion different ways. They looked at age strata, baseline aggression, sleep-status, serotonin status, until they found a group -- post meno-pausal women -- in which the statin appeared to increase aggression. And that was only significant when they excluded one participant who had medically induced menopause!<p>&quot;Among (postmenopausal) women, a borderline aggression-increase on statins became significant with exclusion of one younger, surgically-menopausal woman (N=310) β=0.70(SE=0.34)P=0.039&quot;<p>When you adjust for multiple comparisons done (otherwise pretty sure you&#x27;re just p-hacking) the result for women becomes statistically insignificant --which, given the number of ways they sliced the data, is not at all surprising!<p>&quot;The sample size for women is half that for men, calculations did not power separately for women, and significance of findings for women would not be sustained under multiple comparison adjustment.&quot;<p>The overall thrust of &#x27;Be a medical conservative, it&#x27;s easy to cause treatment related harms you&#x27;re not aware of&#x27; is a good one - there are many pharma companies pushing product on iffy claims. And a lot of research that shows how pharma trials minimize side effects and maximize results by surreptitiously excluding unhealthy trial participants.<p>The research in this piece is neither brilliant, nor awful... but given that the author appears to happily be quoted in a way that takes their research out of context, and seems to be the main source in an article that makes claims that their research does not support, really concerns me that they have their own flawed biases on statins ...

I&#x27;ve been on high-dose statins since 1995. I still feed birds and squirrels in my yard, and most of my so-called neighbors are still alive and seemingly well. I must be doing something wrong :-)

“Then one day, she was chatting to a cholesterol expert about the potential link in the hallway at her work, when he brushed it off as obviously nonsense. “And I said ‘how do we know that?’,” she says.”<p>These are our “experts”, brushing off things about which they have no clue.<p>“How are all these medications affecting our brains? And should there be warnings on packets?”<p>Yet another warning in a list that makes people&#x27;s eyes glaze over is not going to do much good. Additionally, people have a difficult time relating to just how bad these effects can really be. People also tend to overestimate their abilities to perceive the effects and endeavor to address them.<p>“But Golomb’s most unsettling discovery isn’t so much the impact that ordinary drugs can have on who we are – it’s the lack of interest in uncovering it. “There’s much more of an emphasis on things that doctors can easily measure,” she says,”<p>And what is it about medications that makes people willing to connect these dots? Money and a willingness to not want to know and even to deny what is known. The chemical industry is very good at this and we&#x27;ve known about that for a very long time. There are numerous studies that have found these same associations with various chemical products from artificial food colorings to laundry chemicals and more, with effects that include anxiety, depression, and rage. The ubiquity of chemicals with unknown physiological and psychological is staggering. It&#x27;s gotten to the point where we can barely socialize without being inundated with the 21st version of passive smoking. People and places can&#x27;t exist without dousing themselves and their spaces with chemical crap that also includes air &quot;fresheners&quot;, candles, essential oils, etc. Road rage, infertility, anxiety, depression . . . all these psychological phenomena that have risen along with the public test lab that is our world. And chemical companies are using the tobacco industry&#x27;s template of doubt and denial along with decades of honing the craft.<p>“But in order to minimise any undesirable effects and get the most out of the staggering quantities of medications that we all take each day, Mischkowski reiterates that we need to know more. Because at the moment, he says, how they are affecting the behaviour of individuals – and even entire societies – is largely a mystery.”<p>It&#x27;s true. And if it&#x27;s a problem for medications that are presumably scrutinized, what do we think is the case with the 10s of thousands of chemicals that are basically tested using the “honor system” of industry testing its own products for safety? These chemicals are not tested singly, nevermind in the near limitless combinations in which they exist in our daily lives.<p>“At this point it’s worth pointing out that no one is arguing that people should stop taking their medication. Despite their subtle effects on the brain, antidepressants have been shown to help prevent suicides, cholesterol-lowering drugs save tens of thousands of lives every year, and paracetamol is on the World Health Organisation’s list of essential drugs because of its ability to relieve pain. But it is important that people are informed about any potential psychological side-effects.”<p>And every one of these articles will include this boilerplate rationalization that&#x27;s a lot more complicated – and different – than this.

You are what you eat? But this is no different than hard drugs

everything else

Medication is just a tool, it must be used with care and intelligence.

Intra-system communication and control isn&#x27;t limited to the brain. The gut for example, plays a part.<p>What&#x27;s concerning about this article is that the researchers (?) we&#x27;re not open to the possibility.

An easy but not glamorous course of action to prevent this from happening on a large scale is flushing the notion that taking a pill for <i>everything</i> <i>everytime</i> is A-OK out of Western culture.<p>The average American is on ~1 prescribed pain killer and usually has access to several other over the counter opioids. People take incredibly potent whatevers against the mildest allergies to prevent having reddish eyes. A pill to take the edge off, a pill to calm down. Kids who are not firmly in the right area of every imaginable performance bell curve at age 7 get a whole palette of medicine against fictional anger issues, concentration issues, learning issues, anxiety issues.<p>I am glad that the topic of psychological side effects is gaining traction. Personally, I have always felt that taking any medicine is most likely going to be a trade-off against side effects we do not really understand yet. Keeping this in mind, one can make a much more sensible decision whether or not to take a pill. If we get this notion back into the head of people it would help a lot IMO.