Risks of Commonly Prescribed Medications

today we're going to be diving into what I believe are some of the most dangerous prescribed drugs out there unfortunately many people taking these medications are never told about the rare but devastating side effects they can cause and what's more I've curated this list to focus on common drugs so it's very likely that you or someone that you care about might be taking one of these right now for those of you who don't know me I'm Dr ysep with during I'm a doctor and I used to work at the FDA and in the pharmaceutical industry as a drug safety expert so let's get into it the first drugs that we're going to talk about are the anti-depressants so these are drugs like the ssris things like Lexapro and proac and they're used for treating depression bipolar and anxiety now while these medications are often experienced as being calming and therapeutic by many some people will have paradoxical reactions meaning that they become more anxious or agitated or in the worst case is sometimes even suicidal homicidal or even psychotic now the internet is full of stories about these drugs being involved in things like suicides and school shootings and often the most well-known cases involve a drug called paxel which is an SSRI and two notable cases really come to mind for me one is the case of David carmichel who killed his 11-year-old son accidentally during a paxel induced psychotic episode later on this case would go on to be dismissed by the Supreme Court of Ontario due to clear evidence that this was drug rated and the other case comes from close to me I'm in Utah but over in Wyoming one state over Donald shell accidentally killed his wife daughter and his granddaughter and then himself when he had a psychotic reaction to paxel as well Donald Shell's son-in-law who lost his wife actually went on to successfully sue Smith Klein for failure to warn about these types of side effects with their drug paxel now over the last couple decades there have been thousands of cases just like Donald's and David's and these ultimately resulted in the boxed warning that goes on all anti-depressants which warn about the risk of suicidal behavior and behavioral changes on these drugs so moving on from some of these serious behavioral problems these drugs can cause the other thing that I want to mention about anti-depressants is that they can also cause something called pssd or post SSRI sexual dysfunction now over the last several decades thousands of people have been coming forward and sharing that the sexual problems that they developed on these drugs have not fully resolved now that they've come off of them and some people are even reporting serious cognitive damage from these medications this is prompted Regulators in Europe Australia Canada and Hong Kong to update the labeling on all of these drugs to warn about these persistent sexual problems that are not going away when people come off these drugs although this was underrecognized for a long time finally it's getting some of the attention it deserves and it has been covered in news outlets like the New York Times the next drugs that we're going to talk about are the ADHD medications these are drugs like adero rlin or stratera and they're used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and Adolescence and honestly from my perspective it should not be surprising to people that ADHD medications can cause some severe behavioral problems they are after all mechanistically similar to stimulant drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine these are drugs that are acting on our dopamine system however many people assume that they're not going to have problems with these drugs when they're used at these normal therapeutic doses but that's not the case in fact some people who are just very sensitive to these medications can have side effects just like the case of Natalie an Australian woman who spiraled into a drug induced Mania on Ridin and when she eventually came off the drug she looked back and saw what had happened she had lost her job she had lost her partner she' lost custody of her two children and she had burned through $12,000 now there have been thousands of cases just like Natalie and the risk of these behavioral problems are now at least widely recognized by regulators and they are present in the drug labels and that's what we can see in labels like ader's label where it talks about the risk of psychiatric adverse reactions including the risk of inducing new psychotic or manic symptoms in some people the next drug on the list is ARA preol also known as a bifi now this is an antis psychotic medication but it's also very commonly used as an anti-depressant for many people this is a popular antis psychotic to take because it's associated with less weight gain and less sedation compared to some of the other drugs and that's because it's a partial dopamine Agonist and I want you to remember that because most Anti psychotics block dopamine and when something is a partial dopamine Agonist that means it can actually stimulate that receptor sometime and what do we know about stimulating dopamine recepts as well it's associated with things like compulsive Behavior addictive behavior and sometimes things like disinhibition I mean those dopamine receptors is where drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine really act on and that point is going to be important for this so since Abilify has been on the market hundreds of people have actually come forward and blamed Abilify for causing types of compulsive or disinhibited behavior things like gambling or sex addiction for instance one of the people who complained about this was Abby hawksley who went on a $10,000 shopping spree shortly after starting this drug and then there was another instance of a Las Vegas woman who had lived there for decades and had no history of gambling but developed a gambling addiction shortly after taking it and this got so bad that she actually ended up engaging in prostitution to make money now I know what you're thinking when you hear these stories could this just be people blaming poor life decisions on a drug and now while initially a lot of people thought this was the case but there were so many reports that the FDA decided to look into this and after their independent investigation in 2016 they determined that this was in fact a real side effect that this drug was causing a lot of disob and compulsive behavior and they went on to update their labels for Abilify on top of that the victims of this side effect ended up teaming up for a class action lawsuit against the manufacturer of the Abilify of Suka and BMS for failure to warn these lawsuits were eventually settled for an unknown amount now the next drug we're going to talk about is the smoking cessation drug Verena clean or chanics now this is a drug used to help people stop smoking by binding to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the brain which is potentially a great thing because so many people die from smoking each year however after this drug came onto the market a lot of people started reporting that it was causing a whole range of strange Behavior and one of the most well-known cases of this is what happened to the famous Texas musician Carter alright who went out had a couple drinks and took his dose of chanics Apparently after he took his dose of this medication he entered some kind of bizarre aggressive delirium which according to his friends and girlfriend was completely uncommon for him even if he had been drinking a lot while he was in this state he actually attacked his girlfriend and then tried to break into his neighbor's house while he was pounding on the door of his neighbors's homes and terrifying the neighbor a warning shot was fired through the door and it accidentally struck Carter in the head and killed him now this was absolutely devastating to his girlfriend and she believed strongly that it was the chanics that put him in this psychotic delusional state that resulted in his death now for a long time the manufacturers of chantex tried to deny it and they actually tried to say that these symptoms were being caused by nicotine withdrawal but eventually because hundreds of people came forward reporting similar things the FDA looked into this and they ended up going on to update the label of this drug with a boxed warning which is the strongest warning to warn about all of the neuros psychiatric side effects that could happen things like depression and suicide and aggressive behavior the next drug we're going to talk about are the Z drugs now these are a type of sleeping medications and you may have heard of them this is things like ambian Sonata and Lunesta now there have been reports of people doing all sorts of things that they could never remember while they were asleep on this drug like making food driving their vehicles making phone calls and even things like having sex probably the one that a lot of people remember recently was Rosanne bar who was tweeting and she said some racist things and she said it was because she was high on ambient and that was her defense so putting that aside cuz I don't really know what happened in that situation I want to focus on the risk and the risk is real because when the FDA eventually looked into their drug database they found 66 incidents of these crazy behaviors happening on the drugs unfortunately many people had accidentally died because of the things that they had done while they were on the drug now probably one of the most widely known cases involving this was the case of kri Kennedy this is RFK Jr's sister and a couple of years ago she mistakenly took ambian instead of her thyroid medicine and unbeknownst to her got into her car and started erratically driving down the freeway and she accidentally sideswiped a truck and she had no recollection of the incident because she was such a widely known figure this ended up going in a court and there was a jury and after the jury had heard the evidence they ended up acquitting her of charges now the next drug we're going to be talking about is methin or lium this is a drug used to treat or prevent malaria and it's been used since the 1970s it's the kind of drug that's used these days when there's a college kid going abroad for travel or here in Utah we've got like a lot of missionaries and they go overseas for their mission and the frightening thing about larium is it can actually cause really severe Neuropsychiatric side effects and one of these cases actually occurred in 2019 and it involved a young lady Alana cutland who was 19 she was a biology student who traveled to Madagascar to study crabs for an internship and she had been taking this drug in preparation for the trip and a few days after arriving her behavior began to change and her mother noticed that when she talked to her on the phone she just wasn't sounding like herself and she was kind of incoherent at times and it was later reported by people who saw her there that she started to have all of these panic attacks which would come out of the blue and So eventually when she wasn't feeling well she decided to cut her six we trip short and return home early and so she jumped an assessa plane to leave the island and they took off however shortly after taking off unexpectedly to everyone on the plane she opened the door and tried to jump out this happened to the horror of her friend who was with her in the plane at the time who reportedly had to lean out and grab her leg to try and keep her from falling out of the This Plane horrifically as this is described in the articles that have covered this story this happened for 5 minutes before ultimately her friend was not able to save her and she fell 3600 ft into a remote jungle where unfortunately she died now her parents maintain that she had everything to live for and this was completely unusual unexpected behavior and they are convinced that she was actually having a psychotic reaction to the larium which she had been taking now Alana's case does not stand alone in fact there have been hundreds of similar cases of this described in the news and also in the medical literature and because of this mequin now carries a boxed warning for severe neuros psychiatric side effects now the next drug we're going to talk about is montal luas or singular gosh this is a really popular drug it's used for asthma and allergies it's been on the market for approximately 20 years and for many people it has become the go-to treatment for asthma especially in kids because they don't like using the inhalers and this comes in just a tablet form unfortunately what people have found is actually that this drug has some really serious side effects that these inhalers don't have and these are severe psychiatric side effects like becoming suicidal or severely depressed and one such tragic incident of this involved a Young Man Nicholas England who was 22 years old who unexpectedly shot himself and he died in 2017 two weeks after starting singular this was completely unexpected to his parents who said that he had no previous Mental Health issues before this happened now there have been hundreds of cases just like Nicholas's that were reported to the FDA that eventually resulted in them doing a public advisory meeting to hear from experts and from people who had suffered from the side effect to learn more and when the FDA looked into this in 2019 they found 82 documented suicide attempts where doctors thought singular had been the causitive agent along with 500 suicide attempts that people had thought had been induced by the drug now one of the interesting things about FDA advisory committee is that you get to hear reports from the patients live now I want to show you some of these things that these people said they experienced while being on singular so check this out so one person read in April the voices started I thought I was going insane I would look around the room knowing I Heard a Voice Even when no one was there it began to tell me to close the windows or just single words calling me names like [ __ ] [ __ ] and loser at that point I became even more withdrawn not knowing what to do and I would sleep for days at a time just to avoid the voice the day it told me to hurt myself with a knife I went off the singular within a week I noticed the voice was gone or this mother who described what happened to her seven-year-old child and then came the words he would say I'm not worth anything I'm so stupid everything would be better if I'm not here he was consumed with death always asking me about dying telling me he didn't think he should be alive at age seven he actually attempted to take his life I had to tackle my seven-year-old child as we fought over the knife he grabbed in the kitchen I had to hold him while he screamed uncontrollably that he didn't want to be alive anymore now ultimately the research the FDA looked into led to them determining that yes in fact these side effects were totally real and singular was causing all of these things and so they put a boxed warning on the drug this is the strongest warning you can have which describe these side effects in detail now interestingly many people thought that this recognition that this drug could cause such horrific side effects would absolutely tank the use of this drug that has not happened at all in fact many people still do not know that singular can cause these things and singular is still being prescribed at very high levels in the US okay moving on so the next drug we want to talk about is isotretinoin otherwise known as acutane now this is a drug that is used for treating severe acne and it's been on the market since 1982 and it's actually one of the most effective treatments for that however the problem is in rare instances it can cause severe psychiatric side effects that can be catastrophic and sometimes longlasting you know lasting even after the people come off the drugs now probably the most widely publicized case of this happening to someone would be that of Bart stup pac's son Bart Jr or BJ now back in 2000 BJ shot himself in the head for seemingly no reason 6 months after starting Accutane according to his parents he had had no mental health problems in absolutely everything to live for now initially back then the drug companies and many dermatologists denied that isotretinoin could even cause such a thing they would say things like it's the acne that's causing it you know these kids they they have depression associated with the acne and for a long time that's what people believed however hundreds of these cases kept on coming forward from bereaved parents who didn't understand why their children were becoming unexpectedly suicidal or depressed even when you would take into account that they had acne and they might be upset about that ultimately the FDA would receive enough of these reports that they would look into it and they would put a warning on the drug telling doctors that mood disturbances depression Suicidal Thoughts psychosis and aggression could all happen with this drug personally I'm very upset about this warning I actually think it is very weak because it doesn't talk about the long-term cognitive damage that I've seen in some Accutane patients now on this channel I interview people who have had drug injuries and one comes to mind and that was the story of Bert when he was talking about his son Luke who was severely damaged by isotron it actually caused long-lasting brain damage that led to Luke eventually deciding to take his life if you want to hear from Robert about this tragic story you can check out the video right here it is one of the most toxic and dangerous side effects that I have ever seen and I actually believe the FDA should have gone a step further than just putting this in the label they should have sent a dear doctor letter out to every family medicine doctor and dermatologist warning about the potential for long-term cognitive damage on this drug this is so important in my opinion because honestly this is a lifestyle drug I mean this is not saving someone's life it's it's helping them with acne and I think most people if they knew that this drug could cause such long- lasting cognitive problems and things like depression and suicide that might factor into the decision to take this drug so I really think the FDA should have gone a step further so the next drug is finasteride also known as propa now this drug was originally developed to treat enlarged prostates but now it is widely sold through online pill M companies like hyms where they Market it for male patent boldness and it does work for that now unfortunately a small proportion of patients who take this drug develop a condition called post finasteride syndrome which is characterized by severe depression cognitive problems and also sexual dysfunction sometimes catastrophic sexual dysfunction and over the last couple decades thousands of these cases have been widely discussed online and in the medical literature and this ultimately led to an update in the drug label in 2022 to disclose the risk of these psychiatric problems and this persistent sexual dysfunction that happened even after they stopped the drug now in my perspective this is one of the worst warnings the FDA has ever put out because they've hidden it in the postmarketing experiences section of the label which a lot of doctors don't read now typically when you have a serious side effect something like persistent sexual dysfunction or Nuance at depression you want to put that in a more prominent section of the labeling they haven't done that here now again why is this so serious well this drug is a lifestyle drug this is not used to treat life-threatening conditions this is used to treat people who are baling now wouldn't you want to know if you were going to take this drug whether it could cause persistent sexual dysfunction will make you depressed a lot of people my age you know young men in their 30s are Bolding right now and they are taking this and this would weigh heavily on their decision no matter how rare this is even if it was super rare you would want to know it because this is not a life-threatening condition I think the FDA has totally flubbed on this I think it should be in a much more prominent place in the label and it should have gone out with a dear doctor letter again to all Family Medicine doctors who prescribed this for male patent Los now if you want to learn more about this again we also cover people's stories with PFS on this channel and you can check out su's story here who was a young college student whose life was derailed when he ultimately went on to develop PFS now the last drugs on this top 10 list are the fluroquinolone antibiotics these are drugs like l flosin or lequin or cyof flosin these are antibiotics that are used to treat quite common bacterial infections things like UTI or sinus infections and in rare instances these drugs can cause some of the most horrific side effects I've ever seen we're talking about severe psychiatric and neurological problems cognitive damage and this can leave people with damage for years that can sometimes be permanent personally having researched this and also talk to a lot of people who have had this happen to them I would never allow anyone in my family to take these antibiotics if there were any other options now the colloquial term for what happens on these medications is called being flocked and this has happened to thousands of people but perhaps the most well-known case was a case of what happened to Bobby calwell who was a famous singer who you may remember from this [Music] [Applause] song now Bobby Coldwell took one of these flu quinolone antibiotics after he had developed a cold and went to an urgent care in preparation for a tour he was doing in Japan shortly after taking the drub he was flocked and it actually left him in a wheelchair being unable to play his guitar with a whole range of devastating side effects now the articles that I've read about Bobby calwell show that he was severely disabled from this for the rest of his life and actually died with a lot of these side effects an absolutely devastating outcome now because these side effects are so horrific and there have been so many of them the FDA has picked up on this and they've updated their labels to warn about this deadly side effect so there you have it those are the top 10 commonly prescribed drugs that I believe could completely ruin someone's life all of these risks are described in the drug labels but from my perspective doctors rarely warn people about them and honestly the FDA isn't really communicating them effectively to people either cuz most people have never heard of them and what I've seen is these things can happen to anyone I mean the children of famous politicians famous musicians and just thousands of everyday people out there so if you or someone you love is taking these drugs or considering taking these drugs please think about these side effects and watch closely for them so if you like videos like this that go into the risks of psychiatric medications you may be interested in checking out this playlist here where we cover the real life stories of people going through this very thing

today we're going to be diving into what I believe are some of the most dangerous prescribed drugs out there unfortunately many people taking these medications are never told about the rare but devastating side effects they can cause and what's more I've curated this list to focus on common drugs so it's very likely that you or someone that you care about might be taking one of these right now for those of you who don't know me I'm Dr ysep with during I'm a doctor and I used to work at the FDA and in the pharmaceutical industry as a drug safety expert so let's get into it the first drugs that we're going to talk about are the anti-depressants so these are drugs like the ssris things like Lexapro and proac and they're used for treating depression bipolar and anxiety now while these medications are often experienced as being calming and therapeutic by many some people will have paradoxical reactions meaning that they become more anxious or agitated or in the worst case is sometimes even suicidal homicidal or even psychotic now the internet is full of stories about these drugs being involved in things like suicides and school shootings and often the most well-known cases involve a drug called paxel which is an SSRI and two notable cases really come to mind for me one is the case of David carmichel who killed his 11-year-old son accidentally during a paxel induced psychotic episode later on this case would go on to be dismissed by the Supreme Court of Ontario due to clear evidence that this was drug rated and the other case comes from close to me I'm in Utah but over in Wyoming one state over Donald shell accidentally killed his wife daughter and his granddaughter and then himself when he had a psychotic reaction to paxel as well Donald Shell's son-in-law who lost his wife actually went on to successfully sue Smith Klein for failure to warn about these types of side effects with their drug paxel now over the last couple decades there have been thousands of cases just like Donald's and David's and these ultimately resulted in the boxed warning that goes on all anti-depressants which warn about the risk of suicidal behavior and behavioral changes on these drugs so moving on from some of these serious behavioral problems these drugs can cause the other thing that I want to mention about anti-depressants is that they can also cause something called pssd or post SSRI sexual dysfunction now over the last several decades thousands of people have been coming forward and sharing that the sexual problems that they developed on these drugs have not fully resolved now that they've come off of them and some people are even reporting serious cognitive damage from these medications this is prompted Regulators in Europe Australia Canada and Hong Kong to update the labeling on all of these drugs to warn about these persistent sexual problems that are not going away when people come off these drugs although this was underrecognized for a long time finally it's getting some of the attention it deserves and it has been covered in news outlets like the New York Times the next drugs that we're going to talk about are the ADHD medications these are drugs like adero rlin or stratera and they're used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and Adolescence and honestly from my perspective it should not be surprising to people that ADHD medications can cause some severe behavioral problems they are after all mechanistically similar to stimulant drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine these are drugs that are acting on our dopamine system however many people assume that they're not going to have problems with these drugs when they're used at these normal therapeutic doses but that's not the case in fact some people who are just very sensitive to these medications can have side effects just like the case of Natalie an Australian woman who spiraled into a drug induced Mania on Ridin and when she eventually came off the drug she looked back and saw what had happened she had lost her job she had lost her partner she' lost custody of her two children and she had burned through $12,000 now there have been thousands of cases just like Natalie and the risk of these behavioral problems are now at least widely recognized by regulators and they are present in the drug labels and that's what we can see in labels like ader's label where it talks about the risk of psychiatric adverse reactions including the risk of inducing new psychotic or manic symptoms in some people the next drug on the list is ARA preol also known as a bifi now this is an antis psychotic medication but it's also very commonly used as an anti-depressant for many people this is a popular antis psychotic to take because it's associated with less weight gain and less sedation compared to some of the other drugs and that's because it's a partial dopamine Agonist and I want you to remember that because most Anti psychotics block dopamine and when something is a partial dopamine Agonist that means it can actually stimulate that receptor sometime and what do we know about stimulating dopamine recepts as well it's associated with things like compulsive Behavior addictive behavior and sometimes things like disinhibition I mean those dopamine receptors is where drugs like cocaine and methamphetamine really act on and that point is going to be important for this so since Abilify has been on the market hundreds of people have actually come forward and blamed Abilify for causing types of compulsive or disinhibited behavior things like gambling or sex addiction for instance one of the people who complained about this was Abby hawksley who went on a $10,000 shopping spree shortly after starting this drug and then there was another instance of a Las Vegas woman who had lived there for decades and had no history of gambling but developed a gambling addiction shortly after taking it and this got so bad that she actually ended up engaging in prostitution to make money now I know what you're thinking when you hear these stories could this just be people blaming poor life decisions on a drug and now while initially a lot of people thought this was the case but there were so many reports that the FDA decided to look into this and after their independent investigation in 2016 they determined that this was in fact a real side effect that this drug was causing a lot of disob and compulsive behavior and they went on to update their labels for Abilify on top of that the victims of this side effect ended up teaming up for a class action lawsuit against the manufacturer of the Abilify of Suka and BMS for failure to warn these lawsuits were eventually settled for an unknown amount now the next drug we're going to talk about is the smoking cessation drug Verena clean or chanics now this is a drug used to help people stop smoking by binding to the nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in the brain which is potentially a great thing because so many people die from smoking each year however after this drug came onto the market a lot of people started reporting that it was causing a whole range of strange Behavior and one of the most well-known cases of this is what happened to the famous Texas musician Carter alright who went out had a couple drinks and took his dose of chanics Apparently after he took his dose of this medication he entered some kind of bizarre aggressive delirium which according to his friends and girlfriend was completely uncommon for him even if he had been drinking a lot while he was in this state he actually attacked his girlfriend and then tried to break into his neighbor's house while he was pounding on the door of his neighbors's homes and terrifying the neighbor a warning shot was fired through the door and it accidentally struck Carter in the head and killed him now this was absolutely devastating to his girlfriend and she believed strongly that it was the chanics that put him in this psychotic delusional state that resulted in his death now for a long time the manufacturers of chantex tried to deny it and they actually tried to say that these symptoms were being caused by nicotine withdrawal but eventually because hundreds of people came forward reporting similar things the FDA looked into this and they ended up going on to update the label of this drug with a boxed warning which is the strongest warning to warn about all of the neuros psychiatric side effects that could happen things like depression and suicide and aggressive behavior the next drug we're going to talk about are the Z drugs now these are a type of sleeping medications and you may have heard of them this is things like ambian Sonata and Lunesta now there have been reports of people doing all sorts of things that they could never remember while they were asleep on this drug like making food driving their vehicles making phone calls and even things like having sex probably the one that a lot of people remember recently was Rosanne bar who was tweeting and she said some racist things and she said it was because she was high on ambient and that was her defense so putting that aside cuz I don't really know what happened in that situation I want to focus on the risk and the risk is real because when the FDA eventually looked into their drug database they found 66 incidents of these crazy behaviors happening on the drugs unfortunately many people had accidentally died because of the things that they had done while they were on the drug now probably one of the most widely known cases involving this was the case of kri Kennedy this is RFK Jr's sister and a couple of years ago she mistakenly took ambian instead of her thyroid medicine and unbeknownst to her got into her car and started erratically driving down the freeway and she accidentally sideswiped a truck and she had no recollection of the incident because she was such a widely known figure this ended up going in a court and there was a jury and after the jury had heard the evidence they ended up acquitting her of charges now the next drug we're going to be talking about is methin or lium this is a drug used to treat or prevent malaria and it's been used since the 1970s it's the kind of drug that's used these days when there's a college kid going abroad for travel or here in Utah we've got like a lot of missionaries and they go overseas for their mission and the frightening thing about larium is it can actually cause really severe Neuropsychiatric side effects and one of these cases actually occurred in 2019 and it involved a young lady Alana cutland who was 19 she was a biology student who traveled to Madagascar to study crabs for an internship and she had been taking this drug in preparation for the trip and a few days after arriving her behavior began to change and her mother noticed that when she talked to her on the phone she just wasn't sounding like herself and she was kind of incoherent at times and it was later reported by people who saw her there that she started to have all of these panic attacks which would come out of the blue and So eventually when she wasn't feeling well she decided to cut her six we trip short and return home early and so she jumped an assessa plane to leave the island and they took off however shortly after taking off unexpectedly to everyone on the plane she opened the door and tried to jump out this happened to the horror of her friend who was with her in the plane at the time who reportedly had to lean out and grab her leg to try and keep her from falling out of the This Plane horrifically as this is described in the articles that have covered this story this happened for 5 minutes before ultimately her friend was not able to save her and she fell 3600 ft into a remote jungle where unfortunately she died now her parents maintain that she had everything to live for and this was completely unusual unexpected behavior and they are convinced that she was actually having a psychotic reaction to the larium which she had been taking now Alana's case does not stand alone in fact there have been hundreds of similar cases of this described in the news and also in the medical literature and because of this mequin now carries a boxed warning for severe neuros psychiatric side effects now the next drug we're going to talk about is montal luas or singular gosh this is a really popular drug it's used for asthma and allergies it's been on the market for approximately 20 years and for many people it has become the go-to treatment for asthma especially in kids because they don't like using the inhalers and this comes in just a tablet form unfortunately what people have found is actually that this drug has some really serious side effects that these inhalers don't have and these are severe psychiatric side effects like becoming suicidal or severely depressed and one such tragic incident of this involved a Young Man Nicholas England who was 22 years old who unexpectedly shot himself and he died in 2017 two weeks after starting singular this was completely unexpected to his parents who said that he had no previous Mental Health issues before this happened now there have been hundreds of cases just like Nicholas's that were reported to the FDA that eventually resulted in them doing a public advisory meeting to hear from experts and from people who had suffered from the side effect to learn more and when the FDA looked into this in 2019 they found 82 documented suicide attempts where doctors thought singular had been the causitive agent along with 500 suicide attempts that people had thought had been induced by the drug now one of the interesting things about FDA advisory committee is that you get to hear reports from the patients live now I want to show you some of these things that these people said they experienced while being on singular so check this out so one person read in April the voices started I thought I was going insane I would look around the room knowing I Heard a Voice Even when no one was there it began to tell me to close the windows or just single words calling me names like [ __ ] [ __ ] and loser at that point I became even more withdrawn not knowing what to do and I would sleep for days at a time just to avoid the voice the day it told me to hurt myself with a knife I went off the singular within a week I noticed the voice was gone or this mother who described what happened to her seven-year-old child and then came the words he would say I'm not worth anything I'm so stupid everything would be better if I'm not here he was consumed with death always asking me about dying telling me he didn't think he should be alive at age seven he actually attempted to take his life I had to tackle my seven-year-old child as we fought over the knife he grabbed in the kitchen I had to hold him while he screamed uncontrollably that he didn't want to be alive anymore now ultimately the research the FDA looked into led to them determining that yes in fact these side effects were totally real and singular was causing all of these things and so they put a boxed warning on the drug this is the strongest warning you can have which describe these side effects in detail now interestingly many people thought that this recognition that this drug could cause such horrific side effects would absolutely tank the use of this drug that has not happened at all in fact many people still do not know that singular can cause these things and singular is still being prescribed at very high levels in the US okay moving on so the next drug we want to talk about is isotretinoin otherwise known as acutane now this is a drug that is used for treating severe acne and it's been on the market since 1982 and it's actually one of the most effective treatments for that however the problem is in rare instances it can cause severe psychiatric side effects that can be catastrophic and sometimes longlasting you know lasting even after the people come off the drugs now probably the most widely publicized case of this happening to someone would be that of Bart stup pac's son Bart Jr or BJ now back in 2000 BJ shot himself in the head for seemingly no reason 6 months after starting Accutane according to his parents he had had no mental health problems in absolutely everything to live for now initially back then the drug companies and many dermatologists denied that isotretinoin could even cause such a thing they would say things like it's the acne that's causing it you know these kids they they have depression associated with the acne and for a long time that's what people believed however hundreds of these cases kept on coming forward from bereaved parents who didn't understand why their children were becoming unexpectedly suicidal or depressed even when you would take into account that they had acne and they might be upset about that ultimately the FDA would receive enough of these reports that they would look into it and they would put a warning on the drug telling doctors that mood disturbances depression Suicidal Thoughts psychosis and aggression could all happen with this drug personally I'm very upset about this warning I actually think it is very weak because it doesn't talk about the long-term cognitive damage that I've seen in some Accutane patients now on this channel I interview people who have had drug injuries and one comes to mind and that was the story of Bert when he was talking about his son Luke who was severely damaged by isotron it actually caused long-lasting brain damage that led to Luke eventually deciding to take his life if you want to hear from Robert about this tragic story you can check out the video right here it is one of the most toxic and dangerous side effects that I have ever seen and I actually believe the FDA should have gone a step further than just putting this in the label they should have sent a dear doctor letter out to every family medicine doctor and dermatologist warning about the potential for long-term cognitive damage on this drug this is so important in my opinion because honestly this is a lifestyle drug I mean this is not saving someone's life it's it's helping them with acne and I think most people if they knew that this drug could cause such long- lasting cognitive problems and things like depression and suicide that might factor into the decision to take this drug so I really think the FDA should have gone a step further so the next drug is finasteride also known as propa now this drug was originally developed to treat enlarged prostates but now it is widely sold through online pill M companies like hyms where they Market it for male patent boldness and it does work for that now unfortunately a small proportion of patients who take this drug develop a condition called post finasteride syndrome which is characterized by severe depression cognitive problems and also sexual dysfunction sometimes catastrophic sexual dysfunction and over the last couple decades thousands of these cases have been widely discussed online and in the medical literature and this ultimately led to an update in the drug label in 2022 to disclose the risk of these psychiatric problems and this persistent sexual dysfunction that happened even after they stopped the drug now in my perspective this is one of the worst warnings the FDA has ever put out because they've hidden it in the postmarketing experiences section of the label which a lot of doctors don't read now typically when you have a serious side effect something like persistent sexual dysfunction or Nuance at depression you want to put that in a more prominent section of the labeling they haven't done that here now again why is this so serious well this drug is a lifestyle drug this is not used to treat life-threatening conditions this is used to treat people who are baling now wouldn't you want to know if you were going to take this drug whether it could cause persistent sexual dysfunction will make you depressed a lot of people my age you know young men in their 30s are Bolding right now and they are taking this and this would weigh heavily on their decision no matter how rare this is even if it was super rare you would want to know it because this is not a life-threatening condition I think the FDA has totally flubbed on this I think it should be in a much more prominent place in the label and it should have gone out with a dear doctor letter again to all Family Medicine doctors who prescribed this for male patent Los now if you want to learn more about this again we also cover people's stories with PFS on this channel and you can check out su's story here who was a young college student whose life was derailed when he ultimately went on to develop PFS now the last drugs on this top 10 list are the fluroquinolone antibiotics these are drugs like l flosin or lequin or cyof flosin these are antibiotics that are used to treat quite common bacterial infections things like UTI or sinus infections and in rare instances these drugs can cause some of the most horrific side effects I've ever seen we're talking about severe psychiatric and neurological problems cognitive damage and this can leave people with damage for years that can sometimes be permanent personally having researched this and also talk to a lot of people who have had this happen to them I would never allow anyone in my family to take these antibiotics if there were any other options now the colloquial term for what happens on these medications is called being flocked and this has happened to thousands of people but perhaps the most well-known case was a case of what happened to Bobby calwell who was a famous singer who you may remember from this [Music] [Applause] song now Bobby Coldwell took one of these flu quinolone antibiotics after he had developed a cold and went to an urgent care in preparation for a tour he was doing in Japan shortly after taking the drub he was flocked and it actually left him in a wheelchair being unable to play his guitar with a whole range of devastating side effects now the articles that I've read about Bobby calwell show that he was severely disabled from this for the rest of his life and actually died with a lot of these side effects an absolutely devastating outcome now because these side effects are so horrific and there have been so many of them the FDA has picked up on this and they've updated their labels to warn about this deadly side effect so there you have it those are the top 10 commonly prescribed drugs that I believe could completely ruin someone's life all of these risks are described in the drug labels but from my perspective doctors rarely warn people about them and honestly the FDA isn't really communicating them effectively to people either cuz most people have never heard of them and what I've seen is these things can happen to anyone I mean the children of famous politicians famous musicians and just thousands of everyday people out there so if you or someone you love is taking these drugs or considering taking these drugs please think about these side effects and watch closely for them so if you like videos like this that go into the risks of psychiatric medications you may be interested in checking out this playlist here where we cover the real life stories of people going through this very thing

Transcript for:Risks of Commonly Prescribed Medications

Transcript for:
Risks of Commonly Prescribed Medications