Rich Seymour’s stochastic statements.

I’ve been taking Depakote ER in some dosage or another for… 7 years now. The longest I’ve ever gone without it was about a week. Now, with the recent shooting at NIU, covered in excruciating detail by most media, we have the info that the shooter had recently suspended some (as of now) unknown medication. One can bet that it was some sort of psychoactive drug.

So this leaves me in an interesting conundrum which I have faced for the past 7 years. What would I do if for some reason I couldn’t keep taking this drug, Depakote? For example, the FDA recently outlawed OTC Quinine, which seemed nonsensical to me as my Mom takes it for leg cramps, but they did it. Or for example, the DEA outlawed cocaine tinctures and the US outlawed alcohol for a bit there too. PCP was sold as the prescription drug Sernyl for a couple of years then outlawed. Certainly the side effects of PCP seem worse than the side effects of Depakote, but the Depakote side effects can kill you if you have certain liver conditions. Depakote (valproic acid) certainly injures more per user than Quinine did… (someone else can find the stats on that and prove me wrong)…

But yeah, back to the main topic here… what if drug X becomes illegal and the side effects of people stopping taking it aren’t just psychosis, but psychopathosis? One could imagine a horror movie (28 days later, the happening) type scenario as people could no longer fill their ’scripts.

This is all just conjecture and babbling, but I think that lawful drug use has been legislated into illegal drug abuse so often and so capriciously that this sort of scenario deserves some thought.

posted by Rich at 5:44 pm
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