Tuesday, July 17, 2007

"Discontinue use...


...if you have urges to gamble or f*ck compulsively" the drug commercial might as well have said last night. "Wha?" I thought as I looked up from my magazine last night to see an ad for a drug called "Mirapex". So I thought I must have misheard, so I googled "drug side effects" and "gambling" this morning, seriously thinking I'd find nothing but "Jim is crazy", but sure enough, I heard correctly:


"One of the side effects of Mirapex has been the development of compulsive gambling in people who have not had a problem with gambling before taking the drug. For example, a retired government intelligence worker lost thousands of dollars in slot machines before he discovered that gambling was a Mirapex side effect and stopped taking the drug. A 68-year-old man lost more than $200,000 before his medication was adjusted. A 41-year-old lost more than $5,000 in Internet gambling.


Gambling is only one of the pleasure/reward-seeking activities that can increase in patients taking Mirapex. Other obsessive behaviors include:


  • Excessive shopping

  • Overeating

  • Hypersexuality "

Sounds like a party. I wonder how hard it is to fake Parkinson's.

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