"He wasn't on an antidepressant, he just took Neurontin" -- for treatment of pain

VIA OpEdNews: Martha Rosenberg

Two women speak out about the use of Pfizer's Neurontin and the possible connection to their husbands deaths from the psychiatric side effects the drug can induce.

One woman speaks about her husband, a doctor.



""We didn't know his extreme internal restlessness was akathesia, which is linked to suicide in medical journals, or that it was from Neurontin," says Debbie. In his last, dark days, Doug drove for miles "searching for a knife to end his life," buying one at a nearby hardware store and another at a culinary store hours away. On Palm Sunday, April 13, 2003, in an apartment he had rented away from his family, Doug died of multiple, self-inflicted stab wounds to the chest. He was 52."

AND another woman's husband, a doctor

"Doug was a conservative prescriber and grilled his Pfizer rep about Neurontin's safety more than once, says Robin. He was so attuned to his responses to medications, when he took Vioxx before its dangers were known, he noted heart palpitations -- and discontinued its use. A week later, Vioxx was pulled from pharmacy shelves for causing heart problems in some patients. But thanks to Neurontin-caused akathesia, Doug's ability to detect his own mental changes on the drug disappeared. "He did not know his suicidal thoughts were drug-induced and not his own," she says.

On Christmas day, 2004, after opening presents, Doug urged Robin and the boys to go to a movie. Hesitant to separate on a holiday at first, Robin says she remembered an "Oprah" show about how men should get the chance to be alone in the house, to unwind, like women have, so the three went see Meet the Fockers. When they returned, they found Doug hanging in the foyer. He had been on Neurontin for 10 months. He was 54.

Like Debbie Alsberge, Robin Briggs's "aha" moment came later. Two weeks after Doug's funeral, a distraught patient literally drove up on the Briggs' lawn saying he couldn't accept the uncharacteristic suicide and demanded to know what antidepressant Dr. Briggs was on, says Robin. Even though she had been asked the question countless times, responding, "He wasn't on an antidepressant, he just took Neurontin," this time Robin says a light bulb went off in her head and she ran upstairs to the medicine cabinet to read the Neurontin patient information for the first time."


READ the entire article HERE


Further background reading on Pfizer's Neurontin

April 20, 2008-Neurontin vs.Placebo for Bipolar Disorder :Placebo wins soulful sepulcher blog

Internal documents

Manuscript-Neurontin Treatment of Pain Internal Documents:marketing and data mining of patient information


Manuscript-Neurontin Treatment of Pain Internal Documents-1996Title: [Letter from Jacki Gordon to Phil Magistro regarding status of manuscripts]Document Date: 19961108Author: Gordon, JackiCorporate Author: AMM Adelphi LimitedManuscript Neurontin Treatment of Pain Invoice Internal Document--1996 --PFD format.

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Again, more victims of behind the scenes marketing planning from pharmaceutical companies resulting in grave harm to patients.



Hat tip to PHARMAGOSSIP for Martha Rosenberg article.