What Adderall Can Teach Us About Medical Marijuana

June 19, 2012

An article in the New York Times last week described the increasing use of stimulant medications such as Adderall and Ritalin among high-school students.  Titled “The Risky Rise of the Good-Grade Pill,” the article discussed how 15 to 40 percent of students, competing for straight-As and spots in elite colleges, use stimulants for an extra “edge,” regardless of whether they actually have ADHD.  In this blog, I’ve written about ADHD.  It’s a real condition—and medications can help tremendously—but the diagnostic criteria are quite vague.  As with much in psychiatry, anyone “saying the right thing” can relatively easily get one of these drugs, whether they want it or not.

Sure enough, the number of prescriptions for these drugs has risen 26% since 2007.  Does this mean that ADHD is now 26% more prevalent?  No.  In the Times article, some students admitted they “lie to [their] psychiatrists” in order to “get something good.”  In fact, some students “laughed at the ease with which they got some doctors to write prescriptions for ADHD.”  In the absence of an objective test (some computerized tests exist but aren’t widely used nor validated, and brain scans are similarly circumspect) and diagnostic criteria that are readily accessible on the internet, anyone who wants a stimulant can basically get one.  And while psychiatric diagnosis is often an imperfect science, in many settings the methodology by which we assess and diagnose ADHD is particularly crude.

Many of my colleagues will disagree with (or hate) me for saying so, but in some sense, the prescription of stimulants has become just like any other type of cosmetic medicine.  Plastic surgeons and dermatologists, for instance, are trained to perform medically necessary procedures, but they often find that “cosmetic” procedures like facelifts and Botox injections are more lucrative.  Similarly, psychiatrists can have successful practices in catering to ultra-competitive teens (and their parents) and giving out stimulants.  Who cares if there’s no real disease?  Psychiatry is all about enhancing patients’ lives, isn’t it?  As another blogger wrote last week, some respectable physicians have even argued that “anyone and everyone should have access to drugs that improve performance.”

When I think about “performance enhancement” in this manner, I can’t help but think about the controversy over medical marijuana.  This is another topic I’ve written about, mainly to question the “medical” label on something that is neither routinely accepted nor endorsed by the medical profession.  Proponents of medical cannabis, I wrote, have co-opted the “medical” label in order for patients to obtain an abusable psychoactive substance legally, under the guise of receiving “treatment.”

How is this different from the prescription of psychostimulants for ADHD?  The short answer is, it’s not.  If my fellow psychiatrists and I prescribe psychostimulants (which are abusable psychoactive substances in their own right, as described in the pages of the NYT) on the basis of simple patient complaints—and continue to do so simply because a patient reports a subjective benefit—then this isn’t very different from a medical marijuana provider writing a prescription (or “recommendation”) for medical cannabis.  In both cases, the conditions being treated are ill-defined (yes, in the case of ADHD, it’s detailed in the DSM, which gives it a certain validity, but that’s not saying much).  In both cases, the conditions affect patients’ quality of life but are rarely, if ever, life-threatening.  In both cases, psychoactive drugs are prescribed which could be abused but which most patients actually use quite responsibly.  Last but not least, in both cases, patients generally do well; they report satisfaction with treatment and often come back for more.

In fact, taken one step further, this analogy may turn out to be an argument in favor of medical marijuana.  As proponents of cannabis are all too eager to point out, marijuana is a natural substance, humans have used it for thousands of years, and it’s arguably safer than other abusable (but legal) substances like nicotine and alcohol.  Psychostimulants, on the other hand, are synthetic chemicals (not without adverse effects) and have been described as “gateway drugs” to more or less the same degree as marijuana.  Why one is legal and one is not simply appears to be due to the psychiatric profession’s “seal of approval” on one but not the other.

If the psychiatric profession is gradually moving away from the assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of severe mental illness and, instead, treating “lifestyle” problems with drugs that could easily be abused, then I really don’t have a good argument for denying cannabis to patients who insist it helps their anxiety, insomnia, depression, or chronic pain.

Perhaps we should ask physicians take a more rigorous approach to ADHD diagnosis, demanding interviews with parents and teachers, extensive neuropsychiatric testing, and (perhaps) neuroimaging before offering a script.  But in a world in which doctors’ reimbursements are dwindling, and the time devoted to patient care is vanishing—not to mention a patient culture which demands a quick fix for the problems associated with the stresses of modern adolescence—it doesn’t surprise me one bit that some doctors will cut corners and prescribe without a thorough workup, in much the same way that marijuana is provided, in states where it’s legal.  If the loudest protests against such a practice don’t come from our leadership—but instead from the pages of the New York Times—we only have ourselves to blame when things really get out of hand.

42 Comments | addiction, child psychiatry, diagnostics, psychopharmacology | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by stevebMD

The FDA Should Really Look Into This Drug

April 1, 2011

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates and approves medications for use in humans.  Their approval process is rigorous, and they do extensive monitoring of drugs they’ve already approved (“postmarketing surveillance”) to ensure their continued safety and efficacy.

As a psychiatrist, I see one particular drug used very frequently by my patients, usually prescribed by another physician for management of a physical or mental disorder.  In certain cases, however, I wonder whether it might actually worsen the symptoms I’m treating.  Furthermore, I’ve seen several recent references in the medical literature describing how this particular drug can increase the risk of psychotic symptoms and might even cause schizophrenia, a lifelong condition with high morbidity and mortality.

This month’s British Medical Journal, for instance, contains an article showing that users of this drug are more than twice as likely to have psychotic symptoms than nonusers; it “significantly increased the risk of psychotic experiences” over a 10-year period, and “adjustment for other psychiatric diagnoses did not change the results.”  Similarly, a meta-analysis published last month in the Archives of General Psychiatry showed that “the age at onset of psychosis for users [of this drug] was 2.70 years younger than for nonusers,” and that exposure to this drug “is associated with a decline in cognitive performance in young people.”  Finally, an article in the August 2010 American Journal of Psychiatry reported that use of this drug “is associated with an adverse course of psychotic symptoms, even after taking into account other clinical, substance use, and demographic variables.”

Given all this bad news, it’s surprising that this drug is still on the market—particularly in light of the FDA’s recent decisions to pull the plug on other medications with potentially dangerous side effects:  heart rhythm abnormalities (in the case of Darvon), coronary heart disease (Vioxx), increased risk of myocardial infarction (Avandia), fainting and non-cancerous ovarian cysts (Zelnorm), and so on.  So what gives?

And what is this horrible drug anyway?

It’s medical marijuana.

To be fair, asking why the FDA hasn’t withdrawn medical marijuana from the market is not exactly a reasonable question because, technically, it has never been on the market.  The DEA labels it a schedule I drug, which means, according to their definition, that it has a high potential for abuse, no recognized medical use, and no “accepted safety profile.”  However, several states (sixteen at last count, including my home state of California) have approved its use, and annual sales are around $1.7 billion, rivaling the annual sales of Viagra.

Let me point out that I have no official position on medical cannabis.  (See my previous post on the subject.)  I do not prescribe it, but that’s a professional decision, not a personal or moral one.  As noted above, I’ve seen some of my patients benefit from it, and others harmed by it.

Many other substances that are readily available to my patients—whether legal or not—have the potential for both benefit and harm.  People “self-medicate” in all kinds of ways, and we physicians have a responsibility to ensure that they’re doing so in a way that doesn’t cause long-term damage.  We encourage people to stop smoking cigarettes, for instance, and make sure that patients use alcohol in moderation.  (Alcohol and nicotine, of course, are legal but not “prescribed” as medications.)

But once we (i.e., the medical profession and the government) designate a drug as a “medication,” this should imply a whole new level of scientific rigor and safety.  This designation communicates to patients that the substance will provide some sort of measurable benefit and the relative lack of adverse effects when used as prescribed.  I’m not sure medical marijuana passes this test.  Not only have its benefits not been rigorously proven (a fact that is probably due to the reluctance of the NIH to fund such research), but, as demonstrated in the research above, it’s not really “safe” enough to meet criteria for an FDA-approved medication.

As a result, we have a situation where the “medical” label is being used to describe a product that is used for “medicinal” use (although, in my experience, patients often use it for recreational purposes only), but which also has the potential to exacerbate existing conditions or cause new ones.  Medications shouldn’t do this.  Medical cannabis, if subjected to the FDA approval process in its current form, would go nowhere.

Don’t get me wrong:  I understand the potential benefit of cannabis and the compounds in the natural marijuana product, and I support any measure to bring more effective treatments to our patients.  But the current awkward “medicalization” of marijuana imposes too much cognitive dissonance on prescribers and users.  We believe intuitively that it may “help” but also know its potential risks, and that’s hard for any honest physician to endorse.

I see two solutions to this dilemma:  Perform the rigorous, controlled studies to prove its efficacy and safety; or just do away with the whole “medical” façade and legalize it already.

5 Comments | medications, mental health, psychopharmacology | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by stevebMD