Crazy Pills (Lariam anti-malaria drug)
Crazy Pills
By DAVID STUART MacLEAN
Published: August 7, 2013 235 Comments
CHICAGO ON Oct. 16, 2002, at 4 p.m., I walked out of my apartment in Secunderabad, India, leaving the door wide open, the lights on and my laptop humming. I dont remember doing this. I know I did it because the buildings night watchman saw me leave. I woke up the next day in a train station four miles away, with no idea who I was or why I was in India. A policeman found me, and I ended up strapped down, hallucinating in a mental hospital for three days.
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I had been prescribed mefloquine hydrochloride, brand name Lariam, to protect myself from malaria while I was in India on a Fulbright fellowship.
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Last week, the Food and Drug Administration finally acknowledged the severity of the neurological and psychiatric side effects and required that mefloquines label carry a black box warning of them. But this is too little, too late.
There are countless horror stories about the drugs effects. One example: in 1999, an Ohio man, back from a safari in Zimbabwe, went down to the basement for a gallon of milk and instead put a shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger. Another: in Somalia in 1993, a Canadian soldier beat a Somali prisoner to death and then attempted suicide. Psycho Tuesday was the name his regiment had given to the day of the week they took their Lariam.
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dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)is pretty much stock throughout the world for anti-malaria use.
I can see that warnings concerning its use have recently been updated :
FDA Drug Safety Communication: FDA approves label changes for antimalarial drug mefloquine hydrochloride due to risk of serious psychiatric and nerve side effects
http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm362227.htm
Warnings from the time of the link in the OP issued by the UK's NHS here : https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/search?q=mefloquine%20hydrochloride
Never taken them personally but I'd guess warnings are in the carton.
Response to bananas (Original post)
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mainer
(12,037 posts)I've avoided it whenever I have to travel to malaria-prone areas.
Alternatives Malarone (which I've taken several times) and Doxycycline are pretty well tolerated.