This easy-to-buy drug can scramble your brain

Yikes! Is this the most dangerous OTC drug ever?

The race to make as many billions as possible from drug sales doesn’t stop when the FDA approves a drug.

The really big bucks are waiting just a stone’s throw from the pharmacy counter. Right there, on an easy-to-reach shelf where no one will make you sign the screen, or ask if you want a pharmacist to talk with you.

Just pick up a package and check it out. No questions asked.

I’m talking about the more and more common Rx-to-OTC switch. It’s a drug company’s dream come true.

And one of Merck’s dreams came true was when the FDA allowed oxybutynin to go OTC under the brand name Oxytrol.

But for many of us, it may have been one of the worst decisions the agency has ever made.

Oxytrol was the first drug for the “disease” of overactive bladder, or OAB, that the FDA allowed to go OTC. It’s marketed as an easy-to-use patch.

Many experts were shocked when it was approved last year. Even the FDA’s own advisory panel didn’t think it was safe enough to be released from the pharmacy counter.

Now, oxybutynin has plenty of side effects, but it seems that most of them “mysteriously” went missing as soon as this drug went OCT and was given a new name. The FDA seemed more concerned about whether consumers could “understand the information” on the package about who should take the drug.

Unfortunately, the information that consumers really need to know about this drug never even made it to the package.

Aside from “gastric retention,” dry mouth, headaches, and a potentially life-threatening swelling of your lips, tongue and throat (cautions you’ll find on prescription oxybutynin), there’s another warning that’s gone astray.

And it’s about a side effect that can ruin your life.

One user says the drug turned her “brain to mush.” Another describes “mental fuzziness” and depression. And another was referred to a psychiatrist because she was depressed, confused and having a lot of trouble remembering things. But at least for this patient, the specialist connected the dots with oxybutynin.

After stopping the drug, she improved “right away.” She said that “I never even tied the two together. The bladder and the head are rather far apart!”

But despite the distance between your bladder and your head, drugs like Oxytrol can make the trip. They are called anticholinergics, and work by blocking a nerve “messenger.”

And for many, that can cause mental problems. Problems like confusion and psychotic reactions that might sound like diseases with similar symptoms… like Alzheimer’s, for instance.

And if you’re older, you may be especially susceptible.

And here’s the worst part.

The “disease” this dangerous drug is sold for wasn’t one discovered by doctors, scientists or researchers, but rather by a drug company’s marketing department.

OAB was actually the brainchild of a “Mad Man” named Neil Wolf who worked for a drug company later purchased by Pfizer.

Wolf needed to come up with a way to expand a condition called “urge incontinence” to sell more of his company’s drug. The market for people who had this problem of accidently “peeing in their pants” wasn’t big enough to sell millions of pills.

So Wolf’s idea was to make the market bigger. He rebranded the condition to include those who just had a strong urge to make lots of trips to the bathroom.

And it worked.

OAB has become almost a household word by now. Thanks to Neil Wolf, just about everyone has heard of it.

But unfortunately, not everyone has heard about the side effects these drugs can cause.

Especially the mind-blowing effects from one that’s now as easy to buy as a stick of gum.

Sources:
“Will bladder drug scramble your synapses?” Joe Graedon, The People’s Pharmacy, peoplespharmacy.com