Scoop’s Views

There are at least a handful of people arguing the U.S. government needs to “do more” to regulate online pharmacies. Sure, that may be true, but right now, face the facts: most in Congress are older people who are technologically-challenged. In fact, look at legislation about most any aspect of life and you’ll see most of it is at least 10 or more years behind the times. I won’t even touch on the health care crisis in the U.S.

In a story on CNN.com, one woman cried to the cable news channel that she found her husband on their marriage bed, dead, in a pool of vomit. He allegedly died from what the woman — the widow — declares was an accidental overdose of drugs the now-dead husband received from an online pharmacy.

The woman agreed to speak with CNN only if she could remain anonymous. It’s always easy to tell the truth when no one knows who you are and there’s no public accountability for your words or actions. CNN has a statement in the story saying she spoke anonymously with CNN “because she wants to protect her husband’s identity and not embarrass his family.”

The woman’s husband is dead, so his identity doesn’t need any protection. If he truly did die from an accidental overdose, there would be nothing to be embarrassed about. Anyway, that’s her story, and evidently, since she’s anonymous, she’s sticking to it. It’s hard to feel sympathetic when someone wants to hide behind a smokescreen, giving an excuse that doesn’t seem to hold water. Whether it’s the truth or not, well, that’s something she’ll have to discuss with her Maker.

This anonymous woman told CNN that her now-husband had a ritual each night before went to bed: he’d open a bottle of Soma, a by-prescription-only muscle relaxer; count out eight or nine pills that it took for him to go to sleep; then take the pills; and then head to bed.

In case you missed the key part of that information, the wife told CNN her now-dead husband took eight or nine Soma pills each night before going to sleep. Eight or nine! Looking up information on Soma at Drugs.com, there’s a warning that reads:

Take Soma exactly as it was prescribed for you. Do not take the medication in larger amounts, or take it for longer than recommended by your doctor. Follow the directions on your prescription label.

Looking at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Drugs and Human Performance Fact Sheets site, the dose the now-dead unidentified man who accidentally overdosed should have been taken is really much less less than “eight or nine” pills. In fact, over the course of a day, he should have taken three 350 mg tablets, and then, at bedtime, one more, for a total of four tablets from the time he woke in the morning until he went to rest his head and fall asleep at night. The site also offered a second dosage that he could have taken. That would have been one 400 mg tablet four times a day, or, at most, 2400 mg divided into doses over a 24-hour period, which would have been 600 mg if he opted to take only four doses each day. Below is the information from the site:

Potency, Purity and Dose: Carisoprodol is present as a racemic mixture. During treatment, the recommended dose of carisoprodol is for one 350 mg tablet taken three times daily and at bedtime (1400 mg/day). The usual dose for meprobamate is one

400 mg taken four times daily, or daily divided doses of up to 2400 mg. To control chronic pain, carisoprodol is often taken concurrently with other drugs, particularly opiates, benzodiazepines, barbiturates, and other muscle relaxants.

By taking “eight or nine” tablets at one time — especially right before bedtime — the now-dead guy was grossly irresponsible, negligent, and frankly, seemingly had some sort of death wish. If he had 350 mg tablets and took only eight of them at bedtime, then he took 2800 mg of carisoprodol (Soma) — 400 mg more than the dose for the entire 24-hour period. In essence, he was probably taking lethal doses each time he took his “eight or nine” pills, or, as the wife said, whatever it took for him to go to sleep. Well, he accomplished it: he went to sleep. Permanently.

Do I feel sorry for the story? Not a chance. He was taking far more than the prescribed dosage. He went through an Internet pharmacy, which the wife never mentioned, at least in the article, whether it was in the U.S. or some other country. And finally, she never took an active or concerned role in his health care.

The argument, if anyone is going to try to make it, that she may not be a nurse or other health care professional, or that she didn’t know that the dose he was taking was too much, just doesn’t wash. Let’s get real: How many prescriptions do you know of that require a person to take more than two pills or tablets? How many prescriptions require a person to take more than four pills or tablets? Let’s take it further: how many prescriptions require a person to take five or six (or more!) tablets? Not many, huh? Interesting.

A person with commonsense would hear bells and whistles going off, saying, “Houston, we have a problem!” Perhaps her now-dead husband was a drug addict addicted to Soma. That’s one of the major issues with that particular medication, and the reason carisoprodol was taken off the market in Sweden in November 2007: problems with dependence, abuse, and side effects, though the oversight agency believes other similar medications are better, with fewer unwanted issues. In the EU, the European Medicines Agency has issued a statement recommending that member states suspend marketing authorization for this product.

In the story, after sobbing about how she believed her now-dead husband was being treated by a local physician and says she was totally clueless about where the drugs were coming from, she says her now-dead husband became an addict. She says she found out, according to the article, only after he was dead, his source of drugs. She says the Internet pharmacy served as a drug dealer or pusher.

Over at the United States’ agency battling illicit use of drugs — prescription, non-prescription (such as over-the-counter/OTC), and illegal drugs — the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), spokesman Rusty Payne said the abuse of pharmaceuticals “is one of the biggest drug problems we are dealing with. The Internet is the biggest culprit.”

According to the CNN story, the DEA has “formed an initiative with Google, Yahoo! and AOL to warn people about buying drugs online. Between 2005 and 2007, Payne said the official warning popped up nearly 80 million times.”

In the end, things come down to personal responsibility. There’s no amount of whining anyone can do that will place responsibility for one’s actions on the shoulders of another. In a courtroom, though, sadly, that very argument is often made — successfully, too — and people get off the hook because they had “bad childhoods,” were the children of alcoholics or drug abusers, or, as one convicted cop killer tried to argue in the late 1990s in Kankakee, Illinois, because his ancestors were slaves.

People need to learn, once again, to stand up, develop a backbone, and take personal responsibility in matters, whether crimes, lack of employment, failure to pay their mortgage because the person sought a home loan from any company willing to give them a loan after being told by others they didn’t qualify, or after someone’s death as a result of gross irresponsibility with prescription medications.

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