5/18/2023 0 Comments Dr sacks awakenings“We rationalize, we dissimilate, we pretend: we pretend that modern medicine is a rational science, all facts, no nonsense, and just what it seems. Several patients had a similar response: They tried the medicine that brought back some normalcy, found life still unacceptable, got discouraged and wasted away Even increasing the dose to 5 grams/day did not bring her back. But no, getting the dosage right was a balancing act that tended to get more difficult after the patient had been on L-DOPA for a while. It made me wonder if a smaller dose might have been more effective. One third of the way through the book, in every case so far Oliver Sacks increased the does to 3 grams/day and saw bizarre symptoms (problems were sometimes there before the dose increase). Here are some notes that I jotted down while reading. The greatest value from this book comes from the reminder that we are whole beings with experiences and unmet needs that cannot be met with the addition of a drug or drugs. That illness then gets replace with another coping mechanism, which we call a side effect. L-DOPA removed one illness response to life. What I got out of this book is that illness is a coping mechanism.
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