For Some Troops, Powerful Drug Cocktails Have Deadly Results

slimvictor

slimvictor

Bluelight Crew
Joined
Dec 29, 2008
Messages
6,477
Location
"Darkness cannot be dissipated with more darkness.
By JAMES DAO, BENEDICT CAREY and DAN FROSCH
Published: February 12, 2011

In his last months alive, Senior Airman Anthony Mena rarely left home without a backpack filled with medications.

He returned from his second deployment to Iraq complaining of back pain, insomnia, anxiety and nightmares. Doctors diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and prescribed powerful cocktails of psychiatric drugs and narcotics.

Yet his pain only deepened, as did his depression. “I have almost given up hope,” he told a doctor in 2008, medical records show. “I should have died in Iraq.”

Airman Mena died instead in his Albuquerque apartment, on July 21, 2009, five months after leaving the Air Force on a medical discharge. A toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood, including three antidepressants, a sedative, a sleeping pill and two potent painkillers.

Yet his death was no suicide, the medical examiner concluded. What killed Airman Mena was not an overdose of any one drug, but the interaction of many. He was 23.

cont at
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/us/13drugs.html?src=me&ref=homepage
 
RIP

They are getting really stingy with the discharges when they are needed aren't they

Murdered by his employer
 
The military was turning their heads when their soldiers were shooting heroin in Vietnam. Our soldiers are guinea pigs for all kinds of phsychological weapons & what not. Our government does stuff to our soldiers that is kept confidential & its a disgrace!
 
it's no MKULTRA, but it is deeply saddening. it did seem like he needed a good deal of meds, but how much? and shouldn't doctors KNOW what kind of cross-medications can kill their patients?
 
My little brother was in the army when he was 19-20. He was on a lot of drugs, and attempted suicide after combining a handful of tylenol, a bunch of seroquel, 10 flexeril, some fioricet, and some benzos and painkillers. Probably 100 or more pills total. He ended up being discharged, general under honorable conditions, after being placed in the military equivalent of a psych ward. He was in there for 11 months. He said that it was bad, and that practically everyone was drinking, and many were on painkillers. He even used to buy pills from his saergent. The army is fucked up, and there's too many people that need help who can't get it, because they pay little attention. Sad but true.
 
I started to get panic attacks while i was in Afghanistan. At the urging of my command, i went to the base shrink. All that dude did was give me 10mg diazapam and tell me to take it 3 times a day. A week later when i came back to him I told him that the medicine was affecting me adversely. His solution, just take more. A week later I returned and told the doc i was done with the benzos. Then he perscribed zoloft and seroquel. Well the zoloft gave me wicked insomnia, and 4 days later he gave me some other ssri. I feel like that lacksadasical approach to perscribing chemicals has no place in a theatre of combat like afghanistan. Changing the pills in quick succession did me no favors on the mental health aspect either. It's sad that the people that go off to fight for our freedoms are not properlly cared for. In retrospect, i didnt even need pills for the panic attacks, as i regulate anxiety these days with breathing exercises
 
Thats too bad..... What really makes it sad is when he said he "should have died in Iraq". Idk much about anti-depressants but I didn't think that some one would be on THREE types!!! Very disturbing stuff that he died because of all his prescription mixing into a deadly cocktail.
 
yea, i used to buy all my oxys n diluadids from a dude who was in the Army, he got back to the states n his sergeant from overseas was still sending him Oxys n dillys, dude didnt have a script, army doctor didnt give em to him, he was just gettin em handed to him on the side from his junky sergeant
 
It's not just the U.S. military that does this either, all recent wars have been fought, for the most part, completely and totally stoned/drunk/tweeked or doped up on prescription opiates/SSRIs/benzos.
 
According to the autopsy report, Sergeant Bachus had in his system two antidepressants, the opiates oxymorphone and oxycodone, and Ativan for anxiety. The delirium he experienced in his final days was “most likely due to the interaction of his medications,” the report said.
Click to expand...

I like how they say "most likely due to the medication." With opana and oxycodone + all that other shit dude was probably noddin out half the time and the other half wasn't sure where he was at. Sad situation though.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top