The other day discussing about Pink Floyd made me remember the song Comfortably Numb!
It was a real life narration of being injected with a drug!
But this blog is not about that song!
But another similar song called Thorazine Shuffle!
Neurologists will know the terminology and of course the treatment! I was glad to learn a new thing (story of my life everyday!)
In the novel called Determined by Robert Sapolsky; he talks about two mental conditions where you have the interplay of Dopamine!
In fact it is an interesting problem which according to Robert is subtle and cool, in an abstract sort of way!
So, in schizophrenia, there appears to be an excess of dopamine in parts of the brain related to logical thought, and a key treatment is to throw in a drug that blocks dopamine signaling. All good so far!?
Now come to Parkinson’s!
So Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disorder in which sufferers have trouble initiating movement, where the core problem is a loss of dopamine in a completely different part of the brain, and a key treatment is to give people a drug (most often L-DOPA) that will boost dopamine signaling!
See the problem here! Just like nectar; even more is not good!
Now here comes the interesting part!
We do not inject any of these drugs directly into the relevant brain region. Instead, you take the drug systemically (e.g., by mouth or by injection), which means it gets into the bloodstream and has its effect all over the brain.
Give someone with schizophrenia a dopamine receptor blocker, and you decrease the abnormally high levels of dopaminergic signaling in the “schizophrenic” part of the brain back to normal; but at the same time, you decrease the normal levels elsewhere to below normal!
Give L-DOPA to someone with Parkinson’s, and you raise dopamine signaling in the “Parkinsonian” part of the brain to normal but boost signaling to above-normal levels elsewhere in the brain!
So if you treat someone with Parkinson’s using high and/or prolonged doses of
L-DOPA, do you increase their risk of a psychosis? Yes!
In the same way if you treat someone with schizophrenia using high and/or prolonged doses of a dopamine receptor blockers, do you increase their risk of a Parkinsonian movement disorder? Yes!
The problem in this case or the complication is called “tardive dyskinesia,”!
Which brings us back to the Thorazine Shuffle! This is the slang name for “tardive dyskinesia,”!
The Southern rock band Gov’t Mule has a song about it called “Thorazine
Shuffle,” whose final lyrics are “Ain’t no need to worry today, Thorazine
shuffle make everything OK.”
The phrase was common in mental health contexts during the mid-20th century to describe the visible side effects of heavy medicating!
Just when you thought that music is all noise and when you actually end up supporting noise!
Knowledge Knowledge everywhere just stop and think!
Now you need medication only when you do not have much devotion! Whether you believe in God or not; a simple meditation or concentration would calm your mind without any drugs! Watch some old serials like the Ramayana starring Dipika Chikhlia as Mata Seetha and you would be calmed!
Time for some Dopamine Detox!
SHubh Ratri!
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