Crazy Pills (Lariam anti-malaria drug)

[bananas]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/08/opinion/crazy-pills.html?src=me&ref=general

Crazy Pills
By DAVID STUART MacLEAN
Published: August 7, 2013 235 Comments

CHICAGO — ON Oct. 16, 2002, at 4 p.m., I walked out of my apartment in Secunderabad, India, leaving the door wide open, the lights on and my laptop humming. I don’t remember doing this. I know I did it because the building’s night watchman saw me leave. I woke up the next day in a train station four miles away, with no idea who I was or why I was in India. A policeman found me, and I ended up strapped down, hallucinating in a mental hospital for three days.

<snip>

I had been prescribed mefloquine hydrochloride, brand name Lariam, to protect myself from malaria while I was in India on a Fulbright fellowship.

<snip>

Last week, the Food and Drug Administration finally acknowledged the severity of the neurological and psychiatric side effects and required that mefloquine’s label carry a “black box” warning of them. But this is too little, too late.

There are countless horror stories about the drug’s effects. One example: in 1999, an Ohio man, back from a safari in Zimbabwe, went down to the basement for a gallon of milk and instead put a shotgun to his head and pulled the trigger. Another: in Somalia in 1993, a Canadian soldier beat a Somali prisoner to death and then attempted suicide. “Psycho Tuesday” was the name his regiment had given to the day of the week they took their Lariam.

<snip>

[dipsydoodle]

1. mefloquine hydrochloride

is pretty much stock throughout the world for anti-malaria use.

I can see that warnings concerning its use have recently been updated :

FDA Drug Safety Communication: FDA approves label changes for antimalarial drug mefloquine hydrochloride due to risk of serious psychiatric and nerve side effects

http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DrugSafety/ucm362227.htm

Warnings from the time of the link in the OP issued by the UK's NHS here : https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/search?q=mefloquine%20hydrochloride

Never taken them personally but I'd guess warnings are in the carton.

[mainer]

3. Lots of reports of horrible nightmares

I've avoided it whenever I have to travel to malaria-prone areas.

Alternatives Malarone (which I've taken several times) and Doxycycline are pretty well tolerated.