The New York Times of February 14 carries the disturbing news of
an alarming increase in deaths from accidental overdose among
our active duty military personnel and our war veterans. The
usual scenario is a diagnosis of PTSD (often accompanied by a
pain syndrome) unsuccessfully treated with a wide array of
psychotropic drugs, which in their aggregate wind up killing the
patient-- often at a very young age. Autopsy reveals significant
blood levels of prescribed medication reflecting the heavy drug
cocktail and no other apparent cause of death. PTSD/pain
patients are often prescribed a combination of psychotropics
that may include--one antidepressant, one antipsychotic, one
antianxiety, one sleep, and one pain medicine. Sometimes, the
enormous medication burden is worsened even further--either by
the simultaneous prescription of more than one drug from a given
class or the additional self medication effected by the sharing
of pills among patients. Individual psychotropic drugs can have
serious side effects--in