Self- Prescribing: An Editorial

Michael Naafs, A. B.

Department of Medicine, Naafs International Health Consultancy, Netherlands

*Correspondence to: Dr. Michael Naafs, A. B., Department of Medicine, Naafs International Health Consultancy, Netherlands.

Copyright © 2019 Dr. Michael Naafs, A. B. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Introduction
Self -prescribing by doctors or to their relatives is legal in many countries and is a commonplace. The perils are well known [1]. However, non-medical prescription use by the crypto market is becoming an increasing global health problem [2].

Psychiatric drugs with potent sedative, stimulant or euphoric effects are sold on these markets, where the magnitude of these sales is not known [3]. Party drugs as ketamine are going world wide as the last saving for major depressive disorder [4]. Customs find more synthetic drugs send by post than ever [5].

In addition, euthanasia drugs are promoted by the internet as the holy grail powder drug “X”, (sodium nitrate) by laity activists cooperatives, fueled by ignorant media, leading to cruel deaths by methemoglobinemia, cyanosis. convulsions, arrythmias. coma and asystole [6].

Liver transplantations due to acute liver failure after using food supplements are no longer exceptionally and the term “Herb Induced Liver Injury” (HILI) has been born [7].

Conclusion
How has this become so far?

It is obvious there is quite a gap between regular medicine and the self-prescribed internet medicine. Probably doctors and patients do not communicate well about these subjects for unknown reasons to be investigated. Anyway, it would be wise when supplements are regulated by the FDA and EMA like medicines. Lack of cybersecurity on illicit drug transports increases the problem only more.

Bibliography

1. Moberly, T. (2014). Physicians, don’t heal thyself; the perils of self-prescribing. BMJ., 349, g7401.
2. Cunliffe, J., Decary-Hutu, D. & Pollak, T. A. (2019). Nonmedical prescription psychiatric drug use and the darknet, A crypto market analysis. Int J Drug Policy., S0955-3959(19)30024-6.
3. C. M. (2019). Trends in the Use of Non-Medical Prescription Psychiatric Drugs from the Dark Web. DarkWeb News.
4. Ketamine Abuse (2019). Drug Abuse.Com 2019.
5. NOS 2019; Apri 24.
6. Braam, S. (2019). De opkomst en ondergang van middel “X”.
7. Peters, C. P., den Hoed, C. M., Coenen, S., et al. (2019). Acuut leverfalen na gebruik van voedings supplementen Ned Tijdschr. Geneesk., 17.