3rd Class Med and Anti-depressants

On Mon, 21 Jul 2003 01:20:43 GMT, "Richard Kaplan"
wrote:



"Roger Halstead" wrote in message
.. .

Pilots themselves tend to be highly polarized on this issue and many
of them don't understand (or have the wrong understanding) the
reasoning the FAA uses for disqualifying an individual taking those
drugs.

Take a look at the pilot "reasoning" in the initial post... Presuming this
is a real post and not a troll, do you think the FAA is far off the mark?

Not as far as I used to.
I have a bit of a time understanding "clinical depression" as I've
never suffered any form of depression, other than feeling bad when my
dog got run over when I was a kid. Feeling bad about something, or
unhappy due to a reason such as that is not depression.

"As I understand", basically there are those who take the meds and
live normal lives, there are those who take them and still have
problems, there are those who take the meds which work, but have side
effects, and there are a good many who won't admit to a problem and
don't take the meds. Only the first would be safe to fly.

As I stated in one of the other posts, the FAA doesn't want pilots
with clinical depression flying around, nor do I. They can easily end
up like the kid in Florida that stuck the trainer into the side of a
bank building. Who knows how many drivers have decided to cross the
centerline into oncoming traffic?

IF they can verify they are taking meds that do not cause problems AND
do not suffer symptoms while taking it, I see no problem with them
flying...HOWEVER it's that verification and the percentage that keep
quitting the meds that bothers me. It also means the FAA is stuck
with the knowledge if they pass some one, that sooner or later some
one on the meds might forget, or just quit and the results would leave
the reporters having a field day.

I don't see a sure fire way of knowing they are taking the medications
regularly and that they are working.

Even regular checkups are no guarantee.

Roger Halstead (K8RI EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
www.rogerhalstead.com
N833R World's oldest Debonair? (S# CD-2)

There's a fourth possibility to consider as well as the options you listed.
That would be the pilots who do need the medications to counter moderate
symptoms but quit or refuse to take them in order to pass/keep their
medical. In that case the restrictions actually are a proximate cause of
the very hazards they are intended to fight and that too could present a
hazard.

These days many physicians will prescribe anti-depressants for life
situations where in the past they would not have been considered. A day
doesn't go by that we don't see television ads for Zoloft and others -
indeed I read somewhere recently that Zoloft was the #1 most frequently
prescribed drug in North America of any type.

Used to be that only someone who markedly dysfunctional and had been
evaluated by a psychiatrist would be a candidate for psychotropic
medication. Nowadays many people who do not have pronounced clinical
symptoms that would justify a psychiatric consultation but feel they might
function *better* with some pharmaceutical help, will happily be given a
script by their family doctor.

Then we have cases of the same drug marketed under different names.
Wellbutrin as an anti-depressant and Zyban as a smoking cessation aid is a
case in point. Same medication, same dosage, same absorption rates,
identical in every respect.

I wonder if some of this may not be a beaurocratic attitude esconced in the
regs from the days of yore when *all* pilots were somehow expected to have
"The Right Stuff" like Billy Mitchell, Chuck Yeager, Jackie Cochran, or the
astronauts, and people who exhibited any weaknesses, especially emotional
weaknesses, were considered lesser quality individuals that needed to be
washed out of the program.


"Roger Halstead" wrote in message

IF they can verify they are taking meds that do not cause problems AND
do not suffer symptoms while taking it, I see no problem with them
flying...HOWEVER it's that verification and the percentage that keep
quitting the meds that bothers me. It also means the FAA is stuck
with the knowledge if they pass some one, that sooner or later some
one on the meds might forget, or just quit and the results would leave
the reporters having a field day.