Abilify VI: Compulsive Behavior Lawsuits
The civil litigation around the best selling drug of all time got pretty weird
The Frontier Psychiatrists is a daily healthy newsletter. I've written a series of articles about medications, and the majority of them were one-off. Abilify, at one time the best-selling drug on earth, is an exception. This is part six. I’ll link prior articles with a footnote1 to spare your flow state as a reader because that is pleasurable, a function of dopamine.
Addicted to Abilify (articles)
Abilify (aripiprazole) is an atypical antipsychotic medication that functions as a partial agonist at dopamine D2 receptors. Today's article is about a rare and confusing adverse effect of this drug, that led to a series of civil lawsuits Compulsive behavior, including both gambling and sexual behavior. The allegation is that this medication intended to help individuals with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and other neuropsychiatric conditions also created, in some of them, behavior they couldn't control. Dopamine is a complicated chemical in the human brain. I will do a brie…