Follow these links to the previous and next pages, or the index page.
‹ Consumer Comments | Drug Guide Index | Bibliography ›
Clicking on a link in the Table of Contents will take you to that section of the drug guide.
On this page… (hide)
At least what we consider “useful.” Official web sites, PI sheets from around the world, etc.
1. Discussion Board
Link to the Crazy Meds forum discussion board specifically about the drug, if there is one. Otherwise a link to the most appropriate board.
2. Official US website
Usually it’s www.DrugName.com . We’ll note if it’s something stupid, which is usually the site having nothing more than the PI sheet (e.g. Paxil).
3. Other official websites
- These could be sites in different countries and/or languages, such as Lexapro’s
- Or for different applications, the way Topamax is positioned primarily for migraines these days. You can also get to a whole bunch of Janssen-Cilag sites from that page.
4. Prescribing Information & Information for Patients
Prescribing information (PI) is everything the pioneering drug company admits to knowing about a drug. While generics manufacturers are now providing full PI sheets, a recent Supreme Court ruling lets them off the hook from having to update that information regarding new side effects, including potentially dangerous ones, drug-drug interactions, etc.1 There’s a direct link to the full US Prescribing Information (PI sheet)
4.1 PI Sheets for Other Forms
Sometimes one PI sheet will be issued for all forms of a drug. Other times each form (immediate release, extended release, oral solution, etc.) will get its own PI sheet, like Wellbutrin
4.2 Non-US PIs, SPCs, PILs, CMIs, MDSs & EPARs
While there is finally a standard format for US PI sheets, which most drug companies are slowly adopting, it still seems as if they have as many different formats as we do for our med pages. Similarly, different countries have different documentation standards and names for the information you’ll find on them. As in the US, some are geared for doctors and pharmacists, while others are for consumers.
The initials now translate to:
- PI: Prescribing Information. What is now the standard name in the US. Also Australian for Product Information.
- In South Africa PI means package insert..
- SPC: Summary of Product Characteristics. The equivalent to the US PI and the term used by most other countries. SPCs usually have less information than US PI sheets, but some will have as much, if not more.
- PIL: Patient/Product Information Leaflet. These are for the consumer/patient. Unlike SPCs, PILs from other countries often have more information than US PILs/information for patient sheets.
- MDS: Medicine Data Sheet. A name unique to New Zealand. The format used to be unique as well, now it looks like most other SPCs/PIs. Sometimes it’s identical to the Australian PI for a drug.
- CMI: Consumer Medicine Information. Australian for “Really comprehensive PIL.” The same goes for New Zealand now that they’ve adopted the term and format.
- EPAR: European Public Assessment Reports. EU bureaucratese for a PIL - often available in up to 19 EU languages - with an SPC (in English) attached to it.
- PM: Health Canada calls their prescribing information Product Monographs. That’s the vintage name for PI sheets, and is still used to describe the contents of the PDR.
- RR: Review Report. Japan’s Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency - their version of our FDA - produces the most comprehensive and detailed documents about medications I’ve seen. At least the long form is, which is similar in format to the new standard in the US. The short form is OK.
It’s really too bad some of the information in the English-language review reports is redacted, because they include information from original new drug applications (NDAs) and papers published about the original molecule. Stuff you have to file a FOIA request to get.
- Prior to the quasi-standardization we now have, the PI in PI sheet stood for:
- Package Insert - the FDA still uses this term.
- Patient Information - as if most patients could understand more than 10% of what is on a full PI sheet.
- Physician Information
- Prescriber Information - this was uncommon
- Prescribing Information
- Product Information
What’d’ya know, more ads.
5. Consumer rating/review sites
This is a low-priority holdover from the original format, when we used to link to Remedy Find. Remedy Find has been absorbed into Revolution Health, and most consumer rating/review sites skew heavily to people whining about side effects. There is one site dedicated to nothing but side effects. There are some worthwhile data out there, so it’ll get filled. Eventually.
6. Other sites of interest
Whatever else we might find.
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Page created by: Jerod Poore. Date created: 3 August 2011 Last edited by:
Page design and explanatory material by Jerod Poore, copyright © 2004 - 2012. All rights reserved.
Almost all of the material on this site is by Jerod Poore and is copyright © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 Jerod Poore. Except, of course, the PI sheets - those are the property of the drug companies who developed the drugs the sheets are about - and any documents that are written by other people which may be posted to this site will remain the property of the original authors. You cannot reproduce this page or any other material on this site outside of the boundaries of fair use copying without the express permission of the copyright holder. That’s usually me, so just ask first. That means if want to print out a few pages to take to your doctor, therapist, counselor, support group, non-understanding family members or something like that - then that’s OK to just do. Go for it! Please. As long as you include this copyright notice and the following disclaimer, I’m usually cool with it.
All rights reserved. No warranty is expressed or implied in this information. Consult one or more doctors and/or pharmacists before taking, or changing how you take any neurological and/or psychiatric medication. Your mileage may vary. What happened to us won’t necessarily happen to you.
The information on Crazy Meds pertains to and is intended for adults. While some information about children and adolescents is occasionally presented (e.g. US FDA approvals), pediatric-specific data such as dosages, side effects, off-label applications, etc. are rarely included in the articles on drugs or discussed on the forum. If you are looking for information regarding meds for children you’ll have to go somewhere else.
Know your sources!
Nobody on this site is a doctor, therapist, or a pharmacist. We don’t portray them either here or on TV. Only doctors can diagnose and treat an illness. Some doctors tend to get pissed off by patients who know too much about medications, so tread lightly when and where appropriate. Diagnosing yourself from a website is like defending yourself in court, you suddenly have a fool for a doctor. Don’t be a cyberchondriac, thinking you have every disease you see a website about, or that you’ll get every side effect from every medication1. Self-prescribing is as dangerous as buying meds from fraudulent online pharmacies that promise you medications without prescriptions.
All information on this site has been obtained through our personal experience and the experiences family, friends, what people have reported on various reputable sites all over teh intergoogles, the medications’ product information / summary of product characteristic (PI/SPC) sheets, and from sources that are referenced throughout the site. As such the information presented here is not intended as a substitute for real medical advice from your real doctor, just a compliment to it. You should never, ever, replace what a real doctor tells you with something from a website on the Internet. The farthest you should ever take it is getting a second opinion from another real doctor. Educate yourself - always read the PI/SPC sheet or patient information leaflet (PIL) that comes with your medications and never ever throw them away.
Crazy Meds is not responsible for the content of sites we provide links to. We like them, or they’re paid advertisements, or they’re something else we think you should read to help you make an informed decision about a particular med. Sometimes they’re more than one of those things. But what’s on those sites is their business, not ours.
Very little information about visitors to this site is collected or saved. From time to time I look at search terms used and which pages they bring up in an effort to make the information I present more relevant. And the country of origin, just because I’m geeky like that. That’s about it. Depending on how you feel about Schrodinger, our privacy policy should either assuage or exacerbate your paranoia.
All brand names of the drugs listed in this site are the trademarks of the companies named on the PI/SPC sheet associated with the medication, sometimes on the pages about the drugs, even though those companies may have been acquired by other companies who may or may not be listed in this site by the time you read this. Or the rights to the drug were sold to another company. And any or all of the companies involved may have changed their names.
Crazy Meds is optimized for the browser you’re not using on the platform you wish you had. Between you and me, it all looks a lot cleaner using Firefox or Safari, which is what a plurality of visitors use. And I’m running Windows XP3. On a computer that sits on top of my desk. With a 23 inch monitor. Hey, at least you can make the text larger or smaller by clicking on the + or - buttons in the upper right hand corner. If you have Java enabled. Like 99% of the websites on the planet, Crazy Meds is hosted on domain running an open source operating system with a variety of open source applications, including the software used to display what you’ve been reading. As such Crazy Meds is not responsible for whatever weird shit your browser does or does not do when you read this site2.
No neurologists, psychiatrists, therapists or pharmacists were harmed in the production of this website. Use only as directed. Void where prohibited. Contains nuts. Certain restrictions may apply. All data are subject to availability. Not available on all mobile devices or in all dimensions of reality.
‘Everything is true, nothing is permitted.’ - Jerod Poore
1 While there are plenty of books to help you with hypochondria, for some reason there’s not much in the way of websites. Then again, staying off of the Internet is a large part of curing/managing the disorder.
2 Have I mentioned how open source operating systems for commercial applications is one of the dumbest ideas in the history of dumb ideas?
[begin rant] I rent a dedicated server for Crazy Meds. It’s sitting on a rack somewhere in Southern California along with a bunch of other servers that other people have rented. The hardware is identical, but no two machines have exactly the same operating systems. I don’t even need to see what is on any of the others to know this. If somebody got their server at the exact same time, with the exact same features as I did, I’m confident that there would be noticeable differences in some aspects of the operating systems. So what does this mean? For one thing it means that no two computers in the same office of a single company have the same operating system, and the techs can spend hours figuring out what the fuck the problem could be based on that alone. It also means that application software like IP board that runs the forum here has to have so many fucking user-configurable bells and whistles that even when I read the manual I can’t find every setting, or every location that every flag needs to be set in order for a feature to run the way I want it to run. And in the real world it means you can get an MBA not only with an emphasis on resource planning, but with an emphasis on using SAP - a piece of software so complex there are now college programs on how to use it. You might think, “But don’t people learn how to use Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator in college?” Sure, in order to create stuff. And in a way you’re creating stuff with SAP. But do you get a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with an emphasis on Photoshop?
Back in the Big Iron Age the operating systems were proprietary, and every computer that took up an entire room with a raised floor and HVAC system, and had less storage and processing power than an iPhone, had the same operating system as every other one, give or take a release level. But when a company bought application software like SAP, they also got the source code, which was usually documented and written in a way to make it easy to modify the hell out of it. Why? Because accounting principles may be the same the world over, and tax laws the same across each country and state, but no two companies have the same format for their reports, invoices, purchase orders and so forth. Standards existed and were universally ignored. If something went wrong it went wrong the same way for everyone, and was easy to track down. People didn’t need to take a college course to learn how to use a piece of software.
I’m not against the open source concept entirely. Back then all the programmers read the same magazines, so we all had the same homebrew utilities. We even had the forerunner to QR Code to scan the longer source code. Software vendors and computer manufacturers sponsored conventions so we could, among other things, swap recipes for such add-ons and utilities. While those things would make our lives easier, they had nothing to do with critical functions of the operating system. Unless badly implemented they would rarely cause key application software to crash and burn. Whereas today, with open source everything, who the hell knows what could be responsible some part of a system failing. [/end rant]
