Paraphrasing a Lewis Carroll poem —
Speak roughly to your little dog.
And beat him when he seizes.
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.
Imepitoin, sold under the brand name Pexion from Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica Inc. of St. Joseph, Missouri, is an anticonvulsant used in veterinary medicine to treat epilepsy in dogs. It was originally developed to treat epilepsy in humans, but clinical trials were terminated upon findings of unfavorable metabolic differences between smokers and non-smokers.
Anticonvulsants are also increasingly being used in the treatment of so-called bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, since many seem to act as mood stabilizers.
Pexion is similar to Valium and other benzodiazepines (anti-anxiety drugs or minor tranquilizers), acting as a low affinity partial agonist of the benzodiazepine receptor, which means that it acts in the brain similar to a benzodiazepine. It is very unusual for any dog with epilepsy to become completely seizure free even after they have begun taking this drug.
The theory is that the drug suppresses electrical activity in the brain.
On December 4, 2018, the U.S. FDA approved Pexion to treat anxiety in dogs freaked out by noises. In other words, it’s a tranquilizer for dogs.
Dog owners are cautioned to carefully monitor its use, since a side effect can be a change in the dog’s level of aggression. Well guess what, a side effect of these kinds of drugs in humans is also aggressive behavior. Some tranquilizer!
The FDA urges pet owners and veterinarians to report side effects.
It used to be only psychiatrists who prescribed tranquilizers; then family doctors became common prescribers; and now veterinarians have entered the psychiatric industry, ready to psychoanalyze your dog and prescribe a tranq.
Daily use of benzodiazepines in humans is associated with physical dependence. The withdrawal from drugs like these is more prolonged and often more difficult than withdrawal from heroin. Although dogs have not so far shown addiction to Pexion, physical dependence is a known side effect of other antiepileptic drugs in dogs.
The point we want to make is that the psychiatric industry makes a concerted effort to create new patient classes for their coercive and abusive treatments, and in this case that includes pets. We wrote about Prozac for pets way back in 2011, so this trend is continuing.
A primary care physician or family practitioner who refuses to prescribe a psychiatric drug can be accused of being unethical, or even charged and jailed for “criminal medical negligence” because they are not applying the current “standard of care.” Soon your veterinarian may find themselves criminally liable for not prescribing tranquilizers for your pet.
For more information, download and read the CCHR booklet, “Psychiatric Hoax – The Subversion of Medicine – Report and recommendations on psychiatry’s destructive impact on health care.“