Merlot

Article

Merlot is a recurring person in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between January 27, 2022 and July 18, 2024. The archive places it in contexts such as “But Merlot says :”; “Merlot (apparently a Canadian psychiatrist?) on long-acting injectable antipsychotics”; “I’m not surprised that Merlot hasn’t seen “every few months” because that’s still kind of cutting-edge”. It most often appears alongside America, Australia, France.

Metadata

  • Category: People
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: January 27, 2022
  • Last seen: July 18, 2024

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

January 27, 2022 · Original source
But Merlot says:
July 18, 2024 · Original source
Merlot (apparently a Canadian psychiatrist?) on long-acting injectable antipsychotics:
I’ll just add a couple of things. First, I’m not surprised that Merlot hasn’t seen “every few months” because that’s still kind of cutting-edge and might not have made it to Canada, but technically Invega Trinza promises every three months. It’s still very expensive (something like $10,000 per dose), so any health system with resource constraints is probably using older monthly ones that cost a few hundred per dose.
Second, Merlot brings up the issue of titration. Antipsychotics have many side effects, some of which are potentially deadly. Usually if you start experiencing a potentially deadly side effect, you stop the drug. But if you give three months of the drug at once, you are stuck having the side effects for three months, at which point they might kill you. So it’s very important to start by giving the drug as a normal daily pill, then give the injection only after spending a while establishing it has no severe side effects.