Mirapex

My symptoms started at the age of 47. My fingers on my left hand were stiff and were difficult to move. People noticed that my walk was not normal. I was often asked did I hurt.I noticed nothing different about my walk. It was difficult getting up from a chair and getting out of a car. I was diagnosed a year later, it was the onset of tremors starting in my right hand that caused my other symptoms to be recognized as Parkinson's.I am now 59. With the new herbal medicine i purchase from totalcureherbalfoundation.blogspot.com was my only way to get fast relief from this PD,their herbal supplement effectively reverse my Parkinson's disease condition and alleviate all my symptoms. 

Mirapex was a miracle drug for my RLS. I was taking it and functioning as a normal human being for a few years before the side effects started.
I was never a gambler. Once I went to a casino, I was hooked. When that got out of control, I self-banned myself from the local casinos. That didn't work, I continued to go.
Lottery scratch-off tickets became a new obsession. I spent thousands on them.
I became suicidal; almost succeeded the last time. My marriage fell apart because my husband believed that my gambling was a choice not a compulsion or side effect.
Once I was off the drug, my marriage was over, I had lost everything. This has been 7 years ago. My life was shattered. I have moved on but my life, although happy, will never be the same. Mirapex robbed me of everything.
I had contacted attorneys where I lived, but since the side effects and lawsuits were a well known thing (not to me) no one would touch my case. The ones that were willing wanted me to do all of the leg work. I couldn't afford this because I had lost everything.
So, I am left picking up the pieces of my life and the manufacturer of Mirapex got away with ruining another life.

In 1993, I was 44 years old when I first read about RLS in a healthcare magazine article. I then knew what had been bothering me r years before, was an ailment named RLS. Up until then, I thought the problem with uncontrolled movements and crawling sensations in my legs was due to stress. Although RLS is fairly common, most like me, hesitate to admit it because it could be perceived as a personality weakness for instance if you are or wannabe a manager, the perception is a good manager knows how to cope with stress.

In 1994 I mentioned this to a doctor who was overlooking a complete physical exam of corporate executives sponsored and paid by my employer. The doctor prescribed Quinine. It did help a little with the intensity but not with the frequency and duration which seems to be getting worst with time.

Moved from Louisville KY to Fayetteville NC following my wife to her new job. I went to see a doctor at an Urgent Care Outpatient clinic to renew my blood pressure and cholesterol prescriptions. He referred me to a semi-retired neurologist who asked me to participate in a sleep study that confirmed I had severe sleep APNEA. He prescribed Sinemet for my RLS and to use a CPAP respirator for my sleep APNEA. The neurologist explained that Sinemet had several advantages. It was cheap, widely been used for many years to help people with Parkinson disease and more recently RLS. Not much research was done on RLS since the same dopamine based drugs used for Parkinson like Sinemet at a low dosage seem to be effective with no known bad side effects.

My Sinemet prescription was increased several times from one pill a day at bed time to 2, then 3 then up to 6 a day or one pill every four hours. My first neurologist retired and the second neurologist also semi-retired did not seem to know much about RLS. He thought it was caused by me being stressed and I may need medication to calm me down. He told me: “why don’t you do your own research see what you find.” I found on the RLS Foundation website the problem, I had with Sinemet was referred to as Augmentation: a side effect of Sinemet for 25% of people using it. It was referred to as Augmentation.
A suggestion was also made on the RLS FW to use Mirapex instead which did not have that common and rapid augmentation problem. I showed the article to my neurologist and he gave me a new prescription for Mirapex.

At the end of 1998, Started using Mirapex prescribed by a Fayetteville neurologist who was familiar with the drug to treat Parkinson but not for RLS. His own research confirmed that Mirapex worked for RLS, and if not to use narcotics. I saw also on the RLS Foundation website that Mirapex could have this Augmentation problem like Sinemet but over a much longer period. It also recommended to start with a low initial dosage, I believe it was 0.1 mg three times a day. The Augmentation problem I had with Sinemet ceased and I only needed one or two 0.1 mg pills a day of Mirapex for a at least one year. So Mirapex appeared to me as the wonder drug allowing me to resume a more normal life style.

After using a combination of Urgent Care doctors and neurologists in Fayetteville NC, and moving to Elizabethtown NC in early 2007, I thought it would be best if I could find and consult a regular local physician. I got my first appointment with a doctor in Elizabethtown in early 2007. I asked him if I needed a Neurologist for my RLS condition and prescriptions. He said he knew all he needed to treat me and did not need a neurologist. He did not change the prescriptions I had and he asked me to see him every three months.
He never discussed with me possible compulsive behaviors from Mirapex which by 2007 should have been on the label and drug information sheet. His office used something new I had not seen before, All the doctors and nurses used a tablet in which they entered my vitals and the doctor consulted if he was prescribing me a new medication or adjusting a dosage on an existing prescription. I am assuming the medication data base was kept up to date by the drug manufacturers. I have no way of telling if the warnings were the same as the printed sheet given with to the consumer with each prescription. Th doctor never warned me of possible compulsive behaviors and / or what it meant.

Day Time Sudden Sleeping (DTSS) occurred not long after I started taking Mirapex. It could be for instance at lunch time talking to my wife and falling asleep at the table. I had the same problem at work with Day Time Sudden Sleeping. Falling asleep during meetings. Not just dozing: but also, sleeping and snoring. I was so embarrassed and became less confident in my abilities as a project manager.
I mentioned it to my doctor and he said there were two medications I was taking that could have this side effect. Mirapex and one of my blood pressure medicine. Now that I think back about this, I had been taking the same blood pressure medicine for a long time before Mirapex and did not have the Day Time Sudden Sleeping problem until I started on Mirapex.
I asked my doctor if there was something that could help with daytime sudden sleeping and he prescribed Nuvigil. We had to fight the healthcare insurance to get it approved. It worked and it took care of my DTSS. I lost my jpb in December 2008 shortly after HP purchased EDS . I was an easy target for layoff due to my age and my sudden daytime sleep problem in the previous years. EDS or HP as far as I know never reported the DTSS and no one discussed it with me. I was too embarrassed to bring it up during the performance reviews with my boss.

My late wife noticed a sudden change in my eating habits. She often told me: “when we were in Kentucky (1993 to 1999) you only ate your three meals a day and rarely snacks in between. Now you are snacking all the time. Always looking for something to eat. You still eat about the same portions at meal time, it is all these snacks that causes this weight gain. “
My weight had been at 180 lbs from when I was 20 to 45 year old. With my compulsive eating I gain 65 lbs over a 10 year period while using Mirapex.
I will not document here my hot spells with sex. I wold like to point out that the wanings are contradictory, One says could lose interest in sex, the other says could become obsessed with sex. I will not give the details but I did become obsessed with sex.
At the same time in 2004 I started smoking regularly again after I had quit in 1994. I had lung cancer in 2013.

I became addicted to shopping on eBay and Amazon. Often spending all night on my laptop searching for some illusive deal. I was shopping for old and new wrist watches, HO model train sets and accessories, old , new and collectible cameras and chinaware. From my laptop at work although I knew this was wrong.


Although I had seen by then the documented side effect of Mirapex to compulsive gambling, I was not aware that it applied to all sorts on compulsive behaviors like shopping, buying, spending, over eating and certainly not sex.

Then I realized what I was doing on eBay , buying and reselling was a form of gambling where I had been the loser.


Despite most of `my relatives and friends telling me it is not wise to spend your money on real estate after the 2008 crash. I had this urge to improve our estate now. I cashed more than $400,000 of my RIA savings “investing” on some major home improvements convinced that I would get more than my money back if and when we had to sell the estate. The housing market for houses in the $500,000 and up market never recovered from the 2008 crash. The estate we had paid for $500,000 in 2006 and “invested” $300,000 on home improvements, our cost of more than $800,000 sold for only $425,000 in 2012. We had to sell because my wife had lost her job and her share in a company after her partners found out that she was stage 4 cancer.

From 2012 to now it only got worse. After my wife passed in September 2016, she controlled the finances because we both knew I could not, I am facing bankruptcy after buying much more than I can afford in preparation for full time RV'ing.

Starting in 1998 and intensifying over the next decade, I became a different man. Obsessed with dealing on eBay , excessive shopping on line and locally, infatuated with sex, taking risks with my lifetime savings. I feel I have been cheated of the life I should have had with my wife, family, relatives. I am ashamed of who I am, weak, not capable of controlling these urges for buying, sex and over eating. I cannot undo what has been done. I often think a sudden death would be nice to get out of this hold and not have to face all the shame and embarrassment.
The manufacturer is getting away facing new lawsuits because they say there is a warning on the labels. In my case since 2005 two neurologists and three hospitals where I was admitted for seizure or syncope failed to see this warning and never mentioned Mirapex as a possible cause of my seizures / syncopes. Could it be that if they made this warning clear enough, doctors and patients would opt for the much safer but a lot cheaper narcotics to treat RLS and cases like mine at 1.5% of their patients are an acceptable collateral loss. I tried to use narcotics in SC. My neurologist gave me a prescription for morphine. But here is the catch. I need to go see the neurologist every month for a new prescription. The pharmacies are not allowed to keep it in stock. A prescription takes one week to fill. Big Pharma and their lobbyists are hard at fighting the sale of cheap morphine because they dont have anything better with their designer drugs. They track everything doctors prescribed. This is how some doctors qualify for these all expense paid trips for Seminars in exotic resorts. Ask your doctor if he goes to seminars sponsored by the manufacturer of Mirapex, you may understand why he did not discuss with you the possible devastating side effects of Mirapex.
I have a hard time believing or accepting that a drug had that effect o n me. How can I expect my children, friends and relatives to believe me? I know most of them think of me like an alcoholic who does not want to admit his dependency and its effect on him and his entourage. With Mirapex we have it in reverse, we have to prove to all that we are weak because of drug we must take to survive. I know if I did not have a drug to control my RLS , I would not want to be alive more than two days. People who dont have RLS dont understand this, neither do they understand how someone like me have these nearly uncontrollable urges. If I would take a pill for a stomach ache and my skin would change from in my case being white to green, I would certainly have a strong case to sue the manufacturer even if the label said your skin could permanently changed from white to green. Mirapex does not change our skin but it changes who we are,, which is much worse, And sorry about saying Mirapex does not change our skin. I have a bad case of edema on my legs. Two dermatologists, and a cardiologist who saw me and . or treated me for the past three years never mentioned Mirapex. There is a study that proves the link between severe edema on the legs and Mirapex. Another study says if you have a history in your family of any of Bipolar, substance abuses, panic attack, fibromyalgia, you are very likely going to be part of the 1.5% with severe Mirapex side effects or be part of the acceptable collateral group, Big Pharma and the FDA have accepted for us. Lets see in my case, my mother was bipolar, my father and most of my uncles alcoholics, my two brothers suffer from panic attacks and my sister Fibromyalgia, Did I miss one of the qualifier ? And Big Pharma and the FDA are saying I am the only one to blame because I should have seen and understood the warning on their label. How long is it going to take before they force the healthcare industry to do their job and qualify each paient for Mirapex before prescribing it and clearly explain the cheaper alternatives with narcotics? Eight million dollar settlements for each case may help.

Never gambled in my life. Mirapex dose wen up and became absolutely addicted to gambling. Filed bankruptcy. Wanted to die. Went off of Mirapex - compulsion gone.

I started taking Mirapex 12 years ago. I have always been an extremely stable and calm individual, very good with money and slim my entire life up until the time I started the Mirapex. With in a month of starting the medication, my symptoms worsened and I suddenly began to have bouts of extreme rls during the day, which I'd never experienced before. I went back to the neurologist who prescribed the medication to me and he told me that my only other options were to either take 2 weeks off work and go through the severe withdrawals or switch to heavy narcotics!
Soon after that, I began eating. Even when I was completely full and my stomach was hurting, I still wanted to eat. I now felt nervous all the time and food was one of the only things that calmed me down .
I also felt incredibly aroused most of the time. The need to masturbate become overwhelming (except when I'd just taken a dose, which would usually knock me out within an hour). My desire to shop also became an obsession. Anything to try and calm my nervousness down.
After a few years of all this, my marriage ended.
I also began to develop all kinds of aches and pains, exhaustion, constant pinched nerves and seized muscles. For many years I considered them completely unrelated, until they got much worse. Now I've made a definite correlation between Mirapex and muscle seizures(too much dopamine causes them), which have gotten so bad that I'm practically immobilized and in severe pain every day.
The only good thing, was that I became obsessed with health. Over the years I have tried numerous diets and supplements to help me get off of the medication. So far, the only thing that actually truly helped, was raw food. When I only have juices, smoothies, salads and some nuts, I can cut my medication down immediately. Within three days, I've gone from three 0.25mg pills a day, down to one. I've also been taking Pukka's "Night Time", (2 pills 3-4 times a day), which is a combination of Valerian, Aswaganda and other herbs, which definitely helps keep me calm and helps me sleep.
Hoping with all my heart that I can get off this medication very soon and help everyone else I can to.

I took part in the Mirapex class action suit due to RLS. During my years of using Mirapex... more then 20 years, I lost so much. It was totally out of character for me. I lost $150.000 + and when the settlement was finally reached, I ended up with $4700. This was very upsetting as I had submitted all my files of loss to Thomson & Rogers throughout the years.

I asked the lawyers why my settlement was so low and the response I received was, the judge said how do we know that she/me did not spend the money she lost on a steak dinner.

In my opinion, the only one who receives money from a class action suit are the lawyers.

I had been taking MIrapex for 13 years for restless legs. Soon after beginning taking Mirapex, I began exhibiting compulsive behaviors which were totally uncharacteristic of me. These behaviors included compulsive internet chatting of a sexual nature. Prior to that time, I had never been interested in pornography, magazines featuring nudes or semi-nudes or strip clubs. After about 12 years I developed severe edema in my legs and feet. My doctors were baffled by the edema until my cardiologist read that edema could be caused by Mirapex. I was taken off the Mirapex and put on Gabapentin and my edema disappeared quickly. The compulsive behaviors continued however, until I was arrested in May for supposedly having inappropriate chats with a 15 year old girl. Subsequent to my arrest my cardiologist did some more research on Mirapex and found that my behaviors are consistent with the now reported side effects of Mirapex. Other compulsive behaviors I exhibited included impulse purchases such as a 33’ cabin cruiser and allowing myself to fall for a couple of internet scams. In addition to the edema and compulsive behaviors, I would also fall suddenly fall asleep at the worst of times such as in important meetings and at my desk at work; this resulted in my losing a $70,000/year position as the director of a local city department. I’m now a 70 year old unemployable professional. My reputation has been destroyed and my of 47 years marriage and my relationship with my children has been severely damaged. Financially, I had to borrow $25,000 to cover legal fees, spent over $4,000 for a battery of psychological tests and I may lose my house and have to declare bankruptcy.

Documented compulsive gambling linked to Mirapex. Financial and material losses. Low self-esteem. Homeless. I am on long term disability. Suicide attempt and thoughts. Follow-up by psychiatrist.

I became a compulsive buyer, unable to pass a Thrift store, buying things on line and anywhere. I ended up with 46 pairs of mostly hi-end golf shoes (5 pairs of shoes worn by Payne Stewart that retail for @$500) knee high and regular argyle socks, @100 sweater vests, 50 pairs of dress shoes, over 200 golf polo shirts, 3,000 golf clubs, 40 golf bags, and other things. Always wore expensive slacks, $70-$150 golf polo, argyle socks and knee highs when I wore golf knickers which then "REQUIRED" wing tip golf shoes and wing tip or fancy shoes. Got so bad that I actually bought the same shoes off 2 different sites on the same day. Went thru over $50,000. After reading about this side effect, I quit taking Mirapex and the compulsions were gone in 2 weeks, but I can't fit all the things I bought into my house.