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It’s not quite that simple though is it?
I think that one of the points made here “Miguel Veronos” is that these drugs are changing the brain’s chemistry so that some of the people affected after taking them no longer know what’s right and wrong.
Up until they took these drugs, they may have been completely moral humans being with a clear understanding of what’s “right” and what’s “wrong” but after taking them – that ability to distinguish between right and wrong was extinguished.
Then they became “evil” and if they feel that they did nothing wrong, they would not feel as if they should “take responsibility.”
Am I right Maravilla? You’re the expert in this…
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comSome great advice here and visiting for a an extended period of time BEFORE making your mind up is crucial.
Starting a restaurant in any country is difficult enough, starting one in a foreign country where the laws and language are dramatically different makes it tougher and I don’t think we heard “if” biggdawgg had any previous experience in running a restaurant or not. I would respectfully suggest that if not, don’t try it here or that $100K will disappear before you can say Puravida!
Visit Costa Rica for three months, take a good look around and if you have an entrepreneurial mindset, you will see more opportunities than you can imagine and most of them will involves significantly less risk than opening a restaurant. But do it legally please.
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comThis is NOT true.
Some of my investment clients get wire transfers dozens of times per week and nothing is withheld apart from the standard wiring fees
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comDepending on the location – liquor licenses can be IMPOSSIBLE to get and I know restauranteurs paying $1,500 – $2,000 per month to rent a license.
I don’t know what the residency requirements are to apply for a license.
If it’s a very popular location – the one you want – then chances are the liquor license won’t even be available.
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comThis may be of interest to you …
Weekend Edition
April 21 / 22, 2007A Killer Cocktail
Prozac Madness
By FRED GARDNERThe lard-assed cops at Virginia Tech spent two hours interrogating the wrong suspect and failed to prevent the massacre. Now they’re “investigating.” What is there to investigate – which brand or brands of anti-depressant Seung Hui Cho was taking?
A lonely, picked-on boy was given Prozac (or one of its chemical analogs) like Kip Kinkel in Oregon, like Eric Harris in Colorado This is not a scoop, America: Prozac causes horrible, bizarre flip-outs. It is a fact that has been known for 20 years and that Eli Lilly and the other manufacturers of “selective” serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) have relentlessly denied and are still trying to suppress.
On the very day after the shootings at Virginia Tech, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a study challenging the “black box” warning that the Food and Drug Administration had finally attached to Prozac in October, 2004. “Antidepressants Get a Boost For Use in Teens” read the Wall St. Journal headline. “Despite Warnings on Labels, Study says Benefits Outweigh Risk of Suicidal Tendencies.”
The New York Times ran its account of the new pro-Prozac study on the page facing the obituaries of students and faculty members killed at Virginia Tech! “Scales Said to Tip in Favor of Antidepressant Use in Children -A risk of suicidal thoughts is found to be more than offset.” You’d think that 33 deaths would more than offset it back.
Evidence that Prozac induces suicidal ideation and actions emerged when the drug was in clinical trials in Germany in the mid-1980s. The German findings were misrepresented to the FDA by a Lilly employee named Joachim Wernicke. U.S. marketing approval was granted in December, 1988, with no warning required. After a drug is marketed here in Guinea Pig Nation, only a very small fraction of the adverse events brought on by the drug get reported. Patients have to tell their doctors who then have to file paperwork with the manufacturers who then have to voluntarily tell the FDA that their products are dangerous.
Among the adverse events brought on by Prozac soon after it hit the market were numerous suicides and homicides, some of which resulted in legal action by the victims or survivors. Lilly’s strategy was to conceal the trend by settling every case out of court. One of the first to capture national attention involved Joseph Wesbecker, a Louisville, Kentucky printing press operator who, on Sept. 14, 1989, killed eight co-workers with an AK-47 and injured a dozen others before committing suicide. Wesbecker had been prescribed Prozac five weeks before and his psychiatrist, noting that Wesbecker had become “very, very agitated,” told him to stop taking it on Sept. 11. Victims who survived the shooting, relatives of those who died, and members of Wesbecker’s family subsequently sued Eli Lilly, charging that the company “knew or should have known that users of Prozac can experience intense agitation and preoccupation with suicide, and can harm themselves or others.”
In February, 1990 psychiatrists Martin Teicher and Jonathan Cole and nurse Carol Glod published “Emergence of intense suicidal preoccupations during fluoxetine treatment” American Journal of Psychiatry, It described six patients who developed “intense, violent suicidal preoccupations” within two to seven weeks of starting treatment with Prozac. The authors estimated that between 1.9 and 7.7 percent of Prozac users would develop suicidal obsessions. Teicher and his co-workers subsequently reported that Prozac patients were “at least three-fold more likely to develop new suicidal ideation” than patients treated with the older antidepressants, and that patients were also more likely to develop suicidal thoughts for the first time ever while taking Prozac.
Lilly responded, “Our experience does not show a cause and effect relationship between our products and suicidal or violent thoughts or acts. Unfortunately, these thoughts and acts are part of the disease of depression.” But the company made its first small concession, noting on the Prozac label in May, 1990, that “suicidal ideation” and “violent behavior” had been reported (as had pancreatitis) as side-effects. This reference appeared in the “Postintroduction Reports” section towards the bottom of the label. No mention of suicidal ideation was added to the “Precautions” section.
The FDA held a hearing in September 1990 at which its Psychotropic Drugs Advisory Committee (most of whose members got funding from antidepressant manufacturers) considered whether SSRIs can induce violent and suicidal thoughts. They voted 9-0 not to recommend a more prominent warning and 6-3 not to recommend a warning in small type that would have read, “In a small number of patients, depressive symptoms have worsened during therapy, including the emergence of suicidal thoughts and attempts. Surveillance throughout treatment is recommended.”
Lilly and the other antidepressant manufacturers made more finite, begrudging concessions in the years ahead as evidence linking SSRIs to suicide kept mounting. A turning point came in April 2004, when the British Medical Journal reported that GlaxoSmithKline had concealed data showing that Paxil more than quadrupled suicidal ideation among teenagers. A few months later the FDA acknowledged a study showing that SSRI use induced suicidal thoughts in two out of 100 adolescents and ordered a black box warning. Prozac sales dipped as a result and Lilly et al commissioned the study that JAMA published April 18, showing that SSRI use induces suicidal ideation in only one in 100. Suicidal ideation,” “Suicide gesture,” “Suicide attempt,” and other such terms do not accurately characterize the extremely bizarre flip-outs induced by SSRIs. Carefully planning to annihilate the student body fits the profile. Biting your mother 57 times. Driving your car around in circles until you smash into a tree… Years ago, at a meeting of the Prozac Survivors Support group, I heard Bonnie Leitsch, a flamboyant redhead from Louisville who sounded like Minnie Pearl, try to explain what Prozac did to her thinking:
“It’s hard for people to understand. They say ‘you must know what you’re doing,’ but you do not. You cannot distinguish reality. I could never tell if I was awake or asleep. That was the hardest thing for me to determine. I would lay down in bed and I would think ‘Now am I dreaming this or am I awake and doing this?” My mind constantly ran, it never would stop. I could be having this conversation with you and the whole time if I was drinking coffee, I could be thinking about running it on my hand and wondering what it would feel like. Thinking irrational thoughts. And yet still able to communicate at what would appear to be a rational level. That’s why I think psychiatrists and psychologists and doctors who are dealing with people on Prozac are totally oblivious to what’s going on. These people are the best liars in the whole world in terms of being able to come to you and say ‘I’m fine.’ But the whole time they might be thinking ‘I wonder what it would feel like to stick this knife in my hand?’ And, ‘I can take on a motorcycyle gang and kill ’em all.’ Most of these people on Prozac like myself lose all natural ability to love. It becomes a spiritual dullness. You cease to know right from wrong. Because there’s no wrong and you’re right 100 percent and the hell with the rest of you.”
The media just can’t fathom Seung Hui Cho’s lethal outburst, but Bonnie Leitsch -may she still be going strong- can fathom it all too well.
Fred Gardner edits O’Shaughnessy’s, the Journal of Cannabis in Clinical Practice (soon to have a presence on the web). He can be reached at fred@plebesite.com
There are some serious water shortages in some areas of Guanacaste and I have been trying to get more information but each person I am told to talk to doesn’t respond.
It is not all because of increased development although that is obviously making the situation worse but we had less rain last year than we had hoped and water levels are low… This is also one of the reasons why we have had some powercuts throughout the country….
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comDo you have previous successful experience in running a restaurant?
Do you speak Spanish fluently?
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comThis is obviously a controversial topic and we don’t who is who most of the time in a forum but we can treat each other with respect.
Yes! We are entitled to our opinions but we we will refrain from calling each other’s opinions “ignorant.”
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comI guess it’s possible but would hope unlikely…
In the Spanish press release below, the power company is blaming 1: Low rainfall which has forced them to use their thermic energy (from our volcanos) plants more intensely than normal and 2: This ‘intense’ use has caused failures within the thermic plants and 3: There was an additional problem in Arenal that also caused problems.
Supposedly Panama has also suffered from much less rainfall which makes one wonder about their plans to expand the canal…
The press release also says that these power shortages problems may continue…
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.com@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
De: ROBERTO LEIVA
Enviado el: Viernes, 20 de Abril de 2007 04:24 p.m.
Para: TODOS
CC: Alina Alvarado
Asunto: INFORME SITUACIÓN SUMINISTRO ELÉCTRICO
Para su información.Mellegó este comunicado del ICE.
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Viernes 20 de abril, 2007
15:15 horasINFORME DEL ICE SOBRE SITUACIÓN DEL SUMINISTRO ELÉCTRICO
Como consecuencia de los efectos del Fenómeno del Niño, se ha dado una disminución drástica de las lluvias y de los caudales en los ríos que abastecen nuestros embalses y nuestras plantas de generación, situación que ha obligado al uso de las unidades de generación térmica en forma intensiva.
A pesar de las condiciones hidrológicas críticas, la institución había venido optimizando sus recursos, tanto agua, vapor geotérmico como combustible, para satisfacer la demanda durante lo que va de este verano.
A partir del 19 de marzo Panamá, también por razones climáticas, suspendió la venta de electricidad al ICE por limitaciones en su sistema. Además, la operación intensiva de las plantas ha provocado fallas en las unidades térmicas que el pasado miércoles 18 de abril dejaron en situación de riesgo el sistema. Fue necesario entonces proceder con acciones de disminución de carga, afectando circuitos del ICE y circuitos de las otras empresas distribuidoras que sirven en todo el país.
A ese plan de cortes parciales en todo el país se sumó un incidente independiente en la subestación de Arenal que, por causas totalmente distintas, provocó el apagón general de la noche de ayer.
Si bien no se tiene certeza de cuando finalizará la práctica de cortes, se hacen esfuerzos para que en las próximas horas queden resueltos los problemas técnicos que los generan. A ese respecto la institución estará ampliando el plan de recortes para este fin de semana, y eventualmente, para la semana entrante, de tal manera que permita a los usuarios del servicio conocer cuándo y por cuanto tiempo estará sin servicio de eléctrica.
Cada empresa distribuidora en sus respectivas áreas de servicio definirá su propio plan de cortes, el cual deberá comunicar a sus clientes. El ICE estará haciendo lo propio en las próximas horas con aquellos clientes a los que sirve en forma directa a lo largo y ancho del país.
Sugerimos consultar más información en la SALA DE PRENSA de GRUPOICE.COM
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You have no choice – There is only one insurance company in Costa Rica – INS (Insitituto Nacional de Seguros)
You can see their ‘comprehensive’ home insurance policy in Spanish at
You can also see a very brief article by David Garrett in English at and there is a contact form there.
There are representatives who can sell you these very affordable policies all over the country. You can see your nearest INS office is in Jaco at
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comREPOSTED HERE
Posted Apr 19,2007 5:00 PM larastjohn
Thanks for all the info about where to buy a generator. We found one today at EPA but are wondering how you get them installed. We live in Playas del Coco and I guess were hoping to buy one from a company who would then install it for us.
Does anyone have a great electrician either in Coco or who would travel to Coco – someone who had done this before.Thanks 🙂
I don’t honestly know if they are sold in the stores here.
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comDelighted that you like the map “Gee Gee” and please feel free to order in bulk if you wish 🙂
For those of you who have not yet bought your Costa Rica map, you can see it featured at
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.com
