Thousands of compulsive gamblers could end up driving the litigation over addictive behavior associated with the drug Abilify.

Abilify is also known by its generic name aripiprazole. It was originally developed in 1988 by pharmaceutical company Otsuka.

In 2002, Otsua and Bristol-Myers Squibb contracted to market the drug in the U.S.

But since Abilify entered the market, thousands of patients have reported being driven to different types of compulsive and destructive behavior.

Some Abilify patients have become compulsive gamblers. Others report uncontrollable urges to shop, eat, or have sex.

These effects of Abilify are apparently not just in the patients’ heads. Scientific studies have found a significant link between psychiatric drugs like Abilify and compulsive behavior.

One study conducted by Thomas J. Moore, senior scientist at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, examined over 1,500 cases over the course of a decade in which patients reported compulsive behavior in conjunction with Abilify and other dopamine receptor agonist drugs.

Moore concluded that drugs like Abilify can trigger a pathological urge to gamble constantly, even in persons who have never felt such an urge before.

He notes some compulsive gamblers end up losing tens of thousands of dollars.

One patient identified as Lucy says she became one of many Abilify compulsive gamblers. After a violent suicide by her father, Lucy was diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder. On her psychiatrist’s advice, she began treating her PTSD with a few different psychiatric drugs, including Abilify.

Lucy then began a catastrophic streak of compulsive gambling. She started commuting to a gambling resort in Colorado, sometimes late at night. She admits she would stuff her bed to make her husband think she was there sleeping, while actually she was out at the casino.

She says she would lose all the money she brought, returning home with nothing left. Even though she never won, nothing seemed to stop her from continuing to gamble. When she wasn’t at the casino, she would buy lottery scratch-off tickets.

Lucy says she went to extreme measures to get money to use for gambling. She says she lied about needing money for other things, pawned her husband’s professional equipment, and gambled away unemployment insurance checks.

Litigation May Draw Thousands of Abilify Compulsive Gamblers

Lucy is one of thousands of Abilify patients who claim the drug caused them to develop problems with compulsive behavior. Some of these patients have become plaintiffs in a wave of litigation against Bristol-Myers Squibb and Otsuka America.

Generally, these plaintiffs say the companies failed in their duty to warn them that Abilify could lead to compulsive behavior. They accuse the companies of fraudulently concealing vital safety information about Abilify, at the same time thousands of patients suffered from compulsive gambling without understanding why.

They cite the fact that defendants Bristol-Myers Squibb and Otsuka America failed to update the warning label for Abilify with a stronger warning, even though regulators in other countries like Canada and throughout Europe had already done so.

It wasn’t until May of 2016 that the companies, on orders from the FDA, finally updated the label’s list of Abilify side effects to include “compulsive or uncontrollable urges to gamble, binge eat, shop, and have sex.”