Numb Documentary - Watched at Last



Numb website - order the documentary here

I watched this last night, that was a big mistake, my sleep pattern has been a bit shot lately and watching this before bed didn't help!

It was absolutely spot on and I related to ALL of it. I've written about what it feels like to stop taking your antidepressant and what happens Akathisia as have many others, but Phil has gone a step further and actually filmed what happened when he halved his antidepressant. There's no way I wanted anyone to see me in that state and I actively hid myself and "it" when the withdrawals kicked in. Big kudos to Phil for doing this.

The excerpt with his very supportive wife was exactly how Peter was with me, especially where she said she didn't want Phil reading the worst case scenarios on the internet, it was obvious to me Phil was reading the Paxil Progress web site, exactly as I had when desperately searching for the answers. The impact on marriage and family life was an exact mirror image of ours when I was trying to stop taking my antidepressant. Peter on the outside trying to understand what was going on but feeling pretty helpless. Phil tried everything I tried, diet, exercise, alternative remedies, all to no avail. In the end he did what I had to done so many times, he restarted the antidepressant, after much angst and wrestling with whether to persevere with his withdrawals or give in and go back to the drug.  I was interested to see he switched to Prozac, just as I did, and I wonder if it was with a view to attempting to taper off liquid Prozac in the future.

Something else jumped out at me, one commentator in the documentary talked about whether these drugs are "addictive" or not, and this is a question that I have wrestled with. The commentator (I can't remember who it was, perhaps someone will remind me) made the point that the drug companies tell you they are not addictive because you don't see people selling them on street corners and people craving them, but that's because it's so easy to get your prescription filled from the doctor. I have sat in the surgery and heard someone begging for a doctors appointment because they hadn't realised they'd run out of their seroxat and if they didn't get it they would be in a terrible state the next day.

If anyone around me wants to borrow it and watch please feel free to ask me, but I won't post it to anyone because I don't want to risk losing it!



1.20ml - New Reduction

It's been two months since I last reduced, I think I'm deliberately taking it slower over the winter.

I've said it before and I'll say it again but I'm at a stage where it would be so easy to just stop taking the Prozac, I'm on such a stupidly low dose, but on the other hand I'm scared of all my hard work and patience unravelling at the end. So I'm keeping in mind what I read that I shouldn't ever reduce more than 10% of the last dose I was on, and when you think about the maths, the lower I go, the steeper the % drops.
So I'm really not sure how this will work when I hit 1ml, I think I may have to consider when my jumping off point will be.
 NEVER underestimate how this class of drug can screw you up. I'll carry on being the tortoise and not the hare for the time being.

My tortoise Prozac reduction timeline!

Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal: Why Taper by 10% of your Dosage?

I found this today and thought it was an excellent article, I have also put it as a page on the side for reference. It's more or less the method I've been following. Just been wondering where my "jump off" point will be....

By AltoStrata

AltoStrata's Surviving Antidepressants Web Site


Why taper by 10% of my dosage?

We believe that, for a minority, the risk of severe withdrawal is so great, a very conservative approach to tapering to protect everyone is called for.

Many people seem to be able to taper off psychiatric medications in a couple of weeks or even cold-turkey with minor withdrawal symptoms perhaps for a month or so. Doctors therefore expect everyone can do this. However, it seems a minority suffer severe symptoms for much longer.

It is unknown how large or small this minority is. You may very well be in it. You cannot know how your nervous system will respond to a decrease in medication until you try it.
Withdrawal symptoms represent neurological dysfunction. Severe symptoms can be distressing, debilitating, or even disabling. If you get prolonged withdrawal syndrome, there is no known treatment or cure. You will have to cope with it until it goes away.

Some guides will suggest a trial decrease of 25% to start. If you get withdrawal symptoms, it is recommended to reinstate the original full dosage and taper more slowly from there.

That is reasonable, except that it can take weeks to feel the full brunt of withdrawal symptoms from an initial drop. If you have already made two reductions from your original dosage, you will have reduced by about 50% — and your symptoms may indicate substantial neurological damage.

(NEVER ALTERNATE DOSAGES TO TAPER. IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE, THIS IS SURE TO SET OFF WITHDRAWAL SYMPTOMS.)

If you are a person who is sensitive to fluctuations in your dosage, you may be suffering quite a bit, and for these people, even if the original dosage is reinstated at this point, withdrawal symptoms may continue to be severe.

To save wear and tear on your nervous system, we recommend an initial drop of 10% and staying at that level for a month to see if withdrawal symptoms develop. If they do, you may wish to reinstate and make smaller decreases at intervals of about a month. If you are sensitive, this can protect you from a great deal of pain and discomfort.

If are not sensitive to a 10% drop, by listening to your body, you may be able to make 10% drops more often than every month.

In this way, the 10% method protects everyone and you have the option of tapering faster if you can tolerate it.

From the Icarus Project Mind UK Document


If you find you have to withdraw very slowly, it can be difficult to make small enough reductions in your dose, especially if your drug comes in capsule form. Sometimes it’s possible to break open the capsule and remove some of the content to lower the dose. You should always take care doing this, though, as the contents (for instance, fluoxetine) are sometimes irritating to the skin or the eyes. A pharmacist should be able to tell you if it’s safe to do so.
Some drugs are obtainable in liquid form, which can be diluted to make small reductions in dosage. It may be worth asking whether you can change to one of these. You would then need to be very sure what the concentration of the liquid is, and how much water to add to achieve the dose you wish. You may want to ask a pharmacist to help you with this….
Allow enough time for your body to readjust to the lower dosage at each stage. You could start by reducing the dose by 10 percent, and see how you feel. If you get withdrawal effects, wait for these to settle before you try the next reduction. Then reduce it by another 10 percent of the original dose. As the dose gets smaller, you may find this rate more difficult to cope with, and reducing by 10 percent of the reduced dose may be a better idea. If you started with 400mg of your drug, for example, you could first reduce the dose by 10 percent (40mg), to 360mg. The next 40mg reduction would take you down to 320mg, then 280mg, 240mg, and so on. If you got to 200mg and then found that a further drop of 40mg drop was too difficult, you could reduce by 10 percent of 200mg (20mg), and go down to 180mg, and so on. At each stage, if you find the reduction too difficult to cope with, you can increase the dose slightly (not necessarily back to the previous dose) and stabilise on that before you continue.

Also see Dr.Peter Breggin's 10% taper method

Please note that the 10% reduction method we recommend is a 10% reduction on the already reduced dose.

- If you started at 10mg, the first reduction would be 10% of 10mg, or 1mg, for a reduced dose of 9mg.

- Your second reduction would be 10% of 9mg, or .9mg, for a reduced dose of 8.1mg.

- Your third reduction would be 10% of 8.1mg, or .81mg, for a reduced dose of 7.29mg.

And so on.

This ensures that your nervous system is eased down a gentle 10% slope at every step of the process. It’s important that drops become smaller, not larger, as you go. Once you find the rate at which you can comfortably taper, you don’t want to jolt your nervous system with a larger drop than it can handle.

Mathematics whizzes may recognize that the 10% reduction formula is a geometric progression approaching but never equaling zero. At a very small dosage, likely less than 1mg, when reductions no longer cause any withdrawal symptoms, you will want to simply stop.

You will need to use your own judgment about your jumping-off point. Some people have found that the final steps require reductions so tiny they cannot measure them, employing methods such as dipping a toothpick in a liquid solution to ease off in the final stages.

A Prozac Withdrawal Story - This is Short..

..but I bet the long term withdrawal isn't. This is less than a minute but puts it in a nutshell, I had forgotten about this video until a friend shared it with me.

And after I posted this the other day, a friend shared with a video he had made about his own experience after cold turkey from 40mg Prozac (which is double the dose I was on) and sadly he is still reaping the whirlwind and now coming off Prozac a lot slower.

Prozac Reduction Timeline

Psychiatry's Grand Confession

Link to Original article -Mad in America - Psychiatry's Grand Confession


Psychiatry’s Grand Confession

Posted on January 23, 2012 by Jonathan Leo, Ph.D. / Jeffrey Lacasse, Ph.D.

The psychiatry profession has finally come clean and confessed on a national media outlet that there is no evidence to support the Serotonin Theory of Depression. Today, on NPR’s Morning Edition there is a segment about the chemical imbalance theory, and virtually all the psychiatrists who are interviewed acknowledge that the there was never any evidence in support of the idea that low serotonin causes depression. But then, amazingly, they go on to say that it is perfectly fine to tell patients that serotonin imbalance causes depression even though they know this isn’t the case.
Several years ago in PLoS Medicine we wrote a long piece about the serotonin theory and the disconnect between what research psychiatrists say in professional journals and textbooks and what the advertisements say. While the advertisements presented the theory as scientific fact, the scientific sources clearly did not. Given the enormous marketing programs that pushed this theory combined with the media’s lack of skepticism, we were sympathetic to the general public who could hardly be faulted for thinking that theory had some foundation in fact. Following the publication of our piece a reporter contacted us and suggested that we were attacking a well accepted theory. We pointed out to the reporter that we weren’t attacking a sacred cow but that instead we were pointing out the mainstream psychiatry didn’t even accept this theory. We urged the reporter to contact the FDA, NIMH, APA, etc and ask them about the science behind the advertisements. He did, and as expected, an expert from the FDA explained that the theory was really just a metaphor. The problem is that patients who heard their physician explain the serotonin theory thought they were hearing real science. They weren’t told it was a metaphor and hence thought it was a fact. When a doctor talks about high cholesterol, diabetes, or hypothyroidism, they are talking about scientific measurement, not a metaphor. How is a patient with high cholesterol and depression who listens to their doctor’s explanation of their conditions supposed to know when the doctor has moved from science to metaphor?
Several months ago Ronald Pies published an interesting article in Psychiatric Times entitled, “Psychiatry’s New Brain-Mind and the Legend of the Chemical Imbalance.” Pies, just like the experts on NPR, acknowledges that the Chemical Imbalance theory is not true. However, according to Pies, it was the pharmaceutical companies who espoused the theory, and not well-informed, practicing clinicians, because the psychiatry community has known all along that the theory is not true.
But if the Psychiatry Community knew all along that the theory was not true, then why did they not clarify this issue for the general public? Shouldn’t they have pointed out to the general public and patients that what the pharmaceutical companies were saying about psychological stress was not true? Why did the professional societies not publicly set the record straight?
There are many angry comments on the NPR website. These comments are interesting, because apparently many patients who were told that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance never understood that were hearing a metaphor and not science. Since the chemical imbalance theory is often presented as a rationale for taking SSRIs, such patients now understandably feel lied to by their clinicians.
Perhaps the most interesting part about the NPR piece is that the reporter seems to not understand that the idea of telling a falsehood to patients because you think it is good for them is a serious violation of informed consent. Shouldn’t the reporter have asked the obvious questions, such as:
1) Do you feel it is acceptable to present a scientific theory as fact even though you know it is false?
2) Is it okay for psychiatrists to tell patients stories about their conditions that psychiatrists know are false?
3) Is there not an ethical issue when a psychiatrist informs their patient that they have a serotonin imbalance, when the medical textbooks on the shelf clearly say this is a falsified theory?
In general, we are fans of NPR, but hopefully the next news outlet that covers this topic will be more investigative in their approach.

When it Comes to Depression Serotonin isn't the Whole Story

Yesterday, I was lucky to have three interesting articles shared with me, thanks Bobby Fiddaman and Carolyn Anderson. I think I've only got time to get one out this morning, the other two will have to wait til this evening. I like this article because it covers everything I've been banging on about for ages, particularly this : "Frazer says it's probably because it has had, and continues to have, important cultural uses. For one, he says, by initially framing the problem as a deficiency — something that needed to be returned to normal — patients felt more comfortable taking a drug.

"If there was this biological reason for them being depressed, some deficiency that the drug was correcting," Frazer says, then taking a drug was OK. "They had a chemical imbalance and the drug was correcting that imbalance." In fact, he says, the story enables many people to come out of the closet about being depressed, which he views as a good thing."
The chemical imbalance theory is absolutely rife, I see it and hear it everywhere, it's more socially acceptable than "I feel really rubbish/depressed/overwelmingly anxious".


When it comes to depression serotonin isn't the whole story

The antidepressant Prozac selectively targets the chemical serotonin.

When I was 17 years old, I got so depressed that what felt like an enormous black hole appeared in my chest. Everywhere I went, the black hole went, too.

So to address the black-hole issue, my parents took me to a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She did an evaluation and then told me this story:

"The problem with you," she explained, "is that you have a chemical imbalance. It's biological, just like diabetes, but it's in your brain. This chemical in your brain called serotonin is too, too low. There's not enough of it, and that's what's causing the chemical imbalance. We need to give you medication to correct that."

Then she handed my mother a prescription for Prozac.

That was the late '80s, but this story of a chemical imbalance brought on by low serotonin has remained very popular.

"I don't know of any story that has supplanted it," says Alan Frazer, a researcher who studies how antidepressant medications work. He is also chairman of the pharmacology department at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

"It definitely continues to live — absolutely," agrees his colleague Pedro Delgado, the chair of the psychiatry department at UT. "If you go to your community doctor, you're likely to hear some version of that."

But for many scientists who research depression, this explanation is no longer satisfying.

"Chemical imbalance is sort of last-century thinking. It's much more complicated than that," says Dr. Joseph Coyle, a professor of neuroscience at Harvard Medical School. "It's really an outmoded way of thinking."

Coyle, who is also the editor of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, says that though serotonin plays a role in depression, low serotonin is likely not the cause of depression. Scientific thinking has clearly shifted, he says.

Still, the story of serotonin remains. Why does it continue to have such a powerful grip on the popular imagination?

The Link

According to Frazer, to understand how the story of low serotonin came to dominate our understanding of what causes depression, you need to go back to the late '50s, to a psychiatric hospital in Switzerland.

That's where psychiatrist Roland Kuhn gave a newly developed drug to 10 patients who had been paralyzed by depression for years. Over the course of three weeks, he watched a near-miracle occur.

"There was this lightening of their mood," Frazer says. "They became more energized, more interested in things around them."

This was the birth of the very first antidepressants, called tricyclics. And with that birth came a question: How could these drugs possibly be working? Researchers had some ideas, but it really wasn't until the mid '60s, when the cause of Parkinson's disease was discovered, that a real narrative began to take shape.

It turned out that Parkinson's — a brain disorder — was caused by a deficiency of a chemical in the brain called dopamine. This discovery influenced the way scientists thought about depression.

"There is no doubt in my mind that the Parkinson's story had a strong impact on the way that people were thinking about depression," Frazer says. "It became easy to speculate that depression was due to a deficiency."

The question, of course, was what was deficient? Which chemical was too low? For decades researchers argued this question, but no one candidate took the lead. And then came Prozac.

Prozac's Pull

Almost as soon as it was introduced in 1987, the antidepressant Prozac, which selectively targets the chemical serotonin, became a blockbuster. "Prozac just blew everything else out of the water," Frazer says.

This had less to do with the efficacy of Prozac (it is not better at treating depression than tricyclics, the earlier generation of antidepressants) than with the fact that the drug had relatively few side effects.

"It was very free of side effects," says Pedro Delgado. "And so it began to be used very widely, and there was a lot of enthusiasm for it."

That understates the case. In a very short time, Prozac became wildly popular, and again, Prozac worked on just one chemical in the brain: serotonin.

And really, it is because of the popularity of Prozac that the low-serotonin story took hold, even though, Frazer argues, the scientific research has not borne that out.

"I don't think there's any convincing body of data that anybody has ever found that depression is associated to a significant extent with a loss of serotonin," he says.

Delgado also makes this argument. In the 1990s, he carried out a study that showed that if you take a normal person and deplete them of serotonin, they will not become depressed. He says he feels this demonstrates that low serotonin doesn't cause depression.

Coyle is less absolute in his dismissal of the evidence on serotonin. His take is that while low serotonin probably doesn't cause depression, some abnormality in the serotonin system clearly plays a role. But most researchers have moved on, he says, and are looking at more fundamental issues like identifying the genes that might put people at risk for developing depression.

"What's being looked at are processes that are much more fundamental than just serotonin levels," he says. "We need to move beyond serotonin, and I think the field is."

Serotonin Sticking Around

So why are so many people still talking about low serotonin causing depression?

Frazer says it's probably because it has had, and continues to have, important cultural uses. For one, he says, by initially framing the problem as a deficiency — something that needed to be returned to normal — patients felt more comfortable taking a drug.

"If there was this biological reason for them being depressed, some deficiency that the drug was correcting," Frazer says, then taking a drug was OK. "They had a chemical imbalance and the drug was correcting that imbalance." In fact, he says, the story enables many people to come out of the closet about being depressed, which he views as a good thing.

Still, there's no question that the story also has downsides. Describing the problem exclusively in biological terms has convinced many people to take antidepressants when other therapies — like talk therapy — can work just as well.

One critic I talked to said the serotonin story distracted researchers from looking for other causes of depression. But Delgado agrees with Frazer and says the story has some benefits. He points out that years of research have demonstrated that uncertainty itself can be harmful to people — which is why, he says, clear, simple explanations are so very important.

"When you feel that you understand it, a lot of the stress levels dramatically are reduced," he says. "So stress, hormones and a lot of biological factors change."

Unfortunately, the real story is complicated and, in a way, not all that reassuring. Researchers don't really know what causes depression. They're making progress, but they don't know. That's the real story.

It's not exactly a blockbuster.


When it comes to depression serotonin isn't the whole story

The Numb Documentary has Arrived!

Back in August last year I posted about the Numb Documentary, well at long last the DVD is available for purchase here: Numb Documentary, I emailed Phil Lawrence and the DVD is compatible with UK machines. I bought one just now with some leftover birthday money and it works out as £16.58. Can't wait to actually view it, how brave of Phil Lawrence to make a documentary and let people "see" how it is to try and get yourself off Seroxat/Paxil or any of the other SSRI's.

Here's a trailer as a taster:

Should have seen it coming

I’ve had 3 nights of rubbish sleep and low level anxiety, I should have seen it coming, I had two reductions before Christmas after a long period of stability so this could be a withdrawal. I went a bit hyper on Friday; I got home from work and did a shed load of washing and ironing, and cooked a fish pie for the next day as well as tea for that evening, why didn’t I realise? It’s subtle that’s why. P says I always go a bit hyper before I have a crash, he observes the pattern, but he wasn’t around Friday evening to observe. In the thick of it, I find myself thinking I’m on the downward spiral, I’ll never sleep properly again, this is it, I’m cracking up, 2003 all over again. Oh, hang on! This has happened before! Get a grip, this too will pass.

Added into the mix we had to resume hostilities with the neighbours after turning a blind eye for months, an incident meant we could no longer ignore, and a carefully worded letter was called for, we checked out the facts before we wrote the letter and they don’t have a leg to stand on. While we were out said neighbour turned up on doorstep, fag in one hand, our letter in the other, and that tell tale eye twitch, our youngest answered the door and said we were out. He hasn’t been back but has upped the ante.


Prozac Reduction Timeline

I wrote the above last night, as a postscript this morning, I had a really bad night again last night, and when I did manage a couple of hours sleep I had that old recurring dream/nightmare and woke up in tears, I honestly feel the lowest I have felt in a long long time, just have to hang in there and wait for it to pass :(

Postnatal Depression 1994 - The Back Story

So my friend said “about your blog”, I said yeesss, she said “I think you should write a bit more about your experience of depression and not just concentrate on the medications side, although I realise that’s what the blog’s about, I just think sometimes people are searching for other people’s experience of depression”. OK so I saw her point, and it had crossed my mind before that I should. I have touched on anxiety, insomnia and a bit about my second experience of postnatal depression, (which was different to the first experience and a lot “blacker”) when I started the drugs. It seems easier to write about the Lustral/Prozac issue for the world than to write a warts and all personal experience of depression. I’ve seen others do it, mostly anonymously, too late for that now I’m not anonymous anymore, that horse has well and truly bolted. I talked to Al about it and he was cool with it, trouble is am I? Well I could always delete it at anytime couldn’t I.
I was wheeled into the ward with Al in one of those Perspex cribs just after midnight, dazed and on cloud nine, I couldn’t sleep at all, I was too busy marvelling at my new baby sleeping peacefully, he was so still I had to prod him every so often to check he was actually alive.


I was in for four nights, mainly because P was self employed and couldn’t spare the time to bring us home until the weekend. I got the distinct feeling four nights was overstaying my welcome and I would have loved to have got out sooner.


The next day exhaustion soon crept in, as well as feeling extremely tearful, visitors started arriving, I was struggling to feed Al who had started to cry a lot, and I continued to struggle, as my milk hadn’t come in. I was struggling all the time to hold back the tears, I wanted to be able to let rip and cry floods of tears, but I had no idea why I felt like this, and it really would have felt like social suicide and new mum suicide to cave in. This wasn’t supposed to be how I was feeling. It wasn’t in the script. There was a massive massive gulf between how I imagined I would be feeling and the stark reality.


I was under a team of midwives who were separate from the hospital midwives. The hospital midwives were to leave the “team’s” patients to the team and not interfere; I didn’t know this until months afterwards and couldn’t work out why I was seemingly being ignored on the ward. The “team” were stretched, and the hospital midwives always seemed to ignore me and be chatting round a workstation, and because I had a straightforward textbook birth, I barely got a look in. I struggled on with trying to breastfeed an increasingly frustrated baby simultaneously holding back tears. One afternoon I was desperately hungry, Al was sleeping peacefully ( for once) so I went off to get something to eat, when I came back Al had been a bit sick, I was greeted by a hospital midwife who asked “would you always leave your baby lying in sick?”, I was mortified, NOW they noticed me! I struggled bitterly to hold back the tears threatening me.


On the way home from hospital on the Saturday, we stopped off at Tesco with Al in his baby bucket/carrier, we happened to bump into my in laws, my lovely father in law did this mock pretending to run off with Al to jokingly test my reaction, I grabbed him back and we laughed about it, but secretly I was feeling that actually I wouldn’t mind if he did run off with Al, I was feeling so terrified and overwhelmed.


When we got home P was working all hours and I continued to struggle with being a new Mum, and I don’t just mean the night feeds, nappies and general getting used to life with a newborn, I continued to struggle with my raw emotions, it was so much more than just the transient baby blues I’d read about. At the end of the fourth week, I had the final visit from a team midwife. I particularly remember that visit, I remember the midwife sloping guiltily out of the door, she knew I was distressed and holding back the tears, and I knew that she knew and wasn’t saying anything and was relieved to hand me over to the health visitor.


I remember feeling incredibly trapped by my baby.

I remember staring out of an upstairs window at people getting on with their lives, I felt like I was trapped in a kind of bubble, detached from the world carrying on around me, everyone seemed “happy”, I just felt.... detached.


I remember weeks and weeks of feeling incredibly sad, it is the only way I can describe it, the overwhelming tearfulness and raw emotions ever close to the surface lessened over time to be replaced with a persistent feeling of downright sadness, profound sadness, like grief.


I remember the health visitor one time doing the Edinburgh depression scale test on me and I lied.


I remember a doctor asking me if I felt depressed, more than once, and I lied.


I remember once a doctor gave me a weeks supply of sleeping pills for the insomnia but I wouldn’t take them. Insomnia was the most I would ever admit to.


I remember pretending to feel “normal”, never letting the mask slip.


Gradually over a long period of time I climbed my way out of it, and now it’s so long ago (Al is 18 in March) I can’t remember how long it took, but I think it was a year if not two.

This was 1994, not that long ago, but no mobile phones and no computer let alone internet and blogs to reach out to others.

So it’s obvious that I was a bottle it all up type for fear of the shame, embarrassment and public humiliation, not to mention not wanting to put additional pressure on P who was under enormous pressure himself to make ends meet. Which kind of leads nicely onto the point of the next post about Terry Lynch’s book.


My Prozac Reduction Timeline

Beyond Prozac - Terry Lynch

I stumbled across Terry Lynch, not literally, I mean on Facebook, and stumbled on the fact that he is a GP and had written this book. All I can say is I wish every surgery had a Terry Lynch in it.

This book is so easy to read for a layman (woman) like me, I’ve read some others that have been a bit heavy going, but this is eminently readable.I learned a lot about how psychiatry relies so heavily on medication to treat mental “illness”.

I learned that “anti psychotics” are in fact just major tranquillisers, and there isn’t any such thing really as an “anti psychotic” medication that targets a particular area of the brain. “Anti psychotic” just sounds more “scientific” and targeted.

I learned that there really have been no experiments carried out to actually prove that serotonin levels are actually reduced in people who are depressed, and when you think about it, no one actually offers to test your serotonin level to see if it is low, and then tests it again after taking antidepressants to see if your serotonin is raised.

I learned that psychiatry is very heavily reliant on the pharmaceutical industry and the “medicalisation” of “mental illness” to justify its existence, and that we need to stop medicalising human emotional distress. Quoted from the back of the book “loveless ness and loneliness cannot be explained by chemical changes in the brain and cured by the ingestion of drugs. Lovelessness and loneliness, like anxiety and depression and all the ways of expressing distress which are called mental disorder, are part of what it is to be human..”

I leaned a lot about different mental states like schizophrenia, bi polar, anorexia, bulimia, anxiety, depression and suicide in layman’s terms, and the situations in life that can precipitate them.

I learned just how important self esteem is, and this point can’t be emphasised enough, it’s all about self esteem, and being loved and valued.

I learned that we all need to be a lot more open, that is accepting, and understanding about human distress, and understand that emotional turmoil is a normal part of what is to be human. That we can’t keep medicating it and sweeping it under the rug.

Something in the very last chapter of the book really hit home, Terry’s description of a man who visited him "in the surgery in a huge amount of emotional distress, wailing and sobbing. As he left the surgery, exhausted and barely able to stand, he happened to bump into a male acquaintance of his in the waiting room, Terry overheard a brief interchange between the two. The other man asked him how he was; he replied, “I’m good thanks”. Whatever else he felt at this time of crisis in his life, he did not feel ‘good’, but in this world where emotional censorship rules and distress must be kept under wraps, he did not feel he could tell this person how he really felt. This brief exchange spoke volumes about the subtle censorships, which are rampant within society". Yup I could relate to that.

I did think Jeremy Clarkson could learn a thing or two from this book after his crass comments before Christmas.

Of course, what I’ve written here is a huge simplification of Terry’s book and probably doesn’t do it justice, best go and read it yourself ;) Link to the book itself on Amazon

Link to Terry Lynch's talk at Cork Recovery Conference - this man talks a lot of sense.

Prozac Reduction Timeline

Happy New Year (from somone who hates new year!)

Yes Happy New Year, even though I hate it and hate January and February and don't believe in making New Years resolutions, after all you're just setting yourself up for failure, and if you're ready to do something that time will happen at any time in the year and not the 1st January. Ba humbug! Roll on Easter LOL

OK regardless of the above, my hopes for 2012 are that by next new year I hope I will be off of Prozac if I play my cards right this year (but what will I do with this blog at that point? It will have fulfilled it's purpose? carry on blogging the issues? or wrap it up and just support others in the cause?).

I want to see my oldest son settled and happy and following a particular path in life.

I want to see my younger son continue to do well at school despite his dyslexia.

I want our business to really really grow this year.

I want to make time to enjoy my piano more.

I want my friend who has had a really crap 2011 have a fantastic 2012 where everything comes right for her.

I want all my loved ones and friends to have a good 2012.

I want to meet a particular friend in person who I've been talking to on Facebook for sometime now, and have a really good chat about the ishoos and share (Abilify Danger). I hope to strengthen my friendship with others who I've met through my blog as well.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Skool Playground

So I was chatting to another Mum in the school playground, she was a very gregarious, extrovert personality, I can’t even remember how the conversation started or what it was about originally but it must have been quite personal, I confessed that I was on antidepressants, I thought I was probably the only person in the playground who’d had to resort to the shame of using antidepressants. Oh no, she soon put me straight, she was as well, and see so and so over there? She’s on them! And that one over there? and such a body you know, so and so’s Mum...

You could’ve knocked me down with a feather, I’m not sure what shocked me more, finding out that so many other people in the playground were also on antidepressants or the fact that she knew they all were, and how long before everyone in the playground would know I was as well?





My Prozac Reduction Timeline

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!

(Maybe this time next year I will be celebrating a Prozac & Lustral free Christmas :)  )

Prozac Reduction Timeline

1.30ml - for Christmas

So today I am going to 1.30ml, just over 5 weeks since I went to 1.40ml.
If I don't do it now it could be ages, given that I hate January and the long winter months after Christmas. Got to keep moving on though!

Already pondering what I'll do when I get to 1ml and how to proceed at that point.

My Prozac Tapering Timeline vs MHRA SSRI Learning Module Advice on Withdrawal

It seemed quite timely to post my timeline as a blog post, I already have it as a seperate page on here which I keep updated.
The MHRA (Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) have recently published updated guidelines for UK doctors and health care professionals on SSRI's.
SSRI Learning Module: Withdrawal (discontinuation) Effects
One of the things the learning module says is that antidepressants can be withdrawn quite easily and gradual withdrawal can be staged over 4 weeks?!?! 4 weeks, it's taking me 4 freaking years!!!! It also says that people with severe problems can seek specialist advice, where is the specialist advice?? the specialist advice I got was my doctor writing to a psychiatrist for me and getting a letter back advising patient to halve her Prozac and be given Temazepan to mitigate the withdrawals I was suffering, so that's great, substitute one powerful addictive drug with ANOTHER powerful addictive drug. I resorted to getting my specialist advice from books and the internet. I think the doctors think I'm a freak, but it's no wonder if this is the advice they are being given, the sad thing is there are loads of us out there who have struggled with getting off SSRI's and loads of people who don't know they are struggling with a powerful drug because they think the problem is theirs and their mental health and not the drug. It really is a head f***.

My friend Mr Fiddaman has been posting extensively and writing to the MHRA about these issues here: Seroxat Sufferers Stand Up and Be Counted go take a look.

The other issue is that a lot of people want to get off the drug so fast, I fell into that trap numerous times, you just want it out of your system as fast as possible. I learned the hard way that it really isn't worth rushing it, if you're feeling bad, hold at that dose for as long as it takes to feel well again before making another reduction, you can see my timeline below is really haphazard, I threw out the calendar and schedules, just didn't work for me, listen to your body and head, play the long game if you have to, be the tortoise and not the hare!!

I'm at a stage now where my dose is so low it would be really tempting to just drop it totally, go straight from 1.40ml to 0 but I don't want to risk throwing away all my hard work and ending up back at square one because I know I am sensitive to withdrawal.



 25th May 2008 4.90ml


10th June 2008 4.80ml

14th July 2008 4.70ml


14th Aug 2008 4.60ml


14th Oct 2008 4.50ml

25th Nov 2008 6 months

3rd Dec 2008 4.40ml

24th Jan 2009 4.25ml

11th April 2009 4.10ml

18th April 2009 3.90ml

17th May 2009 3.80ml

25th May 2009 1 Year

6th July 2009 3.60ml

22nd Aug 2009 3.50ml

2nd Oct 2009 3.30ml

14th Nov 2009 3.20ml

25th Nov 2009 18 Months

24th Dec 2009 3.10ml

31st Jan 2010 2.90ml

6th March 2010 2.70ml

10th April 2010 2.60ml

25th May 2010 2 Years

5th June 2010 2.50ml

3rd July 2010 2.40ml

7th Aug 2010 2.30ml

18th Sep 2010 2.20ml

23rd Oct 2010 2.00ml

25th Nov 2010 2 Years 6 months

18th Dec 2010 1.90ml

2nd March 2011 1.80ml

28th April 2011 1.70ml

25th May 2011 3 Years

10th June 2011 1.60ml

23rd July 2011 1.50ml

10th Nov 2011 1.40ml

25th Nov 2011 3 Years 6 Months