Prozac Withdrawal

A Prozac Withdrawal Story - This is Short..

2012-02-09T19:14:00.002Z

..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

2012-01-24T20:05:00.002Z

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

2012-01-24T07:46:00.001Z

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!

2012-01-22T17:41:00.003Z

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

2012-01-10T07:21:00.000Z

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

2012-01-07T08:59:00.001Z

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

2012-01-07T08:59:00.000Z

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!)

2011-12-31T14:59:00.001Z

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

2011-12-28T10:33:00.000Z

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!

2011-12-24T07:30:00.000Z

Merry Christmas!!

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

Prozac Reduction Timeline

1.30ml - for Christmas

2011-12-18T08:00:00.000Z

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

2011-12-08T08:56:00.000Z

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

Akathisia - a Side Effect of SSRI's, Withdrawing Too Fast off SSRI's, or Cold Turkeying off SSRI's

2011-11-30T09:20:00.000Z

Summer 1994

Coming back from a gathering of mums and babies, post natal NCT support group, in reality the group wasn’t very supportive, there was rather a lot of competitive mumdom going on, other babies seemed to be sleeping through contentedly, learning the alphabet, names put down for private school already, ok I’m exaggerating a bit.

The mum I was getting a lift home with, our two babies in their seats in the back, I had more of an affinity with, our babies were not so easy and we didn’t pretend otherwise, and neither of us was finding new motherhood a breeze, and we both had money worries. In hindsight I know I was depressed and living with my emotions very raw and close to the surface but for me this was a very closely guarded secret but I think the other Mum sensed it. She was more open about her feelings, at least to me anyway, on that drive home she suddenly let rip, it all came tumbling out, how depressed she felt, her resentment towards the other Mums in the group, the medication she was on, how life was a constant uphill battle managing the baby, her dog, her husband, anxiety about going back to work and the sleepless nights, and the medication she was on. She told me that she often had thoughts when she was driving of just ramming her car into a lorry or car in front deliberately to escape her life.

December 2003 and Feb 2007

5am and for about the 3rd night in a row I’ve barely slept a wink, I can’t stop the adrenaline pumping round my body, my stomach is tightly knotted, I’ve barely been able to eat properly it makes me feel sick. I’m clammy, sweating and crying and P is trying to reassure me, but he has to go to work. I get up and drag myself through all the motions of the day and making sure boys get to school, I feel like the living dead, I make sure they get fed and make sure they and no one else is aware of what’s going on, I don’t hang around at the school gates. Oh I do kind of tell a few people I’m not really feeling right but I play it down. The constant adrenaline is tormenting me on the inside and I can’t stop it. It’s been building up over a period of months and I’ve been fighting and fighting the feelings but it seems to have reached a peak of exquisite torture. It’s like being at the top of a roller coaster that never stops. Someone else mentioned birdsong, and it was a funny thing, the torture was worse in the mornings and over the summer months while it was slowly building, birdsong in the morning outside the window had become a kind of torture as well. I had to go to work only 2 days a week and God only knows how I managed it. I had taken my last Lustral tablet months ago, and come off it as per the doctors instructions, and now my depression/anxiety was back tenfold to punish me for daring to presume I could stop taking it. I must be wired up totally wrong, no one else feels like this do they? What is wrong with me? Maybe I really am insane, maybe I just can’t cope with life without my tablets, how come everyone else can cope with life, and I can’t? There must be something fundamentally wrong with me. By now the Orwell Bridge was beginning to look a bit attractive and I just wanted to escape the adrenaline surges torturing me, my nerves were in shreds.

Broken, exhausted and shaken I reluctantly started taking the Lustral again and gradually started to feel more “normal”. Obviously there was something wrong with me and I needed Lustral to help me function. How come though I hadn’t needed Lustral to function before 1998?

Nowadays my withdrawals are almost but not quite non existent, the tsunami that is akathisia has long since washed away leaving me just a bit more nervy and more vulnerable to stress, much calmer but aware that adrenaline is always not far from the surface, and still trying to hide it and not always succeeding.

I’ve just finished reading Ann Blake Tracey’s book “Prozac Panacea or Pandora?”, I’ve heard the word akathisia in relation to antidepressants in recent years but I had never been quite sure what it was or that it applied to me. This book included loads and loads of anecdotes from people and information about akathisia and I actually felt emotional reading it, there was a name for it and I never knew at the time and I’m absolutely certain my doctor didn’t know either.

Prozac Reduction Timeline

Positive Comments Mean so Much

2011-11-27T09:11:00.000Z

I've had some really encouraging, positive and supportive comments lately from people about my progress, on here, by e mail, through Facebook and in person and I just wanted to say that the positive encouragement means far more to me than you probably realise. It makes me feel really positive about my progress. I've also made some great new friends.

Prozac Reduction Timeline

Dizzy

2011-11-17T17:45:00.001Z

So I've been feeling a bit like this today:

But it's a walk in the park compared to feeling like:

Prozac Reduction Timeline

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver (we need to talk about Prozac)

2011-11-13T17:08:00.000Z

I haven’t seen the film yet, I’m going to see it with my oldest son who is the same age as the fictional Kevin, he’s interested in the book and film as well, but I have read the book twice now. This second time I’ve read it from a different angle, I was interested in reading it from the Prozac and antidepressants angle and the connection with teenagers being prescribed antidepressants and the increasing correlation between SSRI use in teenagers (and adults) and violence and suicide. In the book however it is clear that Kevin has done his research and cynically starts taking Prozac to use it as a defence for his horrific crime. The book is really about the nature/nurture debate and Kevin is every parents worst nightmare.

Whilst it is an excellent book and one that I couldn’t put down, it’s a shame especially now that it’s been turned into a film that it has a negative impact on the debate surrounding the link between SSRI’s and violence and suicide. At the same time I was reading “We Need to Talk About Kevin” this article landed in my mail box about a case where there was a landmark legal confirmation of the fact that the newer antidepressants like Prozac can cause violence and even murder.

Link to this article

Judge confirms Prozac caused teen to murder based on Peter Breggin M.D.'s court report and testimony to the Provincial Court of Manitoba, Canada. Boy sentenced and to be released in 10 months

Peter R. Breggin, MD

"This is a landmark legal confirmation of the scientific fact that the newer antidepressants like Prozac, including the SSRI and SNRI antidepressants, can cause violence and even murder." ~ Peter R. Breggin MD

(PRWEB) November 08, 2011

Final sentencing for the teenager who inexplicably murdered his friend while on Prozac occurred November 4, 2011. The case involved a Winnipeg, Canada teenage high school student with no prior history of violence who, while chatting in his home with two friends, abruptly stabbed one of them to death with a single wound to the chest according to court documents. Provincial Court Judge Robert Heinrichs based his decision upon psychiatrist Peter R. Breggin, M.D.'s report and formal testimony to the court according to the Judge's Opinion.

In the case of “Her Majesty the Queen and C.J.P” (Citation #2011 MBPC 62), in the Provincial Court of Manitoba, Canada, Judge Robert Heinrichs gave the boy a three-year sentence, less time already served, so that he has only 10 months remaining in jail. The judge additionally required community supervision for four years.

Psychiatrist and expert witness for the defense Peter R. Breggin, M.D. said, "This is a landmark legal confirmation of the scientific fact that the newer antidepressants like Prozac, including the SSRI and SNRI antidepressants, can cause violence and even murder."

Dr. Breggin testified that the boy’s primary care physician and his parents alerted the prescribing psychiatric clinic to his deteriorating condition, which included agitation, anger and mood swings. But the clinic continued the Prozac and then doubled it. Seventeen days later, the teen knifed his friend to death, according to court documents.

Provincial court judge Robert Heinrichs read Dr. Breggin’s report and listened to his expert testimony in court. In his written opinion, Judge Heinrichs found “Dr. Breggin's explanation of the effect Prozac was having on C.J.P.'s behaviour both before that day and in committing an impulsive, inexplicable violent act that day corresponds with the evidence; as Dr. Breggin states in his report, there was no significant deliberation or organization by C.J.P. that afternoon.”

Earlier in the year on September 16, 2011 Judge Hendrichs issued his opinion that the sixteen-year-old should be tried as a youth instead of an adult. The judge found that “his mental deterioration and resulting violence would not have taken place without exposure to Prozac." Also confirming Dr. Breggin’s lengthy report and testimony, the judge found , "He has none of the characteristics of a perpetrator of violence. The prospects for rehabilitation are good."

In his report and testimony, Dr. Breggin found that the boy's symptoms were consistent with a Prozac (fluoxetine) Induced Mood Disorder with Manic Features and that he would not have committed the violence if he had not been given the antidepressant. He also testified that the teen had improved dramatically when removed from the Prozac after a few months in jail and that he was no longer a danger to himself or others. He brought numerous independent scientific studies to court confirming that a large percentage of youth exposed to the newer antidepressants will develop these hazardous adverse drug reactions. He also noted that the observations and even the wording of his own earlier scientific publications had been included into the information now found in the official FDA-approved labels. Dr. Breggin’s scientific articles concerning antidepressants can be found on his website at: http://breggin.com.

The defense attorney in the case was Greg Brodsky of Manitoba.

Peter R. Breggin, MD is a psychiatrist in private practice in Ithaca, New York, and the author of dozens of scientific articles and more than twenty scientific and popular books. His two most recent books deal with medication induced violence: Brain-Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry, Second Edition, and Medication Madness: the Role of Psychiatric Drugs in Cases of Violence, Suicide and Crime. Dr. Breggin's home website is http://www.breggin.com where many of his scientific reports on antidepressants and other subjects can be retrieved. On April 13-15, 2012 in Syracuse, New York, the annual conference of Dr. Breggin's 501c3 nonprofit international organization,the Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, will be held. The conference will include a panel of lawyers, experts, survivors and families concerning antidepressant-induced violence, suicide, and crime

It’s great though that someone like Peter Hitchens has written about this book and the need to talk about antidepressants and I suppose I’ve more or less duplicated what Peter Hitchens has written.

Link to Peter Hitchens article

Stigma - Or You Wouldn't Know it to Look at her Would you?

2011-11-08T20:37:00.000Z

Or maybe I’m flattering myself and you did always suspect there was something? So I’m not clinically depressed now but it’s always “there” lurking in the background.

I’ve been thinking a lot about stigma lately because it came to my attention again this week that I still find it really difficult to talk about depression/PND to people in real life who don’t know about it. The irony is that I actually find it quite easy to share on a blog with strangers and potentially the whole wide world. How ironic is that?

Why is it so easy socially to say “I’m diabetic” or “I have asthma” but nearly impossible to say “I have post natal depression” or “depression” or “anxiety”?

It feels so excruciatingly uncomfortable so the easiest option is to batten down the hatches so no one can see and take yourself off to the doctor for some pills to fix it. Far easier than explaining to people around you that you’re depressed and would really appreciate some help and support, and risk them telling you to “pull yourself together” and “what have you got to be unhappy about?” or “it’s all in the head”, like you would actually CHOOSE depression as a lifestyle choice. Once you are taking the pills, if you do have to tell someone you can explain it away by saying “I have a chemical imbalance in the brain that needs correcting, much like a diabetic needs insulin...”, sounds better than saying ”Without them I feel like life isn’t worth living, and falling asleep and not waking up again actually seems like an attractive option”. Or “I can’t cope with my anxiety levels”

There’s a feeling that you’re somehow letting the side down, with PND or depression, it just wasn’t in the script, it happens to other people doesn’t it? It leaves you with a feeling that you are somehow fundamentally flawed, weak. Other people are strong and you are weak. Other people cope with life and you don’t. Other mum’s are coping with new motherhood and you are not. Other people don’t need pills to cope with life and you do. Except maybe, they do as well and you just don’t know it....

Friends

2011-11-08T19:54:00.000Z

Peter had his 3.5 hour Diploma exam today and I was his scribe, it was very intense, and we were being watched on CCTV. Then over a very late lunch I broached the subject of my next reduction and we agreed to go ahead.
When I got home later Carol had left loads of messages on my web site and my bestest friend Shazz had also left something on my Facebook wall as had Carol and they were so timely and made me really appreciate my friends. Shazz has been my bestest friend for about 16+ years and we have been through many of life's ups and downs together and we both continue to support each other although our paths are very different in some ways.

This one was from Shazz.

This one was from Carol who writes this:Everyone's Gran Blogspot

Prozac Reduction Timeline

1.40ml at last!

2011-11-08T18:02:00.000Z

OK so we have agreed that I am going down to 1.40ml tomorrow, it's been a good 3 months I think since the last reduction, I think I will go to about 1.30ml at Christmas, and you never know, by this time next year I might be all the way off! So it's back to the small syringe to measure 1ml and then .40ml every morning:

Prozac Reduction Timeline

If it wasn't true it would be funny.

2011-11-03T16:06:00.000Z

If only....

2011-10-31T07:46:00.000Z

So we have reached an impasse - 1.50ml (6mg)

2011-10-29T13:51:00.000+01:00

So it was our youngest son’s 13th birthday this week, which also marks the 13th anniversary of my being on and off (mostly on obviously) Lustral/Zoloft or Prozac.

So anyway, I, or we’ve reached a bit of an impasse with my withdrawal plan. I’ve been tapering slowly and steadily every 5 or 6 weeks for the past 3+ years. I am now stuck at 1.5ml.

1.50mls!! have you thought about how teeny tiny that dose is every morning? At this stage of the game it would be SO easy and tempting for me to just stop dead, but I know from past experience that that way madness truly lies (and I don’t mean “The House of Fun”) and my current healthy mental state would unravel with the withdrawal. I proved countless times in the past that I am obviously very sensitive to SSRI reductions. It’s crazy how powerful this tiny drop of liquid is.

In many ways I am amazed that I ever got as far as I have, a few years ago I thought I was on Prozac for life, I thought that it wasn’t physically possible for me to cope with life without it, but deep down I could never truly accept that I would be on it for life, because of the side effects I’ve always had a very strong inner drive or compulsion to get myself off this stuff, it refused to go away no matter how much I tried to convince myself to stay on it. Some inner voice I couldn’t ignore kept telling me I needed to get off the pills and kept driving me on, and still does. I like to think I could be happy sticking with a low low dose but deep down I know I’m not really.

So anyway, after 3 months at this dose I am feeling that I would like to now proceed with another reduction, I am now very stable. Peter is very ambivalent about this and I think it’s the first time we’ve disagreed on this issue. I understand his point of view, we have been and still are under financial pressure and both working hard. He also has the pressure/burden of an industry exam to pass. He is also the one who has to cope with me when a withdrawal hits. The last time it happened I am embarrassed to admit I burst into tears in his office and I couldn’t stop, and there was no obvious reason, it was a withdrawal pure and simple, but I just couldn’t stop crying.

So there we are....an impasse.

Any comments welcome.

Prozac reduction timeline

Silent Tuesday ;)

2011-10-25T16:33:00.000+01:00

Confessions of an RX Drug Pusher

2011-10-25T12:45:00.003+01:00

I just finished this book:

Before I read it though I had to google "rx" because although I'd seen the term I wasn't sure what it meant. This was the definition I found: Rx: A medical prescription. The symbol "Rx" is usually said to stand for the Latin word "recipe" meaning "to take." It is customarily part of the superscription (heading) of a prescription.

Gwen Olsen has had an amazingly interesting life. She spent more than a decade as a sales rep in the pharmaceutical industry, the whole book is fascinating but her insight into the decadence, power and corruption of the drugs giants, the political shenanigans and her own experience as one of those reps who wined and dined doctors and showered them with freebies in order to sell the drugs and up the prescriptions, and the hard sell was the part I found most interesting. What a brave woman to whistle blow on the industry she had worked for.

Gwen also has personal insight into mental illness and the "catastrophic consequences that lurk in medicine cabinets", with a family background of mental health problems and a 19 year old niece who committed suicide as a result of being a victim of the adverse affects of prescription drugs.

Gwen Olsen's web site

Marketing antipsychotics.

I won't go into the politics too much of Big Pharma because there are other blogs and web sites who do that far better than I ever could, it is something that interests me and I have a list of books on my hit list:

Anatomy of an Epidemic - Robert Whitaker

Mad in America - Robert Whitaker

Prozac: Panacea or Pandora - Ann Blake Tracy.

The one I'm reading next though is We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lionel Shriver

Some sights that go into the politics in depth:

Seroxat Sufferers Stand Up and Be Counted

Psychiatry, It's a Killing

Antidepressants and sex: A doomed romance?

2011-10-15T08:29:00.000+01:00

A great article sent to me by a friend.
Link to this article
Antidepressants and sex: A doomed romance?

As a libido-friendly "happy pill" gets FDA approval, we talk to people who've endured other drugs' bad side effects.

It sounds like an absurd deal with the devil, the sort fairy tales are built around: You can get back your zest for life — all you have to do is surrender your desire for sex. Feeling depressed, isolated and lonely? Just take these pills that will make you lose interest in one of the most powerful ways that humans achieve connection and intimacy!
Extreme, perhaps, but that’s a common trade-off made by going on antidepressants, especially selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). Of course there are other potential side effects, but dry mouth and insomnia are bearable insults compared to sacrificing your libido, erections and orgasms; and these sexual snags are a significant reason people discontinue treatment, according to experts. So when news broke this week that the FDA had approved Viibryd, a so-called sexy-friendly antidepressant, it caused quite a stir. Far too often, people are forced to choose between their mental and sexual health — as though these were entirely separate categories.
A 25-year-old photographer living in Florida tells me that his libido plummeted when he went on antidepressants. “I would have chosen a bowl of ice cream over the sexiest woman alive,” he said. “I stopped taking the medicine because it wasn’t worth the side effects.” It’s an interesting contradiction: He lost his libido but not the strong desire to have a sex drive. Now, he says, “I’m horny 24/7″ — which is just the way he likes it.
A 28-year-old married man tells me that he had trouble getting and staying hard while on Effexor. “I also had trouble reaching climax.” But he didn’t stop taking the medication: “Even though the side effects caused marital problems, not taking it caused the depression to act up, and the mood swings to get really bad. I just couldn’t handle some things without the meds.” A 51-year-old man tells me that he was already struggling with erectile problems when he went on citalopram. “The ED and depression are a chicken and egg thing, don’t know which came first, but each was making the other worse,” he said. “When I was able to get hard enough for sex, I would often not be able to come for a very long time, if at all.” Eventually, his doctor switched him to bupropion, which he says helped with his depression and lessened the sexual side effects.
At least women don’t have to worry about getting and maintaining an erection to have sex, right? Only, it seems they are far more vocal than men about the sexual costs of antidepressants. A 28-year-old woman tells me that before going on Celexa, she would have sex several times a week, and masturbate alone just as often, without any trouble climaxing. “After about a month on Celexa, I stopped masturbating entirely and lost interest in sex with my partner. I couldn’t climax — by hand or vibrator — and I didn’t have the same sexual drive to even try. Looking back, I’m not sure how I made it! It was so frustrating!”
It wasn’t just frustrating for her, either. “My partner complained about my lack of interest and noticed that I was going through the motions of sex, in addition to skipping my personal pleasure time. I couldn’t climax and I rejected a lot of her efforts,” she said. “I was tired of not feeling like myself in and out of the bedroom. My lack of sex drive hurt my self-esteem and my partner’s. We just didn’t feel like we were connecting like we used to.” So, she went off the drug and she reports that she’s “climaxing again and back to my old bedroom ways!” (She isn’t alone: Last year, Ada Calhoun wrote for Salon about how going off Celexa turned her into a bit of a nympho.)
“Jessica,” a 31-year-old living in New York, says she “had plenty of good sex” while on Zoloft, but it took tremendous time and effort for her to climax. “I was emotionally numbed out,” she said. “It was like I couldn’t access that part of me, emotionally, that would allow me to let go. At the time I thought it was trust issues. I’d read about oxytocin and bonding, and I thought maybe I was subconsciously protecting myself from getting hurt, because being in my early 20s, I was getting hurt a lot!” After several years on the drug, she went off and “the orgasms came back almost immediately.” She had harbored suspicions that the Zoloft was to blame for her lack of orgasms, “but it really only all became clear to me once I got off it — they came right back, without any context change.”
When my friend Elissa, 26, went on Lexapro, she “noticed it look at least 45 minutes to get one orgasm, and the orgasm was basically a tiny blip that was more struggle and irritation than anything,” she said. “So I stopped masturbating. I didn’t mind not having orgasms because I was happy.” But then she found someone else was frustrated by her medication: her boyfriend. He wanted to be able to make her climax, so she went off the drug, but, funnily enough, she still couldn’t have an orgasm with the guy (although it was no problem on her own). That’s a reminder that sexual relationships are mysterious and frustrating, even without the obfuscation of medication.
Anyone who decides to go on meds has to wrestle with these riddles all the time: Which part is the drugs, which part is me, which part is the side effects? (For that matter, anyone in a relationship is familiar with that dilemma as well: What’s me and what’s the other person?) Psychiatrists and social critics might cringe at the idea of people going on and off their meds to chase their orgasms, but that clearly happens quite a bit. Michelle, 38, says her libido and her orgasms disappeared on Prozac, but she was terrified that she would “go off the rails” if she stopped taking the medication. Ultimately, she says, “I just could not envision living life with that big piece” — the sex piece — “of the puzzle missing,” she said. As it happens, she didn’t go off the rails.
From all the media hype this week you would think Viibryd had flipped the pharmaceutical industry upside down — but that doesn’t seem to be the expert opinion in the medical community. Andrew Francis Leuchter, a professor at UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences, said the drug’s data looks solid, but he wasn’t ready to call it a game-changer. There are already antidepressants on the market that boast low sexual side effects, and doctors commonly layer drugs to avoid killing a patient’s libido. The problem is that antidepressants aren’t one size fits all. “Whichever medication we pick, it is only going to get patients well about a third of the time,” he said. “We have yet to find a drug that gets most of the patients well right out of the gate.” Better drugs with fewer side effects — sexual and otherwise — are crucial, he says, but it’s important to develop better ways of predicting which drug will work for individual patients to avoid the trial and error approach.
Antidepressants can make life more bearable — they can save lives — but, for many people, a sexless life isn’t much of a life at all. That people are willing to risk this trade speaks to the level of desperation that can lead to antidepressants; and that many find the trade unbearable certainly speaks to the power of sex.

Close.Tracy Clark-Flory is a staff writer at Salon. Follow @tracyclarkflory on Twitter. More Tracy Clark-Flory

World Mental Health Day

2011-10-10T19:29:00.000+01:00

Something plopped into my mailbox today that reminded me that 10th October is World Mental Health Day. In reality we should be aware of mental health issues every day, not just one day a year. The idea though is to raise public awareness of mental health issues and promote discussion. Apparently 1 in 4 of us are affected at some point in our life.
I am no longer ashamed to admit that I have suffered with depression and anxiety and that I had post natal depression twice, I am still occaisionally chased by the black dog. I have felt the stigma and still do, and in my own small way I hope this blog will help contribute to bringing the subject out in the open. It's not a very sexy subject but it is part of the human condition for many people.

Chill Pill

2011-09-29T07:28:00.001+01:00

A conversation with a friend who is in exactly the same boat as me tapering off prozac, made me realise that yes I am feeling a consistent low level anxiety (bordering on depression) the past few weeks. The big positive thing about being on Prozac full dose is that it really is like taking a chill pill, it makes you so you really don’t give a damn. That was the only thing I DID like about it, and it’s STILL not enough to make me ever want to go back to the full dose because I don’t want the unwanted side effects that go with the “don’t give a damn feeling.

Lately however I have been noticing like I said this consistent low level anxiety which is sometimes hard to shake, we are under a lot of pressure in our life at the moment and so it is hard for me to unravel this feeling, is it the “real me” how I am anyway without Prozac? Is it purely circumstantial and if the pressures we’re under at the moment disappear in time will my low level anxiety also disappear? This is the really confusing thing about having been on Prozac so long, you never really know what the “real you” is, you forget and you never know if what you are feeling is “you” or “Prozac you” or a mixture of both. I suppose the only way I may ever find out is when I eventually get off it completely, but even then my brain chemistry may have altered from years of Prozac so that I never know what the “real me” ever was or is. Confused? So am I LOL

I’m finding it really hard because I feel like I am constantly chasing my tail, never quite on top of things, and like I am doing lots of things “ok” and in a bodgy way when I’d rather be doing less things but doing them well and completing them, I sometimes feel like the boys are being short changed because I don’t give them as much undivided attention as I’d like, and I wish there was more time to cook decent healthy meals. Housework gets me down, that’s the thing I find hard to keep on top of, so I just concentrate on laundry and food and the rest I have to try and let go, but I find it really really hard to turn a blind eye to dust piling up and a bathroom that needs cleaning. That’s when I really wish I could take a chill pill and just not give a damn. That’s maybe one of the reasons why I was prone to depression/anxiety in the first place because I find it hard to “chill” and let things go. I’m always having to tick that list off.

So any tips on how to chill and not sweat the small stuff will be gratefully received.

Perhaps I should just not wear my contact lenses anymore then I won’t “see” the dust!

Prozac Reduction Timeline

Struggling with the Elephant in the Room

2011-09-26T08:14:00.000+01:00

David guest posted my essay about Bob Fiddamans book "The Evidence However is Clear" on his blog:
Struggling with the Elephant in the Room
It will be interesting to see if it raises some debate. I enjoy David's eloquent writing about his situation.

Chased by the Black Dog

2011-09-23T21:09:00.001+01:00

A good friend who reads this calls it “being chased by the black dog”. I think Winston Churchill used the expression “black dog” to describe his depression. I’ve had a mahusive mother of all anxiety attacks, luckily it doesn’t happen often and as I look back over my blog archive it really isn’t too often, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I think lots of different stressers in my life at the moment culminated in triggering something big in me, I spent about the past week feeling really quite depressed and anxious generally and just not myself. The last couple of days I felt pretty bad, and I could feel adrenaline pumping and stomach tightening. It finally culminated in not being able to sleep last night, and we all know how everything seems far worse in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep than in the cold light of day. I spent all day today feeling shattered, exhausted but all the anxiety slowly subsiding and flowing away from me, like a fever had broken. I know I’m on the mend now (apart from a cold)

I don’t know if it’s some kind of withdrawal, or the “real me” surfacing and I have to learn how to deal with the” real me” when this happens. At least I know it passes.

All this resulted in a conversation with P in which we went through all these things and neither of us could conclude what caused it specifically, Prozac withdrawal or real me, but I did realise again what an absolutely fantastic, supportive and encouraging husband I have and appreciated how lucky I am.

Some phrases that help me through the nasty patches:

This too will pass.

If you’re going through hell, keep going – (Winston Churchill (also a friends blog title))

Ships in safe harbour are safe, but that’s not what ships are built for

The best way out is always through (Helen Keller)

I’m not a failure if I don’t make it...I’m a success because I tried

A Mums Madness

Why are more women depressed? Is this a real epidemic - or the result of cynical marketing by drug giants?

2011-09-13T18:16:00.000+01:00

This was in the Daily Mail newspaper and website today (don't normally read the Mail I prefer The Sun & Dear Deidre early in the morning but it was already taken)

Link to the article in Daily Mail

Why are more women depressed? Is this a real epidemic - or the result of cynical marketing by drug giants?

By John Naish

One in three of women polled had taken antidepressants during her lifetime
More women than ever are reaching for the happy pills, it was revealed last week. New research suggests there has been a massive increase in the number of women with depression.
Women are twice as likely to suffer from the illness than they were 40 years ago, and as many as one in seven will be affected by the condition at some point in their lives — more than double the number of men, according to a study published in the journal European Neuropsychopharmacology.
And the result of these soaring depression levels is becoming all too clear — a massive rise in prescriptions for antidepressant drugs.
Newly released figures from the Office for National Statistics show that more than four times as many prescriptions for drugs such as Prozac and Cipramil were dispensed in England in 2009 than 18 years before.
Women are twice as likely to be prescribed antidepressants than men — around two-thirds of all NHS antidepressant drugs are prescribed to women. The scale of these increases, over a comparatively short period of time, is breathtaking. So what’s behind the rise?
The German researchers for the European study blame one factor: modern life. Professor Hans-Ulrich Wittchen, in charge of the research, says the pressure of trying to cope with having a family and pursuing a career is leaving women with a ‘tremendous burden’.
More...Kathleen thought she had the flu. In fact, it was meningitis - and it cost her both legs
Why take your backache to the doctor when you can relieve your pain at home?
But is it really so simple? Go back 40 years and British women were hardly basking in leisure. They had grown up during the Blitz, suffered severe rationing, shortages and poverty wages. They were the victims of demoralisingly blatant sex discrimination and still had to haul in the coal.
Meanwhile, modern-day men are suffering unprecedented job losses, their role as the head of the family is disappearing and their lives are also getting more hectic and harried. But men’s depression rates have not climbed nearly so high.
In fact, one of the main reasons behind this astonishing rise in antidepressant use is that women are increasingly being parked on these powerful and potentially dangerous drugs for want of anything else to help them with the emotional distress that led them to visit their doctor.
This was echoed in a poll of 2,000 women released in June by the women’s campaign group Platform 51 (formerly the Young Women’s Christian Association, YWCA).
Women are twice as likely to be prescribed antidepressants than men
One in three of the women polled had taken antidepressants during her lifetime. More than half of these were not offered any alternatives to drugs. And a quarter were left on the drugs for more than a year without having their prescriptions reviewed.
This is despite the fact that guidelines from the health watchdog NICE say that ‘talking therapies’ such as cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) should be the first-line therapy for patients with mild depression.
Treatment for patients who have moderate to severe depression should be a combination of talking therapy and antidepressants.
‘Women and girls don’t want to take these drugs for a long time and would prefer GPs to discuss with them why they are down in the first place,’ says Platform 51’s director of policy, Rebecca Gill. ‘They can feel no one is interested in their story.’
But many GPs say they feel forced to prescribe women antidepressants because it is difficult to organise alternative support such as psychotherapy.
Dr Peter Kandela, a former correspondent for The Lancet and a GP with a special interest in depression, says: ‘Theoretically, it would be better to give many of them counselling or CBT than antidepressants.
‘I would love to do it. But you have to fill in so many forms and contact so many people.’
Dr Kandela, who has a practice in Ashford, Middlesex, adds: ‘When the appointment finally comes, it is often too late to be of help.’ He says that arranging therapy can take three months.
‘This happened recently with a distressed patient. She gave up waiting and went to another doctor, who put her on antidepressants.’
The drugs carry the potential risk of serious side-effects, ranging from anxiety and loss of appetite and libido to convulsions and mania.
For this reason, the Royal College of General Practitioners advises that antidepressants be prescribed for only limited periods, up to a few months.
However, there is another factor affecting the judgment of hard-pressed doctors: women who are having emotional problems are far easier to spot than depressed men.
‘Men might not have their symptoms recognised so easily as women,’ says Bridget O’Connell, head of information at mental health charity Mind.
‘Evidence from our survey that compares 1,000 men and 1,000 women shows women may describe classic symptoms such as feeling down, tearful or anxious.
‘Men are more likely to act out their distress through drinking too much or being hostile and withdrawn, or they may have physical symptoms such as feeling nauseous or suffering from headaches.’
On top of that, there is the oft-quoted fact that men are much less likely than women to visit a doctor about emotional issues. This has traditionally been put down to the fact that men are too scared or incapable to describe their feelings of anxiety, depression or loneliness.
But a new study of nearly 2,000 children and adolescents has found a rather different answer — many males simply can’t be bothered with such thoughts.
‘When we asked young people how talking about their problems would make them feel, boys didn’t express angst or distress about discussing problems any more than girls,’ says Amanda Rose, a psychology professor at the University of Missouri, who was in charge of the research.
‘Instead, the boys’ responses suggest they just don’t see talking about problems to be particularly useful. It would make them feel as if they were wasting time.’
Antidepressants carry the potential risk of serious side-effects, ranging from anxiety and loss of appetite and libido to convulsions and mania
That still leaves us with the question: Are women really more depressed than ever?
Professor David Healey, director of psychological medicine at Cardiff University, thinks this is unlikely. Instead, he says, the leap in prescriptions for antidepressants may be seen as a triumph for drug company sales departments.
Professor Healey, the author of Let Them Eat Prozac, has argued that antidepressants are today’s ‘mother’s little helpers’ — the new incarnation of tranquillising drugs such as Valium.
‘In the Sixties and through to the end of the Eighties, companies marketed tranquillisers and had to persuade people they were anxious,’ he says.
When Valium-type drugs fell from favour in the Eighties because of their addictiveness, drug companies developed a different class of drugs: antidepressants.
‘In order to market antidepressants you have to persuade people they are depressed,’ says Professor Healey.
‘It is a case of labelling. People are as stressed as they were. The reason they view the problem as depression is down to marketing.’
Drug companies certainly do continue to push antidepressants on to women — even if the women are not suffering from a mood disorder.
Pharmaceutical firms are always keen to find new uses for their existing drugs because they do not have to take them through another highly expensive round of trials to prove they are considered safe enough for human consumption.
Furthermore, it may well be that so many women take antidepressants that it seems normal and acceptable to be given them — for whatever use.
For example, an American study in June declared that the antidepressant drug escitalopram can ease hot flushes in healthy, non-depressed women.
The study concluded that 55 per cent of women who took the drug, which acts on the brain’s feelgood chemical serotonin, had at least 50 per cent fewer hot flushes. But since when were hot flushes a problem to be medicalised and drugged?
Antidepressants have also frequently been prescribed to women with menstrual problems. The practice has been criticised by Claudine Domoney, a consultant gynaecologist at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London.
‘Doctors should always explore other avenues before handing out antidepressants for premenstrual syndrome.
‘It shouldn’t be first-line treatment,’ she says. ‘Why give a young woman a drug with potentially serious side-effects when it might not be necessary?’
Meanwhile, there is a dearth of well-funded research or support for alternative forms of treatment for women suffering from emotional problems.

Women are twice as likely to be prescribed antidepressants than men

Research by five mental health charities found depressed patients were having to wait for six to 18 months for an appointment with an NHS counsellor, with many being forced to go private.
Other alternatives which show promise in small-scale trials include acupuncture and light therapy.
A study of 27 depressed mothers-to-be in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry in April found that after five weeks of full- spectrum light therapy, of the type given to people with seasonal affective disorder, 13 of the women had at least a 50 per cent improvement in their symptoms and 11 were no longer depressed.
Clearly, we do need alternative forms of support and treatment for women who experience emotional problems.
It may be true that life is more hurried, but it is also true that women have always experienced mood problems as part of the natural highs and lows of life.
In the past, they would have been supported by large, close families. Nowadays, they may need to turn to their family doctors for help.
But the answer, surely, cannot be to prescribe ever more mind-numbing antidepressant pills.

Syndicating to Facebook

2011-09-12T20:55:00.001+01:00

I’ve been wrestling with myself for ages about whether to syndicate this blog to facebook. It’s been out there on the internet for years, and now it’s linked up to various other sites, and I’ve loved how it’s helped some people and I’ve made new friends through it, and yet it’s somehow been a bit anonymous. But facebook.....that’s really close to home and I’ve really agonised about it. One or two friends and most of my family have seen my blog and know my “ishoos” already. Most haven’t.

I think there is a silent epidemic of people “stuck” on SSRI medication, unable to stop taking them and suffering side effects. There is still so much stigma around depression/anxiety, it’s easier to go to the doctor and pop pills than seek any other therapies or help. If we break down the stigma of depression & anxiety hopefully, in the long run people will seek other ways to help themselves and SSRI’s will be the LAST resort and not the FIRST resort, So this is my little contribution to breaking down the stigma and “coming out”.

Prozac Withdrawal Timeline

The Evidence, However, Is Clear - The Seroxat Scandal - Bob Fiddaman

2011-09-12T20:53:00.000+01:00

I’ve been following Seroxat Sufferers - Stand Up and Be Counted For a little while and I cottoned onto the fact that the author, Bob had written the book "The Evidence, However, Is Clear" so I sent off for it and read it in one day, that’s pretty fast for me nowadays.

Bob was prescribed Seroxat (an SSRI in the same family as Prozac/Lustral) for depression due to work related problems, what followed was a journey that took him through a tapering process of, what he believes to be, a highly addictive antidepressant. Following almost two years of withdrawal, Fiddaman’s new battle with the manufacturer of the drug (GlaxoSmithKline) and the UK Medicines Regulator (MHRA) took him on a more frustrating journey than he could ever have imagined. (This bit is from the blurb on the back of the book). I understand from Bob’s website/blog/book that he is an activist and winner of two Human Rights Awards and lives in a council flat in Birmingham.

I am really so much in awe of Bob and I learned a lot from his book, about how the pharmaceutical industry has cynically marketed SSRI’s, how the MHRA is hand in glove with the manufacturers of SSRI’s (and other drugs) and not detached as it should be. How they have suppressed information that these drugs are extremely difficult to get off of, and kept the medical profession in the dark about how to get people off SSRI’s properly. I learned how the drug companies peddled the myth of a “Chemical Imbalance in the Brain” which I fell for and believed myself until the penny slowly dropped after 10 years of failure to get myself off Lustral. It’s a shocking read but I wasn’t surprised by anything I read, I’d kind of realised for myself a long while ago that someone must be making a lot money out of all these people who are hooked on and struggle to get off SSRI’s , and believe they have a chemical imbalance. There is a silent epidemic of people who have been put on SSRI’s and haven’t realised they can’t get off them, who think they are on them for life because they have “a chemical imbalance”, and of course I’m horrified that they are increasingly prescribed to children and teenagers around the world with sometimes devastating consequences.

Where I struggle is that I know many people who feel they have benefited from antidepressants as well, and feel they have improved their quality of life, I find myself avoiding discussion forums on mental health on certain web sites now for fear of upsetting people who are on SSRI’s with what I now know. I don’t want to cause additional depression and anxiety for people who are already depressed and anxious and probably wouldn’t want to listen anyway, and there is a place for SSRI’s in some situations for some people (Bob would disagree I’m sure LOL) but SSRI’s should be the LAST resort of the medical profession and not the FIRST resort.

What I really have a problem with is how lightly they are dished out with no warnings. The first time I had Post Natal Depression I soldiered on without drugs, I really struggled, because I didn’t tell anyone, the stigma and shame was crippling in itself, and it took me a good year to really come out the other side, I’m glad I did though and I’m glad I didn’t go into a second pregnancy on SSRI’s and the worry about the effect of SSRI’s on my second baby. After I gave birth the second time I thought I had got away with it, but then I felt the blackness wash over me a couple of weeks after, worse than the first time. This time I decided I wasn’t going to keep it to myself, I was going to fess up, I told Peter and my health visitor, together we went to talk to the doctor, the doctor suggested antidepressants, I was desperate to feel “normal” but my overriding concern was that I would become addicted like the people I’d vaguely heard about who got addicted to valium, and that was the first question I asked, I was reassured that no these were a new class of drug and they were not addictive, I could take them for six months to a year and then come off them..........the rest is history.

I often wonder, if my doctor had said, there is a drug that can help you feel better, but they do have side effects; they can make you feel numb, if you stop them suddenly or come off too fast they can make you feel sick, desperate, and suicidal, they can be extremely difficult to get off, and worse case scenario it could take you as long as 3-5 years to taper off them, I wonder what I would have decided then? If I hadn’t felt the stigma and shame of being depressed and had felt able to ask for support from others instead of running to the doctor as the first port of call I wonder how it would have turned out.

Prozac Withdrawal Timeline

I have to admit to really struggling this week

2011-09-09T07:56:00.000+01:00

Yes I have to admit this week has been quite testing for me. We have had a really bad week, P was involved in a car collision with our neighbours, which I won't go into the details, but it turned pretty nasty with the neighbours, and there is nothing worse than falling out with neighbours. I am pretty piss poor at confrontation and it's something I tend to run a mile from, but I was really proud of myself because I was assertive and calm and I stuck to my guns with the neighbours, while P was really wound up/angry, the neighbours wife was wound up, and the neighbour was displaying a very distinct nervous twitch, I was pleased to note.

As well I can't go into details but we are awaiting a big decision that will mean a lot to our business about how we proceed with it, and the waiting is killing us.

It's my line managers last day today, I have worked with her for 20 years, she is taking redundancy/early retirement, I'm really going to miss her.

The result is that all in all I have been feeling very flat, blah and mildly depressed this week, and it's a timely warning to me to be ever mindful and protective of my mental health and never take it for granted.

Prozac Reduction Timeline

The reduction that didn't happen

2011-09-03T19:12:00.000+01:00

I had set my heart on going down to 1.40ml today, but after discussion with P, we decided to hold off a bit, work issues which we hope to have resolved soon mean that he is feeling stressed to the hilt, and me having a withdrawal meltdown could be too much for him to cope with, fair comment, so I reluctantly decided to hold off for another week or fortnight.
My prozac Reduction Timeline

A Mum's Madness - Sharing the Blog Love

2011-09-03T09:35:00.000+01:00

Thank you to Amy for mentioning me on her blog this week, I am following her blog as well.
Mum's Madness - Sharing the Blog Love
So many blogs, so little time (sigh)

My Prozac Reduction Timeline

Occaisional Wallflower - August Blog Carnival Mental Health Personal Journey

2011-08-31T19:36:00.000+01:00

My blog was included in Occaisional Wallflowers Aug blog carnival about journeys in mental health. I was thrilled to be included, although my story is nowhere near as profound or powerful as the others, it's still been a journey of sorts.
Occaisional Wallflowers Blog Carnival

My Prozac Reduction Timeline (my journey)

Addiction, how was it for me? (aka "Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome")

2011-08-28T14:12:00.000+01:00

I wanted to put on here how withdrawal felt for me; partly just to remind myself of just how dire it could be so I could remind myself of how far I’ve come and how much better things are now.

When I used to withdraw by the alternate day method, on the doctor’s advice, after a few days I would become aware that I felt really dizzy and fuzzy headed, sort of like having water sloshing round your head sometimes, other times you would turn your head and it was as though it took a few seconds for your eyes to catch up with your head turning, then after a while I would get a feeling of sadness which would increase in intensity as the days passed, almost like grieving for something but not knowing what, then eventually a difficult situation would act as a trigger to tip me into intense anxiety as well as the intense sadness. As time went on I would find in the mornings I would wake up early with excruciating anxiety, if I still persevered with getting off the drugs for weeks and months the anxiety would increase in unbearable intensity so I wouldn’t know where to put myself and couldn't escape it, it would eventually became all consuming, it would become 24/7 adrenaline pumping through my system and I would become unable to sleep as well for nights at a time, if I kept on long enough I would almost feel suicidal just to escape the torture of the crushing all consuming sadness and anxiety, and I would become more and more reclusive and not socialize because it was just too damned hard to disguise. It was like being tortured by a monster inside my head that I couldn’t defeat. The longest I ever kept this up for was a whole year in 2003.

Eli Lilly who manufacture Prozac call it “Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome”

Sooner or later I would always have to give it up and go back on the drug. Now try and tell me that’s not addiction?

My Prozac Reduction Timeline

NOT feeling like the Duracell bunny

2011-08-24T21:06:00.000+01:00

The past three days I have been so tired, drained and tired, like my battery has gone flat. I actually could have fallen asleep quite easily at my desk, even though I had seeminly had a good night sleep on Monday. I never know whether this is linked to withdrawal or just part of the human condition, it's so easy to blame everything on Prozac withdrawal. I've also been feeling a bit flat, I think it's the time of year, summer drawing to a close and boys back to school.

My Prozac withdrawal timeline

The Numb Documentary - Here are the Trailers

2011-08-19T19:45:00.002+01:00

I mailed Phil Lawrence and he very kindly let me post the trailers on here, it's all positive publicity for the documentary.

The Numb Documentary

Hell yeah I've felt all those things in the trailers :(

The Numb Documentary

2011-08-19T09:29:00.002+01:00

I stumbled on this Numb Documentary last night, and saw a trailer on another blog, I was so moved by the trailer I have e mailed them and asked if I can post a link to said trailer on my blog. It's amazing that someone has made a film about this subject, and I can't wait to see it. It made me realise that although my blog seems quite lighthearted, lots of cartoons etc, it is actually a very grim subject and it reminded me of just how grim it is when you withdraw too fast or go cold turkey, it reminded me of how I felt so grim I didn't know where to put myself and how close I felt to jumping off a bridge because I couldn't cope with how I was feeling. It's hard to put into words and Phil is much more articulate in his trailer than I am. The way he describes the numbness of being on the drug as well. Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

My Prozac Reduction Timeline

Forgot to take my Prozac!!

2011-08-17T09:41:00.001+01:00

Standards are definately slipping since I discovered the world of blogs and ~~Twatter~~ Twitter, I actually forgot to take my Prozac early this morning!

Prozac Reduction Timeline

The Real SuperMum Blog

2011-08-15T14:41:00.000+01:00

A big thanks to Emma who guest blogged one of my posts on her blog The Real Supermum, got loads of comments and I'm really chuffed to get my blog out there at last, the whole point of my blog is I hope to help enlighten other people stuck on the bewildering antidepressant catch 22.
The Real SuperMum Blog Suddenly Stopping Antidepressants
Go and take a look at the link and Emma's brilliant blog as well.

Pimping my Blog

2011-08-14T09:10:00.001+01:00

I've had some annual leave and in that time I've been exploring the world of blogs as well as pimping my own blog, something I've been meaning to do for a long time, I've had a lot of fun looking it other blogs and getting ideas, and now I've tarted this one up and put it on some blogger networks. Bit like Pimp my ride. I've even added ~~twatter~~ twitter!
Seriously though, I wish all this internet lark had been around when I had my first baby, I've been thinking a lot about the isolation of post natal depression and mean to write about my experience of that when I'm ready. But I wish the internet, blogs and parenting forums had been available to me 1994 living in an isolated village, trapped, lonely, isolated, depressed and struggling with a newborn etc. Oh I went to the NCT coffee mornings but everyone else seemed to have perfect babies and coping beautifuly (competitive parenting?), there were lots of little Alfie's, Hugo's, Arthur's, Maximillians, Theodore's, and then there was me and Alex, don't think we quite fitted in.

Prozac Withdrawal Timeline

Pushing a boulder up a hill

2011-08-07T11:58:00.002+01:00

P was right, a few days after reducing my prozac, I go a bit hyper, then he knows I'm going to have a bit of a crash, I tell him that he blames me/the prozac for any little mood change as it suits him, but we had quite an in depth discussion about it in which he said that he has been a very close observer of me and knows me inside out, and he gets fed up when I accuse him of blaming a mood change on a prozac reduction.

It's Sunday now and I'm feeling a lot better now, I now have two weeks off my SCC job, still working odd days with P but I'll have a bit of time off with the boys.

Prozac reduction timeline

Therapeutic bike ride

2011-08-01T21:19:00.002+01:00

I love the Suffolk countryside!

Prozac reduction timeline

The New Middle Ages Self Nonmedication

2011-08-01T07:40:00.000+01:00

A friend sent me this article about withdrawal in the New York Times which I thought was beautifully well written.

Link to this article

May 6, 2007

The New Middle AgesSelf-Nonmedication By BRUCE STUTZ

Seven years ago, not long after my father died, with my editing job lost, my finances frail, my 26-year marriage failing, a child in college and a mortgage to pay, my brain seemed to lose its way. Sometimes it could barely think at all. Sometimes it tortured a single thought for hours. And sometimes, in desperation and without aim, it released a barrage of anger upon itself.
I could come up with a hundred descriptions of how I felt — as if the train I’d been riding had gone off track, as if the ground beneath me had given way and swallowed me up, as if I were in a black hole being compressed to nothingness — none of them very original, I suppose, because this was not, for a man just past 50, a very extraordinary midlife situation. But it was mine, and I saw no way out of it. Immobilized by indecision or agitated to the point of exhaustion, I could enumerate every stressful circumstance, but I was simply unable or unwilling to resolve any of them. Instead, I dithered miserably while I staved off creditors, struggled to write, sparred with marriage counselors and rued the emotional havoc I was wreaking on myself and everyone around me. Frustrated, I felt angered and at times utterly hopeless. I needed help.
At our first meeting, I told the psychiatrist that what I thought I needed was something to enable me to focus my thinking, something like the amphetamines I used to take in college to study. He demurred but said that an antidepressant might prove worthwhile and accomplish the same thing. He prescribed Prozac, but after only a few days on it, I began having nightmares that verged on the hallucinatory. So he suggested a switch to Effexor, and without much thought as to what this was or how it worked, I took the prescription and the handful of blister-packed capsules he offered (I had, when I was younger, tried many things given me by far lesser authorities) and agreed that we should meet regularly. The medication, he said, would begin working after a few weeks of gradually increasing dosage. I had no adverse reaction to it.
We met weekly and, like engineers examining a weakening structure, began to analyze each point of stress and how I might deal with it. This was not easy since, in the course of living, working and rearing children, I had developed many ways of specifically not dealing with many things — especially those that involved determining who I was and what I thought without reference to my being son, father, husband, lover or friend. I was not breaking new psychoanalytic ground here, but if one of the characteristics of depression —as it has been said of insanity — is thinking the same thing over and over and expecting to get different results, then I was depressed. I found little pleasure in anything; I couldn’t sleep. Each day seemed to drag on forever, and yet I never seemed to have enough time to accomplish even the simplest tasks.
After several weeks of sessions, my brain began to clear. Whether this was because of the drug or from just taking the time to consider my circumstances, I don’t know. Still, it took nearly three years of therapy before I began to lose my fear of thinking about things differently and accepting the fact that change held possibility along with uncertainty. But change was still hard — on everyone. My marriage did not make it through. I was living alone in a 17-by-6-foot below-ground studio in Brooklyn that my kids called “the Batcave,” still challenged by money and work. But the siege had lifted, the panic had vanished and I felt older, wiser and abler.
My last session with my psychiatrist lacked drama. I thanked him. We shook hands. He wished me luck. There was no mention of going off my antidepressant, and satisfied with the way things were going, I continued to take my 150 milligrams once a day. I still struggled with work and money, but I stayed focused. Over the next several months, I wrote a proposal for a book that would, in examining the nature of spring, consider the nature of change. In March of the following year I began my travels, heading north across the country for four months, following the increasing hours of daylight, seeking to reach spring’s climax and complete my spiritual renewal when I reached the Arctic at the summer solstice. But there, I also came to another realization: exhilarated by the 24 hours of Arctic daylight, hoping for a transformative escape from time, I had removed my watch. I was watching the timeless sight of caribou herds crossing the vast Arctic plain — and found myself worrying that I had no way of knowing when I should take my next dose of antidepressant.
In the past I experienced what happened if I didn’t take it on time. When I missed my morning dose, by 2 p.m. I would begin to space out. A prickliness in my neck would give way to a restless agitation that left me edging toward panic. All I would be able to think of was how far away I was from home, my pill, relief. Within 20 minutes of taking the pill, I would feel better. I would feel better just knowing I’d taken it.
But what I was experiencing 4,000 miles away from New York felt absurd. Why, more than two years after leaving therapy, feeling fine, able to work, write and face setbacks and frustrations without panic or depression, was I still taking an antidepressant? I decided that being in the middle of writing the book was no time to stop, and stayed on for another two years. But once the book was published, I began to wonder again whether I needed to keep taking this pill.
Since the time I had stopped seeing my psychiatrist, other doctors had, with no questions asked, written prescriptions. My G.P. was the prescriber of the moment.
“I was thinking of getting off Effexor,” I told him.
“Do you feel O.K. on it?” he asked.
I said I did.
“Then why go off it?”
Well, for one thing, this fear of forgetting my pills. And for another, I was beginning to suffer some undesirable sexual side effects.
“There are other drugs with fewer sexual side effects,” he offered. “And there’s always Viagra.”
Didn’t it seem strange to have to counteract the effects of one drug with another drug? Why not just get off the antidepressant?
“In my experience,” he said, “most people who go off eventually go back on.”
Somehow I couldn’t believe I had to take this pill for the rest of my life. I was feeling fine. At least I thought I was feeling fine. The image that came to mind was of Dumbo the elephant believing that what allowed him to fly was the feather the crows had given him. Only when he drops the feather does he realize that he truly has the gift of flight. Could I let go?
Friends had plenty of stories of trying to go off antidepressants. One said her medication made her lose interest in sex, so that soon after she began taking it she quit but felt guilty telling her therapist, who went on thinking she was on it. Another said she kept trying to get off because she couldn’t deal with the amount of weight she’d gained. But she kept returning to it. One said that within two weeks of quitting, she and her husband both found her unbearable, and she went back on.
All of them questioned my decision to go off. Didn’t I understand that depression was caused by a chemical imbalance? It was a disease, they insisted, like diabetes, and antidepressants were like insulin. But a diabetic knows what will happen if he goes off his insulin. I was in a psychopharmacological Catch-22: the only way to know whether my depression would return if I went off of my antidepressant was to go off my antidepressant and risk depression.
My friends and I are children of the modern drug age; we never knew a time before antibiotics or antipsychotics, so our working assumption is that every disease has its cure. Sooner or later, as in the movies, an Erlich, a Pasteur or a Salk, working late in the lab, has a eureka moment, and the magic bullet is found.
When it came to depression, serotonin was deemed that magic bullet. One of life’s most venerable chemicals — plants were making use of it long before humans evolved — serotonin is one of several chemicals, including norepinephrine and dopamine, called neurotransmitters, which nerve cells release into the tiny gaps among themselves and their neighbors to allow signals to pass among them. Once a message has been sent and received, the sending cell absorbs (“reuptakes” is the scientific term) the leftover neurotransmitter.
During the 1960s and 1970s, researchers recognized that some drugs that improved patients’ moods had the ability to inhibit the sending cell’s reuptake process, thereby leaving more neurotransmitter lingering in the synapses. Inductive reasoning led them to conclude that what must have caused these patients’ mood disorders in the first place was an insufficiency of these same chemical neurotransmitters. Restore the brain’s “chemical balance,” the thinking went, and depression could be alleviated. The antidepressant age was born.
Early antidepressants worked on a number of neurotransmitters. In 1987, Prozac became the first selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (S.S.R.I.) introduced in America, followed by Paxil and Zoloft. Effexor (generically, venlafaxine hydrochloride), the drug I was taking, focused on both serotonin and norepinephrine (and so is referred to as an S.N.R.I), inhibiting their reuptake, increasing the amounts in my synapses and thereby presumably enabling my brain to keep depression at bay.
It has long been known that the body’s chemistry responds to stress. Recent studies suggest that when stress becomes chronic, the persistence of the chemicals that respond to it may damage or reduce the number of serotonin receptors, inhibit the production of proteins that mobilize serotonin receptors and even shrink neurons in the hippocampus, the part of the brain involved most with memory. How the chemistry of chronic stress results in depression is uncertain. It’s also uncertain whether a deficiency of serotonin might lead to chronic stress. But the presumption is that antidepressants, by increasing serotonin, reduce the effects of chronic stress and thereby arrest depression.
Since I was no longer feeling depressed, the experiment I was about to embark upon would test whether without the drug to keep my serotonin up, my depression would return. A risky proposition, considering all I’d gone through to get well, but if I really was well, perhaps my serotonin levels might adjust on their own. Or perhaps I was well enough to live with a chemical imbalance, if that’s what I had.
Drug-company brochures and Web sites reported that the symptoms of going off antidepressants were usually mild and short-lived — a week or two. They all recommended tapering off, preferably by half-steps, in consultation with a doctor. I thought about calling my psychiatrist, but it had been four years, and I didn’t want to return to the place, physically or mentally, where I had gone through so much pain. I also knew my psychiatrist well enough to know that he didn’t take his job lightly and would have most likely asked me to come in. But I couldn’t afford more sessions.
While I was still undecided whether or when to begin, serendipity came into play. Instead of prescribing a month’s worth of 150-milligram capsules to be taken once a day, my doctor mistakenly prescribed 75-milligram capsules to be taken twice a day. I took it as an omen. This would make it easy for me to halve my dose. So I began.
I expected that for the first couple of days I would feel the muscle-twitching anxiety that came when I missed a dose, but it was not so bad, and I had hopes that I might taper off quickly. On the third day, however, I began to find it difficult to focus and was unable to sit at my desk for more than a half-hour at a time. I was agitated, restless and hyperaware of sounds. When I read, sentences seemed to run into one another on the page, and I realized that this was not just because of difficulty focusing my mind but also my eyes. By early evening on that day, I felt so jittery and anxious that I decided I needed more medication. Somewhere, I recalled, a couple of years earlier I stashed a blister pack of 37.5-milligram capsules, a sample my doctor had passed on to me. But where? Although I could have split open a 75-milligram capsule, in my anxious state I became bent on finding those 37.5’s. An hour or more later, after manically scavenging through everything in the apartment, I found them — six remaining in the blister pack. I took one and felt as if I could now go on. I felt relieved to have them. I would stay with my reduced dosage as long as I could, but they would be my backup if I found that I absolutely needed them.
Over the next several days they came in handy, especially at night, when I would wake up feeling dizzy, almost seasick, disoriented and in a heavy sweat, the pillow soaked. One night, awake and not eager to go back to lying restlessly in bed, I went online, typed in “Effexor withdrawal” and found bulletin boards full of pained, plaintive and sometimes angry posters who had quit taking their medication and were suffering a broad but surprisingly consistent range of symptoms: dry mouth, muscle twitching, sleeplessness, fatigue, dizziness, stomach cramps, nightmares, blurred vision, tinnitus, anxiety and, weirdest of all, what were referred to as “brain zaps” or “brain shivers.” While there were those who went off with few or no symptoms at all, others reported taking months to feel physically readjusted. In the face of those symptoms, many despaired, gave up and returned to the drugs.
By the end of the second week, I felt confident that I could continue on 75 milligrams a day. But then my symptoms became more physical: the chills at night and the cold sweats continued. I felt tingling in my shoulders and hands, spasms in my legs. These came and went, seemingly with no reason. And then one night as I lay back to go to sleep, I felt a quick spasm in my head as if an electrical current had suddenly been sent through a circuit somewhere inside my brain. Two more followed in quick succession. With each came a wave of nausea. I sat up. They seemed to disappear. They returned. I realized these were the brain zaps, and over the next few weeks they would come, with no distinguishable pattern, several times a day.
Coping with the ever-changing and seemingly capricious symptoms was beginning to exhaust me. I couldn’t stick to any sleep schedule. I couldn’t think clearly. I was becoming unfocused, agitated and unable to sit long enough to read or work. The stress of anxiety and sleeplessness that I’d almost forgotten seemed to be returning. And that scared me.
Was my depression returning, or could getting off this drug actually cause so many and various symptoms? I spoke with neuroscientists, research psychiatrists and practicing therapists. All of them knew of the difficulties some people had in getting off not only Effexor but other antidepressants as well. They also all agreed that most of these symptoms were caused by a deficiency of serotonin.
What was happening was this: When I started taking Effexor, the drug began inhibiting my brain cells’ process of reabsorbing “excess” serotonin — that is, the serotonin that had gone unused in sending signals across the synapses from one neuron to another. This was the purpose of taking the drug — to increase the amount of serotonin my cells had to work with and therefore, in theory, enable me to cope with my stress and depression. I say “in theory” because even 20 years since the introduction of drugs like these, every researcher with whom I spoke was cautious about presuming a direct relationship between increased serotonin levels in neural synapses and a decrease in depression. First, no one has ever measured the amount of serotonin in the synapses between anyone’s brain cells. No one knows what constitutes a low, high or even standard level. Second, for reasons unknown, only a little better than half the people treated with antidepressants respond to them. Third, studies have shown that placebos have only a slightly lesser rate of effectiveness than the drugs. Fourth, serotonin levels are affected by many things — exercise, light, sleep, diet and even time of day. And finally, serotonin has so much influence on chemistry and functions in so many places in the body and brain relating to mood, sleep, sexual desire, appetite and body temperature that to say that it acts in any one particular way is impossible.
Research suggests that as the effects of the drug set in, my cells became more receptive to serotonin and the brain compensated to ensure that there wasn’t a serotonin overflow. This function is important, because an excess of serotonin can not only cause severe psychological effects but can also, in rare cases, be fatal. During the first weeks of taking an antidepressant, then, until the drug’s ability to inhibit reuptake of serotonin matches the brain’s ability to withhold it, the brain apparently has less serotonin to work with than it had before. During this period patients can suffer a range of uncomfortable side effects, from sleeplessness to anxiety, that make many patients quit taking the drug before they ever reach an effective dose. It’s also the period during which some patients suffer such severe agitation that the chances that they will attempt suicide increase significantly enough that the F.D.A. requires what is known as a “black box” warning on the labels of S.S.R.I.’s for pediatric patients and is considering extending this warning to adults.
What I was doing now by decreasing my dose of Effexor was essentially reversing the process that I went through when I began taking it. As the amount of the drug in my system declined, my neurons once again began to take up the excess serotonin. But while the reuptake mechanism may respond quickly, the serotonin system can take weeks or months to readjust. In the meantime I was going to be short on serotonin and would have to suffer the effects. And because serotonin is so ubiquitous in the nervous system, the effects might be almost anything. They might even feel like depression. Or worse, they might even be depression.
None of these symptoms would come as news to most researchers. In 1996, nearly a decade after the introduction of Prozac, its manufacturer, Eli Lilly, sponsored a research symposium to address the increasing number of reports of patients who had difficult symptoms after going off their antidepressants. By then it had become clear that drug-company estimates that at most a few percent of those who took antidepressants would have a hard time getting off were far too low. Jerrold Rosenbaum and Maurizio Fava, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, found that among people getting off antidepressants, anywhere from 20 percent to 80 percent (depending on the drug) suffered what was being called antidepressant withdrawal (but which, after the symposium, was renamed “discontinuation syndrome”).
They also found that the withdrawal effects depend on a given antidepressant’s half-life — that is, the amount of time it takes for half the medication to be washed out of the body. Since this is a measure of the length of time the drug is effective, you will more quickly feel the effects of missing a dose of an antidepressant with a short half-life than of one with a long half-life. If you’re taking your full medication daily, this isn’t relevant. But when, say, you reduce the dosage of a short-half-life drug by half, that half is, by the nature of the drug, quickly halved again. In their studies, Rosenbaum and Fava found that Paxil and Zoloft, with half-lives of one day, proved more difficult to get off than Prozac, with a half-life of four to six days. Effexor, the drug I was on, has the shortest half-life of all: five or six hours. That explained why, if I forgot to take my medication in the morning, by afternoon I was facing a panic attack. It was also why, Rosenbaum and Fava told me, when a patient is having trouble getting off Effexor they might recommend switching to Prozac to ease the transition.
Still, the symptoms of discontinuation syndrome could be fierce. Fava, in a 2006 paper, cited “agitation, anxiety, akathesia, panic attacks, irritability, aggressiveness, worsening of mood, dysphoria, crying spells or mood lability, overactivity or hyperactivity, depersonalization, decreased concentration, slowed thinking, confusion and memory/concentration difficulties.”
So I decided to stick with 75 milligrams a day for a while to give my serotonin system time to catch up. But in my third week, I still felt constantly uncomfortable and often irritable. The brain zaps were sometimes blinding. No one seemed to know what caused them. I even went to an ear, nose and throat specialist to see if I was suffering from some sinus problem, but he found nothing. One day, trying to repair a cabinet drawer, I ruined the glide and, suddenly and blindly angered, began pounding my head with my fist. Worse was that my failure at something so trivial triggered more general, undefinable feelings of failure similar to those I suffered when I was depressed.
Ron Duman, a researcher at the Yale University School of Medicine in the psychiatry department, told me recently that there was no specific mechanism that would explain my symptoms, but that my system was trying to readapt.
“Your neurons,” he said, “are literally sensing the lack of serotonin.” That was the bad news. The good news: “That the brain is able to adapt to stress, to environmental impact or pharmacological stimuli and change over time is really a key concept of how the brain works.”
My choice then, as I saw it, was either to go back to taking the medication or find another way to try and raise my serotonin levels, or at least help the process along. Duman, an athletic-looking guy himself, told me that studies have shown that exercise can improve the serotonin system as much as antidepressants can. So I began a serotonin-boosting regimen — getting out and taking daily walks around Prospect Park, near my home in Brooklyn. No jogger, I completed the three-mile loop in 45 minutes to an hour. After a few days, I noticed that these walks relieved my restlessness. I began to sleep better.
Sleep, Efrain C. Azmitia of the biology department and the Center for Neural Science of New York University, told me, increases serotonin levels, too. Azmitia, who has conducted research on the serotonin system for four decades, said that light and good nutrition can also increase serotonin. Anything, in fact, that relieves severe stress, which, he has found, is disruptive to the serotonin system. It’s why therapy might work just as well as medication, why placebos may work. The stress is relieved, and the system recovers.
I was feeling so much better by the end of the fourth week that I decided to cut back on my dosage again. At the bottom of my computer bag I’d found more blister packs of 37.5-milligram capsules, part of my hidden caches of medication. The first day went fine. But that night I screamed so loudly in my sleep that it seemed to echo in the room long after I sat up awake. It was 4 a.m. I was having brain zaps. I decided to take another 37.5 milligrams but then to try to make it last me through the next day. It did.
Around this time, I began to feel sensations, smells and sounds more intensely. Had the drug, in keeping me focused, also lowered my response to life’s pleasures? When I asked Rosenbaum, the researcher at Mass General, about this, he insisted that there was no evidence that antidepressants have what he called “a dulling effect.” But others disagree. Joseph Glenmullen, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, says he has had many patients describe it. I know that I felt it.
One evening, sitting in the movie theater and watching “Little Miss Sunshine,” I suddenly found myself welling up with tears. I put my head back and closed my eyes, but the tears came. I wondered for a moment whether it was a sign of depression but realized that I never cried when I was depressed. I didn’t have the focus for it. Over the next weeks, when out walking or listening to music (Count Basie’s “Li’l Darlin’,” in particular), I found myself weeping for no reason at all.
What I was gradually beginning to feel was the difference between clicking on a book on Amazon.com and wandering through library shelves, allowing my gaze to wander from spine to spine. I imagined that when I allowed myself such pleasures, I was disarming stress and that my serotonin responded accordingly.
I was now down to 37.5 milligrams a day. It had been two full months since I began getting off Effexor. I decided to see if I could go without. I felt a bit panicked that morning but by noon was still fine. Perhaps, I thought, this was it. But the brain zaps increased throughout the day. Feeling disoriented that night, I took another 37.5 milligrams. I put off taking another dose for 24 hours and then decided to try to make it through the night. By morning I’d gone 36 hours. Should I try to keep going? But the blister pack held another capsule. Maybe just half of it, I thought. I opened the capsule, poured out the tiny white granules, took half into my palm and swallowed it with a glass of water. When I looked down at the counter with the open capsule, the remaining grains of medicine, and the trail of white power where I’d scraped the rest into my hand, I realized that it was time to move on.
In the months since going off, withdrawing, discontinuing, whatever you want to call it, I’ve been through life’s usual stresses (and some extraordinary ones), felt good, bad, sad, unhappy, glad, even hopeless and helpless. But I’ve yet to feel again the chronic, painful and perspectiveless despair that characterizes major depression and that first brought me to seek help.
Will I become depressed again? Rosenbaum told me that the answer to that question may depend on the severity of the earlier depression — a major depressive episode as opposed to feeling very down or stressed — and the length of time the symptoms lasted. Sometimes, he said, patients feel better but have residual symptoms. “If you have residual symptoms, you’re at risk for relapse. If you’ve had multiple severe episodes, if you’ve had chronic depression, you’re at risk for relapse.” Studies show that people who go through one bout with severe depression have a one-in-four chance of having another. Two bouts, and your chances double of having a third. Three bouts, and it’s nearly certain you’ll have another.
I wondered what my future held, since studies show that those who go through long-term therapy in conjunction with antidepressants have less of a chance of their depression returning than those who only take an antidepressant. “I believe that sometimes people can grow while on antidepressants and free up depression in a way that might buffer them to take advantage of psychosocial treatments they couldn’t have taken advantage of when they were depressed,” Rosenbaum told me recently. “But I’ve also seen people who have done hard work in cognitive therapy, but they just can’t sustain it when depression returns.”
What got me back on my feet? Was it the medicine, the therapy or both? Was it just the passage of time? I’m certain that there was much chemistry involved, since our capacities to think, feel and imagine all come out of the chemical makeups of our brains.
But did I need the drug to alter that chemistry? If my psychiatrist had told me, “I think you can do this without taking any drugs,” would I have done just as well? If I had been told how difficult it would be to get off the drug, would I have so readily started on it? Even the doctors and researchers who most believe in the effectiveness of antidepressants acknowledge that the “chemical balance” paradigm, the magic-bullet paradigm, makes things seem simpler than they actually are. For some, these drugs may be a lifesaving treatment. But for most of us troubled or even temporarily anguished by life’s difficulties, does our long-term reliance on these drugs become more of a convenience than a cure, allowing us to simply keep going in the midst of very difficult circumstances? And once we start taking them, how do we find the wherewithal to stop?
Ron Duman told me about one way that scientists try to test the effectiveness of a given antidepressant in the lab. Put a laboratory rat into a beaker of water and see how long it struggles to get out. When it stops, remove it from the beaker and treat it with the drug. Repeat the test. If it struggles for a significantly longer time than before, the drug is considered to have antidepressant potential.
Is this ability to keep us going altogether good? As Rosenbaum pointed out to me, people under stress can do great harm not only to themselves but also to those around them parents to their children, couples to each other. But when does reliance on a drug keep us from seeking ways to resolve the causes of stress? General practitioners, not mental-health specialists, write most of the prescriptions for antidepressants. For most doctors and psychiatrists, drugs, not therapy, have become the first line of defense. Only some 20 percent of people prescribed an antidepressant ever have even a single follow-up appointment.
Perhaps it was the difficult time I had getting off my antidepressant, but I never think about going back on. I’m enjoying this revitalized view of my emotional and physical worlds. Having finally dropped the feather that I believed allowed me to fly, I face life’s difficulties without much fear of falling back into depression. I have no illusions about having resolved every issue or that all that happened won’t continue to have repercussions on those who went through it with me. I don’t believe in “closure.” Life, like the brain, has too much interconnected circuitry. But it is also always changing.
“The brain has evolved to deal with sadness and grief, and having to deal with them may make the brain more flexible,” Azmitia told me.
Maybe dealing with life’s distresses has its own chemistry. I know I hated every second of it. I don’t know if the medication helped. But I do know that I’m very glad I’m off.

Bruce Stutz writes on science and the environment. His most recent book is “Chasing Spring: An American Journey Through a Changing Season.”

Feeling a bit dizzy and manic?

2011-07-30T16:11:00.001+01:00

So I'm a week into my latest reduction and yesterday I felt really dizzy first thing in the morning for about an hour, and then today I am feeling really woolly headed. Peter says I get a bit manic for a couple of days as well and then calm down, not sure about that one because I don't peceive myself as being manic LOL

Prozac withdrawal timeline

I was so moved I had to copy and paste it!

2011-07-25T17:16:00.001+01:00

P just publised a comment on my blog and I was so moved I just had to put it into a post or it would get totally lost.

PDH said...

I just wanted to say that I'm really proud of you!

Depression in this country is not treated like any other illness, as many of its suffers do not always look like they are ill until the symptoms get so severe. Living with somebody who suffers from depression can be challenging particularly when that person is in a dark hole. I used to believe the doctors when they say that the Prozac is the only treatment that is effective against depression as it is a chemical imbalance in the brain. What the doctors failed to tell you is that Prozac itself has side-effects that mimic the depression itself. It is also the case that depression is caused by not only genetics but also from your environment. In your case it was caused by childbirth and a husband was working so hard that you often felt alone.

The reality is that depression is more prevalent today, due to the fact that our lives are so much more busy. I myself used to concentrate so hard on developing my career and earning money, rather than concentrating on what is really important, which is family and this is so true for so many other people in the UK and around the world. We may have less money than we used to have, as I decided four years ago to give up working in London but we have a much happier home life. I personally believe that you have to work out what is truly important in life both to you as an individual and of course as a family. Supporting each other is so important and often something that we all overlook.

I remember when you went on to Prozac after the birth of our son and it was obvious that you are suffering from a severe bout of depression but in hindsight I wish we had looked at some of the alternatives. The problem is that doctors are under pressure and handing out medication is often looked as a way of getting the patient out of the doctor’s office and no attempt is sometimes made in treating the actual condition by talking or counselling.

I remember that I was once convinced that depression could only be treated by Prozac or other types of medication in a similar family and when you are tempted to come off the medication I was always convinced that depression was returning. I now look back at those times and realise that I was wrong and it wasn't until we found that simple booklet that explained that withdrawing from Prozac can cause withdrawal symptoms like coming off hard drugs. The drug companies and the doctors obviously don't tell you this when you start to take medications as often you are desperate for a quick fix.

I wish I could put into words what it's like seeing an individual struggle for so many years against a condition and not know that the drug that she is taking is causing the problem when you chose to come off. We all have anxieties and bad moods the treatment that we all need is to talk instead of just relying on medication. I do understand medication does have its place for severe cases but I am shocked at how quick doctors are to hand out medication that can have such major effect on people's lives.

I myself once went to my doctor with symptoms of being tied and the doctor in question was ready to prescribe me antidepressant rather than check my sugar levels, which in my case was the root cause of the problem. Shocking I know but it is often the case that depression is misdiagnosed or sometimes just an excuse to get the patient out of the office.

from

PDH (husband)

proud of you x

25 July, 2011 16:48

Prozac reduction timeline

1.50mls

2011-07-23T08:54:00.001+01:00

I decided to go to 1.50mls today as I have been feeling really well, I toyed with the idea of pushing it to 1.45mls but then chickened out as that would be a nearly 10% reduction and as I am now getting pretty low down I'm aware the reductions could impact more and I might be more likely to suffer a harder withdrawal. With prozac it takes a couple of weeks for a withdrawal to impact as it stays in the system a lot longer than other ssri's. The advice I've been given is to never reduce by more than 5-10% of the previous dose.

Prozac reduction timeline

Lucky Dip

2011-07-18T19:40:00.000+01:00

A friend of ours once said, if you could put your life into a big hat or a lucky dip with loads of other people's lives, and pick one (life) out, would you take that chance? and no actually I wouldn't!! I thought that was a really good thought, but maybe it sounded better the way he put it!!

The Road Back

2011-07-07T16:59:00.002+01:00

This plopped into my e mail box yesterday, it was sent from "The Road Back" which I fogot I subscribed to a few years ago.
The Sussex Newspaper - The Road Back
They claim to be able to get people off antidepressants and benzos using their program called "The Road Back", when I was really really desperate a few years ago I looked at this, it claims to be free as well, but I think it's a big fat con, because when you look into it, they recommend all these supplements you have to use to follow the program, when you look at the supplements they are hugely expensive!!!! I found one or two other companies like this as well.
TRB Products
This was when I realised I was desperate but not that desperate and sadly there are companies out there who will prey on others desperation and profit from it. I decided in the end to use a huge dollop of common sense, a multivitamin from Boots, high EPA fish oil tablets, exercise and taper slowly.

Prozac reduction timeline

Anxiety

2011-06-23T07:50:00.000+01:00

Well we found out on Monday that we HAVEN'T got to reapply for our jobs, SO relieved! However despite that I had a mahusive anxiety attack on Monday night, and no idea weather it was withdrawal or reaction to an extremely busy week this week, anyway I just could not turn my brain off at all on Monday night so I spent tuesday feeling like absolute rubbish and the worst of it was that I was having to work in a school, but I THINK I managed to not show how exhausted I was and grit my teeth and get through the day, with the help of lots of coffee. This week is really really full on with Scouts bi annual village auction prep all week on top of work, I am so looking forward to getting back to a normal week next week. I think I had I found out I had got to fill in an app for my job this week and do an interview next week it would have tipped me right over the edge.

Restructuring

2011-06-14T14:21:00.000+01:00

Well after a crappy day yesterday, found out that four colleagues are all going, voluntarily, in one fell swoop (that's about one third of our total staff) and that myself and four others may have to go through an interview process with one of us being made redundant, I was a bit gutted. I'm hoping it doesn't come to that but I should find out Monday next week. Anyway, I think these events triggered a withdrawal and this morning I just totally cracked and couldn't stop crying for a good hour or so, now I feel totally drained, I haven't felt this low for so long it came as a shock. Anyway the cartoon is very apt because we are undergoing a "restructuring"

Raging apprehension

2011-06-13T07:44:00.000+01:00

eurgh! couldn't sleep last night, we have a staff meeting today where we will find out who is staying and who is going, some of my colleagues put themselves forwards for voluntary early retirement/redundancy, they found out themselves on Friday privately if they would be allowed to go or not, but were sworn to secrecy, the rest of us found out what's what today, last night I couldn't sleep for feeling apprehensive, about the possibility of losing half my colleagues in one fell swoop and what it means for the rest of us. The feelings of anxiety and apprehension also echoed the feelings I had in the past when suffering withdrawals so of course I can't help wondering if it's work that's worrying more or if it's prozac withdrawal.

The night before I had that recurring dream again for the first time in quite a while, I was trying to pack a suitcase that was too small and the amout of stuff I'd got to pack in the house/hotel was overwhelming. Mad!

1.60mls..

2011-06-10T07:36:00.003+01:00

that's it, gone down to 1.60mls today.

Jury Service - oh the irony!!

2011-05-19T18:41:00.001+01:00

P has been called up to do Jury Service, right now we need this like a hole in the head!!! The irony is that last year I got called up for Jury Service, I really wanted to do it, but I was rejected because of being on prozac, I wrote about it last year on my blog.

Now, I have given in one of my part time jobs to work with P who is a self employed, and now HE has been called up for Jury service, when you're running a small firm you cannot afford to take time out!!! Grrrr

Prozac reduction timeline

Supermodel midlife affair with antidepressants article on Femail website

2011-05-19T10:15:00.001+01:00

Found this on Femail website today, lucky her I thought, it's only took 3 weeks to get off Lexapro, that's not a battle, it's taking me probably 5 years all in to get off of prozac. Wonder though if she will have withdrawals because she came off so fast? maybe not now, maybe months down the line like I did in 2003.

Super model mid life affair with antidepressants

1.70ml New reduction

2011-04-28T17:11:00.002+01:00

I realise I've left it a long time since I last made a reduction but really that's no bad thing, I am feeling very well at the moment.
I finished one of my two part time jobs last week and although I felt really sad on my last day, and they gave me a lovley send off, I also felt quite a bit of relief, because I realised it was actually getting me down more than I thought, being in two work places where there was restructuring and threat of redundancy/closure, now I'm only in one work place that has that (and that's bad enough LOL).
Next week I will be starting work with P part time as well and I am really looking forward to the new challenge!

Prozac reduction timeline

Today is my eldest's 17th birthday

2011-03-22T19:40:00.000Z

My older son is 17 today, can't believe he is 17!! I remember all those highs and lows in hospital when I had him, the cloud 9 euphoria and then the over whelming fear of the massive massive responsibility I now had, and also feeling quite trapped by it. I did have post natal depression in the months following as well but I didn't recognise it for what it was and as we were going through incredibly tough times financially I blamed it on that, although it probably was that as well as post natal depression and a seismic shift in our life with having a new baby. Despite all these early difficulties I think he's turned out well!

Today I felt absolutely and totally drained this morning at work, so drained I almost felt ill, I think it was partly low blood sugar, it was a long time til lunch as I started early and partly that woolly headed prozac withdrawal feeling, the computer screen and everything just felt too bright as well, for two pins I could have literally fallen asleep on my desk. After lunch I seemed to rally and feel "normal" again.

So tired..

2011-03-15T07:32:00.000Z

I couldn't get to sleep easily last night and I woke up at stupid o clock with a splitting headache, sinus pain and feeling really fed up, I went and took a couple of neurofen and waited for it to kick in, drifted off a bit but not enough and now got to go to work feeling knackered and "down", think this could be a withdrawal.

My job(s)

2011-03-10T19:54:00.000Z

Lots of changes are afoot this year, with all the restructuring going on in the local authority I work for (it's called the "New Strategic Direction" which means getting rid of lots of staff). I have two part time jobs and it looks like I will be made redundant from both this year, one job I know is definately going between now and end of August but I have been there less than two years so I don't qualify for redundancy, the other job is a job I do really love and a service I have worked for for 20+ years, we have been called to a meeting late Monday afternoon, it's all been very secretive and handled strangely so we suspect they are going to drop a bombshell on us, this job I will feel very sad about, I love some of the people I work with and I love the service we offer to schools, but if schools can't afford to buy into us and so many are falling away, then so be it.
Fairly soon I will be making the leap (from the job with no redundancy pay out) to go and work with P, his business is our business and I am a shareholder and director, he desperately needs help and this is an opportunity for us both to make it a success, I am looking forward to being a part of it again. Meanwhile I will hang onto the other job I love and if and when I get made redundant from that I think I'll be on the look out for another part time job to replace it and dove tail in with http://www.essentialifa.com/

1.80mls - new reduction

2011-03-02T21:00:00.000Z

Decided to go to1.80mls today, I've held off for a long while being aware that I hate January and February but now we're into March why not?

I was really touched again

2011-02-27T16:37:00.000Z

When some people very close to me and one in particular (I won't say who to protect identities) called me to say they had discovered and read my blog and were really moved by it. Most of the time I don't really know who reads this apart from one or two close friends I know about but it was so nice to know that someone read this empathised.

Exercise....or lack of it

2011-02-22T19:41:00.000Z

It's half term week this week and I have a week off work, and looking back over this blog I noticed my exercise regime when I started out, then half way through this blog I started working full time, but I still tried my hardest to keep up and either do cross trainer or cycle ride, at least twice a week, then since before Christmas I just kind of fell off, I'd get home from work, and it's just become easier to sort tea out, and whatever else needs doing and well, exercise has just fallen off the end. Today I decided to get back on the cross trainer, thought I was going to find it hell after weeks of sluggishness but actually I went steady and it was fine, think I might try a bike ride tomorrow. It certainly does make you feel good after, all those endorphins and the satisfaction of knowing you've done something good for your wellbeing. Can't guarantee I'll keep it all up next week though.

Update on bad withdrawal

2011-01-08T16:55:00.000Z

Well I am back to my "normal" (whatever normal is!!) self again and the relief is enormous....again, until the next bad withdrawal when I terrify myself yet again that I'm disappearing into that black hole... again.

A bad withdrawal

2011-01-04T18:19:00.000Z

So I have had another night of insomnia and in the morning I felt really shite, I felt like I had dropped into that black hole again, all those old feelings of dread, anxiety, bleakness about nothing in particular. As the day wore on the blackness lifted and I started to feel better again although exhausted from lack of sleep but my mood gradually shifted. Peter keeps reassuring me that it is a withdrawal, he's seen me go through it before and I will come out the other side, and I have to tell myself that it is a withdrawal if I start to think otherwise I could go into a dangerous downward spiral. As it is I'm begining to think I have forgotten how to sleep :(
It is a reminder of how soul destroying depression can be.

Insomnia

2011-01-02T13:07:00.002Z

Insomnia

I lay awake all last night, just could not switch my brain "off", getting more and more wound up as the night dragged on, worrying. When you're lying in the dark, unable to switch off, everything seems so much worse than in the cold light of day. For me insomnia is a very frightening experience because back in 2003 when I was "breaking down" a feature of that illness was not being able to sleep for literally nights on end, and feeling really so terrified and alone as I felt myself cracking up and mentally falling apart at the seams, adrenaline rushing round my body 24/7 keeping me awake against my will, caused by the prozac/lustral withdrawal, a very dark and frightening place to be. I feel scarred by 2003, one bad night now and I'm back in 2003 and thinking I'm falling apart once again. In the cold light of day I know this isn't true. This too will pass, I love that quote.

Prozac withdrawal how long

I hate January

2010-12-28T10:47:00.000Z

I feel really flat now, I always feel flat after Christmas, even though it's my birthday tomorrow and I should be looking forward to that. I hate January, after all the excitement and build up to the Christmas holiday everything seems so dreary. Roll on summer!!

1.90ml Now breaking the 2.0ml barrier!!

2010-12-18T09:07:00.001Z

Yes today I am going to 1.90ml, waited quite a long time for this new reduction because the last one was quite a biggish one and you should never drop more than 10% of your current dose.
I have been feeling very well on the whole but there are subtle shifts of feelings in that I am aware that in certain situations I feel more anxious which is probably the "real me" without the prozac crutch and it's probably no worse than many people deal with anyway on a day to day basis.

Who is reading my blog?

2010-11-30T18:56:00.001Z

Can't help but wonder, I have my little gadget (to the right) which shows the location of people who visit but I would love it if someone made themselves known, maybe left a comment even if to tell me my blog is dull as ditch water LOL

I've been feeling so so tired today, and woke up with a splitting headache, felt like a prozacy type head today.

Dizzy

2010-11-06T15:20:00.000Z

Yes this picture is how I feel today, low blood pressure? or something to do with the prozac going down? felt like it before so I expect I will just wait for it to pass.

2.00ml

2010-10-23T20:55:00.002+01:00

Nearly breaking through the 2.0ml barrier

2010-10-22T07:56:00.000+01:00

This week end I am going to drop from 2.20ml to 2.0ml, I should probably go to 2.10 ml first but actually it's such a fiddle to measure out the 0.10ml on that skinny little syringe I decided it would be easier to take a chance and go straight to 2.0ml. I've read that you shouldn't reduce by more than 10% of your current level and this is still within 10%. Will be interesting to see if I have a withdrawal reaction in a couple of weeks or so.

2.20ml and redundancy

2010-09-18T09:23:00.000+01:00

Down to 2.20ml today, I did wonder wether to take it down to 2.10ml but there is quite a lot going on in my life at the moment, both my jobs are under threat of redundancy now in about a years time with all the cuts this government are making so me and Peter are having to plan for this eventuallity, after all my money, child benefit and tax credits pay the mortgage and all the direct debits/ utility bills :( ....and jobs are very hard to come by at the moment.

Whistleblowing

2010-08-30T08:28:00.002+01:00

This is an interesting link.

New reduction today - 2.30ml

2010-08-07T09:25:00.002+01:00

Hopefully I will break the 2.0ml barrier by Christmas.

Losing a job

2010-07-28T07:42:00.000+01:00

I have two part time jobs and we had a staff meeting at one of my jobs this week, and it seems definate that we are closing down with all the cuts going round, and this job will be going, at least I have plenty of notice to start looking around but it is very sad for all of us. I haven't been there long enough to qualify for any decent redundancy so I may as well start looking.

Weight loss

2010-07-18T10:08:00.000+01:00

I'm not complaining but I'm wondering if my metabolism has speeded up a little as the prozac has gone down, I'm always fairly careful about my eating anyway as I have a big appetite and can eat like a horse so I do have to "reign" it in and exercise or I can find myself piling it on, however what with working pretty much full time and family commitments I do find it hard to fit in the exercise, but my weight seems to have dropped somewhat without me trying. Wonder if prozac does cause weight gain and coming off it speeds up metabolism?

Feeling blah and interview

2010-07-15T08:05:00.000+01:00

OK so it's just hit me this morning that I am in fact feeling very "blah" this week. I had a job interview on Monday, it was only a little 7 hour a week job in a school with the promise of other hours in the school office, when I got to the interview it was so not what I expected, the job described at the interview differed greatly from the job description and what I had applied for, in fact it wasn't a little 7 hour a week job, it was a huge challenge he wanted someone to fulfill on a totally inadequate pay scale and hours and he was desperately trying to convince me what a great idea it was and how I could achieve it, and I felt I'd been led up the garden path somewhat, so needless to say I totally lost interest and wasn't offered it. I was a bit gutted because in my head I'd run away with the idea of this nice little term time only job and having more time at home in the school holidays and maybe during the week as well, that'll learn me!!
I since learned the didn't manage to appoint anyone and no one who went was prepared to take on what he was proposing, suspect it was the misleading job description and the fact he's not paying enough for what he wants to achieve.
Since then I've been feeling quite rough in my head, just really flat, confidence knocked, is this a withdrawal? is it a normal emotion? is it withdrawal triggered by an event? who knows, all I know it that "this too will pass". The sooner the better.

2.40ml

2010-07-03T08:39:00.001+01:00

Down to 2.40ml today and over half way now. I've decided from now on to make only 0.10ml drops and no more 0.20 ml because now I'm lower each drop is steeper and I'm getting more withdrawal effects like the cotton wool fuzzy head and wiered dreams!
Slow and steady wins the race.

My morning regimen...

2010-06-23T20:03:00.000+01:00

.. one Boots own brand multi vitamin, four multi vegepa Omega capsules and 2.50ml prozac!

So true...

2010-06-20T16:02:00.000+01:00

Funnies

2010-06-20T15:55:00.003+01:00

Prozac reduction timeline

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

2010-06-15T20:13:00.003+01:00

This song is so incredibly beautiful and I always thought "comfortably numb" was a really good description for the effect prozac has. It certainly does make you comfortably numb.

Dream again

2010-06-12T15:37:00.000+01:00

I had that recurring dream again last night, packing away I was, no one else was worried about having to get the packing done, and I was getting really annoyed because it was the end of the holiday and no one else was worried about missing the flight or whatever. Still puzzling over this, same dream, I'm sure there is a higher power trying to tell me something.

So dizzy today!

2010-06-07T16:54:00.000+01:00

Today I was just feeling so dizzy, like I might fall over, it wore off as the day went on, but I almost thought I was going to have to come home from work, I just felt so fuzzy :(

officially half way - 2.50mls

2010-06-05T16:29:00.001+01:00

Yup, I am officially half way, it's only taken me a little over 2 years LOL.

Vivid dreams and emotions

2010-05-29T15:20:00.000+01:00

I've been having such vivid and bizarre dreams and the other morning I woke up in tears but couldn't remember why!
I've also been feeling much more emotion coming back now and in a really good way because I think I have been emotionally a bit numb for so long. I'm finding myself easily moved by different things now and it's soooo good to have that feeling back!!

I feel SO much better now!

2010-05-16T17:20:00.000+01:00

Phew! How nice to feel "normal" again instead of profoundly depressed and sad, at least I know yet again it is a withdrawal and I can "ride it out".

That dream again

2010-05-14T20:02:00.002+01:00

Yup I've had it again, in fact I think I've had it a few times lately, this time we were back at old two up two down first home, and it was a right mess.

Some reassurance was needed

2010-05-14T19:58:00.001+01:00

My question

I'll try not to ramble, I have been very sucessfully withdrawing from prozac (after 10 years of failed attempts). It's taken me two years to reduce from 5ml to where I am now at 2.60mls (that's how slow I've been taking it! All has gone well up to now, the past week I've been getting feelings of profound sadness a little anxiety, the waves come and go and feel like my old depression/failed withdrawal attempts in the past.

Is this a withdrawal that will pass in time? or is this the real me? feeling a bit confused but rationally I think this is a withdrawal reaction but it's something I've not felt for a long time. Anyone relate?

The answer

**, this is normal in withdrawal/recovery . Your chemistry will be changing regularly and will do so even for years after you have totally discontinued the drug.

The difference now is it comes and goes, right?

I've never seen anyone go into a depressed state after stopping a drug unless it is stopped too quickly. This is a reaction of the biochemistry.

People have been sold a lie when they are told depression is genetic. It's not. Someone might say their mother was depressed and so is their sister. This is genetic only in as much as behavior is learned (children learn to mimic parents' reactions without knowing it so if mom is depressed children learn to be depressed). The other cause is poor diet. This makes all the difference in the world.

It is perfectly normal for people to experience a couple of periods of depression in a lifetime. An argument can be made for the use of this but that's a huge topic. Any doctor who has not been brainwashed by the drug companies who want you to believe the genetic lie so they can sell you drugs for life will tell you that depression is self-limiting. What prevents it from resolving in most people is nutritional and/or the unwillingness to meet life on life's terms (people who do this are usually people who believe that life is sometimes "unfair").

As I said, you'll feel many things at various times on this journey. Just ride it out. If it stays more than a couple weeks at most, check your diet and supplements. If this isn't it, increase the drug by one dose. This is sometimes necessary as you get into the lower doses. Don't stay long at the increased dose. A week or 10 days will be enough to get you unstuck. Then reduce again and you should be okay.

--C

and sure enough I do feel a lot better today, phew!

Blah...

2010-05-10T20:02:00.000+01:00

OK well for the past week I have been feeling really quite "blah", like a low level depression, no not really depression, well maybe but very mild and just kind of flat. Hope this passes soon, can't help wondering if it's here to stay but that's negative thinking we all know what happens when you get into negative thinking spirals.

Wow I had that dream again!

2010-04-25T18:08:00.000+01:00

Had a lovley day, beautiful weather, reconnected with a school friend, we met for lunch at an Italian restaurant and had a lovley time.
Then last night I had that dream again, it was the end of a two week holiday, and we'd had a great time, but there was a mind boggling amount of packing to do like moving house, not just a couple of suitcases, and a real feeling of sadness, what the heck does it mean?

2.60ml

2010-04-10T10:33:00.000+01:00

2.60ml today, small drop this time or I think my head will go into cotton wool mode again.

Out of sorts

2010-03-16T19:05:00.000Z

I have been feeling so out of sorts the past couple of days, I nearly came home from work early (sick) today, woke up with a splitting headache, my head is very fuzzy and cotton wool like and feel like I can't get a handle on things, I just know it's my head adjusting to a drop in prozac and I've got to ride it out, but I just feel so tired and drained :(

Cotton wool head and a bad dream

2010-03-11T07:58:00.000Z

I've had a bit of a fuzzy cotton wool head this week, a bit like when I used to withdraw the old fashioned way. I can only assume it's because I'm getting lower down on the dose now so each drop is a bigger drop if that makes sense.
Had a bad dream last night, I was crying and crying and grieving, but not sure who or what for and I woke up in tears but then I was rapidly relieved that it was only a dream.

2.70mls

2010-03-06T17:18:00.002Z

Nearly half way.

Following on from Jury Service

2010-02-03T17:59:00.001Z

A friend at work found this article of the Guardian web site 10th January 2010

Call to lift ban on jury service for people with mental illnessBarristers join forces with mental health charity to urge rethink

Denis Campbell, health correspondent The Observer, Sunday 10 January 2010 Article historyMinisters are facing demands to scrap an "unfair and discriminatory" law that bans thousands from being jurors because they have suffered from mental ill-health.

Campaigners claim that many law-abiding citizens are wrongly excluded from jury service after being treated for conditions such as depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

One in four Britons suffers mental illness at some point in their lives, and one in 10 is prescribed antidepressants, which would be enough to debar them.

Rethink, a mental health charity supported by barristers in England and Wales, will this week launch a campaign to have the rule rescinded. It agrees that some people's mental state makes them unfit to be jurors, but argues that many others are victims of an "archaic" ban.

More than 9,000 people a year in England are refused permission to serve on juries. The government promised in 2004 – and again in early 2008 – to review the situation, but has not done so.

The ban arises from the Juries Act 1974. A section on "mentally disordered persons" bars from jury service anyone "who suffers or has suffered from mental illness, psychopathic disorder, mental handicap or severe mental handicap, and on account of that condition either is resident in a hospital or other similar institution, or regularly attends for treatment by a medical practitioner". Rethink wants that replaced with a new definition of "capacity", based on the 2005 Mental Capacity Act, which would allow many of those currently banned to serve, while excluding those who are genuinely unfit.

Stephen Fry, the actor and comedian, who has suffered from bipolar disorder since childhood, is backing the campaign. "There are thousands of people with mental health problems who are willing and perfectly capable of serving on a jury, but who find themselves rejected solely because they see a doctor from time to time for support or medication," he said. "Exclusion purely on the grounds of treatment for a mental health problem is unfair and discriminatory."

Rethink cites Winston Churchill as someone who, owing to his depression, would be banned. Paul Corry, Rethink's director of public affairs, said that about 50,000 people with mental health problems had been excluded since the government's first pledge in 2004 to consult on the issue.

"People should be judged on their capacity, rather than being arbitrarily written off. It is high time the government carried out a consultation and considered outlawing this archaic and discriminatory practice, which prevents capable citizens from carrying out a basic civic duty."

The Criminal Bar Association, which represents barristers in England and Wales, also argues that the ban is wrong. "Trial by jury is a vital component of our criminal justice system and, in order to work at its best, juries should represent a cross-section of society," said Paul Mendelle, its chairman. "Figures suggest that one in four people will be affected by mental health problems, so it is inappropriate to impose a blanket ban that prevents anyone with a history of mental illness from sitting on a jury without assessment of their capacity."

But the Ministry of Justice ruled out any revision of the rule, and refused to say why the government had reneged on its pledges to consult. While ministers were committed to tackling the stigma and discrimination around mental ill-health, "any change would need to strengthen our jury system. There can be no question of changing the law to allow people to serve as jurors where their ability to do so is in doubt", said a spokesman.

2.90mls

2010-01-31T16:01:00.001Z

Yup I have now broken the 3ml barrier and still going strong!

Jury Service

2010-01-31T16:00:00.001Z

I had a letter several days ago asking me to do Jury Service, I was really excited, it's something I always wanted to do, so I filled in the form and sent it back, not really thinking much about it, the form asked some questions about health and the last question was about mental health, and weather you'd ever been sectioned under the mental health act, which I havn't, but I answered honestly about the past post natal depression and prozac use, almost by return of post I was rejected, and I know it was down to my answer about depression, it felt like a kick in the teeth and I was quite insulted, because I'm the most stable unstable person I know and I know one person far more unstable than me who has done jury service, still that's only my opinion and I suppose they have to have some guidelines/rules to follow.