Did I repeat myself?

OK looks like I've repeated myself and got my days in a muddle, I blame sleep deprivation LOL

Run aground this week

I seem to have run aground this week, Tues night I woke in the early hours with a searing headache, like brain freeze but worse, so I had to go down and get a couple of painkillers. Wednesday night I kept having lots of vivid dreams and negative emotions, and then last night I just could not get to sleep and when I did, vivid strange dreams again, I am exhausted and a little scared, when something like this happens it's easy to convince yourself you're losing your marbles and exhaustion doesn't help you to think in a rational way, I feel a bit like a rabbit caught in the headlights. Rationally I know it will pass and all will be ok again and my brain is probably having to readjust to less prozac.

Now down to 4.40ml

This picture shows what the .40ml bit of the 4.40 looks like:

We're talking tiny drops of liquid here, amazing to think what a powerful drug it is. Had a rough couple of nights, two nights ago I woke with an absolutely splitting, searing headache in the early hours, had to go down and take some aspirin, I don't remember having a headache like it ever, then last night I had lots of vivid, strange dreams. Did I ever mention my recurring dream? I have this dream about moving house, sometimes it's moving house, sometimes it takes the form of having to pack up at the end of a holiday, and always, the amout of packing is overwhelming, and the feeling of leaving everything I know behind, I'm sure this dream is significant in someway but not really figured it out, I have this dream about once a month, anyone know about dream? is a spirit guide trying to send me a message?

19th wedding anniversary

Ooh can't believe I forgot to mention, it is in fact our 19th wedding anniversary today, and we are in a really good place with our marriage now, it hasn't always been so, we've been through a lot of ups and downs over the years, some of them too personal to post on here, most of them the financial stresses of bringing up a family and Peter working long hours and the effect on our relationship and family life.

4.50ml (18mg) 10% down

Wey hey!! I should have put this on here a few weeks ago but I've been so bad at this blogging lark, strange considering I come from a family of diary writers and have in fact kept paper diaries myself since about 1976 LOL
I am now 10% down and it's still going well, I've had the odd withdrawal but I have faith that it is "withdrawal" now and if I feel a bit low it only lasts 3 days at the most. Of course it maybe that I have to get used to the "normal" moods that everyone has, prozac does tend to render you a bit "emotionless".

4.60ml Damn I've been bad at blogging!

Is it really April since I last put anything here? I nearly deleted this blog but changed my mind.
I'm doing really well, I started withdrawing in May again, gone down 0.10ml roughly every 5 weeks, so today, 14th August I am now reduced to 4.60ml, very slow progress but I've been feeling good, I was so scared to start with that I was going to fall flat on my face again but I think slow and steady wins the race!!

4.70ml

4.80ml

4.90mls

5mls (20mg)

Started the switch from 20mg prozac tablet to 5ml liquid prozac. Earlier than we originally planned, I was too impatient to wait!

Useful websites..

...but Peter thinks these may bring me down if I dwell on them too much, I need to think positive and not get too stuck on these sites.

Paxil Progress and Seroxat Mad

Supplements I am taking

Since New Year 08:

1,100mg EPA Vegepa capsules

6000mg Ginkgo


Exercise regime:

7 mile bike ride or
30 mins on cross trainer or
3 mile run/walk then 20 mins on cross trainer
regular walks
as many times a week as I can fit in

Discussion of withdrawal plan with Peter

On one of our walks together we discussed how I would go about the next attempt at withdrawal. So, the plan is from 1st June (ish) I will switch to liquid prozac, after two months 1st August I will make the first tiny reduction, plan to withdraw by no more than 5% between August and Christmas, this seems incredibly tiny but I feel this is how I have to do it now, partly because of the severe reactions I had before and partly to reassure myself that I can do it. Peter is a great mentor, he quite rightly as well pointed out that all my perusing support groups wasn't doing me any favours because I'm just reading negative stuff all the time, I've got to think positive about it and just get on with my life, not dwell on other people's severe withdrawal problems which bring me down, I have to think of people out there who have suceeded and moved on.
The reason for waiting for Aug is our house is in so much upheaval and rennovation and we feel that by then the house will be more comfortable and we'll be on holiday and chilled out so to speak.

A probably badly written history of my experiences

A few years ago after I had James, I had a severe post natal depression, at the time I was in a very black and frightening place, but I knew it was THAT bad I had to do something about it. When I went to the doctor he assessed me and prescribed antidepressant medication, Lustral, at the time I was very scared about taking it and scared of how I was feeling, scared of getting addicted to something, doctor reassured me that the new SSRI medications are very safe and totally not addictive and at the same time I knew I had to do something constructive because I had two young children to look after and a husband working his socks off who couldn't take time off.
Anyway, long story short, I took the Lustral, and two weeks later almost overnight, I was well again, the sun shone, I felt like a massive weight or black cloud had lifted off me and I was able to function like a “normal” human being again. I assume it was the Lustral but it may have been the placebo effect of “doing something” about it with a pill.
The theory goes, that you take Lustral, or prozac or whatever your physchiatric drug of choice is, for about a year to 18 months from the time you feel well again then you come off it. Anyways, after being well for a long while I went to the doctors to come off the Lustral, which he agreed, the way I was told to come off was take a tablet alternate days for a fortnight, then every third day for a fortnight or so, then once or twice a week until your off. I did this as instructed, felt very dizzy, my head was full of cotton wool and so spaced out but persevered, then a short while after I’d come off the drug “bang” I’d be hit by massive depression/anxiety, go back to the doctors, we’d come to the conclusion I’d relapsed and back on the Lustral to feel well again. This happened several times over the course of the last few years and I always got well again on the Lustral. Fast forward to January last year, a book jumped out at me in Waterstones called “Coming off Antidepressant Medication”, bought it, and it was a shocking revelation. It explained that the way to come off antidepressant medication was to “taper” it, and NOT the alternate day method, and it explained about “withdrawals”, which I’d had no idea about, and I’m certain my doctor knew nothing about either, in fact I gave him the book to read, withdrawals come in two types, the physical (bear with me please!) which is the head shocks, spaced out dizziness and/or flu like symptoms, and physchiatric withdrawals which can be depression, anxiety, violence, suicidality and loads of other things. The dirty little secret is that the phsychiatric withdrawals mimic or are worse than the original disorder for which you are put on the medication for, and which leads people into a catch 22 situation, you come off, probably too fast and by the alternate day method, get the withdrawals, think you’ve “relapsed” and are a mental defective and go back on the tablets and feel well again.The other dirty little secret is that any alteration in dose up or down can lead to serious problems, and in the US they have a lot of SSRI induced violence and suicide because they dish them out far more than in this country, and in this country they dish them out like smarties because mental health services are woefully underfunded. This lead me onto loads of interesting research and what I don’t know about SSRI’s (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors - prozac family) you could write on the back of a stamp. Anyway, I decided to try and taper Lustral but it’s only available in 50mg and you can only cut it once in half to get 25mg before it crumbles, so I tried it anyway but failed, so then I went back to doctor and switched to prozac because it has a long half life (half life is the length of time an SSRI takes to wash out of the body, SSRI’s with a short half life like Lustral and Seroxat are harder to withdraw from because they wash out fast and you get hit by withdrawals fast, whereas prozac takes days to wash out and the theory is that it’s easier to withdraw from), also, prozac is available in the UK in liquid form so you can taper it slower with a syringe. Anyway, Jan 08 I switched to prozac liquid and armed with my syringe I decided to withdraw at the rate of 5% a week, of course I now know this was WAY too fast, I was getting the usual dizzzyness and spaced out feeling but I could cope with that, but after three weeks in and a 10% down I was hit by a massive massive wall of depression, I could feel it washing over me, I woke up in the mornings feeling like death warmed up not wanting to face the day, couldn’t eat (HAVE to be ill for ME not to eat and weight literally dropped off me) I thought about toughing it out but after three days I know Peter was really worried and I knew if I carried on I’d be jumping off the orwell bridge or doing something equally silly, I felt that ill and it was going to start impacting on everyone around me, I felt like a heroin addict going cold turkey. Luckily this fell in half term week when I was off work and in fact the day of a colleagues leaving do I was in the thick of it. The fact that when you start taking the tablets again you feel well again indicates a withdrawal/addiction problem but medical people won’t ever call it addiction, they call it “antidepressant discontinuation syndrome”. Anyway, I now know that there is a huge spectrum of experiences with SSRI’s from people who take it successfully and come off with no problems to the other end of the spectrum to people like me and worse, and I’ve been advised to take it much slower, reduce by 1/20th or 5% a month or so, make a tiny reduction, stabilize for a few weeks, feel well, before you make the next tiny drop, it’s like landing an aircraft in a hurricane!! One of Peters clients is a pharmacist which has been really handy and Peter has picked his brain. I’ve found a couple of really good support groups on the net, when you try and fail you can also get VERY phobic which can hold you in the catch 22 as well, it’s a complete head fuck, also, what happened to me in Feb half term week shook me up badly and has taken me some time getting over, I’ve felt like I want to die but of course I would never do it.
Oh the other thing is, for the past couple of years I keep getting this recurring dream, sometimes very frequently, it’s always about packing up moving house or packing up at the end of a holiday, and for a long time this has puzzled me, and recently I heard a programme on the radio about recurring dreams and their meanings and the fact that it’s your subconscious or a higher power of spirit trying to guide you or tell you something and you have to think about the emotions in the dream to get the meaning, and the penny dropped, it was about coming off the medication.

Prozac reduction timeline

History of my relationship with SSRI's

Back in 1998 after I had my second son I fell into a severe post natal depression, I was put on 50mg Lustral, I remember taking that first tablet and how it wiped me out totally so I couldn't stay awake, I went back to the surgery and they suggested taking half a tablet for four days then onto the whole ones, there began my relationship with Lustral. I didn't hold out much hope of anything lifting me out of my depression, but lo and behold, about two weeks later I woke one morning and everything was fantastic, the sun shone and I felt like a huge weight had been lifted off me, I felt "well" and normal again, it was a miracle.
Three months on, I decided as I felt well I didn't need to take the tablets anymore, so I just stopped, knowing nothing about them, a few weeks down the road I was feeling suddenly crap again and so it was back on the tablets again, and so it went on.
I was then about a year on, then I would try and come off with the advice of my doctor to withdraw by taking them alternate days for a fortnight, then every third day for a fortnight and fade them out, doing this would make my head so dizzy but I assumed this was correct, and without fail a few months down the road I would relapse and back on the Lustral again, and so I was on the Lustral merry go round.
2003 was the worst year, I'd come off Lustral at the end of 2002, and throughout the year 2003 I was struggling with my mental health (not knowing it was withdrawal), I tried every damned thing through that year, meditation, a healer, counselling, exercise you name it I tried it, the healer told me my depression was imploded anger, anyone who knows me knows I am the least angry and most laid back person you could meet!! By the time we got to December 2003 I was seriously falling apart at the seams, I couldn't sleep for nights at a time, I turned into a zombie, adrenaline was pumping through me 24/7, I couldn't eat and I couldn't function, Peter was having an equally terrible time at work and couldn't take time off to help me (which he now bitterly regrets), I finally had to admit defeat, I was mentally defective therefore I had to start taking the Lustral again.

January 2007 a book jumped out at me in Waterstones called "Withdrawing from Anti Depressants" by Joseph Glenmullen, which advocated the correct way to withdraw was by "tapering", and that what I was experiencing when coming off the Lustral incorrectly was not necessarily a depressive relapse, but withdrawals, which can mimic the original physchological problems, this was a revelation to me and made a lot of sense.

Start of my journey

I am intending this to be a record of my journey in withdrawal from prozac, ups and downs, highs and lows, I'll put a full background of my story in tomorrow.