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I was on three drugs. One was an anti depressent, welbrutain. One was a mood stabilizer, and the other was to curtail the sudden mood shifts I had. But it wasn't working. And so they said take more. I just felt foggy with more and it still didn't work. But then, the third raise in dosage, I started suddenly passing out.
I hated the way I felt like a zombie, and how the doctor thought it was okay. My life is writing and other creative things and I just felt dead inside. And all those issues which had built up and up and gotten worse... The meds made me too zoned out and I felt like I was just drifting.
I did get another doctor. I also explained that physically I was having bad problems, and about the physical side, with food and nutrition problems. My medical doctor was concerned. The one for the psych stuff discarded it like the problems didn't matter.
Last time I went to get the appointment I explained I was no longer taking them and as they were seriously causing problems with my physical body systems, it was intollerable. I was weaning myself off them. I had not passed out in the last couple weeks. The jerk said if I wasn't going to follow his instructions, he couldn't see me. I said fine, tooshay....
When I backed out of ALL of them, the physical symptoms almost dissapeared. Most of all no sudden pass outs. I dumped the medicine and got rid of it. I used herbs to help sooth the bad moments, and it worked fine. But I had to put effort into it, not just let the drug do its thing. The one doctor I had I explained, including the passing out and zone outs and when I just couldn't stand up for long without extreme dizzyness. She said I shouldn't have been on them once the problems showed.
I backed out of everything. I had a few herbals I used and use to help in rough points, but instead of letting a PILL stop the bad moment, I will take a stjohn's wort, and eventually got where I didn't need those.
I chose not to fill myself with drugs, but accept that things effecting only some of us happened to me, but I would not define myself by them. Just as I would not give power to imaginary or ambushing problems, and only used the zone out stuff when I needed it, I would not allow this *fear* to make decisions for me.
My experience and that I heard commonly back then was that you had problem x, a place which triggered. And it was hard to get out of it then. So give patients stuff which bland out everything. No lows but no highs. Just blahville and existing. But you don't really LIVE this way, just exist. You can't really deal with life well this way, and if those things which trigger, you need to know why, or they own you. You do some real therapy, and maybe something mild to help. But if you numb up people so much so they won't have to deal with it, then the problem just lives on and on. But worse, it gives them an excuse to take the pill and never deal with issues which have claimed control. They won't be 'better' until they learn under light or no drugging to step back and take back their lives.
Mental conditions are a different programming than normal, and the goal should always be to use the least powerful meds, and those which could be sitting in a bottle before you need one for the worse things, and use no more than must be used. Instead of a drug to wipe out all the hard stuff, stuff one MUST learn how to recognize its start, and something to stop it before it rules you. Life is full of hard stuff and you are not giving a client real help if 'help' is always a magic pill. And sometimes, with a dosage which blunts the hard part but lets them, with support, tear apart the hard stuff and teach how to live and balance without a magic pill that only maintains their limits.
Mental conditions are a different programming than normal, and the goal should always be to use the least powerful meds, and those which could be sitting in a bottle before you need one for the worse things, and use no more than must be used. Instead of a drug to wipe out all the hard stuff, stuff one MUST learn how to recognize its start, and something to stop it before it rules you. Life is full of hard stuff and you are not giving a client real help if 'help' is always a magic pill. And sometimes, with a dosage which blunts the hard part but lets them, with support, tear apart the hard stuff and teach how to live and balance without a magic pill that only maintains their limits.
Which was exactly the approach my providers followed....lowest dose of one med first, see if that particular one worked, if not, try another. Once we found the one that made a dent with counseling, it was tweaked until the dark gloom lifted. We didn't ramp it up any higher once I felt functional. Never felt blotted out or dull, just normal thinking. For a year or so of particularly bad circumstances I did have a prescription for an adjunct short-acting med and was warned to be cautious using it. Used it so rarely it expired. In a way, just knowing it was there sitting on the shelf was enough.
Which was exactly the approach my providers followed....lowest dose of one med first, see if that particular one worked, if not, try another. Once we found the one that made a dent with counseling, it was tweaked until the dark gloom lifted. We didn't ramp it up any higher once I felt functional. Never felt blotted out or dull, just normal thinking. For a year or so of particularly bad circumstances I did have a prescription for an adjunct short-acting med and was warned to be cautious using it. Used it so rarely it expired. In a way, just knowing it was there sitting on the shelf was enough.
Your very lucky. Especially when there's a busy clinic and there isn't a lot of time and everyone gets their whole fifteen minutes before they hand over the script. If you have a problem, you have to push it and stand up and claim your time, but their point is to move people in fast and out fast. The big one also left you waiting three/four hours before you were handed the script.
I was taking six kinds of pills, and felt like a zombie on a good day. But I decided I was done with that. I backed them out, one pill at a time, and huge care that I felt okay when I stopped them. But actually I ususally felt SO Good. I kept a small bottle of anti depressents for a bad moment, but they were not for anything but when the substitures were not quite enough. I'm sure if I'd asked the doctor they would have said it was a bad idea, but I didn't, so nobody had a chance to say not to.
I'm without the good highs minum meds, but have learned to find other ways to find them than pills, and I did the same thing, sort of at least. If I knew I was feeling down, I'd allow a pill, but I had to really weigh it. Only a few times did I use them. And I came to see how much better it worked if the courage was courage and not pharmasudicals.
Right now, I'm feeling this sense that its all losing its charm, and I need something new, but that might mean having to take a bigger step when I know I'm not ready.
I was on three drugs. One was an anti depressent, welbrutain. One was a mood stabilizer, and the other was to curtail the sudden mood shifts I had. But it wasn't working.
Last time I went to get the appointment I explained I was no longer taking them and as they were seriously causing problems with my physical body systems, it was intollerable. I was weaning myself off them. I had not passed out in the last couple weeks. The jerk said if I wasn't going to follow his instructions, he couldn't see me.
He sounds like a horrible doctor. There are, unfortunately, plenty of bad ones out there.
Quote:
My experience and that I heard commonly back then was that you had problem x, a place which triggered. And it was hard to get out of it then. So give patients stuff which bland out everything. No lows but no highs. Just blahville and existing. But you don't really LIVE this way, just exist.
Life is full of hard stuff and you are not giving a client real help if 'help' is always a magic pill.
It sounds like all three medications were the wrong ones for you (and certainly in combination). No antidepressant should leave a person feeling like that and if it does, h/she is on the wrong med. There are many pathways to clinical depression, and many, many different medications to treat different aspects of it: SSRIs (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), Tetracyclics, SARIs Serotonin antagonist and reuptake inhibitors), Tricyclics, and MAOIs. There are antidepressants that treat lack of dopamine such as NDRIs (Norepinephrine-Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitors). The right drug allows the person to regain their ability to think clearly and make more effective decisions about changes in their lives. They are not magic pills. You're right that anyone on an antidepressant should probably be undergoing psychotherapy, and not with a psychiatrist. They are trained as an M.D.s, not therapists.
What he wrote was not "tripe", it just seems you have some problems with understanding it. He did not say that therapists prescribe anything, he simply implied that many therapists think that medication may be necessary along with therapy.
I believe that many of these medications do more harm than good, personally. I know that I am still suffering from depression myself but feel much better after getting off of Prozac. While I was on it for 2 years, I thought my life situation was worse than it was, and that was the reason I felt so bad. I decided I would get off of it and wondered if it was responsible. It's a good thing I listened to that inner voice that told me to get off of this drug because I have felt better ever since. The links the OP provided only reaffirm my belief that anti depressants are addictive and hard to get off of, and we all know of the side effects they can have.
I'm still depressed but am looking at other ways to deal with it, and just discovered this forum, which should help as well.
If you don't get significant relief from an antidepressant perhaps you do not have the diagnosis of
depression...there is a difference in sadness and clinical depression.
given that not everyone responds the same way to individual meds, if you haven't tried other antidepressants you can't know what works and what doesn't...
Then there is a type of depression, treatment-resistant depression, but usually those pts. have been through multiple drug trials with no improvement whatsoever.
He sounds like a horrible doctor. There are, unfortunately, plenty of bad ones out there.
It sounds like all three medications were the wrong ones for you (and certainly in combination). No antidepressant should leave a person feeling like that and if it does, h/she is on the wrong med. There are many pathways to clinical depression, and many, many different medications to treat different aspects of it: SSRIs (Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors), Tetracyclics, SARIs Serotonin antagonist and reuptake inhibitors), Tricyclics, and MAOIs. There are antidepressants that treat lack of dopamine such as NDRIs (Norepinephrine-Dopamine Reuptake Inhibitors). The right drug allows the person to regain their ability to think clearly and make more effective decisions about changes in their lives. They are not magic pills. You're right that anyone on an antidepressant should probably be undergoing psychotherapy, and not with a psychiatrist. They are trained as an M.D.s, not therapists.
True, and its just as bad when someone trained as an MD fails to understand that not every person comes in the same chemical makeup, and what works great on person A may work bad on person B, and do nothing for C, and maybe made D sick if they take it at all. I supplied my full medical history to them, including how pills are often duds for me, or don't work at all as intended. It was ignored. Its also a factor in absorbtion of foods but doctors who deal in that understand that your trusty pill might be useless and if it seems to be not *blame* them.
One of my main problems is I absorb food and medicines irregularily. Before that I had severe colitus, and after the surgery I felt way better, but there's a lot of stuff I either don't absorb at all or do so haphazardly. This doesn't work at all with psych meds. And often they have a lot of coverings which pretty much assure you that it won't do much. I started using the plant based and my doctor said gee, I was doing better. It was then I explained that I wasn't taking any of them, just the homeopathic plant based stuff. But its anti depressent was in a soft, ground up pill which did work. And while my moods still shift, its in small ways.
The thing was before, since the pills didn't work all they said was take more. More wasn't any more useful then less. The herbals are easily absorbed, and with some real functioning help, I could start learning to deal with it without pretending it didn't exist. And the new doctor actually encouraged me to do what worked without lectures. What really surprised me was when I started taking magnesium. I wasn't down so much as on the edge. Something which upped a mood sometimes overdid it.
But the most effective was the D3 and Magnesium. Its the chemicals the brain uses to regulate itself. Nobody ever suggested that it may be off. Literally within days, the moods evened out and best of all the 'fear fog' went too. But I'm just aware, not manic.
I can go manic, but its not major and the magnesium keeps it with bounds too.
I only wish that I'd discovered these things a long time ago and maybe things would have come out better. And I keep meals basic, but make sure I eat. I do small meals at a time, but if I'm hungry, I have a quick sandwitch or maybe some soup, and have more little meals over one big one.
What helped most with therapy was the DBSA. Depressive and Bioplar Support Assn. Each group has a trained person working with them, but its a place to go and talk about how you feel, the good and bad, and share support and ideas with others like you. And groups have a party for holidays, as many of us don't have anywhere to go. And our group did lunch at a restraunt after group, and the group would pay for lunch if you couldn't afford it. But just being with friends and sharing a meal and being *accepted* helped beyond words.
I love living alone (in people terms, not four legged ones) because I can just be me and I have quiet. And if I need some love, my kitties like to pile themselves in my lap and purr. She's trying to help me type too....
My goal is to see how things go with my son, who is both attending college and working fultime and finds time to be with the family now. I need to find more people I enjoy, and so long as not in the same house (what they say about female's and too many in a house IS sometimes true) I'd love family close. And I want to know my grandkids when they arrive. Nothing is fully planned now, but will be eventually.
I think what changed most of all was when I was so miserable and took all those pills, I was trying to be someone different. But it wasn't me and I wasn't happy trying, and never would be. I manage myself now, and don't let moods rule. I have ways to knock down highs (at least the bad ones) and draw away bad ones, and if they won't go, see what they are trying to say. So maybe by absolute defination I'm not 'cured', but I function quite well. Nobody ever said we all have to be the same.
Most of the time I was 'under active treatment' it was about making you into this ONE standard, and if to get it you were to take a pill. And if it wiped out all the joy in your life, if it wrapped you with soft squishy stuff so you never needed to 'feel', and seemed 'fixed', but you didn't want to be that way. And if the meds became a negative which made it unnecessary to want much of anything, and you complain and a 'doctor' says oh but that's not bad. Do as told. Be normal . . .
Then its time to take back your life, and find joy and reward in the thing you love and need, and if you are not manufactured standard human, but you manage fine, and revel in not being 'normal', and have come to enjoy your life, then I say you are a winner.
I get cold easy. My house has heat and a few fan heaters to help it, but on a really cold day its more than cold, its every joint you have, even ones you don't normally don't notice, All of them ache. A couple of Aleve helps but a nice warm spot with blankets helps. And a few cats cuddled under the blanket being good little heaters.
When I get cold, everything aches. The only way to make it better is three layers of clothes and near the heater. I hate the cold part of winter......
It's interesting that everyone seems to know something about depression and I think that's because most people like to help. I also think that people suffering from clinical depression, that round the clock dread and desperation rather than feeling awful because of a recent travesty or affected by the seasons, don't want to talk about it because they understand that many won't understand or that they can't articulate it enough to do it justice.
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