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The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

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Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#31

Post by partomniscient »

skyhatch1 wrote: post #17

Unfortunately, you cannot cite clinical trials as the sole means to determine individual patient relapse potential. Many doctors, especially psychiatrists, use clinically-proven if-then-else type criteria tools created by professional psychiatrist bodies. As your therapy progresses, depending on how you score with the criteria, the doctor will opt to: - Taper down and cease medication - Reduce medication dose and sup…

- That one didn't seem to work (or was intolerable), try this one. (Continue to repeat cycle until something gives...)

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#32

Post by arc_of_descent »

pc2g4d wrote: post #2

There's a disconnect between what the meta-analysed randomized clinical trials are saying about antidepressants (that they are at best minimally effective relative to placebo) and what relapse rates suggest (that people relapse when withdrawn from antidepressants because the antidepressant was effectively treating the underlying depression). This conflict is resolved when antidepressants are acknowledged as addictive…

I experienced this in mid 2014. I was feeling great and decided to stop taking anti-depressants. I was on 10 mg of an SSRI.

Man, I fell into a well. I was depressed for 3 months. Couldn't get _any_ work done. Had a constant headache. I then checked myself into a hospital after 3 months for a full medical check up. Not surprisingly all the tests were fine. Finally the psychiatrist there put me back on anti-depressants.

Still I was in the funk for a month more. I think what really got me out was going for long walks everyday. For an hour minimum. Seriously, I think sweating it out really has its benefits. I'm now taking 10 mg daily, and when I think about stopping it, the anxiety takes over. :)

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#33

Post by DanBC »

biturd wrote: post #20
facetube wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm. The part that's really telling IMO is that a lot of the withdrawal symptoms are not at all related to depression: they're dizziness, vertigo, and strange electrical feelings in your head – not symptoms of depression or relapse. Minimally reinforcing in terms of "drug liking" or "wanting to take more" in my experience, but there is definitely profound physical dependence.

Anyone who tells you anti-depressants are not habit forming is a rep for a pharma co. that has not been sued to change their stance on that statement yet.

Habit forming - addiction - tends to include tolerance (doesn't exist for anti depressants), pre-occupation (doesn't exist), drug seeking and holding (doesn't exist).

There are problems with anti depressants being over prescribed and misprescribed to people who should have had a talking therapy, and they are difficult for some people to stop, but calling them hanit forming is incorrect.

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#34

Post by DanBC »

biturd wrote: post #18
pc2g4d wrote: post #2

There's a disconnect between what the meta-analysed randomized clinical trials are saying about antidepressants (that they are at best minimally effective relative to placebo) and what relapse rates suggest (that people relapse when withdrawn from antidepressants because the antidepressant was effectively treating the underlying depression). This conflict is resolved when antidepressants are acknowledged as addictive…

I suspect you need not go that slow. I am NOT a Dr., but have talked at length with mine about this. I won't go into specifics or detail as people need to talk to their Dr.s about these methods. All meds have a half life, your taper rate will be based on that and your personal metabolism rate, which can and almost always is altered by the meds themselves. Further confused that a huge percentage of people who suffer d…

> Further confused that a huge percentage of people who suffer depression need no meds and instead need a thyroid test

You can't say things like "huge percentage" without citation.

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#35

Post by jfoutz »

DanBC wrote: post #34
biturd wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you need not go that slow. I am NOT a Dr., but have talked at length with mine about this. I won't go into specifics or detail as people need to talk to their Dr.s about these methods. All meds have a half life, your taper rate will be based on that and your personal metabolism rate, which can and almost always is altered by the meds themselves. Further confused that a huge percentage of people who suffer d…

> Further confused that a huge percentage of people who suffer depression need no meds and instead need a thyroid test You can't say things like "huge percentage" without citation.

10% of the us population on antidepressants, even 1% is 350,000 people...

According to this [1] about 12 million people have a thyroid problem and don't know it. (maybe a bad source?)

Given there's no test for depression, and it's a pretty unreliable judgement call [2], it's a pretty reasonable claim.

[1] http://www.thyroid.org/media-main/about-hypothyroidism/ [2] http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/706714

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#36

Post by lololomg »

jackfrodo wrote: post #10
lololomg wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The annoying thing about (for example) SSRIs is that it's annoying to take accurate doses like that. My escitalopram comes in 5mg, 10mg and 20mg. If I want to slowly taper down from 20mg a day, I have to start chopping off bits from an already tiny pill every day for months on end. I can't just drop down to 15mg a day, it's too abrupt.

I'm on 20mg of escitalopram as well. If you don't mind me asking, why are you wanting to taper down? Is this recommended by your doctor?

No I don't want to taper down. I've tried that and decided that it's not worth it for me. I'll probably take them till the day I die. There's almost no side effects and I function so much better on them. Why stop?

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#38

Post by cat-dev-null »

biturd wrote: post #24
roghummal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google for "The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants" and click through there. Didn't work for me in 'incognito mode' but it did when running normally. YMMV.

I was totally unable to bypass it as well.

Same here. Tried Chrome and FF in regular mode, all extensions off.

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#39

Post by digi_owl »

arc_of_descent wrote: post #32
pc2g4d wrote: post #2

There's a disconnect between what the meta-analysed randomized clinical trials are saying about antidepressants (that they are at best minimally effective relative to placebo) and what relapse rates suggest (that people relapse when withdrawn from antidepressants because the antidepressant was effectively treating the underlying depression). This conflict is resolved when antidepressants are acknowledged as addictive…

I experienced this in mid 2014. I was feeling great and decided to stop taking anti-depressants. I was on 10 mg of an SSRI. Man, I fell into a well. I was depressed for 3 months. Couldn't get _any_ work done. Had a constant headache. I then checked myself into a hospital after 3 months for a full medical check up. Not surprisingly all the tests were fine. Finally the psychiatrist there put me back on anti-depressants…

Dunno about the sweating, but i think doing something physical allows part of the mind to focus on something rather than fluttering about.

It may well be that our stationary modernity and our hindbrain simply don't mix.

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#40

Post by ZeroGravitas »

biturd wrote: post #21
lololomg wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The annoying thing about (for example) SSRIs is that it's annoying to take accurate doses like that. My escitalopram comes in 5mg, 10mg and 20mg. If I want to slowly taper down from 20mg a day, I have to start chopping off bits from an already tiny pill every day for months on end. I can't just drop down to 15mg a day, it's too abrupt.

Worse, keep in mind that pill, broke perfect in half, will not have equal amounts of the active or inactive ingredients in each side. Further, if it is a generic, it doesn't even have to have the same mg amount of the active ingredient, only within a margin of something like 90%, which is huge when dealing with these types of meds.

Why does the error margin only apply to generic medicines? Surely all pills have the same manufacturing issues and legal tolerances?
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