111–120 of 131 posts
I have been on paxil(paroxetine) three separate times. Each was between six months and one year in duration. The first time, I was on a 10mg daily dose. I had quite a few issues when starting the medication the first time; however after a few weeks, I felt great. When I initially discontinued, I had the worst side effects I have ever experienced. Electric shocks in my neck and back of head, depression, mood swings, a…
Biggest effect from reducing my dose of fluoxetine was dreaming again. It's great.
I have experienced discontinuation effects from Paroxetine, Venlafaxine and Fluxoetine in the past, Paroxetine was by far the worst, but absolutely within the boundaries of what the doctor and the tab mentioned. With Paroxetine itself the worst effects would be "blackouts" when I would loose all my senses for a split second, just short enough that I would not fall if walking, but long enough that people would notice…
I've taken sertraline, venlafaxine, bupropion and fluoxetine. Fluoxetine is the only SSRI I experienced no withdrawal from. I was on a low dose (10-20mg) though, and it mostly worked (went from severe depression to mild/none). I have a standing prescription for this as a fallback, but haven't taken it in 3 years. I avoid taking it because of the sexual side effects. I like having orgasms. Bupropion triggered a seizur…
I had a very similar experience. Tried a couple of SSRIs prior to sertraline and had a manic episode shortly after starting it. I was up for about 3 days and drinking furiously. Felt like I was on coke. Immediately stopped once I realised what was happening but it was so gradual and I was manic so it had to be pointed out to me that I was flying.
The home page of the site hosting the webpage submitted here, "Mad in America: Science, Psychiatry, and Social Justice" looks to put a lot more emphasis on the social justice, as the authors published on the site define that, than on science in general or psychiatry in particular. This is more a site that advocates for a particular policy point of view than a site that neutrally reviews the latest methodologically ca…
But of course which methodologically careful research has been done of late is extremely agenda-driven and politicized, too! You can't launder your biases away by putting them behind the abstraction barrier of what the government or what drug companies are willing to fund. That's how you end up with p -hacking. Better to acknowledge that the reason people do science is to do things with science, not because they find…
More like, profit-driven. If we want to get better, we have to stop allowing a class of society to profit from the sickness. Pharmaceutical companies exist not to make anyones lives better - they exist to generate profit.
I'm highly suspicious of the drug-taking culture, as it attempts to justify the enslavement of the individual by way of supplanting their supposed mental-health problems with a very profitable subscription to a proprietary/patented/owned drug formula. I think it is very sad to read this HN article and listen to all the stories of folks who think they are improving their lives with this chemical dependency, and it is really tragic that drug-taking is such a cultural phenomenon that anyone who dares to rise above the field and say "hey, maybe we don't need to do this - maybe there is another way" gets cut down to serve as fodder for the rest of the poppies.
Its quite possible that we've all been swindled by our own hubris. Its happened before. The Romans had their lead pipes, the Victorians their laudanum, and we - "modern" society - have our Prozac and Zoloft. Dare to mention alternative means of lifting oneself out of the mire, and you will incur a great deal of wrath - such is the investment in the propaganda from the multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry in capturing the subject and making sure nobody dares think otherwise to their drug-delivery supply chains...
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I'm curious... you, and all other commenters who mentioned electric shocks... which I'd previously heard of as "brain zaps"... What difference would it make if the doctor had told you of that side effect before you started the drug? Imagine you have no idea of what brain zaps felt like. Would you have avoided the drug based on such a vague description? Can you describe the sensation? It's not painful, right? The sens…
An electric shock is really the best way to describe what it felt like to me. Imagine a sudden electric shock to the middle of your brain. It doesn't exactly hurt, but it is incredibly uncomfortable and jarring. It is like a momentary jolt of energy and caused me to feel pretty disoriented for the following few seconds. It is definitely (feels like, at least) a physical sensation as opposed to just sensory.
I had the same reaction after a couple of weeks of excessive use of ecstacy pills (unknown ingredients obviously, but it felt like it contained a very large dose of MDMA or perhaps MDA), albeit in a much milder form and only lasting for about a week. The first two weeks after I started taking Effexor I actually felt like I was constantly coming up on MDMA, the feeling tapered off shorty after and all I was left with was the horrible side effects. Worst drug I’ve ever used.
We think of doctors and medications as being scientific and precise. But it's more like just throwing some food coloring into a black garbage bag full of all sorts of stuff and shaking it up in hopes of getting it to get to a specific color... but not really being able to see the color through the bag. The drugs all have side-effects, different for each person who takes them. And often those side-effects are as bad a…
In Australia (or at least NSW), the health system doesn't know what to do with you. About 7 months ago I had a mental breakdown and experienced thoughts of suicide. When the health system found out, I had finished having the thoughts, and was at home trying to sleep, being supported by my loving family having been awake at the time for over 14 hours. I was ripped out of my bed by ambulance officers with police presen…
It's good that you had your family around you. The system is too big to understand you on a timely and personal level.
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You may or may not be more up to date on a particular illness, but you are the best authority on your specific case.
But you have your own bias. The amount of fuzz from your personal data can be huge. That's why I wish I could have objective monitors and not rely on sparse visits to the doctor when symptoms aren't here. One dared me to reproduce heart failure on the spot because there was some tension between me and him. It odd.
The effects of abruptly stopping SSRI (and later on SNRI) medications have been well-known since the 1980's. It's considered related to the widespread if individually variable distribution of serotonin receptors in the body. Having prescribed a ton of SSRI/SNRI meds since their introduction, and taken my share as well, it's a phenomenon I'm very familiar with. Called a "discontinuation syndrome", technically not the…