Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit

What's worse is that the longer you take certain psychiatric drugs, the greater the long-term damage it can possibly cause to almost disability. It's being between a rock and a hard place.

I've taken Abilify, Wellbutrin, Seroquel, and a number of other drugs. The biggest problem when you enter the psychiatric system is you go through pill roulette. You take a drug, try it, see what works, and keep trying till you find what works. Even worse is that I entered the system in high school which is a tumultuous developmental period.

One sad personal story is that a psychiatrist started me on a developmental drug. A drug that was approved for other problems but was "in development" for other uses. I tried it and it was worse than Seroquel. Seroquel, if I missed a dose, I couldn't sleep. For this new drug, if I missed a dose, I had a panic attack and if I took it, I would fall asleep. So if I was out too long, let's say traveling, I had to choose between a panic attack or falling asleep.

When I confronted my psychiatrist about this problem, instead of taking me off the drug, he prescribed me medication for panic attacks.

That's hardly the reason for why antidepressants cause what's known as "dependency." I don't think there is malice or nefarious nature to the state of drugs in psychiatry - it's moreso that almost all the drugs that have non-subtle effects, also come with dependency. And thus, doctors' want to prescribe something that has immediacy, because most patients will have doubt and abandonment of a treatment plan if it isn't strong enough to cause immediate change.

But I would agree that the field of psychiatry (not psychology which doesn't require a medical license) has it in their interest to say that antidepressants aren't _narcotics_. And they aren't. But the cruel thing is that the difference between a narcotic and a dependency-causing-drug is blurred.

For example, Wellbutrin is a norepinephrine aka noradrenaline agonist and reuptake inhibitor. It's a stimulant - to call it an antidepressant is a bit of an ongoing joke. If someone has no energy and lacks willpower, any stimulant will get them to do things they might not otherwise have done.

The reason Wellbutrin isn't considered a narcotic is mainly because being full of adrenaline is often a shitty experience - whereas being full of a 10%/90% adrenaline/dopamine mix is quite pleasurable (ADHD stimulants - amphetamines/phenidates.) But it's entirely unscientific to say that an antidepressant cannot be addictive to a person that likes the effects more than the average neurotypical person. Just google Wellbutin abuse and you'll find a ton of personal stories.

And then lets talk about dependency. Dependency is just a rebound effect by the body to adjust its endogenous feedback in order to find homeostasis again. It's why most drugs that have large immediate "gratifying" or noticable psychological effects, also come with a downregulation in the same areas by the brain and body. So when you stop taking the drug, your body is actually BELOW baseline and it will take quite a bit of time before you are back to baseline. In some cases of extreme use, the brain can be structurally changed and permanent damage can result. See "parkinsons from stimulant abuse" for a typical example.

Dependency and addiction only have a difference in a psychological way. The physical withdrawal and rebound effects are mutual. Don't be fooled when you are told that an antidepressant drug is not a "narcotic" and isn't habit forming. It is a lie.

The only psychological drugs that are truly therapeautic are upregulators like Cordyalis, known as Yan Hu Suo in Chinese medicine. It causes neurogenesis and upregulates dopamine. It is quite a beneficial drug to consume when withdrawing from any type of stimulant or dopamine agonist.

Seroquel is part of a family of drugs (antipsychotics) which have some of the worst long term adverse effects of all psychiatric drugs. Everything from tardive dyskenisia to enlargement of the ventricles of the brain are routinely observed over decades of use, and that’s not even mentioning adverse effects which appear almost immediately. In general though, these drugs have little or nothing to do with antidepressants, SSRI’s or anything most poeple will ever take.

Of course the adverse effects of psyshcosis and untreated psychotic illness are much worse, including homelessness and death. So while these drugs are undeniably difficult to live with, people who have been prescribed the family including Seroquel generally really need them to function. All of which is to say that the struggles of people on neuroleptic therapy are generally very different from what’s being discussed in the article here.

Same thing happened to me going off of Lexapro. I called it "the zaps".

Bupropion is marketed as Zyban as a smoking cessation aid meaning that people are coming down on it when they quit Zyban, after they quit smoking. I've done this, twice. I've also used Ritalin in the past. It works similar, and from my memory the coming down is also similar.