Many People Taking Antidepressants Discover They Cannot Quit

A few important points:

1. Antidepressants can truly change people's lives. Not everyone's, and they're not the only treatment that works. Somehow this reporter tends to consistently overlook the clear evidence of benefit (I think this recent meta-analysis was posted on hn: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29477251)

2. Withdrawal symptoms are common if antidepressants are stopped abruptly - some of the folks who reported these symptoms originally have been favorite targets of Benedict Carey, ironically (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9396960). That's why docs encourage tapering antidepressants.

3. The article doesn't distinguish between this sort of short-term withdrawal (common), and longer-term problems with discontinuation (likely quite rare) - they're very very different phenomena.

4. In some cases, difficulty with discontinuing longer-term is a result of persistent depression and anxiety (or returning depression and anxiety). It's not polite to point this out.

5. It's hard to imagine the Times writing an article about the problem with statins being that, once you stop them, cholesterol increases again.

6. If there were substantial long-term risks associated with antidepressants, we would have seen them - and believe me, people have looked and are looking.

7. BUT - we /do/ need more research to understand long-term effects of antidepressant treatment; this absence of systematic long-term study is true for most meds, frankly, but that's no excuse. My question would be: Who pays for it? There's no shortage of investigators who would be delighted to study it. But try getting a foundation, or NIH, to support such a study.

/rant

Further, it should be obvious that dependency is a problem. If the medical profession thinks it's solved that problem by redefining words, I'd say state regulation is pretty appropriate step.

Except that's not how it works.

How it works is that SSRIs have been tested in trials, and are approved.

LSD isn't. When someone says "try LSD" (or psilocybin which seems the newest rage these days) it means they'd illegally acquire the drug (who know for sure what drug they bought? [EDIT: and who knows the dosage/strength of active substance(s)?]), and administer it recreationally without the aid of a professional.

SSRIs, in contrast, are clinically tested, legally acquired, and administered under the guidance of a professional.

> Antidepressants can also cause psychotic episodes, panic attacks, suicide, etc.

Yes, but these side effects are widely documented. There are more common side effects, btw. These are the extreme ones you mentioned, and also the most rare ones. Many side effects are temporary. And if you are suicidal, it is unlikely you get SSRIs prescribed. Unless you lie about that, of course, but if you lie to your MD you're on your own.

My recommendation is simple: seek professional help. If you don't want to take SSRIs, fair enough; your MD won't force you. Heck, they might even be reluctant to prescribe them. But professional help is much more than drugs. Think about CBT, mindfulness, under the guidance of professionals; not self-medicating new age hippies.

That's not the case (currently) for LSD, which will be of unknown quantity and unknown purity. It might not even be LSD.

LSD may be great, but telling people with a potentially fatal illness to just go try it is fantastically irresponsible.