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Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

madinamerica.com

11–20 of 163 posts

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#11
> The causes of my depression were environmental. I grew up in a very dysfunctional family in Minnesota. My parents were both alcoholics and depressed, and their dysfunction became my growth environment

This may be the case, and there may be corroborative evidence for such a conclusion that we are not told about.

But as presented, it's just a set of circumstances, presumably correlated. If both parents suffered depression, author might reasonably be supposed to have a strong genetic predisposition.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#12
post #3

How do you recover emotions without ever having been on antidepressants?

https://www.thecut.com/2016/04/what-it-s-like-to-wake-up-fro...

Autistic people were never thought to lack emotions, in fact many complain about feeling too intense emotions. The article is garbage.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2518049/

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2010.0022...

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#13

The only thing that seems to be universally true about mental health is that we’re all different, and someone else’s experiences rarely apply perfectly to your own. I put off getting on the meds for at least 15 years longer than I should have done because of stories like this. They have been life changing lot positive for me with almost no downsides. In addition, I’ve read more than one story like this where the pers…

In all fairness, though, these aren't isolated incidents. There seems to be some subgroup of the general population that suffers from SSRIs. That's what's interesting here -- what binds these people together as a group. In other words, brushing this aside as "just a bunch of individuals" isn't useful, nor is it satisfying anyone's intellectual curiosity.

> brushing this aside as "just a bunch of individuals" isn't useful

If it gets one person like me who was under the impression that SSRIs make you a zombie, to try them, then it’s useful.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#15

The only thing that seems to be universally true about mental health is that we’re all different, and someone else’s experiences rarely apply perfectly to your own. I put off getting on the meds for at least 15 years longer than I should have done because of stories like this. They have been life changing lot positive for me with almost no downsides. In addition, I’ve read more than one story like this where the pers…

Keep in mind that for many people taking drugs is:

a) not a choice they personally made (coercion by the school system or authorities or parents).

b) they were lied to about the effects and side effects.

c) they were prescribed 'off-label' which means essentially with no proven efficacy.

When you say "Experiment, find what works for you" keep in mind how offensive that is to people who feel they were lied/coerced into a taking drugs that in some cases ruined their lives.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#16

The only thing that seems to be universally true about mental health is that we’re all different, and someone else’s experiences rarely apply perfectly to your own. I put off getting on the meds for at least 15 years longer than I should have done because of stories like this. They have been life changing lot positive for me with almost no downsides. In addition, I’ve read more than one story like this where the pers…

It's just human nature, I guess. There's people from whom antidepressants don't work, and there's people from whom therapy doesn't work (unfortunately, those are not mutually exclusive). However, it seems to me that the individuals with the combination (antidepressants dont't work, therapy works) have a much easier time making an impacting narrative given our current intrinsic and social biases.

My advice to those suffering from depression/anxiety would be to do their research and decide which treatment method they prefer, and to reevaluate once in a while how it is working, keeping in mind that it's very easy to get into a 'bubble' and discard or discredit potential treatment options. No one, no matter how smart, is able to overcome biased thinking.

In my opinion, there are only a few options that have substantial evidence going for them (by the so-called mainstream science): various SSRIs, combinations and uncommon antidepressants, cognitive-behavior therapy and mindfulness-based therapy. One should balance exploitation (taking whatever one thinks works better at a given moment) and exploration (taking one option that one hasn't tried yet) to maximize the chances of successful treatment.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#17
It took me about a year to get to the point the author describes where I felt nothing and didn't care whether I lived or died. I wasn't suicidal--at last I don't think I was--but I was rapidly approaching that point. I was so desperate, I let the doctor put me on benzodiazepines for anxiety even though I knew from previous experience that I would not only become dependent but addicted. After seven years of that, I had enough and stopped seeing all doctors. I weaned myself off the benzos as no doctor I saw even knew how to do it nor did they want to. It wasn't as hard as I thought. After I was off that, the hard part started. Over the course of years I learned how to deal with life again. Eventually I took up running, my own meditation equivalent and soccer. Slowly things improved. It's not always great and many of the original problems are still there but they are mostly manageable.

I'm lucky to be alive really. I try to remember all this suffering at the hands of doctors and the pharma industry that could have been avoided. I will have trust a so called mental health professional again, especially if they are drug pushers. The conflict of interest was readily apparent throughout the whole ordeal both when taking antidepressants and benzodiazepines. It's funny how we demonize some drug dealers while having insurance coverage for others. And all this without a single shred of proof that these medicines work, that there is even such a thing as a chemical imbalance. Because there isn't. If this is what mental health doctors call facts, the entire establishment has failed and derailed into nothing more than making humongous profits from getting people addicted to the drugs they push. It's fucking disgusting.

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#18
From past experience, about four months after I've tapered off anti-depressants I'll want to die. It'll take about a year to recover once I'm back on them.

But that's me. What works for me may not work for you. Unfortunately, a lot of it is trail and error, along with a lot of hard work, to figure out what is the best treatment for each individual. It sucks that this is the case.

At I wrote once upon a time[1]: "There is no silver bullet. Pragmatism trumps opinion. If, and I stress, if what you are doing is working for you, then I wish you good fortune, and would never tell you you're doing it the wrong way."

[1] https://dhubris.livejournal.com/14447.html

Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

#20

The only thing that seems to be universally true about mental health is that we’re all different, and someone else’s experiences rarely apply perfectly to your own. I put off getting on the meds for at least 15 years longer than I should have done because of stories like this. They have been life changing lot positive for me with almost no downsides. In addition, I’ve read more than one story like this where the pers…

Out of interest, how long have you been taking them for? I've heard lots of stories of fantastic short-term benefits, but not very many (in fact, not any that I can think of) where they continued to work long term. I'm not saying they can't work long term, in fact I guess that's why I'm asking, to see whether you are or know of examples where they have worked out long term.
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