This article is absolute bullshit and quite frankly dangerous. It seems to me this woman was emotionally vulnerable and taken in by a snake oil huckster masquerading as a doctor. > Shortly after I started seeing him, my new doctor had me read the book Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker. Robert Whitaker's theses in that book have repeatedly been scientifically disproven. It's anti-science drivel. > The pharmace…
I am not agreeing or disagreeing with anything the author said, nor any references she makes to books or otherwise, however that's such a shallow/basic view of the brain you're putting forward as a counter-point. The brain and physical-mental-emotional-spiritual body are far more complex than a single physical lever being pulled and a single affect happening; neurotransmitters are the transaction layer, the currency,…
Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants
121–130 of 163 posts
Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants
#122The 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…
Hey if we’re offering sample sizes of one, SSRIs make me sleepy and unmotivated—nearly the opposite of a helpful effect. I’ve also heard quite a few complaints from women friends about weight gain. Sexual side effects are common. For me, at least, SSRI medication was and remains to be a distraction from mental health treatment. I also have plenty of rage at big pharma, but that’s more around enabling bad therapists t…
Consider the possibility that you have had bad doctors diagnosing and prescribing for you. Also, there are a lot of therapists that don't (can't) prescribe, maybe it's a good idea to seek help in that direction?
Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Robert Whitaker's theses in that book have repeatedly been scientifically disproven. The book doesn't even have a thesis. Good job not even reading enough of the Wikipedia article to plausibly pretend to have read it. Also, did you even read the link you posted? It says exactly the opposite of what you're claiming it says. The conclusion is literally, "Simple biochemical theories that link low levels of serotonin w…
Hasn't it been decades since a pure serotonin theory was tenable?
Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not agreeing or disagreeing with anything the author said, nor any references she makes to books or otherwise, however that's such a shallow/basic view of the brain you're putting forward as a counter-point. The brain and physical-mental-emotional-spiritual body are far more complex than a single physical lever being pulled and a single affect happening; neurotransmitters are the transaction layer, the currency,…
I don't think an idea of depression that's based on anecdote and opinion is deeper than the mainstream account - which is limited ('shallow') because of the complexities of brain function you've mentioned. The fact is, for the vast majority of depressed people (including myself), anti-depressants work. For some people, they don't. Granted, the healthcare system is as fucked as any other system in our society, but the…
Also, do you realize you just gave a very short, one-liner anecdote - "The fact is, for the vast majority of depressed people (including myself), anti-depressants work." - while calling my long post, an anecdote? Interesting to say the least.
I'm curious, if you're open and willing to share, what else you tried relating to helping depression prior to trying medication - and what life circumstances were you in or had happened previously?
Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Which basically says that when we deplete the body of certain neurotransmitters, people get depressed Your statement represents a logical fallacy. I can also prove that depleting a car of gasoline causes it not to run, but fixing the fuel situation won't make all non-running cars functional. Just look at the more recent research that shows a connection between our microbiome and mood disorders to see that depressio…
It does seems as though SSRIs shouldn't be used as first-line therapy. They are powerful drugs that alter brain chemistry in ways that aren't properly understood. There are a number of low-hanging fruit which can be tried first, such as increased exposure to sunlight, exercise, change in diet, meditation, CBT and so on. But if all of these fail, an SSRI is definitely worth trying - they do work for some people.
Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Weaning off Venlaflaxine was absolute hell until I started taking Prozac as a bridge. It still wasn’t great, but it was a fraction of its previous awfulness. Took me about nine months to wean off venlaflaxine, started the Prozac bridge in the middle and grateful that I eventually used the bridge. Feeling better now. Good luck to you.
I went through the above journey as well and for me it was not worth it. Psychotherapy combined with meditation was a far better treatment and thus why I am hostile to any suggestions of medication from my psych. I simply don't trust the drugs, at all, anymore.
It is going to take effort, either way. There's no magic stick which can be waved to fix the issues at hand.
Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants
#127After almost 25 years of taking antidepressants, I had no emotion left whatsoever. I felt dead and wanted to be dead. I wonder how to understand this. If you have no emotions, can you still want something? Why would you want to die? I tend to understand this sentence in a way that means she was suffering. But isn't suffering the same as experiencing negative emotions? Or is this supposed to mean that she had no good…
there is just endless work, endless things that need to be done to keep yourself alive
and why do you bother when the reward is just more endless days like today? nothing to live for, nothing to care about, no energy to do anything but just sit around watching your body slowly fall apart
fighting against entropy is constant work and actually giving a shit about anything helps give you a reason to put in that work
and by "work" i don't just mean "your day job", I also mean things like "getting out of bed" or "feeding yourself" or "doing anything at all interesting"
Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you believe she is lying about doing much better after quitting her meds and trying other treatments such as meditation and group therapy, the article is not complete bullshit. That being said, I would not be surprised if there is truth to what you said about that book.
> Unless you believe she is lying about doing much better after quitting her meds This is an unscientific and inaccurate. The placebo and nocebo affects are real with actual health effects. Sometimes drugs don't make it to market because they have positive effects less effective than placebo.
Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am quoting from your link: "The serotonin hypothesis of depression has not been clearly substantiated. Indeed, dogged by unreliable clinical biochemical findings and the difficulty of relating changes in serotonin activity to mood state, the serotonin hypothesis eventually achieved “conspiracy theory” status, whose avowed purpose was to enable industry to market selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to a…
Johann Hari covers a lot of the history of antidepressants in "Lost Connections." Per the studies he covers in the book, most of the benefits are placebo effect. The remainder is somewhat of a mystery. Whether you give someone a medication that increases the level of serotonin in their system (i.e. an SSRI), or that decreases the level of serotonin, the effect will the be same. Replace the drugs targeting serotonin w…
Re: Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not agreeing or disagreeing with anything the author said, nor any references she makes to books or otherwise, however that's such a shallow/basic view of the brain you're putting forward as a counter-point. The brain and physical-mental-emotional-spiritual body are far more complex than a single physical lever being pulled and a single affect happening; neurotransmitters are the transaction layer, the currency,…
Would you be able to share how you were able to solve your problem and what the actually underlying cause was? Just a brief overview. I’m currently on SSRIs and they actually do help me sleep, but it’s not really helping with the underlying problems. As for SSRIs they are transformative for some people, and science doesn’t really understand the mechanism. They seem to think that there are secondary effects that are t…
I can say that there are non-medicative practices, along with diagnostic tools available to show concrete evidence relating to showing problems, that are transformative. The difficulty can be that if certain issues are not dealt with in parallel, or in a proper order may prevent/limit/block another therapy/practice/treatment from being beneficial/giving permanent improvement - that otherwise would be beneficial.
1) There's removing agitations from your physical body - in part, starting by getting a food sensitivity test (food panel) to check for up 184 foods that your body may be negatively responding to; also cutting out certain foods that may not show on these tests but may greatly impact you - like do you eat wheat or potato (sweet potato is fine)? Likewise, vitamin D3 liquid form is also good to take, as most of us are lacking it - 5000 to 8000 UI is good for most people, taking an initial 15-20k UI per day for a few days to load up; vitamin D3 is a steroid.
2) You/everyone should also get their hearing checked for imbalances, which can be used as a diagnostic tool to know what is going on; the brain/mind is a system of homeostasis, so it should be able to balance out to hear frequencies at even decibel levels in both ears. There's a sound therapy you can then do to unlock these behaviours, developmental blocks/delays - and resulting imbalances in sensory systems and how that can impact a person and their thinking/behaviours; this can also unlock and allow other sensory to balance out, that may be hyper- or hypo-sensitive. I know on the surface it can be difficult to believe that a sound therapy (listening to specially modified sound/the way its output) could be "magical" or so transformative, however I have my own personal experiences with such - and observing others rapid improvements. There is research as well.
3) Likewise, there's breaking down any ego mind coping mechanisms that may have solidified deeply over your lifetime - since childhood that could be causing a depressed state, or anxious, or other; ego dissolution is another term being used for this, which can be achieved in a few ways, some ways less or more rapid than others - like Ayahuasca ceremonies.
Relating specifically to sleep, it could be any amount of the above 3 influencing/impacting it enough to cause problems, or it could something in your living situation and environment as well - consumption of caffeine (stimulant) or alcohol/weed (depressants), it could be too much noise (or you're hypersensitive currently) - it could be a buildup of emotional . It could be too much energy built-up by not getting enough movement during the day or a few hours before bed.
It could be a weight issue as well or something like sleep apnea (which could be caused by or worsened by any of the above). It could be that you're trying to fall asleep when your body doesn't naturally want you to fall asleep, and then pressures from your day-to-day life of when you're expected/expecting to be awake are the problem/difficulty; the Ayurvedic clock can be interesting to look into to learn about these cycles better.
Also to point out that different medications may interfere with allowing a system to reach its normal, non-dis-eased and balanced state, once trying these treatments/practices. For Ayahuasca ceremonies for example, you shouldn't be on certain medications for at least 24-48 hours before the ceremony - different shamans have different guidelines they follow - otherwise it can be unsafe. If you eat wheat regularly, you may actually be addicted to wheat, which may be difficult to stop eating - otherwise you'll get more and more agitated because of withdrawal (another specific reason why you may have trouble falling asleep); Ayahuasca is showing to be good at breaking addictions.
Regarding your last sentence, from my experience the majority of doctors are terrible at critical thinking. I realized they are selected primarily for their memorization skills via testing, and not critical thinking. Indoctrination of old, stagnant knowledge via current academic systems, and human error are the crux of the problem.
I realized I didn't actually mention underlying problems I encountered. As I child I would have been considered to have Asperger's - however I never was formally diagnosed, it wasn't really a thing back then. I was hypersensitive - though I didn't realize it at the time - it was only after medications caused me to become severely hypersensitive to sound (hyperacusis) that I realized sound was an issue. It turned out I had developed a hearing imbalance due to painful ear infections when I was a child - primarily in my right ear; it's not the hearing imbalance itself that is the problem, it's a tool to show signs of function. Likewise, when I was 5 or 6 years old I had an painful injury to my right big toe pad - which later on I realized my ego mind had created a coping mechanism to block me from that pain and/or from the emotion of the pain, and then my development continued abnormally with that block; until I did a number of Ayahuasca ceremonies which broke down my ego mind and its coping mechanism, reintroducing me to intolerable levels of pain from many sources. Through trying different healing practices I had been doing elimination diets relating to food, and eventually did food sensitivity testing, allowing me to refine and remove what foods I could eat - and by removing all of those foods, I would feel much better, and then introducing just one again allowed the contrast for me to realize just how much pain it was causing me in my GI tract. Acupuncture was another way to get energy flowing again properly. Yoga was another way getting my body healthier, of developing self-awareness by putting pressure on the systems that signal pain and such. I'm probably missing a few things, a bit tired now from writing. I should include the tipping point related to physical pain, and that lead me eventually to exploring and finding Ayahuasca ceremonies, is that 5+ years ago - the pain from LASIK eye surgery really fucked up my nervous system: a strong tension started down the right side of my neck, and my balance on the right side became notably worse; I had been practicing yoga for 5 or 6 years by that point, so I was very familiar with single-legged balance postures.