This terrifies me. I've been trying to get up the nerve to talk to my doctor about my mental health for years now. I've been depressed on and off for a large portion of my life. I've always been really wary of pills though and reading things like this makes me worry even more. I wonder if the efficacy is actually there or if the withdrawal is worth it.
The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs
11–20 of 184 posts
Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs
#12I generally am supportive of people seeking psychiatric treatment, but wow, this woman's case seems, in retrospect, rather mismanaged. It is like her doctors tried to medicate away an epiphany. Realizing that "the glittering balls and designer clothing has no real underlying substance" and being depressed that one's life is limited to such things, is not a cause for medication. It sounds like she was struggling to be…
Psychiatry should not be front-line treatment for most people. End of story.
Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs
#13I am on Klonopin and Remeron. My diagnosis is anxiety, but really it's insomnia. I had a horrible, multiple-year episode of insomnia that started in my early thirties. For about three years I got maybe one night a week of decent sleep. I was mentally and emotionally out of it; I'm kind of surprised I still have a job after that. A few years in, I found a psychiatrist who was willing to experiment and we discovered th…
>Knowing that I have medications available to me that can help me get to sleep is enough that I think I don't actually need the medications any more.
Honest question: Have you ever considered that your insomnia was psychosomatic and, through your doctors involvement in for-profit sales of pharmaceuticals, socially re-inforced?
Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs
#14I am on Klonopin and Remeron. My diagnosis is anxiety, but really it's insomnia. I had a horrible, multiple-year episode of insomnia that started in my early thirties. For about three years I got maybe one night a week of decent sleep. I was mentally and emotionally out of it; I'm kind of surprised I still have a job after that. A few years in, I found a psychiatrist who was willing to experiment and we discovered th…
Any idea what triggered the insomnia?
Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs
#15Does depression go away after a while if taking meds? Or does the person having depression need to take meds for the rest of his/her life to avoid relapsing?
This varies from person to person. As it's been explained to me, some people are indeed "lifers", others use it temporarily (years, even, but not necessarily for the rest of his/her life). Meds alone generally don't make the depression "go away".
Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs
#16Underdiscussed: the horror of missing a couple doses of antidepressants. Being on such meds may work, keeping the patient stable. Nobody mentions that when a couple doses are missed, the result can be a week of anger & angst as resumed medication balances back out again - living hell not just for the patient, but for those around. Weaning off such meds is difficult, reducing doses by literally counting out & down ind…
I agree that it's under-discussed. Part of the reason seems to be that people have such variable reactions. I have friends who literally had to quarter their pills while tapering off of them, and I also have friends who were able to stop taking them cold turkey and felt fine in less than a week.
>I agree that it's under-discussed.
I think the reason its under-discussed is that there is a collective group-think which functions as overwhelming (to the individual) reinforcement: "there is no other way available to solve this problem than the mass sale and consumption of pharmaceuticals".
The moment someone proposes a non-pharmaceutical (read: profitable) solution to many of these ills, they are shut down by the group-think. This is under-discussed, imho, because in the context of social/peer pressure to conform to a very Western normative (consumerism), individual responsibility is shut down.
EDIT: and the downvotes demonstrate my point, because "everyone knows pharmaceuticals are the only solution" ...
Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs
#17Underdiscussed: the horror of missing a couple doses of antidepressants. Being on such meds may work, keeping the patient stable. Nobody mentions that when a couple doses are missed, the result can be a week of anger & angst as resumed medication balances back out again - living hell not just for the patient, but for those around. Weaning off such meds is difficult, reducing doses by literally counting out & down ind…
I agree that it's under-discussed. Part of the reason seems to be that people have such variable reactions. I have friends who literally had to quarter their pills while tapering off of them, and I also have friends who were able to stop taking them cold turkey and felt fine in less than a week.
> Part of the reason seems to be that people have such variable reactions.
I was prescribed Lexapro a few months ago, and while I don't have any plans to go off of it in the immediate future, I did have an encounter with unexpectedly discontinuing it a couple of months ago. I was planning on getting my prescription filled on a Friday, but forgot. I realized this at 12:30pm on Saturday, after the pharmacy had closed. I went without Lexapro for three days: Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (it was a holiday). During that time I lost a significant portion of my hearing of all things; things sounded muffled, as if I had pressure built up in my ears and needed to pop them, but I could easily pop them and it didn't improve. I was also very irritable and had "brain fog", but that wasn't unexpected and was manageable.
Tuesday my pharmacist said that he'd never heard of anyone complaining about hearing issues discontinuing Lexapro and to let him know if it didn't clear up. About three hours after taking it again, I noticed I was able to hear better, and by the next morning I was back to normal.
Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs
#18> Laura had always assumed that depression was caused by a precisely defined chemical imbalance, which her medications were designed to recalibrate. She began reading about the history of psychiatry and realized that this theory, promoted heavily by pharmaceutical companies, is not clearly supported by evidence.
This is the most harmful idea in psychiatry and it's pure marketing bullshit -- everyone knows it, but they still sell this to people.
Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs
#19I am on Klonopin and Remeron. My diagnosis is anxiety, but really it's insomnia. I had a horrible, multiple-year episode of insomnia that started in my early thirties. For about three years I got maybe one night a week of decent sleep. I was mentally and emotionally out of it; I'm kind of surprised I still have a job after that. A few years in, I found a psychiatrist who was willing to experiment and we discovered th…
Just so you know, because it sound like nobody told you... you really need to taper those drugs or the chance of seizure goes way up. It's not like other addictions, you can't just cold turkey benzos or alcohol if you've been using them daily for a long time. It can literally kill you, and you won't see it coming.
There's various schedules on how to do it, here's a good starting point: https://www.aafp.org/afp/2017/1101/p606.html
My personal rule is to never be taking benzos for more than 3 days in a row, to avoid being in a dangerous withdrawal situation.
Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs
#20I am on Klonopin and Remeron. My diagnosis is anxiety, but really it's insomnia. I had a horrible, multiple-year episode of insomnia that started in my early thirties. For about three years I got maybe one night a week of decent sleep. I was mentally and emotionally out of it; I'm kind of surprised I still have a job after that. A few years in, I found a psychiatrist who was willing to experiment and we discovered th…
Any idea what triggered the insomnia?
This is the most important question here. I hope OP has been able to address the original cause of the insomnia, lest it happen again.