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The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs

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Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs

#121

Post by GlenTheMachine »

captainredbeard wrote: post #82
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #10

I 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…

For the sleep, try wearing blue light blocking glasses all day until you are able to sleep reliably. It sounds ridiculous but I read a study in the Journal of Bipolar Disorder a few years back (can't find a link right now) about this. I've given a pair to a friend suffering from a multi-day manic phase (with zero sleep) and it stopped it dead in the tracks, within six hours in this case. It makes you look a bit dorky…

I'm confused. My problem is not getting enough sunlight, and I was under the impression that blue light was what I needed. Why would blocking it help?

Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs

#122

Post by rincebrain »

fwip wrote: post #4
ctdonath wrote: post #2

Underdiscussed: 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.

People don't seem to grasp exactly how variable this can be, or that it's a very inaccurate guessing game to predict a priori how much disruption this can cause.

The best sources of data are your historical responses and those of your family members, and even then, it's really unreliable.

Historically, I have had extremely few side effects from any medication, cold turkey (unintentionally, except for v. small doses of v. safe meds) or tapered off, and I have unfortunately had occasion to try a large spread of psychopharmacology.

Some of those medications either did nothing for me from their primary/intended effect set, while they were extremely effective for family members - not just limited to psychiatric medications, but they do have a great deal of variability in response compared to some.

Some medications that work on me but have no obvious secondary effects than sometimes mild sedation (opioids) do nothing for some of my immediate family (positive or negative) or are extremely powerful on others.

Some medications that leave me with no positive or negative emotional responses to anything are extremely effective for some immediate family members and even worse for others.

Some medications that are strongly sedating for some of my family members (antihistamines) have never done anything useful for me.

Some medications (both in the ??RI classes and a couple of atypical ones) that are helpful or neutral for me induce manic or depressive episodes in family members.

This is a hard problem, and it's going to take a good amount of work and better data curation (e.g. not asking a patient what they took for how long and how well it worked by word of mouth as a primary source) before we get any better at guessing.

Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs

#124

Post by curious_fella_ »

iooi wrote: post #106
GlenTheMachine wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, nobody told me. I experienced the immediate effects of withdrawal when my stomach started tensing up for no good reason, and I started sweating. That was enough to convince me to stop with the cold withdrawal and start tapering. I did not know this could have been life threatening. That's... comforting...

Be very careful tapering off benzos, the withdrawals are more dangerous than that of heroin [1]. You should definitely get your doctor involved in this process. You might also want to read through this [2]. 8 months might not be enough time to taper off depending on the time and dosage you've been on. [1] https://qz.com/677980/opioids-arent-the-most-dangerous-drug-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine_…

Heroin withdrawal, while extremely shitty, is generally not life-threatening.

Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs

#125

Post by empath75 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #33
empath75 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on whether the depression is situational. People don't like to admit that sometimes people are sad because their situation, and not because of something inherent to themselves. Sadness -- even persistent sadness -- can sometimes be a healthy response to an unhealthy environment, that drives you to try and change your situation for the better. The problem is when the sadness becomes the crippling kind that pre…

>Sadness -- even persistent sadness -- can sometimes be a healthy response to an unhealthy environment, that drives you to try and change your situation for the better. Depression is sort of different than generic sadness as it DOES NOT drive you to improve your situation, due to the severe hopelessness it causes. It's the massive problem with depression, and why medication can be so helpful. Depression can cause you…

I don’t disagree. I think people are too often diagnosed with depression when they’re actually having a normal reaction to a bad situation, but I’m very familiar with the kind of depression that is long standing and seemingly unconnected with your current situation. I was just trying to give an example of how medication could only be needed temporarily.

Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs

#126

Post by [deleted] »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #21
azernik wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Mood stabilizer" is a quite accurate description of the usual function of the drug - in bipolar patients like me, it reduces the magnitude and stabilizes the period of mood swings. Mood stabilizers also tend to be anti-seizure meds, and have all kinds of off-label uses because of neurological phenomena we don't understand, but the label is a very useful one. Same for antidepressants - often the same drugs (especiall…

I think what the parent was trying to say was that "antibiotic" describes the drugs' method of action, while "antidepressant" describes the drugs' intended affect. > due to the ill-understood nature of the brain, I think this is exactly the problem. We have a bunch of drugs that seem to work, and we think we know how and why they work, but we're not able to directly measure the problem in those terms. If someone has…

[deleted]

Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs

#127

Post by chaseha »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #101
Gibbon1 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Depression is a chemical imbalance That is literally drug company marketing propaganda.

So, human bodies are perfectly self-regulating in brain chemistry?

The article speaks to how this phrase is a shortcut that doesn't get to the fact that mental health issues like depression can have a range of factors behind them including genetics and environmental factors

Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs

#128

Post by captainredbeard »

potta_coffee wrote: post #92
captainredbeard wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the sleep, try wearing blue light blocking glasses all day until you are able to sleep reliably. It sounds ridiculous but I read a study in the Journal of Bipolar Disorder a few years back (can't find a link right now) about this. I've given a pair to a friend suffering from a multi-day manic phase (with zero sleep) and it stopped it dead in the tracks, within six hours in this case. It makes you look a bit dorky…

Thanks, you prompted me to buy some glasses and try this.

They’re life changing!

Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs

#129

Post by captainredbeard »

GlenTheMachine wrote: post #10

I 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…

This is a great resource for tapering off:

https://willhall.net/comingoffmeds/

I consider it the bible.

Re: The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs

#130

Post by captainredbeard »

JamesBarney wrote: post #58
com2kid wrote: post #9

I 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…

> Medication cannot make people happy. (Well at least not the legal drugs, and the illegal ones won't work long term!) They can only create the possibility for happiness for those who need some extra help. There are phase 3 randomized controlled trials that prove differently.

Let’s not forget that 8% of SSRI users end up having an SSRI-induced [hypo]manic episode. It’s a hidden epidemic.

Additionally, there are few longitudinal studies that show antidepressants as being effective and reasonably side effect free.

Worse, neuroleptics leave the majority of long term users with lifelong tics, tremors, rigidity, and other Parkinson’s style symptoms.

But yeah, there’s a study showing they make people happy with a slightly better efficacy than placebo.

Playing with fire has its risks. Listen to the burned ones, it’s more complicated than a whitepaper.

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