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The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

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Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#41

Post by narsil »

jackfrodo wrote: post #11

Anyone know how to get around the paywall?

This seemed to work for me:

    curl -H "User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.2; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)" http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-mystery-of-when-to-stop-antidepressants-1457377316 | tee file.html
(changing the user-agent slightly on each attempt)

Used https://www.npmjs.com/package/http-server to start a local webserver to view the file for CORS purposes.

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#42

Post by tallanvor »

pc2g4d wrote: post #2

There's a disconnect between what the meta-analysed randomized clinical trials are saying about antidepressants (that they are at best minimally effective relative to placebo) and what relapse rates suggest (that people relapse when withdrawn from antidepressants because the antidepressant was effectively treating the underlying depression). This conflict is resolved when antidepressants are acknowledged as addictive…

Most people who get depressed get through it without any special intervention, while some of us require a period of time on medication and/or counseling. But we still don't know enough about depression to figure out who will respond best with medication vs counseling, or for how long treatment will be required. That's one of the reasons for tapering - to give you time to adjust to the lower dosage, both in terms of letting your body adjust to the biochemical changes, but also give you a chance to gauge how you're doing emotionally and decide whether to continue tapering, stay where you are, or even go back up to a previous dose.

It sounds more like you weren't at a point where you could manage to get off the medication completely, and maybe you should have stayed at either your original dose, or one of the steps along the way for a while.

But - and this is the key - if you are working with your doctor, and you're both comfortable with the plan you've come up with, then that's what you should do.

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#43

Post by philjohn »

DigitalJack wrote: post #30
biturd wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect you need not go that slow. I am NOT a Dr., but have talked at length with mine about this. I won't go into specifics or detail as people need to talk to their Dr.s about these methods. All meds have a half life, your taper rate will be based on that and your personal metabolism rate, which can and almost always is altered by the meds themselves. Further confused that a huge percentage of people who suffer d…

effexor, aka venlafaxine, gave me some amazingly horrible vertigo if I missed more than 1 dose in a row. I was off antidepressants for about 2 years, and then I was hit with severe depression. I'm on the generic for paxil now, and it has made a huge difference. The impact was a night and day contrast.

Someone I know who took it said they got what they could only describe as "head shocks" - the effect of small pulses of electricity flowing through their brain during withdrawal.

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#45

Post by majewsky »

erikw wrote: post #8
pc2g4d wrote: post #2

There's a disconnect between what the meta-analysed randomized clinical trials are saying about antidepressants (that they are at best minimally effective relative to placebo) and what relapse rates suggest (that people relapse when withdrawn from antidepressants because the antidepressant was effectively treating the underlying depression). This conflict is resolved when antidepressants are acknowledged as addictive…

Interesting customer retention scheme Big Pharma has come up with. Find a pool of folks at risk for suicide, and then get them addicted to expensive chemicals that will exacerbate suicidal ideation if they try to quit. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/ "The FDA requires two adequately conducted clinical trials showing a significant difference between drug and placebo. But there is a loophole: There…

That's why we need mandatory pre-registration and publication for trials: You have to announce in advance when you're doing a trial, and you have to publish the results afterwards, so that you can't cherry-pick the ones you like.

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#46

Post by Jasamba »

stevedonovan wrote: post #16
seibelj wrote: post #7

Lexapro (Escitalopram) saved my life. I don't care what any meta-analysis says: years of diet, exercise, and meditation did 5% of what 1 month of Lexapro did for me. I will take it until I die.

Myself likewise. I don't wish to revisit the pit and wallow through the cognitive fog. An interesting aside: why do users of antidepressants feel the need to reduce their dose? It's a benign addiction, like moderate caffeine dependency. One reason is that there _is_ a trade-off; these drugs make us a little dull and less interesting to ourselves.

Just the nagging feeling that this is not really you but a 'drug' induced state. In any case, I'm generally paranoid of medications given the frequency of hidden side effects that aren't revealed/discovered years later and the general evilness of the pharma industry. Down from 100mg to 25mg now, I've constantly been trying to find a way to replace it with more 'natural' things like meditation, reformulation of stressful situations. That being said, the effect of the SSRI's was like day/night for me, and I would recommend anyone who's been suffering for depression to atleast give it a go with the caveats in mind.

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#48

Post by gusfoo »

erikw wrote: post #8
pc2g4d wrote: post #2

There's a disconnect between what the meta-analysed randomized clinical trials are saying about antidepressants (that they are at best minimally effective relative to placebo) and what relapse rates suggest (that people relapse when withdrawn from antidepressants because the antidepressant was effectively treating the underlying depression). This conflict is resolved when antidepressants are acknowledged as addictive…

Interesting customer retention scheme Big Pharma has come up with. Find a pool of folks at risk for suicide, and then get them addicted to expensive chemicals that will exacerbate suicidal ideation if they try to quit. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/ "The FDA requires two adequately conducted clinical trials showing a significant difference between drug and placebo. But there is a loophole: There…

> Interesting customer retention scheme Big Pharma has come up with.

Yes, keeping the customer alive is indeed good for business.

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#49

Post by x0 »

philjohn wrote: post #43
DigitalJack wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

effexor, aka venlafaxine, gave me some amazingly horrible vertigo if I missed more than 1 dose in a row. I was off antidepressants for about 2 years, and then I was hit with severe depression. I'm on the generic for paxil now, and it has made a huge difference. The impact was a night and day contrast.

Someone I know who took it said they got what they could only describe as "head shocks" - the effect of small pulses of electricity flowing through their brain during withdrawal.

Ah yes, those jolts of electricity. I got those for a month after escitalopram.

Re: The Mystery of When to Stop Antidepressants

#50

Post by Tiksi »

DanBC wrote: post #33
biturd wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who tells you anti-depressants are not habit forming is a rep for a pharma co. that has not been sued to change their stance on that statement yet.

Habit forming - addiction - tends to include tolerance (doesn't exist for anti depressants), pre-occupation (doesn't exist), drug seeking and holding (doesn't exist). There are problems with anti depressants being over prescribed and misprescribed to people who should have had a talking therapy, and they are difficult for some people to stop, but calling them hanit forming is incorrect.

Wouldn't the withdrawls qualify them as habit forming? Calling them extremely addicting would probably be inaccurate, but "There's a good chance you'll feel awful if you stop taking this" seems like it may encourage forming a habit.

Apparently there may be tolerance for antidepressants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antidepressant_treatment_tachy...

>ADT tachyphylaxis incorporates drug sensitivity as a potential causal factor for the decreased response. However, tolerance provides a more accurate explanation. While the exact cause of ADT tachyphylaxis in individual cases is unknown, drug tolerance is a more comprehensive model, as it includes mechanisms of pharmacodynamic tolerance, metabolic tolerance, and others.[7]

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