Posted by bleauberry on May 18, 2012, at 8:22:55
In reply to Post-ssri depression (6 months after quitting), posted by joe schmoe on May 17, 2012, at 7:01:54
It sounds to me like you want to figure out how to make things work without chemicals and that's cool. You'll just have to gear up for some experimenting and web surfing. To save some time, top of the list includes a plant called Rhodiola Rosea. St Johns' Wort would be the most popular choice obviously, but the more unknown rhodiola in my opinion is better all around and much faster. It has a multitude of health/illness benefits aside from its mood boosting potential.
Other things to read about would include magnesium malate, magnesium glycinate, B12, B6, niacinimide, 5htp, DL-phenylalanine. And there are plenty of other things to choose from but those would be the strongest starting points in my opinion.
Hey, I was a basket case following many years of psych med use and following failed ECT, but I really didn't want to go back to meds because I knew that was a road that goes nowhere, sooner or later. I really wanted to just sort of fix or support whatever was broken because that would get rid of the symptoms instead of just masking them while the problem continues to get worse under the surface over time.
Don't get me wrong, I am not in remission, but I can say I function fairly well. A couple times a month I might have what I call crisis days, where I need an emergency dose of ritalin and/or vicadin (they work decent and fast for me) to get me over the hump. Other people have had better success than me in switching to biological treatments, but the point is many people do it for the exact same reasons as you and even if their lives aren't perfect they are better than with the meds. As always, it is a benefit/risk balancing act. In your case, the side effeccts outweigh the benefits so you want to find another way. I'm just saying, it can and is done.
But what if someone needs a chemical for the rest of their lives? Well, it might be that for that particular person that is what they perceive to be their best choice. Maybe not a perfect choice, but for them there isn't a better one. That said, no one could possibly know if they need a med longterm unless they have exhausted a good deal of the biological approaches first.
So, over time I looked up a lot of things on the web and tried a lot of supplements. The ones I found were the best for depression and anxiety, in my case, were meds or herbs used in the treatment of lyme disease. For someone else, it may be meds/herbs for heavy metals or for detoxification. For someone else, an overhaul of food choices does the trick. Maybe someone like you who did ok with a pure serotonin med like celexa could duplicate that with a simple low dose 5htp or tryptophan strategy.
The post-ssri thing.....yeah, hey this has just been starting to show up in the last few years and I don't think the consensus crowd is very aware of it yet. But there have been plenty of reports about it here and other forums and blogs, so we know there is something real going on. It seems to present itself in weird ways such as a stubborn depression that is different from the original one, or anxiety that never existed before, or super sensitivity to the effects and side effects of meds or herbs....1/4 of a smallest dose feels real powerful but you used to take a full dose like it was nothing, a med that used to work ok now on the second or third try seems to make depression much worse instead. Bizarre stuff. I don't know what kind of longterm changes happen when the serotonin reuptake site is blocked for a long time by meds, but clearly something undesirable happens, at least with a certain percentage of people but not everyone.
> I stopped Viibryd back at the end of November (about six months ago) and decided to go off AD's for awhile since I wanted to lose some weight and get some sexual sensation back. Well I have lost a lot of weight and am no longer overweight, but, as has happened before when I quit a ssri (Celexa), I am starting to feel a lot of depression (and anxiety, thanks to my job, despite being on clonazepam for social anxiety).
>
> What I am wondering is if this is some medium-term post-ssri rebound effect that will eventually improve if I can stick it out, or whether it is me returning to my natural state.
>
> Has anyone else found they were fine for months after quitting an ssri (once withdrawal symptoms subsided of course), but then started slipping back into depression? Did it pass eventually, or did you have to go back on the ssri?
>
> Wondering if I should try to wait six more months and see if it improves, or whether I need to go back on an AD to improve my unpleasant emotional state, despite the side effects of AD's, which I hate.
poster:bleauberry
thread:1018092
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120508/msgs/1018169.html