Posted by barbaracat on August 21, 2005, at 20:14:52 [reposted on August 22, 2005, at 21:46:35 | original URL]
In reply to Re: Prozac Withdrawal - need advice - going off meds, posted by velodog2 on August 21, 2005, at 18:59:55
Whatever your reasons for wanting to quit a med, and there are as many philosophical as well as medical, there are two absolutes for which there are no exceptions: If you cold turkey an SSRI you will feel much worse than you can imagine. It will be like not putting oil in your car. You'll get along fine for a few weeks, then you'll start screaching and smoking and frying up. Until that oil gets replenished you should just park it. Rule no 2 is, just as you would not want to drive from Miami to Denver in that car, you do not want to make any life changing difficult decisions while your brain's 'oil reserves' are essentially depleted.
Everything will get on your nerves more intensely ,paranoia will reign, you'll also start looking and acting a little weird and intense and people will react to that and you'll get more irritable and paranoid. The kids that shot up their classmates? I believe it was every single one that abruptly stopped an SSRI.
As far as resenting that a pill would determine your happiness, this is a worthy philosophical issue - what would you be like without the pill? If you could truly get it out of your system and your neurochemistry back to ground zero, what are your chances of unadulterated happiness without the false overlay of medication?
If that's your main reason (forget your partner - it's really none of his business and if he doesn't like it, let him go though the mess of leaving, not you in your sensitized state), realize you're going to go through hell and back as your chemistry stabilizes and you will lose the ability to make an objective judgement about your state of mind.
What generally happens is that going cold turkey is usually so hard, so stressful, so provoking rage and despair because you're without your chemical reserves that you tend to make a royal mess out of your life during that time. You get sick from stress, you lose your job, you say and do things from irritability and paranoia. You can't pay your bills, you lose your friends. You create the conditions that would make anyone depressed. That's why people take it reeaalll slow and have plenty of support on hand for the rough times.
Your other question is the clincher. How long should it take? No one really knows. My feeling is that if it's just a matter of upregulating receptors and allowing for repair of neuronal damage, you should be at ground zero in about 6 months after the last pill. I don't see why it would take any longer than that, structurally speaking. Cells have turnover rates. They heal, they regroup. So, if it takes 6 months to stop your last pill (not uncommon), 6 months later you can begin accurately judging if from that point you're starting to feel cleared out and happier or if the misery is unrelenting.
Many of us want to be without meds but just don't know how, have not developed the life or social skills, are naturally too sensitive for this harsh world. I don't know of anyone who has ever quit and stayed quit. People seem to learn the proper skills while they're on the meds then forget them once they're off - a different personality takes over.
I don't think it's a matter a brain damage. I think we just revert back to those old habits seen out of the old lenses. Sometimes we simply grow past the old pains and have grown beyond the reasons we originally took the meds. I'm talking both psychological and neurochemical. Time can make a lot of difference hormonally. However, there are conditions that with time will intensify with or without drugs. My bipolar condition was increasing to becoming a constant in my life prior to going on lithium, so that's one example of where things got worse without drugs.
But there will be an adjustment, no matter what. So, go slow and maybe you do need to try something different, or an augmentor. Just don't cold turkey it. - Barbara
>
> You also said:
> > I'd like to say that your depression is returning because your receptors have not had time to upregulate yet after only 4 weeks. You're most definitely in withdrawal which is why you're feeling the depression and why it's worse.
>
> So my next question would be how long before I may be able to guess at the first answers? How long before the chemistry could be said to have stabilized?
>
> It's not simple to say why I wanted to get off this stuff. I've never been comfortable with the idea that my happiness is simply a matter of proper dosage of a drug. My partner is exacerbating the situation by complaining of my mood swings and claiming that he 'can tell' when I've missed a dose, or tried to come off it in the past, although he doesn't in fact know if or when I've done those things. And so I spend more time worrying about whether I should be taking the daily instead of the weekly prozac, or maybe increasing the dosage, or switching to another ssri instead of thinking about should I be looking for a new job, or a new house, or a new partner ;-)? And the fact that I having been trying to make those decisions (the first two at least, the third is becoming a question now) is a factor as well. I don't seem to be able to get anywhere with the decision. I mean these questions are all about happiness right? Maybe I should just increase my dosage and stay right where I am. It just makes these things too complicated and I want it out of my life!
poster:barbaracat
thread:545377
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/wdrawl/20050822/msgs/545382.html