Topic: Fuck antidepressants.
started by: damien_s_lucifer
Posted by damien_s_lucifer on May 25 2002,22:29
Okay, there have now been one too many articles stating < SSRIs are no more effective than placebo. >So fuck it, I'm quitting. Made my first reduction in dose a week and a half ago... so far, so good. My brain already feels clearer.
Posted by Wiley on May 25 2002,23:17
Thanks for digging that up. I'm trying to get just about every girl I know off Prozac. They are all on the stuff only because they are sad when they don't have a boyfriend. HELLO ...that's fucking normal!! I hate doctors that will just perscribe anything to make a buck. I've always believed that if you activley change the parts of your life that you are not happy about then the rest will just fall into place. I know there are a lot of people in this forum who reley on such drugs and I'm not one to be the judge if they need it or not, but I can tell you that many of my friends don't ...they just need more positivity in their lives.
Posted by Bob_the_Cannibal on May 26 2002,00:31
| Quote (Wiley @ 25 May 2002,15:17) |
| They are all on the stuff only because they are sad when they don't have a boyfriend. |
Never fear, Canni is here, and he brought his faithful sidekicks, Pepe, his Mariache boys, and a 1000 count box of trojans...
Posted by CycleLady on May 26 2002,05:40
The brain is a very powerful organ. An excerpt from the article damien_s_lucifer referenced:"'...We don't really understand psychiatric disorders at a biological level.' Patients with similar symptoms, he explained, may have different problems with their brain chemistry. Scientists don't understand the neural mechanisms of depression -- or why medicines like Prozac and Paxil work."
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are a miracle for some folks. Although, I imagine they are over prescribed. I find it amazing with all the intellect in this world, no one understands psychiatric disorders at a biological level. We can send men to the moon, look beyond the Milky Way with a telescope, but the human body eludes scienctists on so many levels.
Posted by Beastie Dr on May 26 2002,05:42
Anti-depressants are bullshit, and I would NEVER, EVER take them. Not only do they fuck you up in SSRI/MAOI combos, they numb EVERYTHING emotional.
Posted by ic0n0 on May 26 2002,06:02
| Quote (Beastie Dr @ 25 May 2002,15:42) |
| Anti-depressants are bullshit, and I would NEVER, EVER take them. Not only do they fuck you up in SSRI/MAOI combos, they numb EVERYTHING emotional. |
Not in my experience. And I do not take ssri’s or maoi’s I take effoxer the magic drug.
Posted by CatKnight on May 26 2002,06:12
I doubt that I have any actual problems, but I'd love to get my hands on some ritalin. I'd like to see how well I can focus my attention on tests or games while on the stuff.
Posted by Beastie Dr on May 26 2002,06:54
Well. Very well. That stuff is a godsend, however, I certainly slip into the realm of "abuse" on that shit, since I go through 75 pills in about 5 days.
Posted by veistran on May 26 2002,08:00
it is very interesting how much of workings of the brain are still understood in best guess form only.
Posted by damien_s_lucifer on May 26 2002,11:14
i would have agreed with you until about a week ago, ic0n0. but i have noticed a definate increase in emotional content lately. not the major ones so much as the little ones.it's strange, but lately I've been walking around going "wow... I feel things. This is cool."
Posted by Necromancer on May 26 2002,17:43
oh come on its just a bunch of neurons. its not like it has telekinetic powers or anything. Its not hard to understand that anything thrown out of balance is a bad thing. Yes its a complex thing but its not a delicate thing. Just dont abuse the drugs and keep it active. 
anti depressants just numb certain parts to push the balance back to normal as your brains out of sync. its when you stay on them for too long that they become a problem. (mr 75 pills a working week
)
Posted by Beastie Dr on May 26 2002,18:42
I was talking about ritalin pal
Posted by Necromancer on May 26 2002,19:10
| Quote (damien_s_lucifer @ 25 May 2002,22:29) |
| Okay, there have now been one too many articles stating < SSRIs are no more effective than placebo. > |
yes i find their style of music particularly grating and detrimental to my mental health
Posted by compact3000 on May 26 2002,19:47
Try handeling guns in Wall Mart and ask one of the people that work there if they have any anti-depressant pills
Posted by desolate on May 26 2002,20:02
The mere fact antidepressants are handed out like candy to whoever wants them and that you see commercials for them on television should be a good enough deterrent for anyone not to take them. I was on zoloft for about a year and I soon figured out just exactly how this medication was helping my depression. What it does is kill any emotion, so if you're not capable of feeling you're dead inside.
I wish I would have went off of the stuff slower, one day I just said fuck it and stopped taking it completely. I was teary and really down for the two weeks following until I started feeling better. People should depend on themselves to make themselves feel better. Sorry if that came off as being insensitive but I believe its true. Sit around feeling sorry for yourself and your situation and keep hoping someone will care for you the way you should be caring for yourself.
I could fucking bitch forever but there is only one other thing I'd like to mention. sad/depressed, two different fucking things. When I hear people using the word depressed litely cause theyre having a bad day it seriously makes me sick.
Posted by Necromancer on May 26 2002,21:02
the problem is getting doctors to recognise when someone has a proper chemical deficiency and actually DO need the drugs to balance their brain chemistry back out.
Posted by desolate on May 26 2002,22:15
Seems everyone is depressed these days, prescribing antidepressants is the easy thing to do. I don't know about yours but I think mine only pretends to give a shit..
Posted by damien_s_lucifer on May 26 2002,23:57
| Quote (desolate @ 26 May 2002,12:02) |
| I wish I would have went off of the stuff slower, one day I just said fuck it and stopped taking it completely. I was teary and really down for the two weeks following until I started feeling better. |
yeah, the trick is to cut down s-l-o-w-l-y. i tried quitting cold turkey before. it was NOT pretty.
I figure it takes 4-6 weeks to start working, so I should take 4-6 weeks to stop. I'm dropping about 1/4 dose a week. Withdrawal has been very mild so far, and it's been more interesting than painful. My senses have become more, uh, sensitive, so seeing/touching/smelling stuff has been really fascinating... although if they were any more sensitive I think I'd start to flip out.
Posted by desolate on May 27 2002,00:28
Sounds liked you planned this out nicely, wish I had. I hope you do well without your medicated smile too.
Oh and does anyone else feel the urge to take the time to take the white edges off of these faces?
Posted by damien_s_lucifer on May 27 2002,00:56
if you want to clean up a few smileys, that would be greatly appreciated. email them to me when you're done and I'll put them up.another thought on depression... it's not popular to blame Society for things in these days of Personal Responsibility, but every time I see a show like Survivor I can't help but think that a lot of our malaise has to do with our "every man for himself, rudeness = necessary, me me me!" culture.
Compassion, tolerance, patience, and understanding would go a long way towards improving our general mood. And remember, Society is not Everyone Else. It's you as well.
Instead of screaming "more personal responsibility!" at someone - or beating yourself up because you think everything is your fault - try this. Next time you're out, hold the door open for somebody. Smile and say "hi!" why you're at it. Some people will sneer at you if you do this for them, but a lot more will be pleasantly surprised and will thank you.
It sounds asinine, but something that small can easily make someone's entire day.
Posted by CycleLady on May 27 2002,03:14
| Quote (damien_s_lucifer @ 26 May 2002,18:56) |
| Compassion, tolerance, patience, and understanding would go a long way towards improving our general mood. And remember, Society is not Everyone Else. It's you as well. Instead of screaming "more personal responsibility!" at someone - or beating yourself up because you think everything is your fault - try this. Next time you're out, hold the door open for somebody. Smile and say "hi!" why you're at it. Some people will sneer at you if you do this for them, but a lot more will be pleasantly surprised and will thank you. It sounds asinine, but something that small can easily make someone's entire day. |
I totally agree. Spreading kindness is a very good thing. I love it when someone opens the door for me these days, considering I'm on crutches due to a broken foot. A simple and genuine "thank you" is all the gift folks seem to want. I imagine I don't have to mention how many folks have let the door slame on me. DOH! I hate when that happens. But I take care of myself regardless.
Posted by Vigilante on May 27 2002,21:10
Hearing people say "Just change the things in your life that suck and you'll feel better," sends me into a bloody red rage (yes folks, I can manage to feel rage through the wellbutrin and celexa). When you're incapable of mustering the motivation, energy, and hope to make said changes, all the "buck-up-kiddos", and "you-can-do-its" are utterly useless. Of course, I've yet to find medication that will help provide that (and life keeps giving me new and improved reasons to hate it), so I'm fucked either way.
Time for another dose.
Posted by CycleLady on May 27 2002,21:57
| Quote (Vigilante @ 27 May 2002,15:10) |
| Hearing people say "Just change the things in your life that suck and you'll feel better," sends me into a bloody red rage (yes folks, I can manage to feel rage through the wellbutrin and celexa). When you're incapable of mustering the motivation, energy, and hope to make said changes, all the "buck-up-kiddos", and "you-can-do-its" are utterly useless. Of course, I've yet to find medication that will help provide that (and life keeps giving me new and improved reasons to hate it), so I'm fucked either way. Time for another dose. |
The people who say those things to you have never been in your situation. Yeah, they think they're being helpful. Quite honestly, they're just annoying.
Posted by damien_s_lucifer on May 27 2002,22:18
buck up, kiddo. you can do it!(couldn't resist)
Posted by ic0n0 on May 27 2002,22:37
| Quote (Necromancer @ 26 May 2002,07<!--emo&) |
| the problem is getting doctors to recognise when someone has a proper chemical deficiency and actually DO need the drugs to balance their brain chemistry back out. |
From what we know of my brain chemistry it is out of balance, I have always been down since I was a little kid. It is more than just a personality attribute for me, my parents now think that I had a weird syndrome < http://www.asperger.org/index_asc.html > when I was a kid because I had all of the characteristics of it. But I was never diagnosed with it but they weren’t looking for something like that ether. One of the main things in the syndrome is remembering facts and and figures which i do very well. When i was 10 i memorized the capitols of the worlds nations and still remember them all.
Posted by DuSTman on May 27 2002,23:14
It suprises me to hear people complaining about feeling numbed down by antidepressants, because I feel they have had quite the opposite effect on me..Some of you may remember my complaining about poor concentration ability in the "concentration aids" thread ages ago. I went to the doctor about it and was diagnosed with everyone's favourite mental health problem and prescribed Citalopram (aka celexa, celebrex).
The primary thing I was concerned about, of course was barely having the concentration to read two lines of a slide in a lecture without my mind wandering and ending up staring at a lightswitch for 10 minutes. I think that's improved a fair bit with medication, but also have an increase in general energy.
However, one thing this has pointed out to me was that I was very much numb emotionally before, and now I feel an odd kind of contentment, very nice.
Also after the first few days of taking it I could have sworn my hearing became significantly more acute.
Posted by desolate on May 27 2002,23:17
Eh well I'm pretty apathetic. I'm not even the change I want to see in society anymore. =>
Posted by Wiley on May 28 2002,06:31
I want to spend the day with some depressed people ...see if they make me sad or I make them happy ...or they kill me.Should be interesting at any rate.
I'm always interested in how life affects your emotional state or how your emotional state effects your life ...like anatomy vs. enviroment.
Posted by TheTaxMan on May 28 2002,15:18
Choose Apathy(that's my new slogan
)
Posted by a2n3d7y on May 29 2002,20:21
Taking PAXIL is one of the best decisions I made in my life. It halped me see thru all the bull-shit baggage I had built up from day 1 of my life.
My problems are a joke to me now. I LIVE!!!
But now that I'm hooked on the shit, and I keep finding more lame info about it, I WANNA STOP!
I say, go for it (take an SSRI) if your at the point of suicide. Or if your totally jaded like I was. But pay attention to your-self while your on the shit. Make the changes.
So hopefully I'll commit to stopping now, because I don't think I need it anymore. My life rules.
Thanks Paxil!!!! lolol
Goodbye
Posted by damien_s_lucifer on May 30 2002,02:21
yeah, it did its job for me too.There is a whole fancy theory to go with SSRIs, but imho I think the best way to describe things is that increasing serotonin causes mild to moderate sedation, just enough that your mind doesn't flip out as much. a lot of people notice an increase of energy at first, but that may well be because you're not afraid to go out and do things... alcohol has the same paradoxical effect. probably happens because just doing something has a way of giving you more energy
in short, I no longer buy the serotonin-depression theory. it seems odd to me, especially when you consider that computation (and therefore thinking) happens in the neural body, not at the synapses. furthermore, neurons are designed to tolerate and adjust to fairly wide variances in signal strength.
finally, there's the fact that serotonin levels are determined by measuring serotonin metabolites in the blood. serotonin is used for a wide range of things, including muscle control and perceptual feedback. the more your nerves are used, the more serotonin will be released and metabolized. so it makes sense that a depressed person who spends most of their time avoiding moving around and experiencing things is going to have much lower serotonin levels than someone who is highly active. their metabolite levels are lower because they're not using it as much.
this implies that curing depression is going to elevate serotonin levels, but the reverse - elevating serotonin levels will cure depression - does not follow.
in the end, it was changing the way I thought that alleviated depression for me. paxil calmed me down. calm thinking is usually good thinking, so it obviously helped out there. but I'm really starting to doubt that it's anything more than a plain old sedative.
Posted by TheTaxMan on May 30 2002,02:40
| Quote (damien_s_lucifer @ 29 May 2002,18:21) |
| furthermore, neurons are designed to tolerate and adjust to fairly wide variances in signal strength. |
Sorta off topic, but eh?
Last I read, neurons are either On or Off, not REALLY On or a little on.
Posted by damien_s_lucifer on May 30 2002,05:02
neural states are either triggered (on) or not-triggered (off). you can think of an individual neuron as a device that answers the question "is the sum of all inputs > my trigger point?" - if the answer is yes, it fires. If the answer is no, it doesn't.
the trigger point is highly adjustable through several different means. altering neurotransmitter levels is one of these. however, neurons do what they can to adjust for chronic alteration, such as that induced by SSRIs.
in the case of SSRIs, neural response is usually a decrease in the number of serotonin receptors on the receiving cell, with a corresponding reduction in the synapse's bandwidth (since fewer receptors = weaker reception, less accuracy, higher S/N).
oddly enough, "reduced emotional bandwidth" is the term I would use to describe the antidepressant feeling. in addition, they make you somewhat clumsy - a dramatic example of reduced accuracy in signal transmission.
SSRI's mimic the action of sedatives so closely that, as I said, we may as well treat the SSRIs as slow-starting, long-acting sedatives, similar to traquilizers, barbituates, and alcohol.
all sedatives have some paradoxical effects, including the sensation of an initial burst of energy when taken at low levels. they all relieve anxiety, but quitting them produces rebound anxiety in most people (as anyone who has had to quit Paxil or Valium can attest). although they can induce sleep, they all degrade its quality. they all have sexual effects. they can increase or decrease desire, but they tend to decrease performance. they all increase appetite at low levels but induce nausea and vomiting at higher levels...
Posted by ic0n0 on May 30 2002,05:19
I take EFFEXOR, which does the serotoin and also norepinephrine. It first when I started taking it I felt like I was on speed and my eyes were extremely dilated and I couldn't sleep. But now things seem to be going all right, my depression is better, this drug has worked for me before a lot better then the SSRI's. The problem is withdrawal; it is like a car hitting a wall at 100 miles an hour, I wouldn't recommend it.
Posted by Vigilante on May 30 2002,05:23
I took effexor for well over a month; didn't do jack for me, even when combined and continued with wellbutrin. Cold turkey withdrawl made me light-headed and clumsy for about a week. Shrug. I'm getting to the point where I'd just like to be cryogenically frozen for a few centuries to see if something better comes along.
Posted by TheTaxMan on May 30 2002,19:59
Got it (mulitiple (millions of) neurons firing or one (fewer)neuron/s firing for select purpose).