Eventually, as it grows, this site probably will move to a new host server, one that can handle more traffic faster at less cost. The more posts there are on this site, the higher it will show up on Google and the more new people will visit.

Please feel welcome, stretch out, and express yourself.

Your friendly administrator,

Surviving

SurvivingAntidepressants.org is a forum site. Forum sites have been around on the Internet for a very long time, almost as long as the Internet has been around, and way before Facebook. (Facebook is an elaborate forum site.)

Forum sites are organized very simply.

• There's a main index page that shows all the different forums, like the table of contents in a book. Here, the index page is http://survivingantidepressants.org.
• If you click on a forum, such as Introductions and Updates, you will see a list of topics inside the forum. You can add to a topic by posting in the box at the end, or you can start a topic by clicking the big black Start New Topic button at the top right of every forum page. (Please look around a bit and try not to duplicate existing topics.)

To go to another forum, you would go back to the index page. You can do this by clicking on the site logo or one of the breadcrumbs at the top of every page. The breadcrumbs look like this:

SurvivingAntidepressants ---> Support ---> Read This First

If your suggestion is related to what might be a bug in the software, please post it in http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/59-how-to-use-this-site-questions-and-answers/

Thank you.

(This site offers information to empower you to talk with your doctor. For medical advice, consult a knowledgeable medical caregiver.)

Taking a harm reduction approach to psychiatric drugs, we recommend reducing your dosage to the lowest effective dose for you, minimizing your drug burden for the sake of your general health. Many will continue to wean off psychiatric drugs entirely.

While some people may be able to quickly stop taking psychiatric drugs without serious discontinuation symptoms, others cannot. Slowing the taper usually makes quitting more tolerable, reducing the severity of withdrawal symptoms. Gradual weaning can take many months and much patience. If you are tapering or thinking of going off a drug, visit our Tapering forum for information.

If you wish to ask questions, please register and start a topic for yourself in the Introductions and Updates forum. This topic will be your case history, where you can track your progress.

For a minority, antidepressant withdrawal symptoms may continue after stopping medication, for weeks, months, or years. This can be distressing, debilitating, and even disabling. Those who quit without tapering off ("cold turkey") or taper too quickly are more likely to develop prolonged post-acute withdrawal syndrome (PAWS). We offer support for recovery from PAWS, which can be very slow and frustrating.

Gradually tapering off the medication is the only known way to reduce the risk of prolonged withdrawal syndrome. Don't risk the integrity of your nervous system -- unless you have life-threatening side effects from a drug, do not risk suddenly stopping any psychiatric drug.

If you decide to go off psychiatric drugs and you are taking them to control certain symptoms or habits of thought, you will need to take responsibility for learning non-drug techniques for managing those symptoms. If need be, we may urge you to seek coaching from a psychotherapist or other counselor.

We do not offer general mental health support. If you are in crisis, please seek face-to-face help immediately.

Pertinent discussions

- Rules and guidelines

- Will my screen name be recognized? Compliance with European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) 

- Intro to antidepressant withdrawal syndrome

- Tapering multiple psych drugs? Taper the antidepressant first

- Important topics in the Tapering forum and FAQ

- Want to ask a question? Become a member

IT IS RECOMMENDED TO READ THIS SITE ON A COMPUTER OR TABLET. CELL PHONE USERS MAY MISS IMPORTANT INFORMATION.

Surviving Antidepressants is entirely volunteer and supported by member donations. It is not affiliated with or funded by any medical or religious organization.

When people register, they sometimes say they were referred to this site by a therapist, doctor, nurse, or friend.

Did this happen to you? How were you referred to this site, and what did your referrer say about it?

wiki

drugs.com

rxlist

https://pillintrip.com/   Find the name of your pills in any country

or use a search engine, eg google

==============================================

Abbreviations and terminology list in alphabetical order:

AAF Acknowledge, Accept, Float.  

A strategy for handling a myriad of psychological symptoms.  Acknowledge that the symptoms are real, Accept that they can't harm you and that there is nothing you can do about them, let them Float off as you go on about your business

AD antidepressant

ADD attention deficit disorder

ADHD attention deficit hyperactive disorder

ADR adverse drug reaction

AP antipsychotic

BC birth control

benzo is a contraction of benzodiazepine, the class of Valium-type sedative drugs.

CBT Cognitive Behavioral Therapy,

a strategy for changing the way you view your thoughts to help control anxiety and panic among other thing.

CFS chronic fatigue syndrome

CNS central nervous system

CT Cold Turkey or the abrupt quitting of the drug in question.  

BP bipolar

DC decrease/d

DH Dear Husband

DP depersonalization

DR derealization

DW Dear Wife (not dish washer)

Dx diagnosis

ECT electroconvulsive shock therapy (sometimes also called EST I think)

EPS extrapyramidal symptoms

FIL Father in Law

GAD generalized anxiety disorder

GAPS diet stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome

HI homicidal ideation

ID WD interdose withdrawal

MAOI monoamine oxidase inhibitor (older class of antidepressants)

MDD major depressive disorder

mgai milligrams of active ingredient (acronym used in weighing doses with a digital scale)

mgpw milligrams pill weight (acronym used in weighing doses with a digital scale)

MIL Mother in Law

OP other person

OTC over the counter

PGAD persistent genital arousal disorder

PRN latin "pro re nata" = as required

PSSD post-SSRI sexual dysfunction

PTSD Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

RI reinstatement

RLS Restless Leg Syndrome

Rx prescription

SI suicidal ideation

SNRI serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (certain antidepressants, such as Effexor)

SO Significant Other

SRI serotonin reuptake inhibitor

SSRI selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (antidepressants like Prozac for example)

SS serotonin syndrome

ST serotonin toxicity (same as SS, more appropriate name for such)

Sx symptom

TCA tricyclic antidepressants

TD tardive dyskinesia (involuntary movement, movement disorder, often involving the tongue or lips )

Tx treatment

WD is a contraction for Withdrawal

and is referring to the various symptoms that are associated with tapering off of one of these drugs. There is a big controversy over the use of the term "withdrawal" because the medical community has a very specific definition for the word which they think doesn't fit what we are experiencing.  To counter this they came up with the phrase "Discontinuation Syndrome".

WDnormal is withdrawal normal

short hand for "all the symptoms I have been feeling lately but am to lazy to list them over and over again".  It is a variable term that changes with the set of symptoms a person is feeling.

YMMV is your mileage may vary

============================================

I just wanted to start a new topi, as I am feeling poorly.

Anyhow, so many acronyms on this site, what do they all mean?

WD is Withdrawal syndrome

CT  is that convulsive therapy?  

Sorry  I think we need a list somewhere, what all these mean.

Sorry a newbie, the site is fantastic.

I no longer feel all alone in this world.

News: Moncrieff, et al. find no basis for "serotonin deficiency" theory

Moncrieff, J., Cooper, R. E., Stockmann, T., Amendola, S., Hengartner, M. P., & Horowitz, M. A. (2022). The serotonin theory of depression: A systematic umbrella review of the evidence. Molecular Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41380-022-01661-0

Lacasse, 2005 Serotonin and Depression: A Disconnect between the advertising and the medical literature...

Kemp, 2014 Effects of a chemical imbalance causal explanation on individuals' perceptions of their depressive symptoms.

Lacasse, 2015 Antidepressants and the Chemical Imbalance Theory of Depression: A Reflection and Update on the Discourse

Addiction expert brilliantly exposes "chemical imbalance" fallacy

Psychiatrist Ronald Pies shocked shocked shocked by "chemical imbalance" allegations

Psychiatrist Ronald Pies says doctors tell patients the "chemical imbalance" lie as a favor

Yes, it's true.

Just saw this NPR article/broadcast on the new Mad in America website. As usual, the mainstream media is a 1,000 years too late, but I'm still most appreciative. NPR has run a story that debunks the low Serotonin/chemical imbalance theory of depression.

And of course there's a million criticisms I have with the article which I won't mention here, but I'm still so very happy about this. And let me say this: I just know that we here at SA somehow, even in an indirect way, have helped get such a story out.

Link to the story here and and a link here to Jonathon Leo and Jeffrey Lacasse's excellent commentary on this heavily flawed (yet landmark) story.

PS: LOVE how Leo and Lacasse mention our homeboy Ron Pies and the very Psychiatric Times article we tore holes in (pie holes?) months ago.

When the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was issued in April, 2016, the postings on SurvivingAntidepressants.org were already in compliance due to their being pseudonymous.  

All of your activities on SurvivingAntidepressants.org are pseudonymous.

Other than the postings on the Web site, we retain very little of what the GDPR calls "identification data". The only Personal Identifiable Information (PII) we retain is:

• screen name
• e-mail
• join date
• IP address
• time zone
• last visit
• browser

Your IP address is recorded by the software, but is also pseudonymous and cannot be traced to you personally. We do not record real name, address, or age. Divulgence of gender and location is voluntary. The pseudonymous background health information we ask upon registration is held in a secure database. No one but the administrators and occasionally, technical support personnel, have access to the database of information.

Your opt-in to receive e-mail messages from SurvivingAntidepressants.org is permitted by GDPR Article 6. We do not use your e-mail for any purpose other that to apprise you of site news. 

The GDPR allows that pseudonymous material may be retained for a good reason, which we set out in our site mission: peer support, documentation, and education of withdrawal symptoms and withdrawal syndrome caused by psychiatric drugs. The site registration process clearly states that member narratives are collected for research purposes.

The European Data Protection Supervisor explains GDPR exemption of pseudonymous data here.

Quote

 

The GDPR refers to pseudonymisation as an example of an appropriate data protection safeguard in many circumstances, such as:

• when assessing the lawfulness of processing based on compatible purposes;
• when embedding data protection by design in an IT tool’s infrastructure and development;
• a  measure to secure personal data;
• a safeguard in a code of conduct,
• a safeguard for processing activities that occur for archiving purposes in the public interest, or for scientific, statistical or historical research purposes.

 

SurvivingAntidepressants collect personal data that is pseudonymous as both "a  measure to secure personal data" and "a safeguard for processing activities that occur for archiving purposes in the public interest, or for scientific, statistical or historical research purposes".

This site's mission is to support people suffering from withdrawal and withdrawal syndrome, to document cases, and to educate the medical establishment.

Each and every person's testimony about medication history, symptoms, and recovery is extremely valuable to accomplish this mission. It is important that these case histories stay intact, particularly in the Introductions and Success Stories forums.

Much of this information is viewable from the Internet and can be found via Google and other search engines. People who are suffering from withdrawal or withdrawal syndrome are reassured when they see others have traveled the same road, and learn from them. Without the information you post about your experiences, they would not be able to find this site.

These stories are documentation of a problem that probably injures thousands if not millions of people all over the world, yet is mainly ignored or denied by the psychiatric industry.

If we band together, we can bring this to the attention of the international medical establishment, and stop the suffering of more adults and even children. Several papers have been published based on the narratives on this site.

Many posts on this site contain deeply personal information. You may feel uncomfortable about telling too much about yourself.

These are the ways your confidences are protected:

- Your identity on this site is protected by your pseudonym. If you have chosen a good screen name, no one can figure out who you are unless you post identifying information.

(If you have accidentally chosen a screen name that is recognizable to those who know you in real life, send an administrator a personal message with a different screen name for substitution. Unless they are unique, first names will not be recognizable.)

- You decide how much about yourself to disclose. Those who read this site cannot put the pieces of your identity together unless you post fairly specific information.

Moderators will edit a post at the request of the poster if he or she has inadvertently posted identifying information. We will not edit posts to change grammar or choice of words.

Please do not make unnecessary work for staff members by requesting minor changes to your posts. It's okay if your posts are imperfect.

- Unregistered Internet guests, including search engines, cannot read the member list or member profiles. Your profile is visible only to site members. Even the geographical location you put in your profile cannot be seen by Google, or by an unregistered guest visiting the site.

- Only those who are invited or who have the same troubles as you find their way here. While it may seem that this site is highly visible, it is only a tiny, tiny planet, maybe even an asteroid, in the immensity of the Internet cosmos. No one will find your posts here unless he or she is also looking for information about psychiatric drug withdrawal.  Unregistered guests reach this site by searching on terms such as "antidepressant withdrawal." They have the same problems you do.

We are reluctant to delete accounts or all a member's posts, as this leaves gaps in threads where the member has participated and is destructive to the community. See If you wish to close or delete your account.

Many of us feel ashamed we asked for medication and took medical advice that turned out to be wrong. There is no reason to blame yourself. Except for the few who were forcibly medicated, every person on this site trusted their doctors and made choices based on what they thought was good advice. Forgive yourself and join us in supporting, documenting, and educating.

Given all the above, disclose as much as you feel comfortable disclosing on this site. It's up to you as to how much you want to reveal.

This is explained in this topic (also linked below).

GDPR requires notification of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) upon request. The only PII we retain is:

• screen name
• e-mail
• join date
• IP address
• time zone
• last visit
• browser

We are reluctant to delete accounts and the content attached to them. This site exists not only to provide peer support but to document the experiences of people going off psychiatric drugs in order to educate physicians about it. Your Introductions topic is a valuable case history. Your posts here may help someone else in a similar situation, or inform research in psychiatric drug withdrawal or adverse effects. Your experience recorded here is highly valuable.

Outside of the Introductions forum, entirely deleting your account or all your posts leaves gaps in discussions, where the community and staff have shown concern for you by responding to your posts. Having absorbed the support of the community, if you want to leave the site, we ask that you contribute your pseudonymous posts here as a way to "pay it back" -- show your thanks to the community.

Your e-mail address is the only personal data we retain that may be linked to your pseudonym and sometimes to your real identity. This may or may not be the e-mail address you use for other correspondence. 

You have control over your e-mail. If you unlink your e-mail address from your pseudonym, you can edit your e-mail address and enter a made-up e-mail address. If you enter an invalid e-mail address, you cannot get any site notifications or notices. If you forget the e-mail address, you will not be able to log in. 

If you wish to discontinue being a member of the community, you can change your e-mail address and simply not log in any more.

How can I deactivate my account?
 
Remember, your account and posts are under a pseudonym. No one need know that pseudonym is yours. No one can find your posts and connect them with your real identity unless you've told them the screen name you use on this site.

(If your screen name is readily recognizable because it includes your surname, a unique first name, or a screen name that you use on social media, please contact an administrator immediately to request a new screen name. If you use a common first name, there's no reason to change your screen name, a common name returns millions of results in Web search.)

People who are reading this site will not be able to ascertain your real identity unless you give fairly detailed identifying information. If, for example, you post as AmyOrNot from Seattle taking escilatopram, no one would be able to tell which of the thousands of Seattle Amys you might be, and besides, your real name might be Jimena.

Otherwise, your screen name and post content is not going to stand out among the billions of posts on the Internet. Ordinarily, no one but you would search for your screen name with your drug history.

If you wish to deactivate your account, please save yourself and the administrators time and work and simply follow these 3 steps:
 
1. Shut off all notifications (in your Settings)
 
2. Do not visit the site
 
3. Do not log in
 
You may wish to post a farewell message in your Intro topic for those in the community who are concerned about you.
 
You do not need to notify the administrators that you are doing this.
 

How can I delete my account?

For residents of the European Union, GDPR includes account deletion. The site software settings do not permit members to delete their accounts. You will need to make a request to an administrator or through your Settings, under Security and Privacy. Also in compliance with the GDPR, you may request your Personal Identifying Information for review through the same settings. 

TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS

SurvivingAntidepressants.org is not a registered charity. We cannot issue you a receipt for tax return deductions.

If you prefer to make a tax-deductible gift, please donate in SurvivingAntidepressant.org's name to

International Institute for Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal (IIPDW) https://iipdw.org/please-support-us/

Medicating Normal https://medicatingnormal.com/donate/

DONATIONS FROM INDIA

India has barred international transactions via PayPal. If you are in India, please contact the administrator for instructions about how to donate, or ask a relative in the US to make a gift in your name. 

If you feel Surviving Antidepressants is helpful, please consider a voluntary donation.

Surviving Antidepressants receives no funding from any source other than its members. It does not make a profit. We are not sponsored by any organization or religious group. We certainly do not receive any support from pharmaceutical companies! We will never run advertising.

This site's purpose is only to provide support for people withdrawing, reducing suffering, and bringing the problems of withdrawal to the attention of medicine.

Your contribution will go towards expenses such as

- Software, server, and Web site registration costs

- Memberships to like-minded organizations, such as MindFreedom.org

- Purchase of relevant scientific publications

Donations are made through PayPal, which accepts all major credit cards, even if you do not have a PayPal account. It will translate foreign currencies into US dollars.

Thank you for your generosity.

HOW TO DONATE

We take donations only via PayPal. You can use your debit or credit card to send money via PayPal.

IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PAYPAL ACCOUNT

You do not need a PayPal account to make a donation to SurvivingAntidepressants.org. 

If you do not have a PayPal account, here's how you can use PayPal to donate:

Quote

 

Update by ChessieCat - May 2022:

 

Click on the bar at the middle top of the page in the blue bar "Support our work - please give today"

 

When you go to the page click on the amount you wish to donate and then click "Donate with Debit or Credit Card".  This is BELOW the "Donate by PayPal" link.

 

If you wish to support the site in other ways, such as directly paying for hosting or software or providing expert technical advice, please contact the administrator.

Thanks very much for considering making a gift to Surviving Antidepressants.

2011 SurvivingAntidepressants.org in Christopher Lane's Psych Today blog

Belaise, 2012 Patient Online Report of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor-Induced Persistent Postwithdrawal Anxiety and Mood Disorders

SurvivingAntidepressants.org has been nominated for a 2012 Best in Show: Community Award in this year's WEGO Health Activist Awards (www.facebook.com/wegohealth).

Thank you to whoever did the nominating. And thank you to our moderators and members who make this community what it is -- the best darn withdrawal site on the Web.

While other forum sites may permit some aggressive behaviors, we do not. Our members are already experiencing an unfortunate amount of stress.

We understand you may be angry, anxious, or dwelling on self-harm due to your own condition. We'll give you some latitude and pointers about your behavior in personal messages. But if you cross the line 4 times, you will be banned from the site.

Moderators may ask you to reword, or they may remove offending posts or topics.

The warning system
This site is equipped with a warning system for use by the moderators. (In your Profile area, you can see your warning points. Only you and the mods can see this.)

The mods may or may not give you a verbal warning first without a warning point. If you go ahead and do the thing you've been warned about, you'll get a warning point, up to 4 warning points.

If you get 4 warning points, you will be banned automatically.

What will get you warned
Here are a few things that may get you warnings:

- Arguing with a moderator or the administrator in a topic or in a PM. You may present your case reasonably; take care about your tone. Once you get a decision, accept it gracefully. Mistakes may be made, give us the benefit of the doubt, we're trying to keep the peace for the greater good. (It is never a good idea to get on the wrong side of an administrator or moderator.)

We also take a dim view of Internet lawyers who use "free speech" defense when warned by staff. On any Web site, you publish with the consent of the site owner. The site owner can withhold this consent for any reason. If you want to say whatever you wish, start your own site. Please do not waste your time and that of the staff by presenting this invalid argument.

- Attacking another member in a topic. Disagreements must be civil. No ad hominems -- per Wikipedia: "... an attempt to link the truth of a claim to a negative characteristic or belief of the person advocating it...." See more about Abusive ad hominem.

If you argue with or attack an administrator or moderator, or attack another member, your posts may be put on indefinite review. They will need approval by an admin or mod before they are published.

- Harassing or stalking another member.

- Recruiting your friends to gang up on a member. This is also known as a pile-on.
 
- Racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, or other hate speech.

- Graphic descriptions of sexual organs or functioning. This is offensive to some of our members and not appropriate for this site.
 
- Working against yourself or causing your own problems. Since 2011, we have seen many people come here with self-designed drug regimens or other practices that are in themselves problematic, such as taking supplements or high doses of benzodiazepines that are causing unpleasant symptoms. If you not willing to review or change those practices, we may not be able to help you.

- Asking for support for many self-generated emergencies. While we are sympathetic to people in distress, we're only a peer support site and we cannot do anything for people who are in the habit of self-harming in any way, be it via alcohol, risky or antisocial behavior, avoidable hospitalizations, irresponsible use of drugs, avoidable accidents, fights, or threats of suicide.
 
We have seen that going on and off additional psychiatric drugs can worsen adverse effects, including withdrawal symptoms. If you add drugs and have an adverse effect, you will need to discuss it with the prescribing doctor -- we won't be able to help you. (If you feel you need continued drug treatment, your needs may be better met on forums such as depressionforums.org  or patientslikeme.com.)
 
If you find you are somehow involved in frequent emergencies, please seek face-to-face counseling. As emergencies can be upsetting to other members of the community, if you frequently report emergencies that you might have avoided, you will be asked to leave -- your needs are beyond the capabilities of online peer support.

Also, discussions of Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD), other organizations of this nature, or encouraging others to suicide are not allowed on this site. This creates undue distress for our members and burnout for our volunteer staff. 
 
(Please read For those who are feeling desperate or suicidal )
 
(If your life is currently chaotic, this would be a very bad time to go off psychiatric drugs. Withdrawal symptoms may very well add to the complications in your life. Not being able to focus on careful tapering can be dangerous.)

- Overuse of tagging to get reassurance from the staff

Please be aware that the staff is all unpaid volunteers, who often have worries, jobs, families, and health issues of their own. While we do our best to help, none of them can fulfill the role of therapist or social worker. You cannot expect them to fulfill your emotional needs. 

If you want to go off psychiatric drugs, you must learn to manage habits of mind that might have led you to seek psychiatric treatment originally. These habits of mind may include: Irrational worrying, health anxiety, perseveration (repeating the same thing over and over again), rumination, inability to make decisions, needing constant reassurance, chronic pessimism, chronic hostility, finding fault with everything.

These habits of mind might have caused you a great deal of distress in your life, as well as causing distress to your family, friends, and employers, who may have urged you to seek psychiatric treatment. While we are sympathetic to the pain these problems have caused you, there is no way around your responsibility. If necessary, you may need to engage the services of a psychotherapist or other counselor to learn those self-management skills.

The staff here cannot meet the emotional needs that overwhelmed your family, friends, and employers, and it is unfair and exploitative of you to expect them to.

If a staff member communicates to you that you are wearing them out, please do not continue to demand their attention. We require you to respect the time, and dedication of the staff and limit tagging them to important questions about tapering or withdrawal symptoms.

Be mindful not to exhaust the patience of a volunteer staff member. They may refuse to respond to your posts. They are people too, and too much can be too much.

If your demands for attention are extreme or if you overuse tagging, you may get warnings and eventually be banned from this site.

- Being uncooperative, specifically, not keeping notes and reporting your symptom pattern when requested to do so.

Keeping daily notes of your symptoms, when you take your drugs, and their dosages is quite simple. In many situations, particularly when you're taking multiple drugs, we need this information to tell if a drug is causing an adverse reaction or if an adjustment is working.

If, after requested, you avoid doing this, we can't help you. If you persist in withholding this essential information, you may receive more than one warning point, up to being banned from the site (4 warning points).

- Taking over someone's Introductions topic or Success Story to make it about your concerns

To get support from staff here, we ask each member to open an Introductions topic to discuss their specific situation. The owner of the Introductions topic is encouraged to post questions there, get answers and support from staff and other members, and look back on the Intro topic as a record of their progress. It is like an ongoing, first-person case history.

It's one thing to emphathize with any member here and share your experiences and opinions, but it's another thing to take over someone's Intro topic or Success Story and make it All About You. This is selfish and disrespectful to the owner of the topic. It also can obscure the owner's need for information and support.

If you do this persistently, you may earn a warning point. Post about your concerns in your own Introductions topic.
 
- Using all capital letters in posts.
On the Internet, the use of ALL CAPITALS to communicate is interpreted as shouting. Posts entirely in capital letters irritate the moderators and will not get you extraordinary attention, if that is your purpose.
 
Moderators will hide posts that are entirely in all caps. If you persist in using all caps, you may get warnings. Upon the 4th warning, you will be banned.
 
Please keep this a civil community. Use your inside voice instead of all caps.

- Aggressively advocating religious practices
Our members come from all over the world, of all faiths, religions, and age groups. We support the private pursuit of religious or spiritual support, but caution members against promoting a particular religious practice in contexts where this might offend others.

The Finding Meaning forum is the appropriate venue for expressions of personal religious beliefs. Rather than proselytizing throughout the site, you may be asked to maintain one topic in the Finding Meaning forum where you can answer questions about your faith.
 
- Offering psychiatric or  psychotherapeutic care without a publicly displayed license. If you are a licensed physician, therapist, or social worker and want to risk your license to offer such services gratis here, you must post your license number in your signature. You will need to take sole responsibility for what you post as advice. SurvivingAntidepressants.org will not take responsibility for your advice and will not assist you should you meet legal challenges.
 
- Drug shopping or recommending drugs
This is a site for going off drugs. It is not a site for finding out what drug to take next, comparing drug cocktails, or recommending what drug to add. This could be dangerous. People could be hurt by your advice.

We do not recommend experimenting with ketamine, psilocybin, hallucinogenics, adaptogenics, psychoactive herbs, or any gray-market drug. You never know exactly what you're getting and results are unpredictable even in people whose nervous systems have not been compromised by adverse drug reactions.

If your nervous system has been sensitized by adverse effects from psychiatric drugs (or street drugs) or withdrawal, , you could make yourself a lot worse by experimenting with hallucinogenics, etc., and the only remedy is to cope with your symptoms until they go away. We don't have any magic potions for you.

Try such substances at your own risk. If you take street drugs or gray-market drugs and have an adverse reaction, we may not be able to provide you support as you recover and may ask you to leave SurvivingAntidepressants.org.

 
(We do not know of any drugs or drug combination that will fix withdrawal syndrome. Reinstatement of the original drug, often at a low dose, sometimes helps and sometimes does not.)

For the safety of our members, we cannot permit people to give irresponsible drug advice on this site. If you get a warning for this, please take it to heart.

• If you feel you must tell a member to seek help from a physician, please specify the physician. Most likely, the member has joined this site because of lack of success finding a knowledgeable doctor.
• If you believe taking  psychiatric drugs will help a particular member, please specify drug and dosage. Take responsibility for your advice.

If you cannot do this, don't tell people to take more drugs. They don't know what to take and neither do their doctors. I and the staff here on SurvivingAntidepressants.org don't know, either.

We not not provide unpaid volunteer advice about adding drugs to your existing psychiatric drug regimen. We don't mix, augment, or tweak drug cocktails. There are paid professionals called psychiatrists who provide such advice. If your doctor cannot answer your questions about drugs they recommend for you, you might reconsider taking advice from this doctor.

If you want to talk about your diagnoses and adding to your drug cocktail or balancing it, there are other support sites for this, such as http://DepressionForums.org or http://PatientsLikeMe.com.

- Insisting on nonsense about the causes of so-called psychiatric disorders and withdrawal syndrome. You'll need to do a lot of reading and credible citations to come up with original plausible theories.

Red flags for nonsense often found in pop psychiatry:

• Reliance on the "chemical imbalance" theory or that mental disorders are due to some kind of neurotransmitter deficiency.
• Claims that mood disorders are "brain disease,""diseased nerve pathways,""damaged signaling" etc.
• Reliance on neuroimaging or brain scans.
• Assigning specific functions to specific neurotransmitters ("dopamine is responsible for pleasure"). All neurotransmitters are multifunction; normal functioning depends on their all operating together.
• Making sweeping generalizations about "depression." One huge problem in psychiatry research is that there is no one definition of "depression" and studies use different measures for it.
• Publication in biological psychiatry journals.
• More to come, I'm sure.

The "chemical imbalance" or "serotonin deficiency" theories for mood disorders, which were in vogue for about 20 years, have been disavowed by medicine. There never was any basis for this. If a doctor tells you that is the reason for your distress, the doctor is wrong, misinformed, or not being straightforward with you.
 
This is also true of alternative or "natural" practitioners. The "chemical imbalance" theory is invalid wherever it pops up.
 
The "chemical imbalance" theory or its variants does not bear discussing any more than does a theory that says the sun revolves around the earth. It is a waste of time. This site will not add to the dissemination of this misinformation. Credulous discussion of such will be discouraged.
 
See Again, chemical imbalance is a myth. Stop the lies, please. and Ronald Pies says doctors tell patients the "chemical imbalance" lie as a favor
 

Your signature appears under all your posts. To add or edit your signature, click on Account Settings in the menu that drops down from your name in the upper right of every page.

This link should go directly to your own signature. Account Settings – Create or Edit a signature

Remember to Save after entering the text in the box:

The staff needs this information to answer your questions. In your signature, we need to see

- Exactly what drugs you're taking now (not just psychiatric drugs), with dosages and when you started each drug

- What you were taking before, with dosages and start and stop dates

As the signature is limited to 12 lines, we expect you to condense your drug history. The last few years usually will do.

FOR READABILITY, SHORT LINES ARE BEST.

• A list is easier to understand than one or multiple paragraphs
• Include ALL drugs, doses, and dates (starting and stopping)
• Any drugs prior to 24 months ago can just be listed with start and stop years
• Use actual dates or approximate dates (e.g. mid-June 2018) rather than relative time frames (e.g. 3 months ago)
• Spell out months (e.g. "January" or "Jan" as 9/1/2016 can be interpreted as 9 Jan 2016 or 1 Sept 2016)
• Please leave out symptoms and diagnoses

Example:

2001–2002 paroxetine 10mg
2003  citalopram 20mg, paroxetine 10mg
2004  citalopram 20mg, paroxetine 15 mg
2008  citalopram 20mg, paroxetine slow taper down to 2016 Aug off paroxetine
2016  citalopram 20mg  May - Oct slow taper down
2018  citalopram 13 Feb 4.6mg 15 Mar 4.4mg 29 Apr 4.2mg

If you edit your signature, the new one replaces any prior signature. It will appear in your signature under all your posts, even your old posts. If you want to save the information in the old signature, copy it and save it in a file on your computer or in a post in your Introductions topic.

(As of 12/31/13: Signatures are limited to 12 lines of text.)

How to add or edit your signature

1. Click on this link to open the correct page in User Settings:
   Create Your Signature in "Account Settings". 
   2017-June 12 update: link works on desktop, tablet and mobile phone versions
    
2. Enter your signature in the space provided.
3. When you are done, Click on the big black Save button at the bottom.
    

If the link isn't working, follow these steps:

1. Click on the small downward arrow next to your name in the top right corner of any page.
2. Select Account Settings from the list.
3. On the left of the Account Settings page, click on the Signature tab. You will be able to add or edit your signature.
4. Click on the big black Save button at the bottom when you are done.

FOR READABILITY, SHORT LINES ARE BEST.

(The history, or profile information, you entered when you registered can be read only by you and the administration team. If you wish, you can copy it to your public signature.)

If you are new, start a topic for yourself in the Introductions forum.

Link to Start a New Topic in the Introductions forum.

Link to Introductions Forum.

Thank you.

PS Please click on this link to donate a meal to a food bank http://www.bbvacompass.com/feedamillion/Only a click is required.

But, sometimes site Search won't work.

Site search does not recognize 3-letter words or acronyms

However, this search system does not recognize 3-letter words or acronyms. This is a common flaw in search systems bundled with forum software. I can't fix it.

This makes it particularly difficult to find supplements or vitamins such as SAM-e, 5-HTP, or B12.

Try synonyms or longer words that mean the same thing

I try to provide synonyms so these kinds of things can be found in site search. For example, you'd be able to find SAM-e or 5-HTP by looking for their compound names: S-Adenosyl methionine, 5-hydroxytryptophan, or cobalamin.

Use Google!!!

Google has a way to search this site, or any site. You can do this even if you're not a member of SurvivingAntidepressants.org.

Open Google search and in the search box type this:

site:survivingantidepressants.org 5-HTP

and you will get all the references to 5-HTP on this site.

You can substitute any word or terms for the term in red (or any site for the URL in blue -- no space between site: and the URL).

Added: Site Advanced Search

There is an advanced search capability that allows searches by username, forum, date, tag, etc. To open the advanced search page, click on the little white wheel next to the search field in the top right of the page:

There are many ways to do a site search.  Click on the magnifying glass on the upper right section of the screen.  It will take you to a page with 2 tabs at the top: content search, and member search.  The following links explain how to do each type of search.  

Search for a Particular Symptom

See What Other People's Experience with a Drug Has Been

Find Any Content by a Particular Member

See How People Have Recovered From a Particular Symptom

The other option is to do a search using a search engine.  This link explains how to do that: 

How to Find Just About Anything on this Site

While we understand the desire to post this information immediately, the staff requests that you not post this information in a topic. A staff member will make the appropriate announcement.  

As the site continues to grow, we want to balance our desire to be honest and transparent with our need to provide a safe, supportive community. Because we are sensitive to some of our members being in a vulnerable state, we wish to make a distressing disclosure when staff is available and online to provide extra support. We carefully consider how to convey the message to the membership in the hopes of minimizing the distress associated with such news.

If possible, staff also needs to ascertain and respect the wishes of family members, who may be reading their loved ones' threads or posting on their behalf.

We want to acknowledge the community's loss and grief in a way that allows Surviving Antidepressants to exist as a trauma-informed space, providing as much support as we can during especially troubling news. Thank you.

• potential withdrawal symptoms
   
• what’s involved in reducing dose safely
   
• what's required from you and your ability to self-manage

 
Please carefully consider your ability to meet the challenges of tapering in the context of both your current wellness and life situation.
 
Other posts in this thread
 

DO NOT START TAPERING if ...

Will how I quit affect potential symptoms?

Why taper so slowly?

Is it withdrawal or relapse?

Stages of Withdrawal: Acute and Post-Acute

Keep notes on paper about your drug dosages and daily symptom pattern

My own personal e-mail account was hacked at Yahoo. This happens a lot. You might have gotten spam from friends' e-mail addresses, this means their accounts were hacked.

Because of our hosted server arrangements and my constant vigilance for blacklisted entities, this site is fairly secure.

effexoractivist.org has had a lot of problems with hackers, and had to move behind a wall at Tribes.com to avoid them. benzobuddies.org recently had problems with members' passwords being hacked.

(benzowithdrawal.com has been "parked," meaning its owner has made it inactive as a forum, for unknown reasons, probably not because it was hacked.)

The best way to avoid having your account hacked is to have a complicated password.

To keep your password safe:

-- Make it something only you would know, and not a word in the dictionary.

-- Mix up uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters like this: porVe3yU%87.

-- Make it longer than 8 characters.

Members may notice you can't start a topic here. This forum is for announcements and site support.

Only administrators or moderators can start topics in this forum.

You can reply to any topic in this forum.

If you'd like to suggest a new topic in Read This First, please send the administrator (or moderator, when we have them) a pm. Members may start a topic or post in any other forum.

If you are new to the site, go to the Introductions forum to start your first topic so the community can get to know you. You can add updates about your progress to your Intro topic; it will be a kind of journal or history of your case.

In addition, Please put your withdrawal history in your signature to help the moderators.

This is a free volunteer peer support site. The people participating here give freely of themselves to help others.

Unfortunately, in support forums, people occasionally register with other agendas. They may want to promote a supplement program, a book they've written, or paid counseling services. They try to take advantage of suffering.

Do not give any personal information, including your e-mail address or phone number, to anyone who contacts you through this site selling something -- goods or services.

Supplement programs: We can't recommend any!

We don't know of any supplement programs that help recovery from antidepressant withdrawal syndrome. There are a few that make that claim, but there is no evidence the supplements work, or that they were chosen with any amount of knowledge.

People who are experiencing withdrawal often have hypersensitive nervous systems. If they are going to try supplements, it's best to try them one at a time, in very small doses, to see if they will aggravate symptoms. The supplement programs we know of package multiple supplements together for a high markup.

Because they make unsubstantiated claims, recommend taking multiple supplements that may be harmful, and sell common supplements at high prices, we do not recommend any supplement programs.

In the Symptoms and What Helps forum, we discuss individual supplements, do what we can to document effectiveness, and share anecdotal information about them, including tips where to find them at lowest cost. Please look there if you are interested in supplements.

Books or pamphlets

In our In the Media forum, people are welcome to post about books, for discussion by the community.

No one is permitted to sell books, or post links to sell books, on this site.

Counseling or healing services

No one is permitted to promote or sell their own counseling or healing services on this site. When doctors or psychotherapists register on this site, they may identify themselves by their professional credentials. However, they most likely would not offer individual therapeutic advice online, as this may make them vulnerable to lawsuits. They may talk generally about therapeutic techniques.

Anyone who identifies himself or herself as a mental health professional on this site will be required to submit bona fides to the administrator for verification.

We do hope to develop a list of doctors and psychotherapists we know understand gradual tapering and can support people through withdrawal.

If a person claiming to be a mental health professional or other counselor contacts you through this site offering their services, please immediately notify an administrator or moderator.

Be very careful in giving your e-mail address, phone number, or other indentifying information to anyone you haven't "known" for a while on this site. If you have any questions about someone, contact an administrator or moderator.

This site was started in early March 2011. It's now a year old.

Thank you, everyone who's joined our community and added your voice. Your participation has made the site what it is -- a place where people can find honest information about tapering and withdrawal syndrome, and compassionate support and understanding from others in the same situation.

Thank you, volunteer administrators and moderators for keeping our site a safe place for recovery.

And thanks to the kind donors who have contributed money to keep this site afloat for all of us.

Health and healing to everyone,

Altostrata

3) You will get an e-mail asking you to confirm your e-mail address. Follow the instructions to do this.

If you register with an invalid e-mail address; you will not receive this confirmation e-mail. You will be unable to validate your registration and log in as a member.

4) After you confirm your e-mail, you become a member. Please note: Only administrators can delete accounts. We do this very rarely. See If you wish to close or delete your account
 
5) Please start a topic about yourself in the Introductions and Updates forum so established members can get to know you. With your updates, over time this topic will be a sort of journal or history of your case.

6) Please put your withdrawal history in your signature. This will appear under each of your posts and enable members to understand your situation.

Click here to go to Introductions and Updates.

Questions? Click here.

Welcome to Surviving Antidepressants!

Surviving Antidepressants is not responsible for any information posted in the forums. Each post is the personal opinion of its author. We do not vouch for or warrant the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any posting, and are not responsible for the contents of any posting.

Some of our members are trying to read and participate on this site via a phone.

They've run into difficulties. The screen on a phone is too small to allow easy reading. The topics are hard to follow. There have been misinterpretations of postings.

Posting from a phone tends to lead to non sequiturs. Questions are asked over and over, answers are being overlooked.

The information on this site is complicated. It is best read on a computer or a tablet.