FeralCatman: recovering from Seroquel

[Jools2816]

@FeralCatman Agree. The fact that we know so little is not so much a problem as the fact that we do not admit or that many scientists and doctors do not admit it. They are taught and trained otherwise. My father was a doctor and a researcher, and I grew up with drawers overflowing with meds. You have an incident of flatulence, you take a drug :). But later in his life he became so disillusioned with traditional medicine that he started researching medicinal plants. Needless to say, funding did not flow through his lab. We all know that where there is no profit, there is no interest. I cannot comprehend, as I read more and more about the effects of AD how things such as the neurophysiological effects have not been researched. There is a lot of robust research acknowledging that the changes are affecting major functions and cause debilitating effects. Yet no coherent, consistent info. I might as well do a degree the amount of both scientific and anectodal info I did ... I think that research that does not include lived experiences is very limited. 

[FeralCatman]

@Jools2816 That is interesting to hear about your dad and for me the practitioners that I have managed to acquire have all become the very same way so I'm very lucky to have them because they don't discount anything that I talk to them about they actually think about it and try and help as best they can and they are all certainly willing to admit that they don't know. These days if I find a doctor that shows too much confidence I find another doctor. I need help not ego.

[FeralCatman]

One other thing I would like to post that I have mentioned in the past but is also worth repeating is this.

 

The way I write is more like a technical writer so a lot of times the emotions I'm going through don't come across all that well. I do a lot of research and have posted a lot of information but just so everybody knows I am just as frightened out of my mind as everybody else on this website because this process absolutely is scary. So we are all in the same boat. Scared to death and frustrated and all working together to help each other find the right answers. So many people have come to this website in horrible shape and yet healed and moved on so we all must be doing something right.

 

I have also answered questions for quite a few people and please remember as I stated in the recent post it is my best guess but there is no way for me to know for sure that it's absolutely correct it's just based on the best information that I have at this time.

[FeralCatman]

I just posted this article on the topic of Stress and the microbiome.

 

 

 

[FeralCatman]

On 8/20/2023 at 11:40 AM, FeralCatman said:

@manymoretodays I have a question for someone who is not on this site but is a friend of the family. They have recently run into hard times and their doctor prescribe them sertraline and Klonopin. They are on 50 mg of Sertraline and 0.5 mg of Klonopin twice daily. They've only been taking this for a little over a week. My dad is discussing the risks with them and what I need to know is what did they need to do to stop taking these. It's only been a week or maybe 8 or 9 days so do they need to taper or can they just stop it or can they do rapid taper?

 

This person also has a history of drug abuse which is known to their doctor and I'm just beside myself that they put them on Klonopin. Utterly irresponsible.

@Altostrata Thought everyone would want to know that my family friend stopped taking the Klonopin and the prescription sleeping pill they had given him on top of it and is down to one tablet of Sertraline and he is sleeping fine and his anxiety is gone so he is going to taper that last tablet and should be off it soon and he seems to be doing really well. Thank you for the input and concern. Another life saved

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

So I seem to be down to only four major symptoms left. All the other stuff that occurred like temperature regulation, circulatory issues, crazy BP changes, muscle pains, and pretty much everything else I've listed on this thread since it started seem to have resolved. The pain I was having while walking is gone and yesterday for the third time I observed that my knees no longer hurt while walking downhill so the massive weight loss seems to be helping a great deal even though it took a while to see the difference. Still getting an average of 7 - 8 hours broken sleep. The 4 symptoms I am left with are:

 

1. GI issues - Poor motility, poor digestion of fat/protein, low stomach acid.

 

2. Very emotional dreams waking me up.

 

3. Waxing and waning anxiety/cortisol. Still seems cyclic in nature. Working on figuring out what is me and what is the withdrawal.

 

4. Still peeing more than I'd like at night but half of what it was just 4 months ago.

 

Seems like 1 & 4 are slaves to 2 & 3. So in addition to the digestive supplements I am focusing on relaxation and staying as low stress as possible. So even though I still have the anxiety, not constant, I can say with confidence now because it's happened enough that on the days when I feel really good they are better than ever. I can also say with confidence as can my dad who's been going through this with me on the phone everyday that every time I get hit hard with another round of really bad symptoms when it passes something else has gone away and I seem to be a little bit better every time. My therapist says the same.  That has been the one consistent pattern over the last few years. So it seems every time you take a kick to the seat of the pants that actually kicks out another symptom.

[modelarz71]

It's hard for me to trust a psychiatrist who says that if I have had IBS symptoms for 3 months, it's definitely not because of escilatopram.
I know full well that I got it after stopping the SSRI for the second time aftre 3 weeks 5 to 2,5 mg. Regret. The doctor doesn't know, (belive) but we know and maybe SSRI will fix the IBS that caused it? What do you think.
My whole life I didn't think about digestion and it happened on its own without my participation. I think I'll choose Chinese or Mongolian herbs for cooking because I have to do something. They supposedly heal the entire body. at least they shouldn't do much  harm, and I'll think I'm healing something.
 

[FeralCatman]

2 hours ago, modelarz71 said:

It's hard for me to trust a psychiatrist who says that if I have had IBS symptoms for 3 months, it's definitely not because of escilatopram.
I know full well that I got it after stopping the SSRI for the second time aftre 3 weeks 5 to 2,5 mg. Regret. The doctor doesn't know, (belive) but we know and maybe SSRI will fix the IBS that caused it? What do you think.
My whole life I didn't think about digestion and it happened on its own without my participation. I think I'll choose Chinese or Mongolian herbs for cooking because I have to do something. They supposedly heal the entire body. at least they shouldn't do much  harm, and I'll think I'm healing something.
 

To be honest I don't trust much of anything any psychiatrist says anymore. It seems like what you are asking is if starting an SSRI might fix the IBS but maybe I'm reading it wrong so let me know. If that is what you're asking I really can't answer that I have no idea if an SSRI would fix IBS or not though I know sometimes antidepressants do get prescribed for bowel issues I think the success rate with that is pretty spotty and I personally wouldn't trust it or even try it. I just passed 2 years and I still have digestive issues but I am learning how to manage them and improve them very slowly and I think the biggest factor is time and good diet. I am using betaine hydrochloride for low stomach acid and will soon be starting some digestive enzymes prescribed by a nutritionist to see if they help.

[modelarz71]

 I like your words: I'm learning how to deal with them and improve them very slowly,"
 They are as peaceful as herbal medicine. SSRI hit like a hammer, mixed in the intestines, and after WD it exploded. IBS and SSRI are probably connected vessels, unfortunately 
But I'm weak and I have other symptoms...
 

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

I have become friends with someone else who is going through withdrawal who is actually a nurse practitioner. She is reading a book about anxiety and the stress response and found the following Passage. It is the last section that seems to happen to people in withdrawal the most often if they have GI issues and is why I'm unable to eat correctly. The stress on your nervous system of going through this process actually shuts down your digestion and makes it impossible to eat right without assistance. It is simply a stress response cranked up to ludicrous speed as your body tries to adjust and it can take a long long time. This is why so many of the recommendations for healing from withdrawal involved doing everything you can to lower your stress and cortisol levels. This is really key to healing.

 

"During the acute alarm reaction, the stomach's motility halts, digestion stops, and the blood supply to the stomach's lining is decreased.

 

As stress continues, due to imbalance of the nervous system and hormone changes, hyperacidity and over-production of digestive enzymes occur. The heightened digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid, acting on the weakened gastrointesti- nal lining, result in ulceration, producing stress ulcers. With continued stress, the ulcers may hemorrhage or perforate and precipitate a medical catastrophe.

 

In other cases, the reaction to chronic, abnormal stress may be failure to produce hydrochloric acid or enzymes, resulting in chronic indigestion and poor nutrition."

 

So another indicator that the acid supplement and digestive enzymes are definitely going to be useful to at least help eliminate the digestive stress and help the rest of my body to calm the hell down. The rest of course is time and patience and calming everything else down as much as possible.

 

For those who have seen the movie Spaceballs you will understand the term ludicrous speed. So basically Rick Moranis got a hold of the stress response controls in our nervous system and cranked it up to ludicrous speed. Seems like just about everything that happens is fall out from that cranked up stress response. So basically we all got Spaceballed. 🙄

 

[FeralCatman]

The above passage about the stress response also explains why when I first got off the Seroquel that all that vigorous exercise and messing with my allegra and the Benadryl and pushing myself too hard made me so much sicker. It's not guaranteed but there is a fair chance that had I left everything alone and slowed way down instead of speeding up that things may not have gotten quite as bad. Unfortunately I hadn't found this website yet and was following standard advice for dealing with stress which of course much of it ends up raising cortisol levels not lowering them. Messing around with any other neuroactive medication just confused my nervous system even more and it decided to show me how bad an idea it was to have done that. Another lesson learned that all the recommendations on this website are in fact sound Advice.

[FeralCatman]

Here is the book mentioned in the above post and it is where that passage came from.

 

[FeralCatman]

I just realized something else about my gut distress that I actually learned from watching the Gupta program free videos on YouTube. The Gupta program teaches, that for each of the illnesses that it intends to treat, that the limbic system is in part responsible for generating a symptom which is not to say the symptoms are psychosomatic. They are real physical symptoms. This I think is due to the keyed up stress response that does things like signal your digestive tract to shut down stomach acid to shut down the digestive process. What the Gupta program goes on to teach is that this process can become a self-reinforcing loop. So when the stress response shuts down your digestion it actually creates stress in the digestive tract to which the brain responds to as a threat and then increases the stress response which then continues to keep the digestion shut down and the process will start to loop. Now I am certainly not advocating for or against the Gupta program however based on what I have experienced it does seem that this is probably what happens. Relaxation and lowering stress is one part of breaking this Loop by getting the limbic system to calm down. However, as noted elsewhere on this website, sometimes taking digestive enzymes and other digestive aids can become necessary to sort of jump-start the process which would eliminate the stress on the the bottom end which of course is what I am trying to do. Ultimately the treatment ends up attacking both ends using relaxation and stress reduction to calm the limbic system and calm the stress response and also using the acid supplement and enzymes to reduce the digestive stress which will also help to calm the limbic system and break that cycling loop which keeps the digestion shut down and dysfunctional. I am up to the full dose of the Betaine HCL and I'm going to wait a week or so to allow my system to adjust a bit more and then I'm going to slowly start adding in the digestive enzymes to each meal. So far as long as I don't eat too much fat it has pretty much fixed the constipation and the motility is definitely better though not ideal and there is definitely still some stress coming out of my guts probably because the job is only half done. I will post updates as time goes by to let people know what happens with the enzymes.

[modelarz71]

On 1.09.2023 at 16:08, FeralCatman said:

Muszę też powiedzieć, że odnośnie nietolerancji pokarmowych mój dietetyk powiedział mi coś ciekawego. Omówiłem z nią test wrażliwości pokarmowej i ujawniła dwie rzeczy, z których jedną już w pewnym sensie wiedziałam. Pierwszy z nich to co najwyżej badanie wrażliwości pokarmowej polegające na zastosowaniu immunoglobuliny G. Nauka stojąca za tym nie jest dobrze udowodniona, a wiele badań wykazało, że nie oznacza to wrażliwości, a jedynie pokazuje narażenie i niewiele mówi o tym, czy lub nie, w rzeczywistości zareagujesz na żywność, która ma dużą liczbę. Jedynym sposobem, aby naprawdę dokładnie określić, na co jesteś wrażliwy, jest zastosowanie diety eliminacyjnej. Drugą ujawnioną przez nią rzeczą, która faktycznie ma sens, jest to, że w miarę jak jelita regenerują się, układ odpornościowy i metabolizm ulegną zmianie, a wraz ze zmianą układu odpornościowego zmienia się odpowiedź immunologiczna na różne pokarmy, co wyjaśniałoby, dlaczego ludzie stykają się z różnymi i różnorodnymi pokarmami. poziom wrażliwości w trakcie powrotu do zdrowia po odstawieniu i jest to spowodowane tym czynnikiem. To kolejne dobre wyjaśnienie, dlaczego wszystko zmienia się z biegiem czasu, ponieważ w miarę regeneracji układu odpornościowego, metabolizmu i układu nerwowego zmienia się sposób, w jaki wchodzisz w interakcję ze środowiskiem.

Well, you know about the intestines, what do you think about the slowdown in metabolism and increased appetite when using SSRIs (some people say so) and when I was taking escitalopram I had to eat sweets all the time. Now in WD appetite for sweets is still acivated, I don't exercise anymore, and I see that I have gained a lot of weight - this is a good way to get diabetes maybe and others
 

[FeralCatman]

30 minutes ago, modelarz71 said:

Well, you know about the intestines, what do you think about the slowdown in metabolism and increased appetite when using SSRIs (some people say so) and when I was taking escitalopram I had to eat sweets all the time. Now in WD appetite for sweets is still acivated, I don't exercise anymore, and I see that I have gained a lot of weight - this is a good way to get diabetes maybe and others
 

Seroquel did the same thing to me. Now that I am off of it all of that has stopped and much has recovered. Still dealing with a few issues but things have improved significantly.

[littlebird]

8 minutes ago, FeralCatman said:

39 minutes ago, modelarz71 said:

Now in WD appetite for sweets is still acivated, I don't exercise anymore, and I see that I have gained a lot of weight - this is a good way to get diabetes maybe and others
 

Seroquel did the same thing to me. Now that I am off of it all of that has stopped and much has recovered. Still dealing with a few issues but things have improved significantly.

Same thing, was craving sweets like crazy on the high dose. Things got weird with cravings and weight with a weird generic, seemingly gained some water weight on a stronger brand name that's melting away on a lower dose. It's been odd and I never know how my pants are gonna fit in the morning lately! 🤣 Feels like my body is having some alice in wonderland bigger and smaller stuff going on.

 

Trying to eat less sweets, not craving them quite as much as when I was on more Seroquel but I still lean on them for emotional support. Wish I got emotional support from veggies!

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

Hey everyone. I just wanted to let people know that I will be taking a break for awhile. Feeling a bit burned out on the topic of psychiatric medications and need to look up and out at the rest of the world for awhile. So, I won't be logging on for a bit while I do other things. I will be back at some point but my brain needs a break from this topic for awhile. My notifications are off so I won't know if you message me unless I log on.

 

I am doing okay and am not having another major wave or anything like that. Just need some space.

 

Hang in there everyone. You'll all get there if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other. 😉✌️😺😺

 

 

[j1290]

1 hour ago, FeralCatman said:

I will be back at some point but my brain needs a break from this topic for awhile.

I totally understand.  It's great to take a breather from this topic now and then.  

Be well, and hope you check in now and then to let us know how you are.  All the best!😸😸😸

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

Hey everyone just wanted to post a quick update. Still pretty much on break but want to let everybody know that the digestive enzymes are definitely helping quite a lot. So much of the remaining stress was in my gut and they are definitely working to help remove that stress so I will be taking them for quite a while and my nutritionist thinks I will need them throughout the rest of my tapering and I think she's probably right which is fine. Since starting them I've been able to be very slowly but increasingly more active without any consequence. I will be back on at some point again and post another update but I just wanted to let people know that this stuff is helping and I'm planning on starting my Tegretol taper fairly soon. With the long-term memory coming back into Focus and all the crazy dreams I was having which are dying down now I am realizing that a lot of the things I've been through were never fully processed and dealt with and some of that stuff is coming back to bite me now so I'm going to have to work on all that for quite a while and really put it all to bed. It is one of the reasons I am staying offline for a while because I am finding I am very subject to limbic kindling and right now having other people's symptoms in my head isn't a good thing for me. For now I need to really focus on dealing with all the trauma and focus on what I need to do to heal up and when I finally get a grip on all that I will be back. Here are a couple of links for some very short inspirational videos that I watch everyday that I thought everybody would like and may find helpful like I do. If people do find these helpful please feel free to take these links and repost them so more people can see them. Please take care everyone and just know you're going to be okay 😉✌️😺😺

 

https://m.youtube.com/@MulliganBrothersInterviews/shorts

 

These are my favorite 2 videos of all the videos on that link.

 

 

 

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

I am still on break but I wanted to post something that I wrote for my tapering buddy offline. This person is having a particularly hard time right now so I wrote this for them and thought it would be worth posting for everybody else in a slightly adapted form.

 

This isn't a competition because we are all very different however for anyone who thinks they’re too damaged to heal take a look at my attached medication history spreadsheet. Every stop and switch was a rapid swap or cold turkey not a taper until the Seroquel. I've been on every class of medication that there is in addition to all the other meds they gave me to manage the side effects of all those meds. I've also had years of abuse here and there, much of it in the mental health system, and lots of different trauma. After being put on the Tegretol in 2011 I definitely have signs of dysautonomia. I was a medication dependent diabetic on a full dose of thyroid medication as well as with high blood pressure high cholesterol and was up to 269 lb. I had reached a point where I couldn't take five steps without feeling short of breath. When I started walking to start losing weight I had shin splints that hurt so bad they brought me to tears and I could only do about a tenth of a mile every 3 days because the pain was so bad. That took many months to work through. For a while I had a metal brace on my right leg because the knee pain was so bad and it took 8 months of physical therapy to figure that out and get through it. In the middle of all that I've had four surgeries. My thoracic spine on its own has started to fuse from what I now know was a medication side effect and looks like a melted candle on an X-ray. During my last hospitalization they came pretty close to killing me and I ended up having a heart attack and it took years for my EKG to go back to normal. Despite everything I went from all of that to being 165 lbs and able to hike 9 miles with 35 lb on my back in the dead of winter at night. At the moment I have lost that again but I will get it back in time. From the time I started taking control of my health in 2006 it's been 17 years and not all of it has been painful, some of it's been pretty good. Add to all of that, after my second divorce, I took on $74,000 in bad debt and had a credit score in the 500s. When I got put on disability I got a foreclosure notice because I couldn't pay my mortgage or any other bills for a while. That was in 2011. After that my ex-wife who is a pharmacist didn't want to pay the debt she committed to and that I cosigned on and I had to take her to court five times to finally get a contempt order and force her to start making payments. Now in 2023 all but $6,000 of that that is gone and that is up to my ex-wife to pay and in 12 months it will be gone and off my credit finally and I now have a near perfect credit score. My life did not at all go as I had hoped or planned and yet here I am up in the mountains in a nice little house in a beautiful place and somehow my body is still finding its way back to where it wants to be. Though I am still struggling with some stuff a lot of things have healed up and gone away. There is no reason that can't happen for everyone else as well but it takes a long time and it's very difficult at times and that's something that has to be accepted unfortunately and there is no quick way through this. It happens one little step at a time which is the way it's going to go for everyone else as well. You're going to get there and remember there are no lost cases the only cases that are lost are the ones that give up. And don't think I haven't thought about that more than once. At one point I typed up a letter to my family to explain to them what happened after I was gone and yet here I am. At some point you're going to be okay. All you have to do is just not give up.

[tsranga]

4 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

All you have to do is just not give up.

Thank you. I needed to hear this today.. 

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

So, lots of good news.

 

The digestive enzymes and the betaine HCL have turned out to be a complete game changer. There was improvement in gut function within 2 days of starting the betaine HCL. Now that I am on the enzymes the stress in my gut is nearly gone. No more putting food in a blender. I am back to huge plates of steamed vegetables, eggs, chicken, yogurt, apples not applesauce, rice, potato, yogurt, and Kefir. I will be adding back in fish and more berries for gut healing. All going through just fine. No more undigested food coming through. The only thing I have to really be careful of is external stress which still slows my guts down pretty quickly but my limbic system doesn't react harshly any more. So there you have it, the bulk of the problem was stress in the gut which resolved with the addition of the supplements.

 

Without the stress in my gut I am now able to walk 1.5 miles plus daily with no consequences. Upper body exercise is still too stressful but who cares. That will get better with more time and the walking will get me back to hiking. I have added in more lower body stretches and back stretches and am doing 30 sec front planks and sciatica exercises every morning to strengthen by back which has become very weak. I have been able to expand my chores around the property a bit as long as I go slow and take breaks. People stress seems to be my number one trigger so since I live in the middle of nowhere that is easily dealt with. Don't pick up the phone and stay off the internet (other than to look up information I need or to watch Simons Cat on Youtube. Here is his Youtube Channel if you are a cat lover like me.)

 

https://www.youtube.com/user/simonscat

 

I had some more blood work done and more good news there. Last year my Immunoglobulin E (IgE) levels were way above normal at 419 kU/L. The high limit is 100 kU/L. This year it tests at 79 kU/L which is back to normal. IgE is the immunoglobulin implicated in allergic reactions to substances including foods, drugs, and environmental allergens. I also had elevated IgE levels to Corn, Wheat, Soy, Peanuts, Almonds, and Pistachios. I am no longer reactive to wheat, almonds, and pistachios. Soy is greatly reduced. Corn, peanuts, and almonds are now minimum detectable. I suspect that within 6 months to a year all will drop back to undetectable. I will continue to avoid all of them as much as possible until my blood work is clear. Prior to withdrawal I had no food allergies so this was a withdrawal induced issue that is clearing up as time goes by. Yet another indicator of how these drugs and drug withdrawal affect the body and this may explain the sudden onset of food and food additive sensitivities in some people. If IgE is elevated the overall reactivity to anything entering the body would also be elevated. Something to think about.

 

My sodium levels have evened out with the salt dosing I am using so those are normal now as well. I may not even need the extra salt but it's not hurting for now so I'll worry about that later.

 

I also had my other immunoglobulins checked to see where my immune deficiency is at. IgA is unchanged and still low and I think I may have always had that issue as it's pretty common. IgM is normal but very low, IgG which is the most abundant immunoglobulin is low normal but the highest it's been since we started measuring it. So my immune deficiency is now very minimal and the diet and gut healing seem to be helping to boost the IgG which is great. As the tegretol dose goes down the bone marrow suppression and immunodeficiency should disappear as well.

 

My thyroid is improving again. Not enough for a med change but definite improvement.

 

I am going slow with expanding my diet. As I said I still have to add in fish and berries and I want to also add in garlic, onion, and red bell pepper. I still only eat twice daily because that's when my body tells me to eat so I just go with it. I've actually been eating like that for years because it's what my body wants to do. Listen to the body. Once all of that is done I will start switching to the half XR and Half IR with the Tegretol in November. If that goes well then in December I will start reducing my Tegretol dosage and by next June I'll be down to half of that dose.

 

Tons of progress and I am starting to regain confidence in my body and my health anxiety is getting better. Still hate the medical system and medications. I don't think that will ever go away. As long as I take things very slow and one at a time with everything I do it seems to be working well.

 

[FeralCatman]

I also want to add a few more things as food for thought.

 

Through this process I have had some members contact me telling me that the supplements were a bad idea and that getting off medications as fast as possible was the only way to heal. These were not moderators. If I were someone who were easily influenced and couldn't think for myself then I never would have tried the supplements and I would have been stuck and still struggling. If I had rushed off the rest of my medications more than likely I would have really ended up hurting myself and would have destabilized my nervous system even more, possible beyond repair or at least would have been very miserable for a very long time. This process has made me suicidal more than once and doing that could have pushed things over the edge.

 

I can't say either of these was necessarily bad or good advice. It depends on individual circumstances and we are all different. Just because something worked or did not work for you doesn't mean the same thing applies to others. This process is too individualized and making unfounded recommendations like that, though well intended, is going to get someone hurt or killed. So, please leave that kind of stuff up to the moderators and if you want to give input like that always qualify it with either "this is what worked for me" -or- "this is what didn't work for me". This is a very dangerous and potentially deadly process to go through and good intentions can have very bad outcomes for some. So please consider this before handing out advice. Unless you are a moderator moral support is the best thing to offer.

[Catina7]

It's nice to hear such a great update from you @FeralCatman!  All your hard work is paying off, and I'm glad you are enjoying the benefits of that.  😻

[Ciro]

@FeralCatman that’s really great that the supplements are helping so much. May I ask which betaine hcl and digestive enzymes you’re using? 

[Heath]

Great news !

[tsranga]

I am so happy for you that the the supplements appear to be working.  

[littlebird]

9 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

The digestive enzymes and the betaine HCL have turned out to be a complete game changer. There was improvement in gut function within 2 days of starting the betaine HCL. Now that I am on the enzymes the stress in my gut is nearly gone

Aren't enzymes amazing?? Felt better in a lot of ways after starting, but my dark circles largely went away after starting them. After getting comments on how much different I looked, I read that dark circles under the eyes can clear up when gut inflammation gets better. Wild.

 

9 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

I am no longer reactive to wheat, almonds, and pistachios. Soy is greatly reduced. Corn, peanuts, and almonds are now minimum detectable. I suspect that within 6 months to a year all will drop back to undetectable.

Woah, that's awesome. Great news!

 

9 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

Still hate the medical system and medications. I don't think that will ever go away.

Right there with you, seems like it's baked in at this point. I've also had a bunch of physical health issues throughout my life that have at times been mismanaged, hard to look at western med with anything but skepticism and resentment.

 

9 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

Through this process I have had some members contact me telling me that the supplements were a bad idea and that getting off medications as fast as possible was the only way to heal. These were not moderators. If I were someone who were easily influenced and couldn't think for myself then I never would have tried the supplements and I would have been stuck and still struggling. If I had rushed off the rest of my medications more than likely I would have really ended up hurting myself and would have destabilized my nervous system even more, possible beyond repair or at least would have been very miserable for a very long time. This process has made me suicidal more than once and doing that could have pushed things over the edge.

!!! Rushing off is so dangerous, that's a fast track towards destabilization. Scary advice. Seems like slower is so much safer, and supplements can make a huge positive difference too.

 

9 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

This is a very dangerous and potentially deadly process to go through and good intentions can have very bad outcomes for some.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is a saying for a reason!

 

9 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

if you want to give input like that always qualify it with either "this is what worked for me" -or- "this is what didn't work for me"

Great practice in all areas of life.

 

9 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

Without the stress in my gut I am now able to walk 1.5 miles plus daily with no consequences.

This is such great news, man. Thanks for updating us! So glad you can get back to hiking soon. I gotta get out on one myself now that I think about it... even a walk in the urban neighborhood can be really nice too, seeing what nature is doing and what birds I can spot. 

 

So happy to hear you're doing so well! 🥳 Thank you for letting us know.

[Mittenraised]

12 hours ago, FeralCatman said:

This is a very dangerous and potentially deadly process to go through and good intentions can have very bad outcomes for some. So please consider this before handing out advice. Unless you are a moderator moral support is the best thing to offer.

I agree. Moral support is about all I have to offer, but I can tell you it means alot. I appreciate every word here. Good to see you drop in, I have missed your posts. Stay healthy!

[FeralCatman]

20 hours ago, Ciro said:

@FeralCatman that’s really great that the supplements are helping so much. May I ask which betaine hcl and digestive enzymes you’re using? 

NOW brand Betaine HCL and here is a link to the enzyme I get through my nutritionist

 

https://www.transformationenzymes.com/product/digest/

 

[FeralCatman]

UPDATE

 

Thank you all for the kind words and the support and I really do appreciate it and I'm glad that people are finding this stuff helpful. This is going to be my last post until I start my taper in December but I got one more blood test back that I forgot was still pending and that is an Immunology test for what is known as an IGG subclass deficiency which is part of my immune deficiency driven by the carbamazepine. All of the numbers have improved since last year and when I went back and looked at the historical data you can quite clearly see that after I jumped off the Seroquel my immune system took a big hit. So more direct evidence that this process doesn't just mess with your brain and neurotransmitters but it messes with everything in your body and these tests prove it. The good news is despite taking a big hit like that it is recovering slowly but surely which tells me that none of this stuff is permanent it just takes a long time to fix itself.

 

I will post again probably at the end of November or beginning of December with an update on what's happening with my taper and in the meantime I'm just going to try and keep living life as normally as possible which seems to be working pretty well. 😉✌️😺😺

[FeralCatman]

I watched this video this morning and felt I needed to log on and post it for everyone especially for those who think they're too broken to heal.

 

 

[FeralCatman]

 

[FeralCatman]

I just posted this in finding meaning.

 

 

[FeralCatman]

Dr Horowitz and the Gang are publishing a book on how to get off these drugs properly and is designed for doctors and pharmacists and other prescribers and it's going to be distributed both in the UK and the US early next year.

The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines: Antidepressants, Benzodiazepines, Gabapentinoids and Z-drugs (The Maudsley Prescribing Guidelines Series) https://a.co/d/bYrJ9Gd

 

[peaceandlove]

Hello how are you doing ?  

haven't talked to you in a long time but I remember us talking about food activating us & causing anxiety. Has that gone away for you? Being sensitive to food