Why we decided to stop medication

[paulk23]

I am new here and iam just wondering why other members have decided to stop antidepressants,for me i had two moments that made me feel I had to change ,firstly last year my first child was born and although it was an amazing experience I didn't feel I was in it I didn't get that excitement in my belly and struggled to feel any emotions and still today although I love my daughter so much I still struggle to feel emotions it's as if iam going on the memory of what them emotions where . Secondly while on holiday last year I sat looking at a beautiful view we had walked to see ,it was stunning caves with the blue sea and a beautiful beach and I can remember feeling absolutely nothing about this view just feeling completely dead inside, later that day I wanted to cry about how I felt in general but I couldn't and I haven't been able to cry for years , this battle to come off effexor for me is so tough but I use them moments as fuel to keep me going I hope to return to that view some day with my daughter and feel like me again .

[Rubied]

Hi, I normally only lurk on this site and only make replies to my own Introduction topic but seeing as this one hasn't gotten any replies yet I'm going to give my reasons for stopping meds.

 

I was on meds for about 3 years and it never sat right with me from the start. However I was suffering a lot from life adversities and thought I needed something to 'numb' me for a while whilst I navigated my life a bit. I now realise that those 3 years I was just coasting through life, never really feeling any real ups or downs, so I had already wanted to stop taking the drugs soon, but found myself never 'finding the right moment to quit'.

Breaking point was this year, in February my father died and I could not feel emotions properly. I remember seeing him before the cremation and wanting to cry and FORCING myself to let out a few fake tears, the emotions were stuck inside my body, I couldn't let it out! I decided to stop these drugs, how was this a good thing, not being able to mourn even?

So that was my biggest reason, but also because I believe that whatever life throws at us, we are all capable of navigating it 'naturally', with support, nature, love, caring. I am suffering a lot right now but I have to keep some kind of hope that it will be ok. It is September now, and I have spent the last couple of weeks/full month crying everyday, ugly crying, finally mourning my dads death. I think I am also going through sertraline withdrawal (5 weeks stopped my final dose) and I'm still wondering what to do about it but at least I can feel emotions now. The pendulum has swung all the way to the other side now and its quite unbearable, but I don't think I will ever go back to these drugs again.

[littlebird]

I've been on them more than half my life and have no idea who I am without them/what my normal baseline is. I long suspected that some of my issues were stemming from being on too many meds, but it wasn't until tapering that I discovered just how many problems were side effects from these chemicals. It'll take me a long time to untangle all of these, but here's hoping I can figure it out safely and with relative ease! 

[FeralCatman]

This is a fairly easy question for me to answer and that is side effects as well as not really knowing who I am anymore. After 30 years on meds there's a lot of things that got blamed on me and my body and they turned out to be side effects so I no longer trust these meds or the system that prescribes them because no matter what happens it will get blamed on you. Here's a partial list of symptoms I experienced while on meds that are now gone that I'm off one of them and coming down off the others.

 

Type 2 diabetes

High blood pressure

High cholesterol

Insane weight gain maxing out a 269 lb but I am now down to a comfortable 165 lb

Hypothyroidism

Disrupted circadian rhythm

Worsening paranoia

Worsening anxiety

Light sensitivity

Sleep disorder

Awful carbohydrate cravings

Increased anger and irritability

 

There are many more but you get the idea this stuff was wrecking my body and making my life worse and as time went by it was making things even worse and then more worse and more worse and worser and.......... well it was just turning my life to ****. At one point the twitching in my hands was so bad I got diagnosed with epilepsy and that's gone too so a lot of the supposed long-term benefits of these medications turned out to be nothing but a great big lie. As I said the system blamed all of this stuff on my body and this so-called illness but now after coming down off of Just One Drug and starting to finally feel better it's pretty clear that everything I was told about the benefits of these meds was bullsh*t.

 

[ccloudyrose]

Simple answer: I don't know who I am without them, I barely remember what happened or who I was while on them and I so desperately want to know who the real me is.

 

They also began slowly making me more and more ill instead of doing what they were prescribed for, to 'help' me. I didn't have a choice when I went on them, I was under age and didn't know any better.

[getofflex]

I was tired of being only half of a person.  I still had some emotions, but many of my emotions were trapped inside of me because I was numb.  It took the edge off the emotions, and made me emotionally flat.  I was chronically tired, and my sleep was not restorative.  My memory was pretty much shot.  I had a lot of trauma that was trapped inside of me, because I was numb.  

 

Now that I'm off, I'm having emotions in spades, and it can be overwhelming and exhausting, but I'll take this any day over being half a person.  My relationship with God is much better, and I have much better discernment about social, emotional, and spiritual things.  My sleep is much better in quality, there is a lot more REM sleep, even though I still have insomnia many nights.  Now, I'm better able to work through the trauma that has been inside of me, and it is slowly going away, which is very exciting!

 

Just one last thing - I want to be in charge of myself, and not have a chemical controlling my brain.  

Edited September 5, 2023 by getofflex

[rachie]

I was sitting on my front porch one day and felt this deeply numb despair and a voice said if you don't do something you are going to die like this. I had tried 5 other times over 20 years, disasterously, to get off the meds and I did not have the info and resources. I felt imprisoned by the drugs and it was mostly my private secret. I would complain to my husband but never let anyone know how truly bad it was. For years I was going through inter dose withdrawal every night because I was on a short half life AD and I finally tested as an ultra rapid metabolizer. I felt so anxious every day for about 19 years and I learned to just keep facing it and carrying on but it felt at all moments like someone was about to push me out of an airplane. Just standing in line to pay for something was difficult because I constantly felt like I needed to run or I was being pushed. I had an internal tremor which I guess was tardive diskenesia or something like it that I woke up to every morning. Every day felt like I had the flu. I had the worst toxic smell coming out of my right underarm only in intervals but I could feel the drugs building up to toxic levels and emotionally everything would intensify during strong smell days. (It is mostly gone now except in a big wave it returns). I realized I had not cried in well over a decade. And then occassionally with what I called the toxic buildups would come suicidal urges which I knew weren't mine. I just couldn't keep living in the numb despair any longer. So here I sit, over 3 years in to this and still suffering immensely and in a pretty big wave but just remembering why I am doing this and hearing the others above reminds me that the only way out is through and I will just have to pick up my feet and carry on one day at a time. I don't want to go back. And yes, I too have had about 4 billion unshed tears come forward since I started down this road, many curled up in a ball on my closet floor. I have moments where I feel little sparks of life and its wonders again and I long for that feeling to last. Right now looking forward is scary because of the mantra that I will never be okay but looking back I know I don't want to go there. And those sparks are just enough to give me my own spark of desire and hope because I never felt that life energy buzzing around me while I was on the drugs. Hoping that makes a little sense. Point being, if I see it through I may be able to live in that feeling of being alive again. Godspeed to everyone on her. It takes a super strong drive for something better to take this on. xoxoxo  

[Happy2Heal]

I spent 42 years of my life medicated (starting at age 18)

I was numb, I was obese, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired

I was sleeping around the clock, and my idiot PCP said I must be depressed and should increase my AD

I knew something was terribly wrong

I was 60 yrs old and it felt like my life was over, but I had not been living for a long long time

I was a recluse, I had no friends. I stayed in my apt except to go to drs appts and boy I had a lot of those!
i went food shopping once a month - sometimes twice, and that was my life

 

I wish that I had realized sooner what was happening to me... 

I did try to get off the lexapro several times but WD was mistaken for "relapse"...

 

when I found this site, It was like the clouds cleared and I could finally see the truth of what I had been thru and was going thru 

 

this site saved my life