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  2. Crap. Welp, the couple days I tried the other brand gave me terrible nightmares and sleep apnea, but they've now stopped back on the old brand. So ridiculous when they say generic brands of this hell drug can be substituted with each other. I'm having crying spells everyday. Head hurts. Feeling exhausted. Praying that I don't destabilize again.
  3. BaccatePlayer

    mariamisery: Can I survive this withdrawal?

    It is hard because it's our government. It's how you navigate everything in life and your whole body. If this was transcribed into an eye injury you'd be seeing everything blurred all the time, having days of extreme astigmatism and sore eyes only slowly having better sight each day. If it affects your mood, thoughts and feelings, you are basically under a spell. It's an out of character experience but you can always tell yourself that you'll be alive without any harm. Even if you feel crazy, you won't be cutting yourself with knife or anything. MRI would show no abnormalities, so as impossible as it seems just remember it's always a symptom. I don't really stay positive, there's fear all the time, I can't even feel confident enough to say I will handle everything from now on. What's the alternative though? If it heads recovery and I will be alive anyways, it's only a matter of me having bad time. The mood needs to match the external, there's no answer inside other than catastrophizing rumminations. Give yourself in to the influence of reality because it is stable unlike your mind. If there was any danger, your body would react to protect you no matter what. You may feel like you can't separate yourself from symptoms, but they really aren't signaling external threat. This sounds like a mad idea, like asking yourself to give up on your autonomy and giving your body to an unknown man abandoning yourself fully, but if you trust the symptoms, they will take you into absolute hell, so better to sync with your surrounding knowing that what you'll do or say will be completely normal and safe even if you feel like not holding a steering wheel. Waves happen, morning cortisol happens, menstrual cycles happen, this will never stop rolling cause your body is always in motion. Your thoughts react to everything around all the time, you are digesting food, processing what you see and your CNS is always there with you throughout each experience. If it makes you feel abnormal, use what works to set an example. Panic feels like something bad will happen, so go there, do something and let your mind see nothing bad happened. When in a wave write down your negative thoughts. Maybe during a window you can reframe them. Maybe post them here and we could work on it together. Maybe tell someone close that you feel it and it will be less of a threat because your family or friends will assure you you're safe. Next wave you will have a base. You will remember it was the real you who proved your neuroemotions wrong. I'd say if you can, start a day with relaxing your body, touching the nature, hugging your closest ones, something that will prove you are participant in regular life. Then read the affirmations and really pay attention to accept them fully. Maybe read your own topic. See how you were exiting your doubts each time. Maybe someone else's topic. You need to have that panorama of it feeling bad, accepting it happens all the time, changes all the time and eventually returning to normal. Without it symptoms will be leading and real life will go to a shadow. When you are set physically and mentally, do your best to stay distracted for the rest of the day. When it persists at some point, slow down and hold onto your current activity. Shut down any thinking and just follow your participation. You grip a pen or focus on who is talking to you at the moment and avoid intentionally affecting your flow of thoughts. If you see your thoughts don't help, simply don't let yourself be the one to rescue yourself. You won't control it anyways, so just let yourself be controlled by your enviroment instead of your healing internal office.
  4. Today
  5. AGlassDarkly

    AGlassDarkly: hello fellow travellers!

    Hello all An update as I approach the two-year marking of my final dose of SSRI & SNRI. Time (just as is often mentioned here) has continued to heal. Two months ago I noticed that the terrible sleep disturbances and cortisol-flooding wake-up calls of a year ago were becoming more infrequent. I was now consistently falling asleep within 30mins of bed time and sleeping overall more like 6hours of total sleep. The terrible churning of energy within was also lessening. I no longer felt sedated and insulated from the world in the way that we know SSRIs produce. This, however means being more in touch with reality! – and all the things that now need fixing in my life that were being delayed or masked by the medication are revealed. This has produced a feeling – completely different to recurring depression – and more like one of mental exhaustion and intense frustration – even anger, at the 30 years of progress I ceded to the drugs. But I now know that this is simply the human state of existing! No one can escape it until death finally frees us. At least now I know for certain that my problems are my own to fix – and I can see them clearly, not through the distorting lens of sedation. So that was the good news – now the inevitable bad, and a caveat! Life (as it does) has thrown at me several curve-balls in quick succession that have seriously reset the progress described above: Death of a beloved pet; loss of work, and an unplanned house move – all within an eight-week period have wreaked havoc with my CNS and sent me back to a very dark place reminiscent of the early post-withdrawal period. Sleep disturbances; cortisol-flooding, and dark anxiety have become an unwanted companion again. What exact physiological mechanism has produced this reset? This is unknown – but I see it as a stark reminder that long after the drug has completely left our systems, the CNS is in a very delicate state of balance as it repairs. As I approach my two-year anniversary I celebrate my lived experience that progress is possible – and I have confidence that it will return; this setback is a temporary state (a wave!) that will recede in time. So wherever you are on your own road to freedom I say: Yes, it will be incredibly hard – but day by day however you need to, just keep going. Ride the waves – bask in the sun from the occasional windows – and just wait it out. And be encouraged in the certain knowledge that the immense strength that this whole process will build in you is going to be reward in itself for all those lost years – wasted by the damn pills.
  6. I really hope so. So desperately I hope that will happen. Thank you. I know. That's how I've been feeling, and I am now aware that I'm still sucked into this bad mood. Bad isn't an enough word for this. I also know how good I felt when I was in a completely different mood. Life was completely different, and I was strong. But at the same time, these memories that appear in my mind are real. Things didn't seem to be real until few weeks ago. Back then, all I remembered were just an 'impression'. It was painful, but it also didn't seem real and it was somehow distant from me. That allowed me to have some hope at the same time when I was suffering. Now am remembering the experiences of times when I suffered so much, but never truly healed from it. I just kept moving on with my life while pretending nothing happened to me. And now all of these painful memories are coming back to me and it seems to require my attention again. It's saying "look how painful you were, look!" I am just too afraid how strong and painful these memories are. It's like a tsunami, or a tornado. You can't fight against it. You just lose to it. Maybe the best thing is that it will go away some day. I hope this will go away someday, too. Then I will start building new things again. Then again it will come back, go away, and repeat... But while that happens, I might get stronger, and I will prepare for better the next time.
  7. mariamisery

    mariamisery: Can I survive this withdrawal?

    Hi. Thanks again. I feel you are right on. How can this be so hard? How do you stay so positive? Misery everyday. What do you say to yourself to get from one day to the next?
  8. BaccatePlayer

    mariamisery: Can I survive this withdrawal?

    Facing it too. Sometimes after leaving distraction I just become aware that I'm lost, like someone just cutted off my narrative and I don't know where the beginning or end is. I think I freak out at the prospect of being subject of a mood. It does make sense because it's just unnatural and it feels being trapped. Then again, meds are out of my system, so wierd or not, this is still actual me, just injured. This is something else, something that it's hard to hide under belief that it will change, something hard to distract myself from. I think my mind tries to find a way to cope with it now, somehow get used to it, but it's just so wierd and lacking in sense. I think this confusion is about delay in processing. I've noticed my mind sometimes feels shaken when switching between focusing on different objects and people around and the internal thoughts, images, sounds. I was thinking I couldn't wake up fully, but it's more like stuck at the "deep inside thoughts" mode even if I do something else. No issue if it's typing on phone, but very abnormal when making dinner for example. Definitelly agree on the "not built for this". Still this is just cognition combined with mood. I realized this is hidden frustration in my case. Maybe try to picture it as a few receptors not being yet repaired where needed and your body sending you some "error" or glitch signal because it works on loading your real current emotional state. When the though or feeling or sensation is especially estranging I notice it lacks a full link. Imagine your healthy body going through anxiety and then back to normal. It feels like you have some control over it. You feel how smoothly it releases that emotion of fear and how you know the path back. When these unique for recovering organism experiences emerge I feel like they are out of my reach. It's lacking the clear beginning or end and just feels like mistakenly recognizing a paper in your mouth while eating pasta. Clear intrusion, unexpected and alien without feeling like your body has a way of dealing with it in its inventory. I don't have the need to jump or anything but the "something inside wants to jump out of my skin" feeling comes and goes. It's common from what I see. When I had severely "fried" or "electric" feeling of there being too much chemicals in my brain making it feel heavy, full, overloaded it presented itself as me carrying some burden inside unable to throw it out. It was prompting nausea, unlocated pain, mental mania. Maybe it's a lesser version of it now. Maybe some of that burden got deleted and now there's a void and mind tries to figure out what should be there instead. We're not losing our heads, Maria. It will pass, the body always aims for homeosthasis, it wants to go back to what it used to be. If you feel helpless by all these strange realms, remember that since you are going through a change, it doesn't stay as it was. The recovery really is underway and such symptoms are proof brain is working on it. If the time to try feeling yourself isn't now, it is pending. You'll get there but now you're going through a portal and it feels unnatural. Temporarly.
  9. Jaffa

    Doctorsrcrap: can't cry and frustrated

    @Doctorsrcrap I'm so sorry. It's so very frustrating. I really think inflammation must be at least part of the problem. Have you tried an anti-inflammatory diet? In some ways its good to know that there is nothing structurally wrong with your back. So then we go back to it being nerve pain, withdrawal, and we ask what is going to possibly aid or speed up that healing. I'm going to see if I can find some info for you on inflammation. In the meantime stay calm and do everything you can to ease your suffering. I find hot water bottles on aching areas beneficial. Hugs
  10. jon1

    Vitamin defiency

    According to the study linked below, there is some evidence that SSRIs may affect folate, calcium and vitamin D levels. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5874849/ Other than that article, there isn't very much information about it, apart from a lot of websites repeating the same information, or using scare tactics about vitamins, in general, to try and sell their supplements. Or opinion pieces without any data to back them up. Once off the medication, a healthy diet and getting out in the sunshine should sort any deficiencies out pretty quickly. The majority of people don't need vitamin supplements. On a side note, I've read an increasing number of articles lately from scientists saying they think they've got the whole vitamin D thing wrong. And we may all naturally have wildly varying amounts of the stuff, meaning the blood tests are pointless. So I wouldn't be at all surprised if all the advice about it is reversed over the next few years.
  11. Probably good sign. Homogenization suggests your symptoms are coming to an end. Neutral at worst, but still not worth fixating on that. Just keep going and in a few weeks you'll see where it brought you with likely a more defined answer. Mood is very powerful. It fluctuates a lot from the inside, so you may feel confused. It will eventually find your stable sense of self, but right now don't get sucked into it because these are temporary jumps. You are a subject of constant changes and this is similair to watching partially painted nail - it looks odd, right? Like it didn't make sense, but when it's fully painted it looks solid again.
  12. Doctorsrcrap

    Doctorsrcrap: can't cry and frustrated

    Ive had an mri on my back and they found nothing
  13. Xcaretuk

    Xcaretuk: Kindled and Petrified

    Thanks Emonda for your quick response. Yes it’s an immediate release tablet. Yes you’re right about the scale I think my husband says it only goes to 0.001g. Thanks for your thoughts. Would we be correct to assume when you add the 10ml of water to the crushed tablet in the syringe does the tablet fully dissolve and the volume of water/solution remains at 10ml ? We just wish to take a tiny bit off to see if it will relieve the pain as it’s been everyday for over 4 months. 🙏
  14. Jaffa

    Doctorsrcrap: can't cry and frustrated

    @Doctorsrcrap ❤️
  15. Mamgu

    Mamgu: reducing citalopram

    So I survived Metal March (3 gigs in the end, not bad for someone who rarely goes out these days 😂). In terms of the squeezies, it was all OK. I noted there's a certain tone at live music gigs that when played, drives through me and it feels as though I'm being knocked over. I never had anything like that before withdrawing from Citalopram so totally putting it down to that. It's fleeting and I rationalise the experience, before long I'm back in the zone 🙂 I feel OK to continue the tapering now so here goes......
  16. Hi Momiki - I was really sad to read this, I hoped the year long hold was enough and you'd be able to chip away at the dose levels 😞. I'm so sorry this is your experience, it's just not fair. What is good though, is your attitude - of course you're going to feel bummed, but you are looking at the positives of holding for a longer time. I think it's crucial to have a life amidst the dramas of this process and you being able to focus on your mental and physical wellbeing is important. So I wanted to say, although it's a rubbish situation, well done for being as positive as you are and for looking after yourself Also, you're right 20mg to 1.2mg isn't to be sniffed at - well done. Who knows what the future will hold for you, maybe when it's time to start recommencing the dose drops, you'll find it much easier 🤞 Stay strong and be happy ❤️ x
  17. Emonda

    Xcaretuk: Kindled and Petrified

    Hi Xcaretuk, Sorry to hear you've had a bad day. The logic is reasonable, and it is certainly a very slow start to tapering. It's prudent to carefully test the waters. My only question is will your scale measure accurately to that level? I can't remember if I told you, but this is what I do: Crush a tablet between two spoons. Then, pulverise it into fine powder using the tip of one spoon against the other spoon. Add the contents into a large syringe, Add 10ml of water and shake vigorously, Extract what I don't need with a 0.5ml syringe (buy them online and remove the needle). If you were to test the water with a 2% reduction, you'd remove 0.2ml. I reckon it'd be too hard to reduce by less unless you added more water, say, 20ml. Drink the remaining liquid from the large syringe, then fill it with water again and drink that too, just in case something was left behind. Can your tablets be crushed and converted to liquid? My copy of the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines says that Paroxetine immediate release tables can be mixed with water. Are your tablets immediately release? I'm not a doctor nor a compounding chemist...I'm just letting you know what works for me. You need to make your own decisions with this. You could use a compounding chemist, although it would significantly increase the cost of the medication for you. Also, from memory, LostinCanada found her compounding chemist prepared doses varied by +-10%. I'm sure LostinCanada may have some wisdom from personal experience with this drug when it's daytime on her side of the world. I hope this helps. Emonda
  18. All the negative aspects of my past life are trying to come back to me, even the things I thought I had forgotten.
  19. I no longer want to live with this wickedness. I want to live for the love of nature, and the nature of love. I don't want to twist anything anymore.
  20. Xcaretuk

    Xcaretuk: Kindled and Petrified

    @LostInCanada@LotusRising@Emonda Hi, I have had a shocking day for nerve pain yet again in my forehead and back of eyes. My husband and I after looking back on your suggestions are thinking of reducing the dose by 1mg over a month ( to be on the safe side) to see if that would help a little. We are thinking of the following steps: 1. Weigh the tablet (20mg) in solid form. 2. Crush the tablet into a powder 3. Remove the required amount of powder for that days dosage for example day 1 of a 30 day month would be 1/30 of 1mg (0.033). 4. Dispense powder into a glass of water stirring waiting for it to dissolve. 5. Once dissolved drink all water with dissolved tablet inside. 6. Then refill the glass with water and drink it to ensure all powder has been taken. 7. The next day remove 2/30 (.066mg) of 1mg and the follow above steps. By the end of the month we would have reduced the dosage by 1 mg. Does this sound correct to you? Thank you so much again for all your help. We are so grateful.
  21. What can we do if there is nothing left to love about? I don't think I've ever felt this bad during the whole withdrawal (but obviously I don't remember any of those moments, so it's always the 'worst', but this time it really is just horrible). How naive was I? I thought I was almost healed. I thought I could live this way and see the future. I thought my symptoms were much less severe than others.
  22. I have been trying to solve my moral, social and emotional problem for more than 8 years without anyone's moral support, on my own, alone. I didn't have success but I always had all the will and I still do, it's just that my spirit is depleted, tired, it has been since I was hospitalized. But I see more clearly than ever the meaning and purpose behind my actions and needs, my objectives. That's what I lost at the hospital, the logic behind my actions, the purpose, the meaning, I was forced to left behind all those things in order to escape that horrible place, because I was brutally oppressed, gaslighted, pathologized, stigmatized, alienated, separated from the rest of the world, in an unfamiliar place, in a max security prison, and then drugged. The drug was the only thing that could really stop me from meeting my real and desperate needs and achieving my legitimate objectives, and those bastards used it to make me go back to "normal", forcibly, to make me disconnect from my true emotions, feelings and true self, to change my logical, understandable and meaningful human reactions. They're so insane and harmful.
  23. What is this? I thought I was healing. Now my 'symptoms' doesn't even seem to match with that classic windows and waves pattern. In fact that's how I've been feeling for a while... All I can think of is that my terrible past memories are coming back more alive (my poor vocabulary won't let me use other word than just 'past memories') and starting to torture me as it always did before. I was feeling much better until a month ago. I felt I was healing. I felt so much promise in my life. But ever since I've been starting to remember more about my past, my life has been nothing else but a torture for me. Now I am here, immensely suffering, only to remember how terrible my life has been. What a torture my life was.
  24. Hi there. Sorry to see you are having a rough time. Full moon times affect me so this past week I have had similar stuff going on. I try to lay low and rest until it passes. Hope to see you on the mend soon. 😊
  25. Jaffa

    Doctorsrcrap: can't cry and frustrated

    It seems that it does according to Alto who mentions b12 and fish oil in a post about preparing for psych drug withdrawal. That said, in my humble opinion, if you are eating well and getting good quality red meat and green veg, nuts and seeds and good fibre then vitamin deficiency shouldn't be too bad. I'm more inclined to think this is nerve pain but you could carefully try some vitamins to see if they help. Tumeric in large doses has some effect on inflammation. Have you tried an anti -inflammatory diet? Have you ever tried a ketogenic diet which is also anti inflammatory? Have a look at the work of Dr Chris Palmer. Just checking - is menopause or peri menopause a possibility. ? Please please hold on. I'm sure this is excruciating. Have you sought a second opinion ? Does the pain prevent you from sleeping? Im so sorry @Doctorsrcrap. I wish I could be more helpful.
  26. So is yours. Some days harder to be positive but this is what we have to work with…
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