Consciousness

[btdt]

Consciousness is the state or quality of awareness that is more advanced than the primitive awareness that insects have. Being conscious is also being aware of something within oneself, such as ideas and thoughts.

It gets muddied when using drugs and wd from them.  I wrote this a long time ago and for some reason maybe good sense... I can't read it today.  It was a long time ago and just now I am feeling less reflective and stable than I would need to be to read it.  I have always felt this was really important and it could be drivel you can be he judge I lost it for a long time and found it again today since I do not want to lose it again here it is ...at SA. 

peace 

 

Consciousness and Effexor (Antidepressants)

 

I am always searching. Night and day I am looking for an explanation. In the beginning I was looking for a cure as my life was out of control I was sick , constantly sick. In body in mind and in spirit. It was all incompassing there was no escape. Doctors I seen offered medication most did not work many made me worse. On the advice of devine intervention or a hallucination I am not sure which I quit taking all medications and let nature take its course. When I did this I was quite prepared to die as I had suffered long and hard there was no fight left in me. Surrender was the choice of last resort and I had made that choice. I obviously did not die.

Today I wanted to put down my thoughts about consciousness and how it is connected to the disconnection of self by the use of antidepressants. I think only a person who has done battle with these drugs for 18 years and has been searching and collecting information for almost as long could join these dots. I am that person. While I realize most of the paths I have searched come up empty there is this underlying connection with consciousness I see. I would like to gather my thoughts on this now and put them in one place.

I have read and reread a book called The Power of Now. I think only people like myself who have completely trashed their life to the point that there is really nothing left but people you have disillusioned mostly family who feel a responsibility to see to your well being and of course doctors who I have discounted as a source of help. Only people in this state with no money no life and very little to hold onto could find the NOW such and important part of their lives. The past is generally where a person of my age has built security nurtured relationships that will sustain them in their future. I have none of this so my future is very questionable hence the importance of the Now to me and other

individuals who have been damaged the same way. As usual it is difficult to stay focused not because of the current residual damage to my brain if there is any but because the intensity of this trip has been such that a undercurrent of emotion and traumatic memories pull me away from the NOW and into the past. This has been and remains my constant struggle to remain in the present time and deal with content that I wish to focus on. Bear with me as I am trying to make this as concise as I am able but the content needs a bit of history to make it understandable. I am doing my best to not get trapped in the web of history but I need for you to know it is a struggle and I may slip forgive me if it does happen. Please continue reading as I hope to eventually get to the point but the point needs some sign posts to make it relevant. Behind each sign post is a well of unconsciousness slipping into these wells I now know is what has kept me lost. The unconsciousness is not the kind where you are asleep as you generally see would see the word used but rather an awake type where you go to work drive you car build and destroy lives. This I believe is drug induced and I hope to if not prove it scientifically present a few more sign posts that may lead to a general understanding of what we are up against in trying to find our way thru this dark forest. Expect to trip on some fallen trees as would be the case maneuvering in any forest at night.

I know there will be many who will discount this idea of mine fine I accept you don’t agree and I know you will add your two cents I am not so much welcoming it as expecting it. I don’t welcome it because if I am even close to an understanding on this issue it is very important to the lives that have been affected and those that will be

affected in the future if we do not get some clarity around this issue and restrain the use of these drugs. There are countless places for you ideas I just wish you would not put them in this thread unless there is a some issue of fact you would like to contest where there is a possible mistake in the concept those comment which may lead to further growth or clarity on this issue are welcomed. If all you have is a non productive criticism bitching and whining please restrain yourself or start you own thread.

At this point I am mostly I hope above water but if I should slip into the well of unconsciousness the wake variety expect me to be underwater if you can go there with me pretend you are listening to a person underwater experiencing life and reacting to life while constantly underwater then you too can glimpse what it is like to be a person currently under the influence of antidepressants or reliving the state of drug induced unconsciousness. Welcome to our world be glad you can leave whenever you want as those of us affected cannot.

The idea just hit me that maybe the slips into the well are where the real identity and understanding exist and in that may dwell the truth you need to glimpse I think it may turn out in the end to be a bit of both. Life unconscious and the coming out and understanding life after this state it is a slow dawning not a sudden trip like the falling back in. For those who have lived this or are living it maybe this will help not in how things will be exactly for you but in sign post in showing the way. This entire exercise is in a hope of consolidating the past and therefore a base for the future as I cannot seem to move forward in the ways the world expects while I am still reeling from these experiences and slipping between altered states. I would like to say here that most of the time I do not live in an altered state at this point or I don’t believe I do I may be wrong either way I am out of it long enough to know the difference.

Here is the sign post that state this train of thought today.

 

 

 

N

 

 

 

 

Now I do not want to get into the purpose of the book though love this book and find it immensely helpful during my healing process it has helped me get through the days and direct my energy way from the trail of crap I have left in my wake.

What would like to focus on is the first sentence and may have been well advice to just type it but thought there may be some who will be spurred by the second sentence to read the book J hence there it is. I may put as many off their choice.

So when we are in dreamless sleep we are actually entering into a consciousness state that I suspect is a restorative state that allows us to heal on a regular basis hence allowing us to remain conscious in our waking day. Without this type of restorative sleep we slip into a an ever increasing state of unconscious living not just the type talked of in this book but a state beyond this to being unable to consolidate our own feelings wants needs we are removed from ourselves and live as shells of who we once were. This will change when the drugs are removed and tho the heart and soul the essence of who you are will

return there is all this pollution that has built up in you own system and is represented in how you have lived your life while drugged that needs to be dealt with. If you have been drugged for years and years this is an ominous task. If you have been drugged a short time with devastating effects as some are devastated this may still be an ominous task but with fewer wells to fall into.

Here is my take on this years ago I had a car accident I had what was thought to be a concussion. I hurt my leg in this accident and for a few years took Tylenol #3. I went to scheduled apt with a back specialist. I was working and quite functional at this time. This doctor thought I was taking too much Tylenol and gave me a pill that he said would allow me to take less. This is before home computers and before people mistrusted their doctor or their drugs. I took the pill. Within a couple of wks I had hallucinations and went quite mad. Strangely enough the medication was never thought to be a cause of any of these issues. Within the next two years I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue fibromyalgia quit work could not sleep had many other health and psych problems.

I seen and experienced things that were not there this fact got me sent to the head injury clinic where they suspected I had a brain injury from the accident year earlier and was having some kind of seizure which was expressing itself as these “experiences” I do not recall if I told them about the pill I had been given for leg pain I can only expect that it was part of my file they may or may not have received. Testing was done a sleep deprived EEG. During this test the operator asked me if I had a good nap. I found this odd as I had not been asleep and told her so. She said yes my brain was asleep. I also learned on reviewing sleep test with my doctor that I never went into the fourth level of dreamless sleep that discussed in the book that started this writing.

I had the pills from the back doc still I took them occasionally when my leg was too painful. The medication was prozac the name on the label was not prozac so even when I heard of prozac I did not identify it as a medication I had taken. It was not till 18 years had passed that I figured out I had taken prozac and that was cause of not only my craziness but the sever ongoing issue with insomnia pain and psych issues were indeed withdrawal. I suffered two years in this state before being sent to a pain clinic where you got it they put me on amitriptyiline an antidepressant used to treat fibro. I helped me sleep and through sleep my healing/life improved it too had many side effects I was eventually switched to Zoloft then paxil then respiradol then effexor eventually it stopped working increasing the does caused mania so cellexa was added this is how one is drugged for 18 years on what started as a treatment for leg pain and cause untold suffering . Repeatedly withdrawal was diagnosed as other things depression ptsd ect more drugs and more side effects and more withdrawal and more diagnosises… a trap is what I call it now.

Yes I have fallen in a couple of wells already as memory needs a place to unleash itself but I am still here and moving forward. This is how the post antidepressant brain functions or at least how mine does.

Back to unconsciousness induced losing your grip on life and personality changes this may not be the only reason the drugs have such a devastating effect but I think it is one of the ways.

Another offshoot of this sleep/consciousness idea can be found by looking at Sleep State Misperception it is a topic we covered at paxilprogress.org when I was a member there of course all my posts have been deleted so you will see number on the top left counting the

posts when you see a missing number you will know that was one of my posts. Still some of my comments are still in the responses as quotes. Doctors Anne Blakely covers this in her book and while she does some stuff that really does distract from her good work and make it easy for the drug companies to discredit her the information she presents on this issue seems sound. There are cases where a antidepressant using person has done things which they say were like dreams to them they are sleep walking. Something referred to in some antidepressant writings as spellbound. For instance a husband killed his wife in what seemed like a dream to him he loved her dearly and strangely enough he used the drug as a defence and went free. So there is more to this than my ramblings and yes I know I had my head smacked in a car accident and that rules me out is some peoples minds as have a straight up horrid reaction to medication and as medication being the soul cause of my problems but to that I offer this. I carried on my life after the head injury finished school and work the problem the doc was trying to fix was using too much Tylenol #3. The problem created was massive this is my opinion. I can’t make people believe me I can only tell the truth and let the pieces drop where they may.

What I can tell you is this when I was having problems when I was on Effexor I could not think after 5 or so years on I felt like I had did when I had just had a head injury and so I started looking for the doctors I had that were treating what they thought was a brain injury after I had taken the prozac. This was the worst my brain has ever worked after prozac and after 5 years of Effexor I could not think. After Effexor I had all the symptom of MS and was evaluated for it including an MRI which showed plaques in the white matter of my brain. This was thought to be either migraines or a vascular issue a the time. Since I have found research linking vascular issues to antidepressants. Either way the point of view that I felt he same right after the accident when I had a sever concussion then again after a short few doses of prozac then again after long term use of Effexor says something to me. These drugs hurt our brains mess with our sleep cycle in way not yet understood change our level of consciousness and hurt our bodies.

K that is it for me today I am spent

[cymbaltawithdrawal5600]

As this post appears highly autobiographical and written in a 'stream of consciousness' manner, perhaps more suited to your own thread so you don't lose track of it?

[btdt]

It will be going there too lets leave it a day or so if nobody has any thoughts on it... from their own perspective we will take it down... k

peace  I wrote it years ago when I was closer to the meaness of wd... still messed up but close enough to get it...