RubyTuesday Off meds and back in Ballet Class age 62

[RubyTuesday]

ADMIN NOTE RubyTuesday's Introductions topic is here.

---

 

 

2002 to 2016 age 44 to 58 Prozac, Birth Control, (Celexa, Lexipro, Wellbutrin, Xanax, Ativan) Seroquel, Lamictal, Remeron.

Hi I used this forum from 2013 to 2016 when I tapered off Remeron, Seroquel, and Lamictal after starting Prozac in early 2002. 

 

In 2001 I was  the single mom of an 8 year old boy who had NOT been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder although he did and does show all the signs, as do I. I was obliged to homeschool him for several years since the only way to get anything done right is to do it yourself. In 2001 my father died, my girlfriend died, my boyfriend left me, I got fired from a job I loved, I got pregnant, and boyfriend #2  insisted on an abortion and then disappeared. I was diagnosed with "situational depression". Prozac seemed to work for me for awhile.

 

 However in late 2008 and early 2009 I tried and failed, once again, to find an effective medical intervention for my lifelong severe menstrual pain and mood swings. I was supposedly being treated for this, with Prozac, by the Ob Gyn who had performed my abortion seven years earlier.. However my PMMD (undiagnosed) and pain were getting worse, not better. Not one but two male doctors insisted that menopause had nothing to do with my problems and refused to discuss any hormonal intervention. At this time I was 50 years old, and oh, genetically female.

I had a new Nurse Practitioner in a revolving line of NPs who continued to rubber stamp my previous prescription without doing any re-assessment. I asked the new guy if I could get a prescription for Ativan for use a couple of days a month before my period. I had noticed that it had a significant impact on my premenstrual AGITATION, hence cramping and temper tantrums. He told me that, had I requested this for anxiety, he could have given it to me, but, since I had made the request for menstrual problems, I had to ask my Ob Gyn. Dutifully, at my next appointment with my Ob Gyn, I made the request of him. 

He became quite flustered and told me to talk to my “psychiatrist”. I pointed out that in fact it was he, my Ob Gyn, who had originally started me on Prozac, for “female problems” (such a catch-all term!)  He continued to stonewall me and I realized I had made a serious error  which could never be retracted. I was now, in his view, engaging in “drug seeking behavior” as defined by whatever marketing materials he was reading.  Furthermore, his attitude towards me changed and became so demeaning and insulting during that conversation, (which took place while he was fully clothed and I was wearing a paper gown with no back),  that I literally left his office and told him “no thank you” on the cold speculum up the You Know What I was about to get that day. And I found another free clinic to refill my birth control. 

Sitting outside his office I was frustrated and very angry. Why was I even trying to talk to a couple of men about female problems in the first place? Why were they so high and mighty? How dare they even consider trying to divide up gynecological issues from emotional  issues in the human female? And who the hell was defining requesting Ativan as “drug seeking behavior“ and Prozac as “talking to your doctor”?

 Imagine my further outrage, roughly a decade later, when I read Robert Whittaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic. This was in fact the first non fiction full length book I was able to finish after I got off my meds.. (During the six year tapering, reinstatement, and tapering again period, I dropped out of two separate attempts to earn a teaching credential.) In that book I learned that during the original trials of Prozac, they were obliged to give the test subjects benzodiazepines in order to calm their AGITATION. However, they left that very significant fact out of the published studies. Which is downright criminal, not to mention grossly unscientific.

 

 

Also without further consultation with any men in white coats, I stopped taking birth control in June of 2009, and started consuming large amounts of cannabis for the pain.

In late 2010 I abruptly tapered off Prozac (I didn’t bother talking to the same male NP I was stuck with for several years before he, mercifully,  retired, why would I?)  and I quit cannabis, alcohol, sugar, and gluten all at once. I completely lost my mind.  How I am still alive I have no idea. In late 2011 I started on the Remeron Seroquel Lamictal triad after trying several others for most of 2011. Also in late 2011 my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 bone cancer and given 6 months to live, of which she lasted for 5. 

 In  2012 and 2013 I noticed that I felt worse than I had ever felt even at my worst without medication, and I decided to taper off all my meds. Coincidentally, at the same time I completed my Yoga Teacher Level 1 Certification. This forum was my only source of support. 

I had learned the hard way not to discuss my medication withdrawal blues either in AA or in any yoga classes, and certainly not with any of my so-called doctors.  My son was studying Chemistry and helped me with the actual cutting and calculating part of the puzzle. My own Inner Math Brain, hailed as gifted at age 11, was out to lunch. At this point he was 20 to 23 years old.

Also in early 2013 I was diagnosed with CPTSD and I began the process of applying for Disability, which also took 3 years to attain. I went through all my interviews and medical assessments focusing solely on my symptoms, without saying one single word about my growing awareness that the medications were driving all the symptoms. In fact, one of the guys who approved my Disability was the same guy who first put me on Prozac through the so-called “welfare to work” program thirteen years earlier. (not the Ob Gyn. Different doctor.) By the time I was granted Disability in late 2015 I was having muscle spasms that were so bad I was about to get fired from my job as an after school teacher, as I could not stand up on the playground for long periods of time. Instead I was able to resign.

On March 23, 2016, during a full lunar eclipse, and after a long conversation with a stranger at the library about homeschooling, I flushed the remaining 3 months of medication down the toilet. The whole year of 2016 was a living hell which I can barely remember except when I read my journals.  From December 2016: "The first thing that must be said about keeping a journal about one's withdrawal from psychotropic medication is that it is completely impossible to keep a journal about one's withdrawal from psychotropic medication. (even for a veteran writer with an advanced degree in psychology like myself) The meds just have too intense an effect on your brain chemistry.”

 

A slow recovery began in early 2017 and in early 2018 I began working again part time as a teacher and tour guide.  In August of 2019 I re-enrolled in graduate school, and completed two semesters,  a project I chose not to continue due to financial issues, not to cognitive issues. However, I remain very active taking online classes including foreign languages and intermediate ballet while I shelter in place. I expect that I will eventually return to part time teaching in some capacity.

 

During the withdrawal period starting in 2013, as well as throughout 2016 (and also for all of 2011, the year of polypharmacy) I experienced the entire gamut of withdrawal symptoms including brain zaps, brain buzzing, auditory hallucinations, nerve twitches, nerve pain, headaches, vision abnormalities, severe mood swings, suicidal ideation, severe muscle and joint cramps, depersonalization, derealization, akathisia, brain fog, fatigue, and more. I honestly don’t remember some of those symptoms until I read about them in a forum.  Two common symptoms of withdrawal, insomnia and stomach problems, were only minor problems for me. For a while I took Benadryl to sleep and then I switched to melatonin. I drink a teaspoon of liquid acidophilus in juice every day.

Two problems have lingered, both a form of Tardive Dyskinesia. Occasional very painful  joint and hip pain kept me from my preferred level of physical activity for long stretches punctuated by short bursts of walking and/or ballet class. I take blue green algae, magnesium, chosto chondroitin, a supplement for “fibromyalgia”, and I do my best to drink lots of water every day. And a chronic twitch in my left cheek which lasted for 4 years began to interfere with my comfort level while driving at night, and  led me to start getting Botox injections in 2020. And I now have a diagnosis of minor osteoarthritis in my left hip.

I believe it is highly likely that the severe dry chest cough I had for 3 weeks in January of 2020 was Covid, and that I suffered from post Covid syndrome certainly from April through September. 2020, if not continuing in the present.  The muscle, nerve, and  joint pain returned temporarily and became so debilitating that for several weeks I could not walk without  a cane. I got another  X-Ray and MRI for my hip and was told that the degeneration was only minor. I also suffered from vertigo, fatigue, asthma, and more, all of which I had suffered from in times past, and all of which had been ascribed to various causes, and all of which are now listed in a group of symptoms called  ‘post Covid syndrome.”  

 

In October of 2020 I mysteriously began taking the entire hour long ballet barre again. Oddly enough it was the same date, October 2, as my last dose of Seroquel five years earlier. With certain modifications, I take class  3 to 5 times per week and I continue with this today.  Although during the summer of 2020 I could barely walk across my living room with a cane,  I am slowly pushing my half mile walk around the neighborhood up to one mile. Today I walked a mile and a half. Dance and walking remain my best defense against depression. 

I use an app on my phone called Curable that collects and presents in a user friendly format all of the up to date neuroscientific understanding of chronic pain that is driven by tension rather than by physical injury.  Curable has encouraged me to get moving again, and not to let the pain paralyze me. In fact, freezing is a trauma response, and movement is the cure. That is; whatever degree and type of movement you can accomplish and tolerate right now. It can be as simple as wiggling your toes, or rubbing your hands together. The asana is where YOU are in the pose, not where that photo-shopped model is.

I have experienced overwhelming grief at the loss of my social contacts during Quarantine. But unlike the years on Prozac and Polypharmacy, the grief has a clean, clear quality to it. I dive into it and I feel that it is bottomless, but I do know that it will end. During withdrawal there were waves of total agony and windows of slightly less agony. Now there are waves of grief for concrete recognizable losses and windows of pure joy and gratitude for simple things like being able to stretch my leg up on the ballet barre. 

Once upon a time,  when I was a bright young thing of eighteen I memorized a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay called Renascence. While I was writing this, some of those lines popped into my head.

 

“Over these things I could not see

These were the things that bounded me...

 

...And so beneath the Weight lay I

And suffered Death, but could not die

…

Into the Earth I sank til I

Full six feet underground did lie

…

I would I were alive again

To kiss the fingers of the rain

…

O God, I cried, give me new birth

And put me back upon the Earth!

…

I know not how such things can be

I breathed my soul back into me!

…

About the trees my arms I wound

Like one gone mad I hugged the ground

 

I raised my quivering arms on high

I laughed and laughed into the sky…”

 

This is a long poem, more than 20 stanzas, but I am fully capable, now, almost five years off of all psych meds, of memorizing it once again.

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55993/renascence

 

Edited January 5, 2021 by Altostrata
changed font

[Altostrata]

Congratulations, Ruby! Thanks for coming back and letting us know how well you're doing.

[Kalmar]

3 hours ago, RubyTuesday said:

ADMIN NOTE RubyTuesday's Introductions topic is here.

---

 

 

2002 to 2016 age 44 to 58 Prozac, Birth Control, (Celexa, Lexipro, Wellbutrin, Xanax, Ativan) Seroquel, Lamictal, Remeron.

Hi I used this forum from 2013 to 2016 when I tapered off Remeron, Seroquel, and Lamictal after starting Prozac in early 2002. 

 

In 2001 I was  the single mom of an 8 year old boy who had NOT been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder although he did and does show all the signs, as do I. I was obliged to homeschool him for several years since the only way to get anything done right is to do it yourself. In 2001 my father died, my girlfriend died, my boyfriend left me, I got fired from a job I loved, I got pregnant, and boyfriend #2  insisted on an abortion and then disappeared. I was diagnosed with "situational depression". Prozac seemed to work for me for awhile.

 

 However in late 2008 and early 2009 I tried and failed, once again, to find an effective medical intervention for my lifelong severe menstrual pain and mood swings. I was supposedly being treated for this, with Prozac, by the Ob Gyn who had performed my abortion seven years earlier.. However my PMMD (undiagnosed) and pain were getting worse, not better. Not one but two male doctors insisted that menopause had nothing to do with my problems and refused to discuss any hormonal intervention. At this time I was 50 years old, and oh, genetically female.

I had a new Nurse Practitioner in a revolving line of NPs who continued to rubber stamp my previous prescription without doing any re-assessment. I asked the new guy if I could get a prescription for Ativan for use a couple of days a month before my period. I had noticed that it had a significant impact on my premenstrual AGITATION, hence cramping and temper tantrums. He told me that, had I requested this for anxiety, he could have given it to me, but, since I had made the request for menstrual problems, I had to ask my Ob Gyn. Dutifully, at my next appointment with my Ob Gyn, I made the request of him. 

He became quite flustered and told me to talk to my “psychiatrist”. I pointed out that in fact it was he, my Ob Gyn, who had originally started me on Prozac, for “female problems” (such a catch-all term!)  He continued to stonewall me and I realized I had made a serious error  which could never be retracted. I was now, in his view, engaging in “drug seeking behavior” as defined by whatever marketing materials he was reading.  Furthermore, his attitude towards me changed and became so demeaning and insulting during that conversation, (which took place while he was fully clothed and I was wearing a paper gown with no back),  that I literally left his office and told him “no thank you” on the cold speculum up the You Know What I was about to get that day. And I found another free clinic to refill my birth control. 

Sitting outside his office I was frustrated and very angry. Why was I even trying to talk to a couple of men about female problems in the first place? Why were they so high and mighty? How dare they even consider trying to divide up gynecological issues from emotional  issues in the human female? And who the hell was defining requesting Ativan as “drug seeking behavior“ and Prozac as “talking to your doctor”?

 Imagine my further outrage, roughly a decade later, when I read Robert Whittaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic. This was in fact the first non fiction full length book I was able to finish after I got off my meds.. (During the six year tapering, reinstatement, and tapering again period, I dropped out of two separate attempts to earn a teaching credential.) In that book I learned that during the original trials of Prozac, they were obliged to give the test subjects benzodiazepines in order to calm their AGITATION. However, they left that very significant fact out of the published studies. Which is downright criminal, not to mention grossly unscientific.

 

 

Also without further consultation with any men in white coats, I stopped taking birth control in June of 2009, and started consuming large amounts of cannabis for the pain.

In late 2010 I abruptly tapered off Prozac (I didn’t bother talking to the same male NP I was stuck with for several years before he, mercifully,  retired, why would I?)  and I quit cannabis, alcohol, sugar, and gluten all at once. I completely lost my mind.  How I am still alive I have no idea. In late 2011 I started on the Remeron Seroquel Lamictal triad after trying several others for most of 2011. Also in late 2011 my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 bone cancer and given 6 months to live, of which she lasted for 5. 

 In  2012 and 2013 I noticed that I felt worse than I had ever felt even at my worst without medication, and I decided to taper off all my meds. Coincidentally, at the same time I completed my Yoga Teacher Level 1 Certification. This forum was my only source of support. 

I had learned the hard way not to discuss my medication withdrawal blues either in AA or in any yoga classes, and certainly not with any of my so-called doctors.  My son was studying Chemistry and helped me with the actual cutting and calculating part of the puzzle. My own Inner Math Brain, hailed as gifted at age 11, was out to lunch. At this point he was 20 to 23 years old.

Also in early 2013 I was diagnosed with CPTSD and I began the process of applying for Disability, which also took 3 years to attain. I went through all my interviews and medical assessments focusing solely on my symptoms, without saying one single word about my growing awareness that the medications were driving all the symptoms. In fact, one of the guys who approved my Disability was the same guy who first put me on Prozac through the so-called “welfare to work” program thirteen years earlier. (not the Ob Gyn. Different doctor.) By the time I was granted Disability in late 2015 I was having muscle spasms that were so bad I was about to get fired from my job as an after school teacher, as I could not stand up on the playground for long periods of time. Instead I was able to resign.

On March 23, 2016, during a full lunar eclipse, and after a long conversation with a stranger at the library about homeschooling, I flushed the remaining 3 months of medication down the toilet. The whole year of 2016 was a living hell which I can barely remember except when I read my journals.  From December 2016: "The first thing that must be said about keeping a journal about one's withdrawal from psychotropic medication is that it is completely impossible to keep a journal about one's withdrawal from psychotropic medication. (even for a veteran writer with an advanced degree in psychology like myself) The meds just have too intense an effect on your brain chemistry.”

 

A slow recovery began in early 2017 and in early 2018 I began working again part time as a teacher and tour guide.  In August of 2019 I re-enrolled in graduate school, and completed two semesters,  a project I chose not to continue due to financial issues, not to cognitive issues. However, I remain very active taking online classes including foreign languages and intermediate ballet while I shelter in place. I expect that I will eventually return to part time teaching in some capacity.

 

During the withdrawal period starting in 2013, as well as throughout 2016 (and also for all of 2011, the year of polypharmacy) I experienced the entire gamut of withdrawal symptoms including brain zaps, brain buzzing, auditory hallucinations, nerve twitches, nerve pain, headaches, vision abnormalities, severe mood swings, suicidal ideation, severe muscle and joint cramps, depersonalization, derealization, akathisia, brain fog, fatigue, and more. I honestly don’t remember some of those symptoms until I read about them in a forum.  Two common symptoms of withdrawal, insomnia and stomach problems, were only minor problems for me. For a while I took Benadryl to sleep and then I switched to melatonin. I drink a teaspoon of liquid acidophilus in juice every day.

Two problems have lingered, both a form of Tardive Dyskinesia. Occasional very painful  joint and hip pain kept me from my preferred level of physical activity for long stretches punctuated by short bursts of walking and/or ballet class. I take blue green algae, magnesium, chosto chondroitin, a supplement for “fibromyalgia”, and I do my best to drink lots of water every day. And a chronic twitch in my left cheek which lasted for 4 years began to interfere with my comfort level while driving at night, and  led me to start getting Botox injections in 2020. And I now have a diagnosis of minor osteoarthritis in my left hip.

I believe it is highly likely that the severe dry chest cough I had for 3 weeks in January of 2020 was Covid, and that I suffered from post Covid syndrome certainly from April through September. 2020, if not continuing in the present.  The muscle, nerve, and  joint pain returned temporarily and became so debilitating that for several weeks I could not walk without  a cane. I got another  X-Ray and MRI for my hip and was told that the degeneration was only minor. I also suffered from vertigo, fatigue, asthma, and more, all of which I had suffered from in times past, and all of which had been ascribed to various causes, and all of which are now listed in a group of symptoms called  ‘post Covid syndrome.”  

 

In October of 2020 I mysteriously began taking the entire hour long ballet barre again. Oddly enough it was the same date, October 2, as my last dose of Seroquel five years earlier. With certain modifications, I take class  3 to 5 times per week and I continue with this today.  Although during the summer of 2020 I could barely walk across my living room with a cane,  I am slowly pushing my half mile walk around the neighborhood up to one mile. Today I walked a mile and a half. Dance and walking remain my best defense against depression. 

I use an app on my phone called Curable that collects and presents in a user friendly format all of the up to date neuroscientific understanding of chronic pain that is driven by tension rather than by physical injury.  Curable has encouraged me to get moving again, and not to let the pain paralyze me. In fact, freezing is a trauma response, and movement is the cure. That is; whatever degree and type of movement you can accomplish and tolerate right now. It can be as simple as wiggling your toes, or rubbing your hands together. The asana is where YOU are in the pose, not where that photo-shopped model is.

I have experienced overwhelming grief at the loss of my social contacts during Quarantine. But unlike the years on Prozac and Polypharmacy, the grief has a clean, clear quality to it. I dive into it and I feel that it is bottomless, but I do know that it will end. During withdrawal there were waves of total agony and windows of slightly less agony. Now there are waves of grief for concrete recognizable losses and windows of pure joy and gratitude for simple things like being able to stretch my leg up on the ballet barre. 

Once upon a time,  when I was a bright young thing of eighteen I memorized a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay called Renascence. While I was writing this, some of those lines popped into my head.

 

“Over these things I could not see

These were the things that bounded me...

 

...And so beneath the Weight lay I

And suffered Death, but could not die

…

Into the Earth I sank til I

Full six feet underground did lie

…

I would I were alive again

To kiss the fingers of the rain

…

O God, I cried, give me new birth

And put me back upon the Earth!

…

I know not how such things can be

I breathed my soul back into me!

…

About the trees my arms I wound

Like one gone mad I hugged the ground

 

I raised my quivering arms on high

I laughed and laughed into the sky…”

 

This is a long poem, more than 20 stanzas, but I am fully capable, now, almost five years off of all psych meds, of memorizing it once again.

 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/55993/renascence

 

Well done! You story inspires me to keep going! 

[Cocopuffz17]

Amazing journey! You are so strong. It is so sad to read what these meds have done to peoples lives and doctors still remain naive to the effects of them even after patients complain for years. You are an amazingly strong woman. Thanks for sharing your journey

[almuPA]

Congrats Ruby,

 

You are a true survivor! I am so sorry for the bad experience you had with the doctors, It really makes me angry and sad at the same time. But you could survived to all, and that gives me Hope for myself, so thank you very much for coming back. 

Hugs,

Almu.

[RubyTuesday]

Hi Ruby checking in here. Have gone back to part time teaching as predicted. Teaching chess to elementary school kids after school. During quarantine I broke up with boyfriend and got back on Visterol as needed for anxiety and insomnia lowest dose. Also used Visterol to help with Seroquel wd c. 2015 had no trouble stopping.