nycdreamer What if our baseline is severe depression?

[nycdreamer]

Hi all,

 

I'm only 3 weeks in to a prozac withdrawal and the most insane depression has hit me with racing/ocd thoughts and feelings of being disconnected. I can hardly functionm I definitely experienced this before starting antidepressants. What if our baseline is severely low chemicals? What do we do?

[InvisibleUnless]

depression is not directly caused by "severely low chemicals" (for instance, the low serotonin hypothesis of mental illness is a disproved myth), but i can definitely relate to already having a hard time before medications.  the meds never cured my illnesses, but going off them eventually helped me.  it wasnt a chemical change, but rather an attitude and lifestyle one.

 

im definitely not implying you are 'choosing' to be depressed, its never as simple as that.  but, there are significant things you can try that might help you with your depressed and anxious state.  there are collections of ideas around here for treatment options, like counseling methods, lifestyle adjustments, supplements, non-western and alternative medicines (like acupuncture and meditative practices), and other scientifically validated plans for achieving greater mental wellness.

 

if you are still struggling, with or without meds, i recommend a variety of things personally:

 

1. having a counselor that can both understand your situation and give helpful advice towards getting better (whether they are procedural, philosophical, or take the form of recommendations to resources)

2. having a community or collection of a few friends that you can discuss your difficulties with and receive both support and encouragement in emotional and practical ways

3. taking responsibility for researching and making decisions about your own healthcare that other people might admonish you to 'leave to the professionals'---the medical establishment is NOT here to get you better!

4. GOING EASY ON YOURSELF!  seriously, a lot of issues arise from how hard we are on ourselves, with our expectations and feelings of self-doubt and insufficiency and judgement.  its important to be responsible and decisive about our life choices, but we also need to give ourselves some breathing room and understand that we dont control what happens to us, only how we respond to it.  and some situations are absolutely harrowing.

 

there are many threads and individuals with recommendations for how to combat depression and thought-troubles, and i am neither an exhaustive resource of those topics nor treatment options themselves, but im sure people will chime in and link you to resources with greater acuity than i am capable.  its good that youve found a place to ask these questions, because i have found the members here quite welcoming and information-savvy in my short time here so far.  please make yourself at home, foot stool optional.

[bluebalu86]

I also have questions like these. I was very sick with depression, anxiety and panic attacks long before I started taking the meds. 

[bluebalu86]

I want off all meds but at the same time I feel seriously mentally ill and in need of medical help so I really don't know what to do about all this. 

[Altostrata]

nyc, you may be tapering too fast.

 

If you choose to live a life without psychiatric drugs, you will have to find non-drug ways to cope with any symptoms you have.

 

If you believe you are seriously mentally ill, you will always easily find people who will confirm your opinion, no matter what your condition. One way or the other, you need to take responsibility for yourself.

[MatGMax]

Hi nycdreamer

I'd agree with Alto, you may be tapering off too fast.

Also when in depression it is hard to see a time in the future when you feel better, but it will very likely come. It is a quirk of our brains that we don't see it.

 

Ssri's have shown to be of some benefit some cases of severe depression. But virtually no benefit in cases of mild and moderate depression (and they are dolled out like lolly water).

 

Cheers

 

Damien

[nycdreamer]

I spent the first 20 years of my life totally out of body with major panic disorder,hypomania and partial seizures. This is very tricky. So torn between eastern and western medicine.

[Martin]

Hi all,

 

I'm only 3 weeks in to a prozac withdrawal and the most insane depression has hit me with racing/ocd thoughts and feelings of being disconnected. I can hardly functionm I definitely experienced this before starting antidepressants. What if our baseline is severely low chemicals? What do we do?

Well, you could take l-theanine, that increases chemicals. Most notably dopamine, serotonin and gaba. - might very likely be too activating if you're going through withdrawal though.

 

Also prozac sucks. Horrible horrible med. 

[Altostrata]

nycdreamer, I've made this into your Introductions topic as it has become about your particular situation.
 
How long were you taking Prozac, at what dosage, and how did you go off?
 
Please read

What is withdrawal syndrome?

Why taper by 10% of my dosage?

About reinstating and stabilizing to stop withdrawal symptoms

Tips for tapering off Prozac (fluoxetine)

[nycdreamer]

It all started when I was about 5. I was in nursery school and felt painful adrenaline rushes throughout my body, episodes of depersonalization and agitation. This continued through my 20s and looking back feels much like akithisia. I started Zoloft in my 20s and it did help the obsessive thoughts tremendously and the anxiety. A year ago I started getting physically and mentally sick from the Zoloft. Doctors switched me from one drug to the next, only for me to end up back on Zoloft. I tried to stop it all together but ended up in the psych ward. I was finally switched to Prozac for its long taper and have been through a month of hell starting to come off of it. I'm in mental agony, having intense fear, obsessive thoughts and the depersonalization has been coming back majorly. I dont feel mentally here. My baseline is feeling out of body and disconnected. If thats my baseline, am I better off on meds? It feels like I have a metabolic disorder or something that causes miniscule chemicals in my brain. And I get floaty and detached. Help!

[mammaP]

How have you tapered prozac NYC? It sounds like you have made cuts too big or too fast for your brain to keep up. Tapering needs to be slow to allow the brain and nervous system to adjust to the lower dose.  I would hold where you are and not make any more cuts until stable, or even updose a little but without knowing what your starting dose was or what your current dose is it's hard to say how much to updose. Everyone wants to get off the drugs and once the decision has been made it has to be right NOW, but our brains can't cope with that and need time. 

 

After reading your story it looks to me like you may have adverse reactions to some food additives, or there maybe something with your gut that is causing problems.  When my kids were small, I noticed that one of them became difficult and hyper when we were shopping. She was a total nightmare but really good at home.  Then I saw something in a magazine about additives and realised that was the problem. She was only like that when shopping, and we always went to the same cafe for a snack where she had an orange squash. I never bought squash or other sugary drinks so she never had them at home.  I stopped buying it and she had water instead, she was fine and it stopped right there. It was simple for me but if I had used bottled squash at home, or bought processed foods she would most likely have been diagnosed with some disorder. It could be anything, that is just my experience, find the cause and cure the depression.  

 

There is an excellent book about the GAPS diet, many psychological conditions start with the gut, make that healthy and the conditions improve. Here is the topic that discusses those diets. 

 

http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/890-scdgapspaleo-diets/

[nycdreamer]

I want off all meds but at the same time I feel seriously mentally ill and in need of medical help so I really don't know what to do about all this. 

Isn't this confusing? If we are born with a deficiency of some sort it seems we need to find a natural way to correct it if we're going to come off meds...

[nycdreamer]

nycdreamer, I've made this into your Introductions topic as it has become about your particular situation.

 

How long were you taking Prozac, at what dosage, and how did you go off?

 

Please read

 

What is withdrawal syndrome?

 

Why taper by 10% of my dosage?

 

About reinstating and stabilizing to stop withdrawal symptoms

 

Tips for tapering off Prozac (fluoxetine)

Thanks for responding. I was on Zoloft for over 10 years then switched to Prozac to taper off SSRIs. Now I feel COMPLETELY depersonalized and detached. It's so scary.

[nycdreamer]

How have you tapered prozac NYC? It sounds like you have made cuts too big or too fast for your brain to keep up. Tapering needs to be slow to allow the brain and nervous system to adjust to the lower dose.  I would hold where you are and not make any more cuts until stable, or even updose a little but without knowing what your starting dose was or what your current dose is it's hard to say how much to updose. Everyone wants to get off the drugs and once the decision has been made it has to be right NOW, but our brains can't cope with that and need time. 

 

After reading your story it looks to me like you may have adverse reactions to some food additives, or there maybe something with your gut that is causing problems.  When my kids were small, I noticed that one of them became difficult and hyper when we were shopping. She was a total nightmare but really good at home.  Then I saw something in a magazine about additives and realised that was the problem. She was only like that when shopping, and we always went to the same cafe for a snack where she had an orange squash. I never bought squash or other sugary drinks so she never had them at home.  I stopped buying it and she had water instead, she was fine and it stopped right there. It was simple for me but if I had used bottled squash at home, or bought processed foods she would most likely have been diagnosed with some disorder. It could be anything, that is just my experience, find the cause and cure the depression.  

 

There is an excellent book about the GAPS diet, many psychological conditions start with the gut, make that healthy and the conditions improve. Here is the topic that discusses those diets. 

 

http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/890-scdgapspaleo-diets/

Thanks so much for your kind response. I am starting to think that it is heavy metal poisoning from vaccinations. I've read up on it and heavy metals cause disrupt neurotransmitter production. Until I figure out the underlying cause, I'm not sure I can walk around feeling out of body like this. I cut the Zoloft down slowly then switched to low dose Prozac for a couple of weeks... which self tapers according to doc. It seems no matter how slow I go the end result is a return of symptoms pre-med. The allergies idea is definitely good though. I wish I had a ton of money to do a bunch of alternative testing. I have cut back on gluten, dairy, etc. in the mean time.

[LoveandLight]

How do you reverse cure the heavy metal poisoning? I wonder if that's what happened to me..looking back a heap of illnesses arrived around the age of first childhood injections..hhhmm..

[nycdreamer]

Hi there. The Andy Cutler protocol is the most respected way to remove heavy metal with chelators. Apparently, alot of vaccines can trigger illnesses and mental toxicity. Im trying everything at this point;) what illnesses did you experience as a child?

 

http://www.livingnetwork.co.za/chelationnetwork/chelation-the-andy-cutler-protocol/

[Petunia]

 I cut the Zoloft down slowly then switched to low dose Prozac for a couple of weeks... which self tapers according to doc. It seems no matter how slow I go the end result is a return of symptoms pre-med.

 

This is not actually true, it does have a longer half life than other antidepressants and can sometimes be easier to taper from, for some people, but it still needs to be tapered carefully, especially if you have been on these kinds of medications for a long time, which it seems you have.  When you say you cut the Zoloft down slowly, what exactly do you mean? What dose of Prozac did you take for 2 weeks? Are you off all medication now?

 

Its possible that reinstating a small dose of Prozac, stabilizing and then tapering slower would help.  Please carefully read the links Altostrata posted in your thread earlier.

 

We suggest reducing by no more than 10% of the current dose every 4 weeks, this reduces the risk of withdrawal symptoms arising. Please read through this which will explain why:

  

Why taper by 10% of my dosage?

 

Please would you put your drug and withdrawal history in your signature. Putting a short version of your drug and tapering history in your signature helps people understand your context, it appears below each of your posts. Here are instructions for how to do it:

 

http://survivinganti...your-signature/

 

Here's how to add your signature from a phone or tablet:

 

http://survivinganti...nature/?p=84105

 

Ten years on an SSRI drug is a long time, and I would advise anyone in this situation to consider tapering over an extended period of time, possibly taking as long as 2 years or more, based on the symptoms experienced through the tapering process.  Some people may be able to taper faster than this, but others need more time.

 

Here is an excerpt from another post written by Rhiannon on another thread, which will explain why:

 

 A lot of people, including healthcare practitioners; in fact, I guess, most people-- are operating from entirely the wrong paradigm, or way of thinking, about these meds. They're thinking of them like aspirin--as something that has an effect when it's in your system, and then when it gets out of your system the effect goes away.

That's not what happens with medications that alter neurotransmitter function, we are learning.

 

What happens when you change the chemistry of the brain is, the brain adjusts its chemistry and structure to try to return to homeostasis, or biochemical and functional balance. It tries to restabilize the chemistry. 

 

For example: SSRI antidepressants work as "serotonin reuptake inhibitors." That is, they cause serotonin to remain in the space between neurons, rather than being taken back up into the cells to be re-used, like it would be in a normal healthy nondrugged brain.

 

So the brain, which wants to re-establish normal signaling and function, adapts to the higher level of serotonin between neurons (in the "synapse", the space between neurons where signals get passed along). It does this by removing serotonin receptors, so that the signal is reduced and changed to something closer to normal. It also decreases the amount of serotonin it produces overall. 

 

To do that, genes have to be turned on and off; new proteins have to be made; whole cascades of chemical reactions have to be changed, which means turning on and off OTHER genes; cells are destroyed, new cells are made; in other words, a complex physiologic remodeling takes place. This takes place over time. The brain does not grow and change rapidly. 

 

This is a vast oversimplification of the amount of adaptation that takes place in the brain when we change its normal chemistry, but that's the principle.

 

When we stop taking the drug, we have a brain that has designed itself so that it works in the presence of the drug; now it can't work properly without the drug because it's designed itself so that the drug is part of its chemistry and structure. It's like a plant that has grown on a trellis; you can't just yank out the trellis and expect the plant to be okay.

 

When the drug is removed, the remodeling process has to take place in reverse.

 

SO--it's not a matter of just getting the drug out of your system and moving on. If it were that simple, none of us would be here. 

 

It's a matter of, as I describe it, having to grow a new brain. 

 

I believe this growing-a-new-brain happens throughout the taper process if the taper is slow enough. (If it's too fast, then there's not a lot of time for actually rebalancing things, and basically the brain is just pedaling fast trying to keep us alive.) It also continues to happen, probably for longer than the symptoms actually last, throughout the time of recovery after we are completely off the drug, which is why recovery takes so long.

 

http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/6655-dignan-pre-work-for-an-eventual-taper-attempt/?p=98469

 

 

 I am starting to think that it is heavy metal poisoning from vaccinations. I've read up on it and heavy metals cause disrupt neurotransmitter production.

 

I guess its possible that your original problem was caused by heavy metals from childhood vaccinations. But if what you are experiencing now is withdrawal from SSRIs because of too fast tapering, then you need to recover from that first before you can address any underlying issues.

 

I'm in the same situation as you, I have underlying issues with anxiety going back into my early childhood, but right now I"m in protracted withdrawal from going off antidepressants too fast and my nervous system is not yet stable enough (not recovered) for me to start experimenting with or using treatments for underlying causes. Any changes which effect the nervous system or increased stress of any kind can make withdrawal symptoms worse than they already are.

 

Of course its your decision what you choose to believe, but I hope you will take the time to read through the help we have offered so that you can make informed decisions for yourself. Something to keep in mind while looking for information and deciding what to believe is whether or not the provider of the information has a product or service to sell, or is sponsored by someone who does. If they do, the information is quite likely to be biased in favor of what they are selling and not necessarily true. I'm sure you know this already, but I wanted to mention it anyway because its so easy to get caught up in all the unsubstantiated nonsense that gets written by people trying sell stuff, when we are desperately trying to find a way to feel better...it happens to me all the time.

[nycdreamer]

*note, post and responses moved from symptoms forum

 

How long until our brain receptors work again?

 

Hi all,

I have that frightening disconnected feeling (recently stopped SSRI after 11 years). I'm wondering how long it takes for our receptors to readjust and feel human again? This feeling is horrifying. Talking to people is trippy. I just want to read and walk in the park.

Help!

Edited May 31, 2015 by Petunia
added note

[Altostrata]

Please read What is withdrawal syndrome?

[Lovofsun]

Unfortunately we are all different and the process can vary...

 

I have read accounts of people feeling 90% better within months and some it takes years...

 

No matter what though... Every day you are returning to your normal self... You ARE getting better and YOU will feel like you can read and walk in the park!

 

YOU will do it

[nycdreamer]

What did you all do during the first few months of withdrawal? Were people able to maintain work and regular functioning?

[ltree74]

I am currently in the first two months.  As for functioning normal, my husband would probably say not.   I have had to have two days off work at separate times due to feeling overwhelmed.   I have not entertained my hobbies much lately either.  I have began an herbal supplement to help my mood be not so wavy.  I am doing yoga and meditation also.  Both help tremendously.  I have days were I feel ok then days that I am so irritable.  It's a process.  I never knew it would be so hard.  This website has really given me hope that I can get thru this. 

[manymoretodays]

For me.......no......as far as work and normal functioning.  But I am older, well younger than that now.  But age and number of years on psycho meds could surely be a factor.  6 mos. off Lexapro(excitalopram)  and 10 days off adderal(generic amphetamine/stimulant) plus yeah.......easily overwhelmed, and things that should not be stressors are.  Oh and I did not wean down off my AD totally......went from 3 mg. to zero.  All these things "may" be factors.  Not enough antedoctal studies to date.

 

I am taking it a day at a time.  Having a hopeful day.

 

However......I believe, I believe in neuroplasticity.  No choice really.........

[Kar]

I work but don't do much else. I sleep 9 hours per night during the week and on the weekends 12.

 

I have various strategies at work - being very organised, writing stuff down, breaking tasks I can usually do into smaller sub tasks, taking regular breaks etc.

[Petunia]

nyc,

I moved the topic you started in the symptoms forum to your introduction thread here because it was related to your own situation specifically. Please use this thread to track progress, write about symptoms, ask questions and communicate with the community, add to it whenever you want.

[Altostrata]

nycdreamer, please read the links we give you.