lostinMI

[lostinMI]

Hello all,

 

I'm still new to this AD misery and need some advice. 

 

I know this is an anti AD site, but am asking for help.  I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm venting or complaining !

 

I am currently trying to taper off Valium.  I also take 45mg of Remeron and 100mg of Lyrica at night.   Not sure why I was put on the Lyrica.

 

I want to get off all these meds.

 

I am having very severe "S" word ideation every day, which I have to believe is directly related to taking Valium or from taking all these meds.

 

I see my pdoc today and when I tell her I am having such bad thoughts, she'll undoubtedly want to put me on something, either another AD, or anticonvulsant or antipsychotic or something.

 

I don't want to start any more meds.   The bad thoughts are overwhelming me and I need them to cease asap.

 

Has anyone on this site unwillingly accepted trying a new Med in an attempt to get rid of such bad thoughts ? with the intent of weaning off it when the bad thoughts diminish ?

 

thanks.   really sorry to have to vent like this. 

[bubble]

Hello lostinMI and welcome to SA.

 

I'm very sorry that you are struggling so badly. Unfortunately I'm typing from my phone so I can't see whether you filled in your signature with the drug history. That would be very helpful.

 

When did that ideation start? What were your most recent drug changes especially dose connected with emergence of this particular symptom?

 

We have a great subforum here for benzo tapering so that would be a good place to explore what went wrong with valium.

 

Doctors will for sure prescribe more drugs but there is no way telling how they will affect you.

 

If we don't want to take drugs we simply don't. At least I do it like that.

 

But I would urge you to have near you a helpline number and also if you have somebody you can trust to call when things get really bad.

 

A number of members have been struggling with the same symptom and I believe somebody will chime in.

 

You aren't venting. Please feel free to share how you feel.

 

I'm sorry I couldn't be more helpful at this point.

 

Hang in there.

 

Bubble

[Altostrata]

Welcome, lost.

 

Depression is a very well-known side effect of benzos. The other drugs you're taking may be involved, too.

 

It is also possible that if you've taken the benzo or any of the other drugs inconsistently -- forgotten to take a dose, for example -- your bad thoughts might be due to withdrawal syndrome. See What is withdrawal syndrome?

 

Please put ALL the drugs you take in the Drug Interactions Checker http://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.html and copy and paste the results in this topic.
 

See Taking multiple psych drugs? Which drug to taper first?

 

Why taper by 10% of my dosage?

 

Go here to discuss tapering the benzo http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/forum/29-members-only-benzo-tapering-discussion/

 

This is a site for going off drugs. Like you, almost everyone here decided that the drugs were causing problems for them. As doctors are so poorly informed about adverse effects and withdrawal, many people have had very bad experiences with the drugs.
 

[lostinMI]

Hello Altostrata.

 

Below are the drug interactions you asked me to copy and paste:

diazepam ↔ mirtazapine

Applies to: Valium (diazepam), Remeron (mirtazapine)

MONITOR: Central nervous system- and/or respiratory-depressant effects may be additively or synergistically increased in patients taking multiple drugs that cause these effects, especially in elderly or debilitated patients.

MANAGEMENT: During concomitant use of these drugs, patients should be monitored for potentially excessive or prolonged CNS and respiratory depression. Ambulatory patients should be counseled to avoid hazardous activities requiring mental alertness and motor coordination until they know how these agents affect them, and to notify their physician if they experience excessive or prolonged CNS effects that interfere with their normal activities.

diazepam ↔ pregabalin

Applies to: Valium (diazepam), Lyrica (pregabalin)

MONITOR: Central nervous system- and/or respiratory-depressant effects may be additively or synergistically increased in patients taking multiple drugs that cause these effects, especially in elderly or debilitated patients.

MANAGEMENT: During concomitant use of these drugs, patients should be monitored for potentially excessive or prolonged CNS and respiratory depression. Ambulatory patients should be counseled to avoid hazardous activities requiring mental alertness and motor coordination until they know how these agents affect them, and to notify their physician if they experience excessive or prolonged CNS effects that interfere with their normal activities.

mirtazapine ↔ pregabalin

Applies to: Remeron (mirtazapine), Lyrica (pregabalin)

MONITOR: Central nervous system- and/or respiratory-depressant effects may be additively or synergistically increased in patients taking multiple drugs that cause these effects, especially in elderly or debilitated patients.

MANAGEMENT: During concomitant use of these drugs, patients should be monitored for potentially excessive or prolonged CNS and respiratory depression. Ambulatory patients should be counseled to avoid hazardous activities requiring mental alertness and motor coordination until they know how these agents affect them, and to notify their physician if they experience excessive or prolonged CNS effects that interfere with their normal activities.

 

Please comment accordingly.......   thanks so much

[Altostrata]

Was Valium the first drug you started taking? How long have you been on it?

 

What is your daily symptom pattern relative to when you take your drugs?

[lostinMI]

I started 20mg of Paxil back in 2008 after I lost my Dad.  I stayed on the Paxil till sometime early on back in 2014 a couple months after I lost my Mother.  I quit it C/T and suffered no s/x whatsoever.  Did not know then that a taper was probably warranted.  I was just fine the whole summer of 2014.  No s/x at all.

 

Then, in October of 2014 I started feeling the anxiety starting to come back strong.  Crashed and burned on Halloween, 2014 and was in-patient at two different psych hospitals three times between Nov. 1, 2014 and Jan 16, 2015.  For severe panic anxiety attacks.  I'm wondering if the reason I crashed on halloween was because I quit the Paxil in early 2014 with no taper.   Is it possible I suffered some sort of rebound protracted withdrawal ?

 

On Nov.1, they started feeding me 1mg of Ativan every day.  Plus 20mg Paxil.  Attended a two week out-patient program thereafter, stayed on the Paxil.  The Paxil did nothing.    Relapsed, had to go back.

 

On the 2nd stay a new pdoc switched me to 1mg Klonopin and Zoloft, I don't remember the dose.  Left with a script for Zoloft, but not Klonopin.  In between stays, I kept taking up to 0.5mg of Ativan to ward off start up effects of the AD's.

 

On the third stay, on Jan.6, 2015, at a Public Hospital,  they took me off the Ativan C/T , no Zoloft, and put me on 45mg Remeron and 15mg Buspar.   Would not give me any Ativan.  felt bad the whole ten day stay.

 

Got out Jan 16th.   Stayed on the Remeron and Buspar. Started back on the Ativan up to 0.5mg that my GP Rx'd.     Quit the Buspar a month later C/T with no side effects.

 

Around March 1st started waking up feeling very panicky and anxious.  Couldn't figure out why since I was sleeping good, 6 hrs.+

 

That's when I found a benzo site and was told I had probably reached tolerance on the 0.5mg dose of Ativan.  Started dry taper off the Ativan using a scale.   Got down to 0.4mg and could not cut any lower.   Very bad symptoms.

 

Saw a new pdoc Feb 15th.   Told him I wanted off the Ativan.   He put me on 75mg of Lyrica in the a.m. and 75mg in the p.m.  Tried to lower the Ativan to no avail.  The a.m. dose of Lyrica gave me double vision so bad I could not drive safely.   He also told me to take large quantities of Holy basil extract and ashwaghanda.   The supplememts did little if anything at all.   I complained about the vision issue, so after about a month, he took me off the 75mg a.m. dose of Lyrica C/T and raised my p.m. dose to 150mg.  I dropped the Lyrica down to 100mg at bedtime, perhaps too quickly.    Had increased wd s/x after I dropped down the lyrica dose.

 

Found a new pdoc who agreed to cross me over to Valium.   Crossed over from .4mg of Ativan to 4mg of Valium in 6.5 weeks.    No relief.   pdoc had ne updose the Valium to 8mg.  Still no relief

 

I've been on all Valium since June 12th.    I've been on 8 mg of Valium since July 1st.

 

Pdoc added 5mg of Celexa in a.m. on July 16th,   I took it for 5 days, felt worse, then quit taking it.     I've been on 8mg of Valium for 8 weeks now.

 

The bad "S" word thoughts started around the time I quit the Celexa.

 

 

Summary:   Right now I dose 4mg of Valium at 6 a.m.     4mg of Valium at 6 p.m.       100mg of Lyrica at bedtime and 45mg of Remeron at bedtime.    So, the Remeron came first, then the Lyrica, then the Valium.

 

I start feeling real bad around 9 a.m.    Severe brain fog, panic/anxiety, total lack of concentration.   Unable to function at work after around 9 a.m.   Moderate blurred vision,  feel really bad all day until around 8 or 9 p.m. after I take the Remeron and Lyrica.     Never felt any sedation or relief from the Valium.

 

The last two or three nights I have not slept good at all.     On August 6th I started to dry taper my Valium using a scale.   I am currently down to approx. 7.8mg of Valium.

 

The bad thoughts are overwhelming me.  My pdoc now wants me to start taking 25mg of Seroquel at bedtime.   Took it two nights, could hardly get out of bed.  Quit after two days.   Don't want more meds.

 

My symptoms feel like the awful interdose wd symptoms I felt back when I had reached tolerance on the Ativan.   

 

Don't mean to whine or complain, just looking for some advice on how to cope better.   I've been diagnosed as Major Depressive Disorder.   I don't really feel depressed about anything, except this nightmare I'm living with the Valium and other meds.

 

Thanks

[lostinMI]

I feel like detox is my only way out of this mess but have been warned by numerous folks to forget that idea, that I will come out of it much much worse with potential permanent CNS damage.   

 

Like many folks I'm scared to death of my situation.    I'm an accidental addict now and want and need to get off all the meds as quickly as is safe to do so.

 

I have a benzo wise Therapist but so far the relationship is not helping me at all.

[bubble]

Oh my! You have been through an awful lot (of experimenting by psychiatrists ;(

 

Yes, everything started with CTing Paxil after 6 years of using it. During those six years Paxil had become an integral part of your brain and it its absence the whole structure gradually tumbled down.

 

Going back on Paxil was a sound idea but after 6 months the original dose was a way too much for you and that's why you "relapsed".

 

(Could you put a brief summary of this in your signature? Something like: 2008 Paxil 20 mg, early 2014 Paxil CT, October 2014 anxiety, 31 Oct 2014 crash, hospitalised Now.1, 2014 - Jan 15 2015: 1 mg Ativan, 20 mg Paxil, stopped, Klonpin, Zoloft, etc.)

 

All the experimenting that followed only made things a lot worse.

Changing meds that doctos advise is their panicky response and a sign of their ignorance and helplessness. I can only repeat the sad conclusion one member reached: psychiatrists trying to "fix" the brain resemble monkeys trying to fix a car engine with their stone tools: they have no idea how that intricate miracle of evolution works and in their clumsy attempts cause great havoc. 

 

But human brains have a great ability to recover if spared of further tampering. Drugs caused a lot of damage but getting off of them asap as you say can cause even more damage. that's why we advocate for what is called a harm reduction approach. That's our best chance at recovery. Our brains need to regrow and for that they need drugs to be slowly slowly removed. But first you have to stabilise and stop changing drugs and their dosages.

 

Below is my favourite quote by our moderator Rhi which explains the complex neuroscience behind what is happening to us in simple ways. I found it extremely helpful in understanding what is happening to me and consequently found it easier to live with it.

 

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. 

With multiple drugs and a history of drug changes and cold turkeys, all of this becomes even more complicated. And if a person is started on these kinds of drugs at an early age before the brain has ever completely established normal mature functioning--well, it can't be good. (All of which is why I recommend an extremely slow taper particularly to anyone with a multiple drug history, a history of many years on meds, a history of past cold turkeys or frequent med changes, and a history of being put on drugs at a young age.)

This isn't intended to scare people, but hopefully to give you some idea of what's happening, and to help you respect and understand the process so you can work with it; ALSO, because you are likely to encounter many, many people who still believe these drugs work kind of like aspirin, or a glass of wine, and all you need to do is stop and get it out of your system. 

Now you can explain to them that no, getting it out of your system is not the issue; the issue is, you need to regrow or at least remodel your brain. This is a long, slow, very poorly understood process, and it needs to be respected. 

​

[lostinMI]

Thanks for the response Bubble.

 

My only close friend, as well as some of my coworkers, and my Employer, are insisting that I follow the pdoc's directive and continue to experiment with different meds.  

 

All in an attempt to find something that will get me back to being my old self again.  I'm very skeptical that that will ever happen.

 

They all think Psychiatrists are all on the up and up, there to help folks and would not prescribe anything that would cause harm to their patients.

 

It's going on a year since I fell into this seemingly eternal pit of misery.  I really need some help and advice on how and when to start tapering these meds I'm on.

 

Should mention that I have been getting some good help from someone who cares, on another site, but thought I'd post up my situation herein for more exposure.

 

Thanks,

 

lost

[bubble]

Our society has a very problematic perception of the psychiatric drugs. Those who haven't experienced them have a luxury to take this or that stand regarding their benefits.

 

But those of us who have been taken to hell on these roads paved with such good intentions know differently.

 

We have found that it is time and stability that heals and not drugs. It's up to you to decide which course to take.

 

If you want to inform yourself about how our society build its view of psychiatric drugs Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whittaker is a great place to start.

 

At the moment a lot more suffering that you are experiencing is due to the drugs that have left your system and left it awfully messed up than the drugs you are taking at the moment.

 

I Know that it might be difficult to embrace that way of looking at the things but those of us who don't learn from others learn (in my language we have the expression) with their own skin...

 

I think that at the moment your best bet is wait for the brain to heal. All the drugs just made you feel worse. As much as it's hard not to do anything it is precisely this stability that heals.

 

I just found a great message from one other member which I'm copying here.

 

If you are in a particularly bad place, please find hope in knowing that time is the great healer with coming off of these medications. If you can find ways to distract yourself while this time passes, it will make it so much more tolerable. Hyper focusing on the symptoms doesn't make them go away any faster, and I don't think it really makes you feel better (at least it didn't help me). But focusing on other things gives your brain some relief from thinking that WD will never go away, and you need that desperately to maintain hope. Try to be as kind and patient with yourself as you possibly can be, WD is not fun but you can and will feel better in time.

I always like to recommend Baylissa Frederick's book Recovery and Renewal because it helped me realize how much time is sometimes needed to recover, every person is different. She also has a Facebook page called Bloom in Wellness that is very encouraging. Best wishes to you in your journey to wellness! :-)

 

​It would help us very much if you could complete your signature with the rest of your drug history.

 

Bubble

[Altostrata]

lostinmi, your story is a good example about how one gets on the psychiatric drug merry-go-round.

 

Yes, it sounds like you had some kind of delayed Paxil withdrawal syndrome -- Paxil is a very difficult to drug to quit -- and then adverse rebound reactions to the benzo. This scrambled your nervous system, which has gotten even more scrambled by the other drugs.

 

So far, you haven't had success trying various drug combinations. You can continue to do this as your family, colleagues, co-workers, and doctors recommend. It is possible doing the same thing over and over will eventually give different results, but it isn't logical.

 

This is a site for going off drugs. If you decide you want to continue drug cocktails, there's not much we can tell you. What we do here is give tapering guidance and coach people in dealing with withdrawal-related symptoms.

[lostinMI]

Hello Alto,

 

With all due respect, yes, I'm aware this is a site for going off drugs.  That's why I'm here, to get help getting off the drugs I'm on.  

 

Thanks for the response.

[Altostrata]

You may have realized that what your your family, colleagues, co-workers, and doctors believe is at variance with the general thrust of this site. Only you can make the decision about what's best for you.

 

Please let us know if you need any additional information about tapering.

[tgirl]

Hey Lost,

Wanted to check in and see how you are doing?

I see you are from Michigan too!

 

Please let me know how you are doing,

Tgirl