Posted on 01/02/2015 9:15:50 AM PST by Sean_Anthony
"A Walking Nightmare": Antidepressants and suicidality
“It’s like being in a torture chamber all your life.”
That’s how Brenda, a young woman from the southeast of England, describes her experience with prescription antidepressants.
Two years ago, Brenda was a young professional with a career she enjoyed and an active social life. “I also started to write a novel,” she recalls. “I was really creative. I had a lot of friends.”
All this changed in the summer of 2013 when Brenda experienced a minor medical problem and was prescribed Augmentin, an antibiotic. Immediately she began experiencing suicidal ideation, along with nausea, anxiety, and akathisia, or uncontrollable restlessness. Her doctor prescribed Valium, which made her symptoms worse, and then the antidepressant citalopram. He dismissed her concerns about possible side effects.
(Excerpt) Read more at canadafreepress.com ...
She seems to react to all medication badly.
I’m not sure why a doctor would treat depression by prescribing a central nervous system depressant such as valium.
“In addition, Brenda experienced other side effects, including uncontrollable jerking movements, tremors, feelings of feverishness, excessive perspiration, numbness, insomnia, and rapid heartbeat. “The nausea was worse than ever before,” she recalls. “All of this 24-7, no breaks. Absolutely no breaks, apart from the two or three hours of sleep I was getting. I couldn’t hold any thoughts in my head for more than two or three seconds.”
These side effects listed here are basically caused by central nervous system rebound, which is a terrible condition caused by taking cns depressants and then stopping without tapering off very slowly, although this effect is supposedly less pronounced with valium than it is xanax.
Sadly, I speak from experience with that. CNS rebound is the last thing anyone ever wants to know. Do not ever mess with your CNS. That is the lens through which one perceives every, single thing in this world, and if you screw it up with drugs, you will pay a price unlike anything you have ever known.
I do not have any experience with anti-depressants, but it my understanding that they shut down certain areas of the brain that produce various “happy” chemicals, and supply those chemicals on their own. However, overtime, those areas of the brain shut down by the drug will remain shut down, and the body can no longer produce those chemicals without the drug, thus one’s mood becomes dependent on the drug.
I have battled depression in my life, and I have used drugs to combat it, both legally and illegally.
It has been my experience that drugs are not the answer to depression. Drugs use simply creates a whole new slew of problems and generally increase depression.
One can control one’s state of mind by way of taking positive action in one’s life. Even something as simple as exercise can be extremely effective.
For example, I used daily exercise to overcome panic attacks that I began to suffer after a heart attack. Basically, my dad suffered a heart attack, then he suffered another one 6 months later that killed him. I thought the same would happen to me, so I began to have panic attacks at the thought of this after my own heart attack.
However, by engaging in rigorous exercise, I proved to myself that hey if I can do this type of exercise, chances are I am not going to die like my dad, and the panic attacks faded then went away. This was a far better option in my mind than taking the valium I was prescribed. I know what valium does after previous experience with it, and I do not want to be anywhere near that stuff.
Valium is usually prescribed because it can help you sleep and it does cut panic attack symptoms. That’s the only reason.
I decided to time my attacks with an old-fashioned wind-up stopwatch. I got so focused on the timing the attacks faded away. Also I found drinking really cold water helps.
There’s something up with the medical profession that they just love to give people anti-depressants!
Mr. Megan was diagnosed with A-Fib and the cardiologist put him on lisinopryl (sp?) and Coreg. He was fine with the lisinopryl but the Coreg turned him into a zombie. When he asked to be taken off the Coreg the doctor’s nurse practitioner told Steve he was depressed and she wanted to put him on some anti-depressant. Steve called the cardiologist and told him he wanted off the Coreg.
When he quit the Coreg he was back to normal about two days later.
And he refuses to talk to the nurse practitioner anymore.
IMHO anyone getting pushed to take an anti-depressant needs to give it serious consideration before taking it. These people don’t seem to care if you really need it, they just seem to have a quota or something that they need to fill for handing out these pills.
The objective of The Medical System is to get you to use some drugs, then later more drugs, culminating finally in a series of very expensive surgeries —cutting bits of you off.
It’s a kind of powerful Machine.
As a psychologist, I firmly believe that anti-depressants are maybe 20% effective. They will “take the edge off” for those with mild situational depression (e.g., bereavement) by helping the brain retain serotonin and indirectly stimulate dopamine. Sunshine and exercise are more effective for that task.
A CNS depressant is usually prescribed for anxiety. Why it was described for depression makes sense only if the doc wanted the patient to stop complaining ASAP. It’s malpractice.
MDs prescribe drugs because it is the only tool they were taught to use. It’s not a conspiracy, just incompetence.
The best medicine for depression is Sunshine.
Some 15+ years ago, a doctor decided I needed to take Paxil because I told him I felt “gloomy” a lot. Mind you, this was right after my first wife ran off so gee, I wonder why. At any rate, I took that garbage for like 2 years. Getting off of it was an absolute nightmare. I would get these jolts of extreme dizziness feeling that would last like 2 seconds and they came at near-predictable intervals every couple of minutes. This went on for weeks until it started to gradually subside over the course of a month or 2. I was lucky to still have a job when it ended, the only escape was to sleep, it was absolutely maddening. This is evil stuff and it was only after I finally got clear of it that I realized how badly it was affecting me. I’m not going to tell anyone they shouldn’t ever take this crap, but you should be absolutely certain that it is an unquestioned necessity. In my case, it wasn’t, I don’t know why he decided I “needed” that stuff at the time. Life was pretty unpleasant at the time, but I can’t see where it was necessary. I often wonder if they get some sort of kickbacks for promoting this sh$#@%
My late brother, a D.C., used to say that modern medicine was based on the theory that everyone’s body either had a shortage of drugs or a surplus of organs. Sometimes both.
Yes, indeed. I have seen the practices adopted by several depressives, all to good effect. I have seen a severe manic depressive get ironed out, first by heavy use of vitamin D supplements and then getting out in the sun and walking a lot. The D works but the sun and exercise works better for several reasons.
Triptophan and Tyrosine in your diet are adored by the body with the help of enzymes to create 5HTP, which then breaks down into Seratonin. However food preservatives work by blocking enzymatic action on food. Fungus or bacteria cannot digest food if their enzymes don’t work, and you cannot either. All you can do is adsorption simple sugars and starches.
Because of this all you get from foods is simple calories, no nutrition. Your body is forced to synthesis all its complex hormones from scratch, and it can only do that so long before it exhausts it’s trace mineral supply.
This issue is compounded with synthetic fertilizer raised farm crops that are trace mineral deficient.
I suggest you avoid all preserved foods, and determine to eat organic foods exclusively for three days in a row once a week. It takes 48 hours to clear your digestive tract, that will give you one day a week of actual nutrition.
If it comes in a box or bag and does not need refrigeration, it is full of preservatives. Eat one candy machine cookie and your organic health food dinner becomes just calories.
To fast track your recovery, make yourself some Kim chee using natural mineral and sea salt. Put in various chopped organic veggies and spices to taste. The natural fermentation creates enzymes, and the trace minerals in the Himalayan salts, sea salts etc will activate the enzymes and super charge your ability to adsorption complex protiens and minerals.
That is, if your diet has been free from preservative for a few days. If you suffer from depression, eat foods rich i. Tryptophan and tyrosene with yous kimchee. Your serotinin will return to normal. This “prescription” is the quickest recovery path from adenal burnout.
Look up a product called “the perfect Pickler”. It makes kimchee easy, and enjoy a new life!
De-pimped - here’s the entire article:
“It’s like being in a torture chamber all your life.”
That’s how Brenda, a young woman from the southeast of England, describes her experience with prescription antidepressants.
Two years ago, Brenda was a young professional with a career she enjoyed and an active social life. “I also started to write a novel,” she recalls. “I was really creative. I had a lot of friends.”
All this changed in the summer of 2013 when Brenda experienced a minor medical problem and was prescribed Augmentin, an antibiotic. Immediately she began experiencing suicidal ideation, along with nausea, anxiety, and akathisia, or uncontrollable restlessness. Her doctor prescribed Valium, which made her symptoms worse, and then the antidepressant citalopram. He dismissed her concerns about possible side effects.
“We wouldn’t give them if they weren’t safe,” he assured her. “In two weeks come back and you’ll be a different person. You’ll be much better. They’re very safe. Don’t read the side effects because you’ll think you’ll get them all.”
The results were disastrous. “It literally blew my brains out. Just dreadful. I became suicidal around the clock. The suicidal ideation was just unbearable. Just darkness in my head. It wasn’t like there was anything wrong with my life or I had a reason to be depressed. [It was] a terror like I’ve never known. I was just terrified. I’m still living like this, by the way, fifteen months later. I was in bed, curled up in this ball, just too scared to do anything.”
Brenda describes the thoughts that were going through her head: “I want to kill myself. I want to kill myself. I can’t stand to stay alive. I have to die. I have to die. For no logical reason. It was just a feeling – I had to end my life.”
In addition, Brenda experienced other side effects, including uncontrollable jerking movements, tremors, feelings of feverishness, excessive perspiration, numbness, insomnia, and rapid heartbeat. “The nausea was worse than ever before,” she recalls. “All of this 24-7, no breaks. Absolutely no breaks, apart from the two or three hours of sleep I was getting. I couldn’t hold any thoughts in my head for more than two or three seconds.”
With her doctor’s assistance, Brenda tapered off the citalopram. The feelings of suicidality intensified, along with the agitation, anxiety, and rapid heartbeat. Her doctor referred her to a “crisis team” which included a psychiatrist who diagnosed her with agitated depression and prescribed quetiapine, an antipsychotic drug, along with another antidepressant, sertraline.
The suicidal ideation got worse than ever, Brenda recalls. “I was just lying in bed and all I could think of was finding a cliff to jump off.” She told the members of her crisis team that the drugs were making her condition worse. “I am sure of it,” she explained. “Please listen to me.”
The crisis team members insisted that she must stay on the drugs. “You must do what the doctor says,” they admonished. Soon after, Brenda tried to commit suicide by drowning herself in a bathtub.
“It wasn’t a cry for help,” she says. “I did want to die.”
I can only assume this woman was given these drugs because it is cheap. In a socialist government run medical industry there’s no point in treating the real causes of, or managing the symptoms of, mental illness because it is too expensive and time consuming.
I would say that using valium as a sleep aid is extremely risky.
You do not want to rely on pills to assist you in every day functions at all, because to become addicted to pills, most especially benzodiazepines, is truly Hell.
With regard to panic attacks, I never even believed in these to be honest. They sounded like BS to me. However, I certainly experienced them after suffering a heart attack.
I would describe the ones I had as a very sudden onset extreme fear of imminent death that resulted in shortness of breath and very rapid heartbeat. After just experiencing a heart attack, the rapid heartbeat was not welcome at all.
However, even though I did have a prescription for valium for those attacks, I used as little of it as I possibly could, and tried to address my mindset thinking that was the cause of the attacks, rather than addressing the symptoms with the pill.
I am very glad I did this, because I know valium is extremely physically addictive. I already beat an addiction to xanax earlier in my life, and I did not want to be exposed to this class of drugs again knowing how easy dependence on them can form.
That sounds like an excellent strategy really.
Anything you can do to gain control of them without resorting to drugs is the only way to go.
It is important that one be in control of one’s mind and thoughts rather than to be controlled by them.
Except you have no clue what clinical depression is.
Gawd, I love these simple-minded know-nothings with zero training or exposure to the mentally ill who make sweeping medical pronouncements.
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