live without antidepressants

I’m beginning my third month on Cipralex. The quest to convince my doctor and parents failed, obviously.

It is actually helping. It’s a lot easier to have conversations, to speak my mind, be criticized without taking it to heart, walk around in public … it’s great.

Days when I forget to take it are scary: just a few hours after I’m supposed to have taken it, it’s like I’ve landed right in the middle of a depressive spell. My anxiety skyrockets, my compulsions come back, I become depressed and reclusive. I honestly cannot believe how I lived 12 months like that.

Getting to therapy is also pretty difficult: driving there is an hour, and she’s open only on school days – I can’t miss a day every 2 weeks, not in senior year, so I can’t get therapy as often as I’d like.

SUMMARY: Meds are okay. They are really awesomely helping me out, but I’d still rather be off them and be whole, happy, and functioning without chemicals. I will be someday.

My doctor is really pushing them. My parents said they wanted a psychiatrist, not a psychologist, because “psychologists aren’t real doctors / they will mess you up / they blame all your problems on your parents”. So it looks like that with their bias, I am being fast-tracked to a prescription, rather than therapy. I think an SSRI is more likely to fuck me up than talking about my problems.

Personally, I want to take as little medication as possible through my whole life. Especially for the brain, which medicine still knows so little about. Antidepressants, (though they work … on some people … sometimes), are such a stab in the dark. I want to stay away from that, thanks.

I had all the weird side effects while getting off antidepressants. Dizzy, headaches, nausia and the wierd zoom noises in my head. I went on-line to check it out and lots of people experience this stuff, so I just rode it out and I noticed when this stuff would happen I just thought it was interesting but nothing more. That’s how I knew I was ready. If the side effects of quitting are freaking you out, then you are probably not ready to quit!

I had to get on Prozac to get OFF Cymbalta. Should be off everything within 2 or 3 weeks!

Various antidpressants have helped me throughout the last decade, but now I’m trying to get off so I can have another baby, and it’s been hell. My latest variety has been Cymbalta. It was okay, but the withdrawal is absolutely horrible. I’ve had nausea, vomiting, cold sweats, dizziness, this funky zapping sensation in my head, extreme sleepiness, etc… So now I have to take Prozac for a few weeks, just to help me get off Cymbalta. It just sucks. I’m tired of dealing with prescription drugs.