Two members of my husband's family have been on antidepressants, Remeron and Prozac, for years. It doesn't seem to have made their lives easier. One member while on one or the other of these drugs, (she's been on one or the other for years now) physically assaulted me. The other, on Prozac, has gone from sweet and easy-going to a mean little B..... from h3ll.
Do I think the antidepressants had anything to do with it? Yep. The first person tried to throw me through a plateglass door and would have succeeded had I not screamed for my husband to intervene. She's not like that as a normal person.
I suspect that the bad results tend to be mediated by individual response to these medications, i.e., body chemistry maybe, or diet, or other medications they are taking interacting with the antidepressant?
I suppose many will think this is a negative topic, and it is, but it is one we're faced to deal with. I'm just trying to understand depression, meds, and the whole way our society has changed in this area for the better and possibly for the worse.
I think Prozac is one of the most controversial anti-depressants and that it has the most/worst side effects, too. It's one of the first widely used meds for depression. It's not as popular today, I don't think, because of so many other, better alternatives.
I'm on Wellbutrin and Lexapro. I know I wouldn't be the healthy person that I am today if it weren't for these meds. I wasn't suicidal before going on them and I've not had any problems with those feelings since being on them almost 3 years now. We started with Wellbutrin at the lowest possible dose and slowly figured out what was going to work for me. It took quite a few months and I was content to keep trying in baby steps to make sure it was the safest for me and my condition.
Good, consistent, honest communication with your psychiatrist is essential for the proper medicine and dosage as is good, consistent, honest "talk therapy". I think "regular" doctors shouldn't be able to prescribe them because of the specialty required with these types of meds, but that's just my opinion. I would never ask my GP to prescribe them for anyone I love. Too many people do get their prescriptions from GP's instead of going to a specialist and they don't follow up with the doctor regularly and even less are even in therapy, or, like you mentioned, don't actually use therapy for what it's designed - HELLOOO!! It's really sad to read about these things because that man could have been helped if he'd cooperated and that's not due to the meds, it's due to his bad decisions, which he knew were bad decisions at the time, he just didn't want to deal with them.
I've spoken with my psychiatrist about being able to come off the medicine at some point, but he's wary right now due to the fact that I was clinically depressed just about the entire time I was involved with TWI, 10+ years. Seems the longer you're severely depressed, the more likely you are to relapse if you come off the meds and if you relapse then the meds are less likely to work as well the next go round. Honestly, I'm only just now feeling like I'm really at the edge of the fog in so many ways, so I'm not in any hurry at this point. :)
there was an article on the news here in the last year about a woman that had started a post partum depression website to warn people about the effects of anti-depressants... I think they're angle was that the anti-depressants were what were helping cause those thoughts...
I just think that, in general, we need to quit drugging up society...
...and I think this site, despite it's shortcomings, does a lot to help folks...
Ya know, I keep hearing again and again about people who claim that they hear voices in their heads telling them to kill so-and-so. ... *Usually* as a means of getting off on the insanity defense or some such cop out.
..... Ummmm, ... I wonder if any of them ever thought to tell the voices "NO!", ... hmmmm?
And as to the parents/relatives who 'forgive' the cold blooded killers (ie., 'forgive' = 'let them go'), I think they should be locked up as well. At the very least, avoided and shunned in public.
Sorry for the off hand rant, but come on. People can't control themselves better than this??
I think it should be obvious by now that antidepressants/antipsychotics, or any other kind of psychoactive drugs work well for some folks and not so well for others.
Type and dose of psychoactive drugs is not an exact science. In fact, type and dose are arrived at by trial and error. It takes a wise shrink and an involved and motivated patient to work the equation to the point of success. Not all mentally unstable people are able to comply long enough for good results to happen.
I think other people just simply react badly or do not react at all to these meds.
I have been on antidepressant drugs for 15 years now. I take Paxil. I have tried several times to get off of it, just last year I tried this for 6 months. After I got over the horrendous physical withdrawl effects of stopping this medication, the depression began to return. Slowly and insidiously until I gave up and went back on them.
Now, today one year later, I am happy and healthy, in spite of some pretty horrific events that have recently occured in my family.
Hopefully one day psychiatric conditions will be more easily diagnosed and meds more precisely applied. But until then, we're all still learning.
Belle and Nolongerlurking, thanks for sharing the up side to the drugs. I believe they certainly help people. I taught a student once who had a night and day personality. When he was off the drugs he would sit in class and take a little pair of scissors and tell the kids sitting around him that he was going to kill himself and pretend slashing his wrists during group work when I wasn't looking in his direction sometimes. He also would hear voices. I told him, Garth, several times to tell the voice "no." I also took a chance and told him to use the name of Jesus Christ once. The kid was starved for attention at home, I believe, and this was his way of getting it and possibly paying the adults back in his life. When he was on the drugs he was one of the most cooperative and creative kids in class.
Tom, the author of Artificial Happiness said the majority of people are using drugs because of sadness. Apparently, they haven't figured out how to function in a positive way without them. Why are so many people sad I wonder? I agree partly with you and Garth and partly with Belle and Nolongerlurking. Some people really do need the drugs and it is a quality-of-life saver for them. But, they apparently didn't help the guy who was in therapy above and on drugs and still had a criminal mind and commited the crime he'd thought about for 10 years.
I wonder why some people get better and some get worse on drugs.
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Watered Garden
Two members of my husband's family have been on antidepressants, Remeron and Prozac, for years. It doesn't seem to have made their lives easier. One member while on one or the other of these drugs, (she's been on one or the other for years now) physically assaulted me. The other, on Prozac, has gone from sweet and easy-going to a mean little B..... from h3ll.
Do I think the antidepressants had anything to do with it? Yep. The first person tried to throw me through a plateglass door and would have succeeded had I not screamed for my husband to intervene. She's not like that as a normal person.
I suspect that the bad results tend to be mediated by individual response to these medications, i.e., body chemistry maybe, or diet, or other medications they are taking interacting with the antidepressant?
WG
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waterbuffalo
Gosh, WG, how horrible.
I suppose many will think this is a negative topic, and it is, but it is one we're faced to deal with. I'm just trying to understand depression, meds, and the whole way our society has changed in this area for the better and possibly for the worse.
Thanks for the feedback!
wb
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Belle
I think Prozac is one of the most controversial anti-depressants and that it has the most/worst side effects, too. It's one of the first widely used meds for depression. It's not as popular today, I don't think, because of so many other, better alternatives.
I'm on Wellbutrin and Lexapro. I know I wouldn't be the healthy person that I am today if it weren't for these meds. I wasn't suicidal before going on them and I've not had any problems with those feelings since being on them almost 3 years now. We started with Wellbutrin at the lowest possible dose and slowly figured out what was going to work for me. It took quite a few months and I was content to keep trying in baby steps to make sure it was the safest for me and my condition.
Good, consistent, honest communication with your psychiatrist is essential for the proper medicine and dosage as is good, consistent, honest "talk therapy". I think "regular" doctors shouldn't be able to prescribe them because of the specialty required with these types of meds, but that's just my opinion. I would never ask my GP to prescribe them for anyone I love. Too many people do get their prescriptions from GP's instead of going to a specialist and they don't follow up with the doctor regularly and even less are even in therapy, or, like you mentioned, don't actually use therapy for what it's designed - HELLOOO!! It's really sad to read about these things because that man could have been helped if he'd cooperated and that's not due to the meds, it's due to his bad decisions, which he knew were bad decisions at the time, he just didn't want to deal with them.
I've spoken with my psychiatrist about being able to come off the medicine at some point, but he's wary right now due to the fact that I was clinically depressed just about the entire time I was involved with TWI, 10+ years. Seems the longer you're severely depressed, the more likely you are to relapse if you come off the meds and if you relapse then the meds are less likely to work as well the next go round. Honestly, I'm only just now feeling like I'm really at the edge of the fog in so many ways, so I'm not in any hurry at this point. :)
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Tom Strange
there was an article on the news here in the last year about a woman that had started a post partum depression website to warn people about the effects of anti-depressants... I think they're angle was that the anti-depressants were what were helping cause those thoughts...
I just think that, in general, we need to quit drugging up society...
...and I think this site, despite it's shortcomings, does a lot to help folks...
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GarthP2000
Ya know, I keep hearing again and again about people who claim that they hear voices in their heads telling them to kill so-and-so. ... *Usually* as a means of getting off on the insanity defense or some such cop out.
..... Ummmm, ... I wonder if any of them ever thought to tell the voices "NO!", ... hmmmm?
And as to the parents/relatives who 'forgive' the cold blooded killers (ie., 'forgive' = 'let them go'), I think they should be locked up as well. At the very least, avoided and shunned in public.
Sorry for the off hand rant,
but come on. People can't control themselves better than this??
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nolongerlurking
I think it should be obvious by now that antidepressants/antipsychotics, or any other kind of psychoactive drugs work well for some folks and not so well for others.
Type and dose of psychoactive drugs is not an exact science. In fact, type and dose are arrived at by trial and error. It takes a wise shrink and an involved and motivated patient to work the equation to the point of success. Not all mentally unstable people are able to comply long enough for good results to happen.
I think other people just simply react badly or do not react at all to these meds.
I have been on antidepressant drugs for 15 years now. I take Paxil. I have tried several times to get off of it, just last year I tried this for 6 months. After I got over the horrendous physical withdrawl effects of stopping this medication, the depression began to return. Slowly and insidiously until I gave up and went back on them.
Now, today one year later, I am happy and healthy, in spite of some pretty horrific events that have recently occured in my family.
Hopefully one day psychiatric conditions will be more easily diagnosed and meds more precisely applied. But until then, we're all still learning.
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waterbuffalo
Belle and Nolongerlurking, thanks for sharing the up side to the drugs. I believe they certainly help people. I taught a student once who had a night and day personality. When he was off the drugs he would sit in class and take a little pair of scissors and tell the kids sitting around him that he was going to kill himself and pretend slashing his wrists during group work when I wasn't looking in his direction sometimes. He also would hear voices. I told him, Garth, several times to tell the voice "no." I also took a chance and told him to use the name of Jesus Christ once. The kid was starved for attention at home, I believe, and this was his way of getting it and possibly paying the adults back in his life. When he was on the drugs he was one of the most cooperative and creative kids in class.
Tom, the author of Artificial Happiness said the majority of people are using drugs because of sadness. Apparently, they haven't figured out how to function in a positive way without them. Why are so many people sad I wonder? I agree partly with you and Garth and partly with Belle and Nolongerlurking. Some people really do need the drugs and it is a quality-of-life saver for them. But, they apparently didn't help the guy who was in therapy above and on drugs and still had a criminal mind and commited the crime he'd thought about for 10 years.
I wonder why some people get better and some get worse on drugs.
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