Posted by bleauberry on June 20, 2008, at 17:17:23
In reply to I'm slowing going off my meds, posted by Deneb on June 19, 2008, at 18:01:40
Millions of people have health conditions that are completely improved with medications and require lifetime consumption to stay well. Heart disease, blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, organ transplants, on and on. I wonder why we tend to think the central nervous system or the brain are different?
Just wanted to followup and say I agree with the wisdom of SLS. If it must be done, do it one drug at a time. I would add, do it very slowly in very tiny increments. If at any time you notice worsening that is instinctively different than withdrawals, get back to your regular dose immediately.
The phenomenon has been noted here hundreds of times in the last decade, and is well documented at other places such askapatient.com or revolution health. The mysterious phenomenon. A drug that previously worked very well without notable side effects becomes a poison with strong side effects that either doesn't work, works only a fraction of how it used to, or actually makes you feel worse than ever. Almost like your immune system recognizes it and says no no no. And there is a certain aspect of treatment resistance that was not there previously, which makes the whole process harder and more complex in followup efforts.
There are indeed people who take a drug, get well, stop the drug and stay well. There are indeed people who take a drug, get well, stop the drug, relapse, start the drug again and it works just as good as ever. No scientific evidence to back it up, but my guess is the bad outcomes outnumber the the good ones. Any way you look at it, one is taking a situation of very low risk and purposely voluntarily entering a realm of high risk.
Personally I think the time to think about changing meds is when they are obviously not working like they used to, for whatever reason. Poopout, aggravation of underlying biology, whatever. That's a time to maybe change. But when perfectly well? Hmmm.
I guess what I am saying is, you've heard it before, "if it aint broke, don't fix it". It's too easy to accidentally mess it up even with perfectly honorable good intentions and skill.
So you decide to stay on the meds. You have to put a pill or two in your mouth everyday, someone else is paying for most of it, you feel pretty good. I dunno, I would trade you a million dollars for that.
poster:bleauberry
thread:835521
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20080617/msgs/835685.html