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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 10 of 10. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by rjk on December 1, 2002, at 13:29:13
I had been taking antidepressants for six years without a problem until I was advised to combine Remeron with Effexor. I only took this combo for a matter of weeks because it gave me a severe headache. Since then I have had extreme and immediate reactions to any med I have taken to the extent that a single dose of any drug now has the same effect on me as a full dose should have if taken for many weeks. I now dare not take any more meds and feel worse now than I did when I was first put on them. Combining meds was the biggest mistake of my life. Without any exaggeration, it has ruined my life.
Posted by utopizen on December 1, 2002, at 16:16:08
In reply to How psychiatry ruined my life, posted by rjk on December 1, 2002, at 13:29:13
I heard someone else (maybe on this board) say the same thing-- became med-sensitive right after combining two meds.
Weird stuff, freaking me out since combining meds is my doc's next option. Social anxiety not responding to Effexor XR 300mg/day. He's concerned Klonopin is habit-forming, so he's quite willing to put me on two meds. Geez, it's like let's avoid the alcohol by taking some anti-freeze instead! Several of you are like, stop seeing him, but I mean, it's been a year of treatment, he's good outside of benzo phobia, and I don't feel like switching.
Posted by Mr Cushing on December 1, 2002, at 19:42:12
In reply to Re: How psychiatry ruined my life, posted by utopizen on December 1, 2002, at 16:16:08
This is kind of off topic, but what exactly is the difference between "habit forming" and the fact that just about every SSRI is actually addictive? Nobody's ever mentioned anything about SSRI's being "habit forming" yet they are usually pretty painful to start up on and the withdrawal is worse than coming off of most street drugs. "Habit forming" is only applied to benzos for some reason, and I find benzos to be one of the best medications out there for anxiety and panic attacks and that usually doesn't have any start up side effects and the withdrawal is actually quite a bit easier, than say, Effexor.
Posted by utopizen on December 1, 2002, at 19:57:11
In reply to Re: How psychiatry ruined my life » utopizen, posted by Mr Cushing on December 1, 2002, at 19:42:12
My doctor will prescribe anything for me as long as it's not a benzo. He'll even give me 2 SSRIs at once, which is very risky, as we have seen in other posts.
As for "addicting" neither SSRIs nor benzos are such. SSRIs are also not habit forming, they simply are hard to withdraw from. There's a certain amount of chemicals your body gets used to after awhile, and you need to wean off the drugs that fire these chemicals slowly.
If you get up quickly from a chair, you may feel light headed. Your body was use to sitting and breathing and absorbing oxygen in a certain way, and you quickly changed that. So your head feels like it's blacked out and you can't see anything for a second or two.
So were you addicted to the habit-forming seating position? Of course not! Addiction requires increasing tolerance and accompanies withdrawl. SSRIs do not produce tolerance, although they may stop working. Withdrawl of a med is not the sole criterion for determining a drug's addictiveness.
Just because withdrawl effects are uncomfortable or less comfortable than other drugs does not mean that the drug was habit forming or addictive. Klonopin is habit forming because over time a patient may need a greater amount to receive an equal benefit. This is tolerance, a thing SSRIs lack.
And it's impossible to compare street drug withdrawls with licit drug withdrawls objectively-- these ratings depend on the practioner completing the survey, and as a result is not objective. It's like ranking the intelligence of different species- you just can't do it.
Posted by joy on December 2, 2002, at 7:47:25
In reply to Re: How psychiatry ruined my life » utopizen, posted by Mr Cushing on December 1, 2002, at 19:42:12
I agree; benzos are best treatment for anxiety/panic attacks with no side effects when used responsibly. I have not raised my Xanax dose in over two years. In fact, I take less now.
Joy
Posted by Mr Cushing on December 2, 2002, at 8:34:38
In reply to Re: How psychiatry ruined my life, posted by utopizen on December 1, 2002, at 19:57:11
Klonopin is habit forming because over time a patient may need a greater amount to receive an equal benefit. This is tolerance, a thing SSRIs lack.
Then how come you see people on this board talking all the time about how they need to bump up their levels of the SSRI that they are taking after about a year or so because they've stopped being as effective? Isn't that tolerance?
I've been taking Clonazepam now off and on for nearly 4 years and on my "worst" days I need 1.5mg spread throughout the day. On my "best", I still need .5mg in order to slow my head down enough to sleep for the night. I've never had to go over 1.5mg per day in almost 4 years. So I would guess that unless you were taking the benzo for a VERY long time, tolerance isn't an issue?
Posted by utopizen on December 2, 2002, at 18:21:07
In reply to Re: How psychiatry ruined my life, posted by Mr Cushing on December 2, 2002, at 8:34:38
> So I would guess that unless you were taking the benzo for a VERY long time, tolerance isn't an issue?
>
Some people will need to increase their dose, some won't. But it's not addictive, and neither are SSRIs. I'm sorry, the ground can feel as wobly as you want, weird electric shock feelings don't make something addictive, they just make something weird.Pardon me, but I think a big reason why SSRIs on this board are being compared to heroin is frankly, the ones making such outlandish comparisons never touched heroin. I mean, neither have I, but I don't go saying it's not like heroin either. What's with people and the Internet anyway?\
Everyone wants to convince everyone else on every subject they write on like they've read a dozen books on that very subject. Geez, we can tell you didn't do heroin if you're writing about Lexapro, for crying out Pete.
Anyway, I did take Vikoden for pain once, as prescribed, for a month. And let me tell you, I don't grab my Effexor at night and convince myself I'll need it or else there's some remote possibility i could wake up with anxiety, but I did with Vikoden. The hand that pops those things thinks faster than your brain can, and so by the time you realize you're attracted to the pills you're already addicted and need to literally shake it out of your system.
Posted by Mr Cushing on December 2, 2002, at 18:53:29
In reply to Re: How psychiatry ruined my life, posted by utopizen on December 2, 2002, at 18:21:07
I've actually tried just about every illegal drug that's out there except for sticking a needle into my arm, and yes, withdrawal from every one of them was easier than with most SSRIs. When I took Celexa for 2 years, 20mg a day, that wasn't that bad. I would compare that with say, quitting smoking tobacco. However, the Effexor, while only being on 75mg of it for about 3 months every day, try cocaine... Much easier to get off of lol...Take for example that you're using cocaine daily for a while, and you're starting to get addicted to it. It's not that you're scared of what will happen once your buzz ends while you're still high, it's that feeling that you get once you come down that makes you 'need' to take it again. It starts off as sort of an unpleasant tingling feeling throughout your body which within hours is incredibly painful and agonizing to endure. The only way to get this feeling to go away, which will continually get worse till you feel as if you're basically going to lose your mind, is to take the drug again. That's addiction. To me, that was the same effect as taking SSRIs. I could pretty much tell by the hour when it was time to take my medication because I could feel that feeling starting up. If, say, I fell asleep at night without taking my medication, I'll wake up in a complete cold sweat in the middle of the night shaking because my body was P'd off that it didn't have the medication. If I took my pill, then fine, within say another hour, I was starting to feel pretty leveled out again.
That is completely comparable to addiction.... that's why I said that in the first place. Taking SSRIs is almost like you become addicted to them.
Now, on the other hand, I've NEVER had that feeling with Clonazepam. I use it basically when my body starts to freak out on me. If I start to feel like I'm having a panic attack, for example. It's never at the same time of the day, it's never when the drug starts to leave my system, and I usually don't require the same amount of the drug every day. I still use .5mg every night to help me get my sleep, but when you're Bi-Polar and you're trying out a ton of medications to try and keep yourself stabilized, hoping to find something that will work, then you 'need' your sleep or else you're completely off the wall.
Personally, I believe that the only reason that benzo's have that "addiction" stigma attached to them is because if a "normal" person were to take them, it would feel pretty damned good. As you probably know, SSRIs don't do that. In fact, most SSRIs make you feel worse before you started to get better. And for a normal person to be so desperate for a buzz that they would endure all the side effects of SSRIs in order to finally reach that peak after a few weeks, then that's just sick.
Don't get me wrong though, SSRIs are EXTREMELY helpful for the people that need them. I'm back on Celexa again, and I don't mind the side effects that are attached to it or the "addiction" that I will go through coming off of it because while I'm on it, it helps me to lead a normal life. Benzos, on the other hand, also help you out incredibly and don't need to be increased too frequently unless you're relying on them as your sole source of medication. Say for example the person that pops a handful of Xanax every night because of insomnia and is only popping the Xanax in hopes that it will knock them out cold and keep them out cold. They will probably need to increase their dosage frequently to get that same effect. However, when it comes time to quit taking the Benzos, other than the "emotional withdrawal" that you get from say, quitting smoking marijuana, the physical withdrawal symptoms are very minor.
Some Docs get away with saying that they're "addictive" while not labelling any other medication that way is because it makes normal people feel the same thing that people that actually need the drug are feeling. If they created an SSRI that would immediately make you feel good about everything upon taking it, and was that way for everybody, not just the people that needed it, it would be labelled the exact same.
Posted by leslieg on December 3, 2002, at 17:24:14
In reply to Re: How psychiatry ruined my life, posted by utopizen on December 1, 2002, at 16:16:08
I let my (old) pdoc talk me into Buspar, then Effexor, then increasing the Effexor ... it never seemed like the right solution to me, but she was the "expert." My withdrawal from Effexor was so bad that I had to get depressed enough to try to put myself into the hospital (via self-injury) before I was willing to even consider going back on an antidepressant. You need a pdoc who is willing to work *with* you. Not give you a lecture, a script, and say "see you in 3 months." It *is* reasonable to be afraid of what these drugs and drug combos will do to you. That's one reason you are on PB -- to find out more! But your pdoc should be part of the solution, not part of the problem. One year of working with him/her isn't really all that much time. When I set out to find a new pdoc, I asked around for one who would respect my worries. I found one. (The old one didn't understand why I didn't want to continue Effexor into pregnancy. This one will support my decision to have a drug-free pregnancy should I get pregnant again.) This type of support and listening is vital. If you feel you really have a great raport with this pdoc, then perhaps he'll let you educate him more about Klonopin.
> I heard someone else (maybe on this board) say the same thing-- became med-sensitive right after combining two meds.
>
> Weird stuff, freaking me out since combining meds is my doc's next option. Social anxiety not responding to Effexor XR 300mg/day. He's concerned Klonopin is habit-forming, so he's quite willing to put me on two meds. Geez, it's like let's avoid the alcohol by taking some anti-freeze instead! Several of you are like, stop seeing him, but I mean, it's been a year of treatment, he's good outside of benzo phobia, and I don't feel like switching.
Posted by me so tiny on December 10, 2002, at 5:13:19
In reply to Re: How psychiatry ruined my life, posted by Mr Cushing on December 2, 2002, at 8:34:38
> Then how come you see people on this board talking all the time
> about how they need to bump up their levels of the SSRI that
> they are taking after about a year or so because they've stopped
> being as effective? Isn't that tolerance?no, that's "pooping out". That's a scientific term, used by scientists. :-)
For some reason, sometimes AD effects fade away, sometimes, for some people. My cousin was on Prozac for like a decade (since it was invented almost) then it pooped out and she got moved to Celexa.
I started on Paxil about 20 months ago. Somehow we never quite got to "full effect" and the dosage kept on creeping up to the max. Yeah, this is closer to your "bumping up" pattern. Then, finally, I decided it just wasn't doing it anymore, so I'm migrating to Lexapro.
Why did it fade? Don't know. Perhaps my binge alcohol intake? grass? Trent Reznor music? lack of sex with a real human for way way too long? Reading depressing war, concentration camp and Mt Everest disaster accounts? Or maybe forgetting to take my meds one day and doubling up the next, maybe that does it. Irregular bedtime? Whatever it is, it's GOT to BE MY FAULT. I must have done something wrong or irresponsible.... ahem. sorry.
This is the end of the thread.
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