Anyone in the thread say how a lot of these drugs list 'suicidal tendencies' as a side effect. You could very well more likely try and kill yourself out right than before the pills. Or just, you know, become completely reckless with your life.

I hate how Doctor's treat patients as practical guinea pigs. I've been on about 5-6 SSRIs in my life and one TCA. The reason for so many was 'Well, this one isn't working, let's try another one.' and then basicaly after going through all those they said 'Well, since these high doses aren't working, let's just increase the doses until they work!' Not once was I offered something a therapist I could see on a regular basis (I was able to get 2 appointments, each about 4 months apart for 30 minutes.) Basically, since I wasn't getting happier, and was so stressed out my blood pressure was throught the roof, I just quit taking them over time. To my fiancee's amazement, I actually was less stressed out, happier and much more lively then on the drugs. When I next went to the doctors and I told them I stopped taking the drugs all thy had to say was 'Why would you do such a thing?!' like it was the worst thing in the world I could do, and then went on to prescribe me another 3 months of pills without my consent...

Which really, at this point, I can't trust doctors anymore. It seems they want the quick fix for everybody, which is the drugs and they don't care what the outcome is. The reality is probably only a small number of people on SSRIs need them or is even helping them. How are pills supposed to make your life not suck when it does?

I'd think twice before going on any brain pills, especially if the doctor only needs 'I'm feeling kind of depressed' to prescribe powerful mind altering drugs.

That's my opinion.

looooool @cranks. great post!!!

pills can't make your life not suck, of course... if it really does and it's not just your perception. But wow... 6 types of anti-depressant?!? You must have the patience of a saint!!! I flat out refused to try another SSRI after the 1st did nothing. Better to try something more different, i thought...

anyway, about Crank's point about a well built mind... what happens if you are generally perceived to be an annoying person? And how do you balance fixing your bad points and understanding why other people get annoyed at you, with staying strong and understanding when it's just them having a bad day? This is something that bothers me.

Living in society is so tiring... it seems there's always someone that has some kind of problem with how they perceive you to be... too loud, too quiet, too confident, not confident enough, disrespectful, too late, too slow at learning, generally annoying, too argumentative, inconsiderate, no common sense, can't even cut an apple properly, too interested in everything, and even being happy and optimistic annoys some people!

I wouldn't care if it wasn't for the fact that people take all of these things seriously and then end up hating you over some petty thing that you probably never even noticed...

Yeah, at one point I had a lot of patience, but that's been long since been erroded by well, people taking advantage of it.

Also, is there any point to changing yourself self so much that you're not even yourself anymore just to please people?

KMDES Wrote:Anyone in the thread say how a lot of these drugs list 'suicidal tendencies' as a side effect. You could very well more likely try and kill yourself out right than before the pills. Or just, you know, become completely reckless with your life.

Which really, at this point, I can't trust doctors anymore. It seems they want the quick fix for everybody, which is the drugs and they don't care what the outcome is. The reality is probably only a small number of people on SSRIs need them or is even helping them. How are pills supposed to make your life not suck when it does?

I'd think twice before going on any brain pills, especially if the doctor only needs 'I'm feeling kind of depressed' to prescribe powerful mind altering drugs.

That's my opinion.

Couple things about anti-deps. The reason why "sucidal tendencies" or "risk of suicide" is listed on many SSRIs is not that SSRIs actually cause you to go kill yourself. What is really happening, as it was explained to me by 2 psychiatrists when I started on them is that they tend to work so well for some people that it removes lethargy. Lethargy has something of an evolutionary benefit in that many depressed people that contemplate suicide don't have the urge to try because of the lethargy. When SSRIs are started the lethargy tends to go first before the mood gets more positive, leading some to commit suicide. It is not the SSRI driving people mentally to kill themselves.

Additionally, I can understand your frustration with doctors and the way they seem to haphazardly try different medicines till they find something that works. However, you have to realize that when it comes to the brain or even just the human body, there are many thing we still just do not understand; the brain most of all. For some some people, some medications/antideps might work while for others it just won't. This has to do a lot with how neuroreceptors and neurochemicals work in the brain. We still do not have a very good understanding why some chemicals will work better for some and for other people, it just won't work at all. It could be genetics changing the receptors on their neurons, or any number of other things.

vix86 Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:Anyone in the thread say how a lot of these drugs list 'suicidal tendencies' as a side effect. You could very well more likely try and kill yourself out right than before the pills. Or just, you know, become completely reckless with your life.

Which really, at this point, I can't trust doctors anymore. It seems they want the quick fix for everybody, which is the drugs and they don't care what the outcome is. The reality is probably only a small number of people on SSRIs need them or is even helping them. How are pills supposed to make your life not suck when it does?

I'd think twice before going on any brain pills, especially if the doctor only needs 'I'm feeling kind of depressed' to prescribe powerful mind altering drugs.

That's my opinion.

Couple things about anti-deps. The reason why "sucidal tendencies" or "risk of suicide" is listed on many SSRIs is not that SSRIs actually cause you to go kill yourself. What is really happening, as it was explained to me by 2 psychiatrists when I started on them is that they tend to work so well for some people that it removes lethargy. Lethargy has something of an evolutionary benefit in that many depressed people that contemplate suicide don't have the urge to try because of the lethargy. When SSRIs are started the lethargy tends to go first before the mood gets more positive, leading some to commit suicide. It is not the SSRI driving people mentally to kill themselves.

Additionally, I can understand your frustration with doctors and the way they seem to haphazardly try different medicines till they find something that works. However, you have to realize that when it comes to the brain or even just the human body, there are many thing we still just do not understand; the brain most of all. For some some people, some medications/antideps might work while for others it just won't. This has to do a lot with how neuroreceptors and neurochemicals work in the brain. We still do not have a very good understanding why some chemicals will work better for some and for other people, it just won't work at all. It could be genetics changing the receptors on their neurons, or any number of other things.

Oh, I already knew the reason why it does that, as I have been there (ATV 'accident'), but it still goes without saying that the pills could still increase the chance of suicide.

I've been told before, the reason a doctor will prescribe SSRIs is because they don't understand mental diseases and prescribe pretty much blindly. (This information coming from a Doctor.) This is the equivilent of a handyman trying to fix something in a house by altering it's structure, if you don't know what you're doing, you can cause some serious damage, and if you don't know what you're doing, get someone who does or leave it alone. My one doctor prescribe me Ativan and Paxil to take, at the same time! As I found out after taking it, he might as well prescribed me Acid from the reation of those medications at the same time. Why did he prescribe them? He figured he'd wing it and see if they worked together not knowing that they'd react badly.

Also, the 'battering ram' approach isn't very good either, trying something over again and over again with bigger 'rams' until they cross their fingers and it works. The consequences for failure being permanent damage to my body or death. The upside? I'd end up a soulless shell of a human.

IceCream Wrote:looooool @cranks. great post!!!

pills can't make your life not suck, of course... if it really does and it's not just your perception. But wow... 6 types of anti-depressant?!? You must have the patience of a saint!!! I flat out refused to try another SSRI after the 1st did nothing. Better to try something more different, i thought...

It may sound like a silly question, but have you ever tried thinking about your problems? I mean really sitting down and facing all the things that could potentially be upsetting you, and either dealing with the ones you can control/influence, or learning to accept the ones you can't. I wish I'd tried to do that anyway.

I was pretty down a few years ago. I had a lot of problems that I couldn't seem to overcome and the weight of them was affecting my life pretty badly. I didn't like thinking about them, that was just upsetting if not despairing, so I learnt not to think about them, and eventually I felt a lot better. I'm sure the chemicals in my brain are well-balanced now, just like the people on medication, but have I really solved my problems? Or are denial and meds no better than ibuprofen for a sciatica patient? I'm beginning to wonder if it's just a coincidence that I've had chronic RSI pretty much ever since then, and I wonder if others who don't face or even admit to their problems don't or won't suffer in other ways, but I don't want to speculate.

It seems like there's a lot of resistance to the idea of psychological causes of depression (look what happened to Fabrice), even though a large number of the symptoms are psychological. The idea of treating chemical imbalances caused by depression to cure depression seems a little paradoxical to me. Like I said, perhaps it has its uses, but I don't understand the reluctance to go deeper, even if it isn't very pleasant to do so. I guess the kind of attitude KMDES described explains it in part. I can't imagine many people who barely have the motivation to get out of bed in the morning saying "actually, Doc, I want to talk about the horribly frightening and embarrassing thoughts that make me sick to my stomach instead of taking one of those everyday."

The problems I had were my fiancee had recently left me, I was so far in debt I was almost bankrupt, and I was working 3 shitty at the exact same time.

Funny thing is, to solve the problems I had I started my own business. This effectively solved almost all my stress, finacial and relationship issues. When I started my own business, I quit taking pills and was fine. Then we moved and I got stuck back in near bankruptcy debt, and stuck in another shitty job. This caused me to go back on pills for a while. I stopped taking the pills again when I got to the point when I'd pretty much be considered a threat to myself and others. That problem went away once I went off the pills. I still hate my life how it is right now, but it is sure a lot easier to deal with off the pills than on.

The worst problems are the ones you can control but your relational issues prevent you from doing what needs to be done. Or as one of my doctors said 'No one has absolutely any control of their life what so ever.'

KMDES Wrote:Also, the 'battering ram' approach isn't very good either, trying something over again and over again with bigger 'rams' until they cross their fingers and it works. The consequences for failure being permanent damage to my body or death. The upside? I'd end up a soulless shell of a human.

i don't know about that... some antidepressants do have different mechanisms at high doses than they do at low ones. For instance, some only have an effect on serotonin and neuradrenaline at small doses, but start affecting dopamine too when you get to higher doses.

As it happens, the SNRI i take appeared to have no effect until they upped me to the highest dose, and even then it was slow. I don't really consider myself a soulless shell of a person though...

KMDES Wrote:Also, is there any point to changing yourself self so much that you're not even yourself anymore just to please people?

no, course not! but... we all have to live in the world too. Generally, it's not much fun when people dislike you, and it's hard to ignore if lots of people find you annoying for various reasons.

Javizy Wrote:It may sound like a silly question, but have you ever tried thinking about your problems? I mean really sitting down and facing all the things that could potentially be upsetting you, and either dealing with the ones you can control/influence, or learning to accept the ones you can't. I wish I'd tried to do that anyway.

my emotional problems are usually with myself, and i used to think a lot, make lists & stuff of how i could become a better person, etcetc. But, i think it's actually quite counterproductive to do that, because it kinda makes you feel more hopeless. So, i tend not to think about anything whenever i can, and just watch happy drama or do something else mindless. It seems a lot better to practise being happy & not taking the world too seriously somehow than to focus on problems to me... of course, if there's some very pragmatic solution, you should though...

Anyway, i think the absolutely worst thing about depression is how the world becomes empty and meaningless, and you can't understand beauty anywhere, and you don't even understand the point of walking round the next corner or seeing something new because everything's the same, and equally pointless. It's this feeling, that rarely left me at any time when i was depressed, that makes day to day life unbearable, and stopped me getting out of bed, or even being bothered to eat sometimes.
So, when people talk to me about solving the underlying psychological problems, i'm always slightly like... what? What pschological problem could have really caused that? Even if i think "everything's meaningless" now, i just can't FEEL it at all now, since i've been on anti-depressants. Even if i repeat it 100 times, i can't see the world like that anymore.
Whatever makes that sort of feeling in your brain is probably the most precious thing in the world, i think...

I'm not saying it horribly affects everyone who takes them, but the people who shouldn't take them it usually does affect them very badly.

How anti-depressant drug researchers make ramen for dinner

julianjalapeno Wrote:Also, my favorite book about this subject that I think really describes how it feels when you`re in the throes of depression is Darkness Visible by William Styron. Its short and very readable.

Interesting and moving book, thanks.

Somewhere he talks about the suicide of artists (he forgot Stephen Zweig), so I just wanted to say that the death of Primo Levi is still debatted today, not only because hurling oneself down the stairs is an uncommon suicide method, but also because he still had many plans and projects, as shown by papers found in his drawers.

Styron also suggests a relationship between loss and depression, a link also followed by a great author, Pierre Fédida in books like Des bienfaits de la dépression, or like L'Absence -- sorry no translation available yet, but I know some of you can read French.

Futher reading about hopelessness: Kierkegaard, Treaty of despair; Nietzsche, I think it's in Beyond Good and Evil that he talks a lot about it; taoist and buddhist writings also mention it a lot.

All this talk of depression is making me....

Signs of Japanese learner depression: (This is a joke)

# Cosplaying Alucard from Hellsing and actually sucking peoples blood while crying.

# Watching endless loli anime until you believe boys and girls actually act that way. It makes you cry.

# Your GF dresses up in a school girl uniform and you turn on the cartoon version instead then cry.

# You read DMC and don't laugh, but cry.

# You have clocked up 1000 hours of Gundam flight time and then you cry.

# When you cry you think of anime, which makes you cry.

(Yes, yes, I know. Otoku-fanboy slash pedo-manga hating, Gundam-maniac with an anime addiction and HAYFEVER <---- Hold on! That's not depression!)

KMDES Wrote:I've been told before, the reason a doctor will prescribe SSRIs is because they don't understand mental diseases and prescribe pretty much blindly. (This information coming from a Doctor.) This is the equivilent of a handyman trying to fix something in a house by altering it's structure, if you don't know what you're doing, you can cause some serious damage, and if you don't know what you're doing, get someone who does or leave it alone. My one doctor prescribe me Ativan and Paxil to take, at the same time! As I found out after taking it, he might as well prescribed me Acid from the reation of those medications at the same time. Why did he prescribe them? He figured he'd wing it and see if they worked together not knowing that they'd react badly.

Also, the 'battering ram' approach isn't very good either, trying something over again and over again with bigger 'rams' until they cross their fingers and it works. The consequences for failure being permanent damage to my body or death. The upside? I'd end up a soulless shell of a human.

I have to ask you then what alternative doctors should take then? Should they let the crumbling house just sit there and fall down because they don't know the "perfect" way to modify the house to keep it from collapsing? The role of the doctor/psychiatrist is to help the patient get better, to improve their state so that its stable and they can get counseling to right things. No doctor is going to sit there and say "welp, I don't really know what the best way is to fix this house so I guess I'll just sit and hope for the best." I can assure you 90% of paitents DO NOT want to hear that from their doctor.

That said, I do agree that a lot of doctors can be rash and stupid when it comes to prescribing multiple medications at the same time, some may not check as much as they should. However, some of it does go back to the whole "everyone's brain chemistry can be a little different.

As to your first point abut the over-prescription of SSRIs. I think there are a few big reasons why these are overprescribed these days. 1) No psychiatrist wants to risk "this" patient being the one that actually needed them (its been shown that many people can be given a placebo and recover from depression just fine without the need of real medication) 2) SSRIs are relatively safe. Compared to old methods for dealing with depression (MAOIs), you don't have to worry about crazy interactions between food you eat or other medication. Additionally, taking them won't have a huge negative effect on people that may not even need them (see point 1). SSRIs are not "rewiring" your brain in anyway. All they are doing is decreasing the re-uptake of serotonin at the synaptic gap in neurons. Its not like LSD where a foreign chemical is faking out neurons and causing them to fire. You are still using the same serotonin that your body makes.

Its also somewhat worth noting that no drug makes it (or should make it) past FDA without being tested in the most ridiculous situations. They'll run it on rats (which regardless of being rodents, have remarkably similar brain make up to humans, hence their use in experiments) and do stuff like give them 200x the amount of the drug that would usually be given to a human. They'll then kill the rat and slice its brain up and see how/if it affects it.

IceCream Wrote:Living in society is so tiring... it seems there's always someone that has some kind of problem with how they perceive you to be... too loud, too quiet, too confident, not confident enough, disrespectful, too late, too slow at learning, generally annoying, too argumentative, inconsiderate, no common sense, can't even cut an apple properly, too interested in everything, and even being happy and optimistic annoys some people!

I wouldn't care if it wasn't for the fact that people take all of these things seriously and then end up hating you over some petty thing that you probably never even noticed...

The secret here is of course to learn not to worry about people's opinions / perceptions of you. Even if someone does "hate" you (which is unlikely, as hate is a strong emotion and takes alot to make someone feel like that), it shouldn't matter as long as you're confident in yourself and what you're doing. It's their problem not yours!

vix86 Wrote:I have to ask you then what alternative doctors should take then? Should they let the crumbling house just sit there and fall down because they don't know the "perfect" way to modify the house to keep it from collapsing? The role of the doctor/psychiatrist is to help the patient get better, to improve their state so that its stable and they can get counseling to right things. No doctor is going to sit there and say "welp, I don't really know what the best way is to fix this house so I guess I'll just sit and hope for the best." I can assure you 90% of paitents DO NOT want to hear that from their doctor.

That said, I do agree that a lot of doctors can be rash and stupid when it comes to prescribing multiple medications at the same time, some may not check as much as they should. However, some of it does go back to the whole "everyone's brain chemistry can be a little different.

As to your first point abut the over-prescription of SSRIs. I think there are a few big reasons why these are overprescribed these days. 1) No psychiatrist wants to risk "this" patient being the one that actually needed them (its been shown that many people can be given a placebo and recover from depression just fine without the need of real medication) 2) SSRIs are relatively safe. Compared to old methods for dealing with depression (MAOIs), you don't have to worry about crazy interactions between food you eat or other medication. Additionally, taking them won't have a huge negative effect on people that may not even need them (see point 1). SSRIs are not "rewiring" your brain in anyway. All they are doing is decreasing the re-uptake of serotonin at the synaptic gap in neurons. Its not like LSD where a foreign chemical is faking out neurons and causing them to fire. You are still using the same serotonin that your body makes.

Its also somewhat worth noting that no drug makes it (or should make it) past FDA without being tested in the most ridiculous situations. They'll run it on rats (which regardless of being rodents, have remarkably similar brain make up to humans, hence their use in experiments) and do stuff like give them 200x the amount of the drug that would usually be given to a human. They'll then kill the rat and slice its brain up and see how/if it affects it.

What the alternatives should be is 1) if they don't know that particular area of medicine well, send them to someone who does 2) Look before you leap, get data and actually listen to the patient. Which I guess a attention span of more than 30 seconds would be needed.

SSRIs can greatly affect a person, even up to years after taking it. They don't have support groups for people discontinuing Paxil for nothing you know. Here's a wiki page about effects of discontinuing SSRIs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSRI_discon...n_syndrome

And the FDA will pass more dangerous stuff than you think, look at acetaminophen. The most frequent cause of liver failure by 3 times all otehr drugs combined. They lace narcotics with the stuff to make the narcotics more dangerous to take.

Never place your bets on safety when there's serious money to be made.

kazelee Wrote:All this talk of depression is making me....

Beat me to it.

Well, can't tell if it's normal to have "depressions" within the young age of 17, perhaps it's the wrong term. I never knew that love actually could be depressing. My girlfriend lives in Japan, I'm in Germany and we see us about every 6 months for ten days. Both of us are still visiting school and when we meet it's just "wonderful" (like the Indian man from "Sex and the city 2" tells the girls in Abu Dhabi in this cool hotel.. anyway). It's depressing to see that her parents accepted our relationship, although they are Japanese and I expected them to be more conservative (in their eyes I am de facto a gaijin; that's another topic, but hope you know what I concretely mean) than mine. The point is mine are not accepting her. I dunno why. I talked to them and also wrote a detailed letter to them after they started speculating what this relationship was all about (aiming at ugly and dirty things solely - after them). All in all I can tell only that the wonderful days we spent are just worthwhile and I would regret it more breaking up and continueing as she wants to try studying in Germany (she has regular private classes German, therefore she's quite fluent already, also in English which is her second mother tongue. Her father is from America and it took quite long he becomes "accepted" by the Japanese mother of his wife.).

In short: the feeling is still there but there is no chance we could be close and there is no "solution" in that sense that could solve this troublesomeness. Therefore I feel often depressed. I haven't talked about this to anyone else and my parents seem to be rather.. annoyed and don't want to listen even. Sometimes having a wavy mood - I personally refer to this state as my "depressed" state.

KMDES Wrote:And the FDA will pass more dangerous stuff than you think, look at acetaminophen.

(That's paracetamol to UK readers.) I'm not sure that a drug that was first introduced in 1953 is a particularly useful guide to what level the bar is set at for new drugs over half a century later...

pm215 Wrote:

KMDES Wrote:And the FDA will pass more dangerous stuff than you think, look at acetaminophen.

(That's paracetamol to UK readers.) I'm not sure that a drug that was first introduced in 1953 is a particularly useful guide to what level the bar is set at for new drugs over half a century later...

It does show neglect on the FDA's part by allowing it to still be in use, over the counter yet. And Im sure someone could come up with a recent example of a dangerous drug being allowed.

wha...? paracetamol?!? never heard of that one before... maybe if you overdose on it...?

yes, SSRI's have a discontinuation syndrome, but this is mainly linked to abruptly stopping rather than tapering off the dose, as i talked about before.

and yeah, i get the brain zaps every time i forget to take mine, and it's not so nice, but definately nothing compared to being depressed!!! (i can understand why you might be a little pissed if it never even worked for you in the first place though...)

It doesn't make the drugs especially dangerous though... and as the page you quoted said, if a patient does have problems on tapering, changing to an SSRI that doesn't have associated discontinuation syndrome before stopping generally stops this problem. Ongoing problems are actually very rare.

I don't even think you need to OD to cause liver damage, but maybe for liver failure. If taken with caffeine, the chances of liver damage/failure are much much higher. But here's the kicker. You can buy Tylenol...with caffeine in it! Despite being faster to get rid of your headaches, it's also much more dangerous.

Alcohol is even worse than caffeine though...

Oh, yes depression, I know it very well.. furtunately, I've found the ultimate way to escape - or rather - end it. All. And I didn't even achieve an intermediate fluency in japanese. Oh well.... maybe next time

Feeling depressed? It may be your quarter-life crisis

There's some useful information in this thread. That forum and site is actually quite interesting, although it has a stupid name.

I've been reading a ton of success stories in other places about people who've reduced or recovered from their chronic pain symptoms through paying attention to their mental health. It's amazing how much stress and tension you can be completely unaware of as it becomes routine, and how absolutely unnecessary and avoidable the majority of it is.

There's so much good research and information on the effects of the mind on the body. I don't think people should be so cynical about exploring it, even though it's the paradoxical attitude of a medical community that recognises severe problems like depression and cardiovascular disease as stress-related, but laughs at the idea of personality traits, negative thought patterns, repressed emotions etc as playing any sort of role in the process. It's all about breaking the cycle, and it seems as though medication is too often a way of maintaining it in a desperate effort to skip the final stage.