Getting on anti-depressants to begin with. How it happened to me.

I have been taking anti-depressants off and on for about 15 years. (Yuck and more yuck!) It is not something I have wanted to do. I do not like taking medication. But based on my situation, at the time it was the only thing I new to do.

Two and half weeks ago, I decided to wean myself off of the anti depressants. I have been on probably every anti-depressant in the book. Either it immediately did not work or over time gave out or had bad side effects and I was switched to another. It has been a slow downward spiral or boil as I will mention later. I did not go on them because I attempted suicide or was in a psychiatric hospital. I was going through a very rough and challenging time. It is amazing how many people are being put on these drugs for this reason and then are never able to get off them. This was the beginning.

About a year ago, I was put on a med called Pristiq. It is the same as effexsor, yet is not metabolized through the liver. It is a new drug. I recently read that because it is similar to effexor that it is going through the FDA fairly easily.

To wean myself off of the drug I started backing off to one every other day for about 4 days, then every two days and then after 3 days of not taking it, I refused to put it back into my body. To back up a bit and let you know what lead me to this. I have never felt right. I have felt drugged. Sometimes better than other based on the drug I have been put on. I was on effexsor for off and on for something like 5 years. It started giving out and I started to have to take higher and higher doses. I started to have tremors (scary). I started to have name finding problem, which is very scary for me for my grandmother had alzheimers disease. Those were the primary side effects I can think of as I writing this. I moved over to a couple of other drugs which did not seem to work and then put on Pristiq. (I have been seeing someone who only focuses on meds, and she has a detailed file of my history.) With the Pristiq my side effects of tremors and name calling still existed and did not improve. For the past eight months we have been tweaking it with other meds to balance out the anxiety and depression. I have felt drugged. I have not felt normal or vibrant and alive. She went up on the Pristiq as the other meds were not working and I started to have sleeping problems, and involuntary limb movements when trying to sleep. I would wake up in a jerk with a part of my body moving involuntarily along with Restless leg. I also would wake up gasping for air. My mentor, who is not my med doc suggested I go and see a sleep specialist for if I were to have sleep apnia, that could be dangerous. I talked to my med doc about it and set up an appointment with a sleep specialist. My med doctor told me. The sleep specialist will deal with the involuntary muscle movement and I will handle the anxiety/depression. After this sunk in, I was livid. Bandaid upon bandaind, upon bandaid and not addressing it in a wholistic way for a cure. But this is all the doctors are trained on and know. Doctors are trained on pharmaceuticals and surgeons, surgery. There are some doctors that have gone outside the box and made efforts to get additional training in alternative medicine and some have a true art in healing others.

I went back down on the Pristiq. The muscle movements were manageable. I forgot to mention above that when all the muscle movements and sleeping issues were going on, I was taking Xanax every night. This would give me a hang over in the morning. A clear mind was something I did not have.

I have tried in the past to get off of these drugs unsucseccfully. I started back on them in September of 2004 because I had uncontrollable racing thoughts and panic attacks. I was under severe stress at the time about to lose everything (or what I thought was everything haha) Anyhow, I went to a med doctor I was referred to who looked and acted like Austin Powers. OMG what a journey with him. I ended up seeing an old med doc I had used in the past whom I had a much better trust. About two years ago I did a cleanse and proceeded to wean myself off of effexsor. Horrible panic attacks again. At the time I was a single parent, going to school to finish my degree and had been laid off. My whole body was shaking and I had to hide it and carry on and work under these conditions. The work I ended up doing at the time was not sitting at a desk answering a phone. It was handling much responsibility. I even had to do like 3 overnighters. Had not done that since college. No end to the panic and it was scary. I thought it was never going to end. So needless to say back on the meds.

This time around is different. When I decided to get off the darn things, I started doing as much research as I could. Before I found any good information. I started suffering the worst withdrawals ever. This was nothing compared to getting off of effexor. Initially I zoned out in front of the computer for 3 days researching. When I turned my head, my brain would have to catch up (this happened with effexsor but not this extent). I had horrible nightmare and fear. I had crazy thoughts. (Thought I was going mad, but from my experience and research I new this was the drugs.) My research led me to find that amino acids are key to getting through the withdrawal. So I bought a few that I read would be helpful and continued my research. I immediately could feel them working, but I was not out of the woods. I have experimented and are now using some that have got it under control. I am still suffering from insomnia and anxiety. I have a few more on order that I really believe will get the anxiety and insomnia under control. Then it is time to balance out and restore. Since the beginning of weaning myself off, every day seems to get better, although I do have some setbacks.. It is amazing what happened when I started to get that stuff out of me. Every one of my senses has come alive in ways that are not describable. It has made me so aware of my brain and how small imbalances can make a huge difference. Colors have become more vibrant, listening to music is amazing, I can smell things from a mile away. Wow what have I been missing? I have been numb and I had no idea. It is almost as if I was this from put in water and the heat slowly turned up and I was in boiling water and did not know it.

I am not out of the woods yet. I am still working on this process and I hope for living a wonderful, healthy, balanced life drug free!!!