The downside of drugs

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I can attest greatly to the side effects of Anti psychotic drugs (including anti depressants).

Every medication I was put from fall 2010 until late 2014 caused significant to huge side effects for me.
The side effects were worse than the benefit.
I still have most of the side effects, which I believe are permanent.
Though most are fading away since switch to the generic of Cymbalta.

I depending on the medication; I was either too sleepy, couldn't sleep, more pain than I usual have, restlessness and restless leg syndrome, couldn't focus, more severe mood swings, affected my memory, made me more anxious, made me more irritable, more impulsive, more suicidal, sapped my energy, made my temperature sensitivity increase, made me too damn warm, etc...

Some how I kept it widely hidden from everyone (obviously I told the doctors).

I stayed on Effexor from 2012 until last December because it had minimal side effects while keeping me stable enough to complete undergrad and masters (I did really well in masters).
But it did cause high weight gain, constant need to snack, and other side effects I was wiling to accept due to how weak they were. But it didn't go far enough in helping me!

I just didn't have the energy to go through the medical roulette.

In December, I switched to the generic form of Cymbalta which works wonders for me with no real negative side effect.
It does cause me to lose weight, though that's a good thing (down almost 12 lbs since December) and makes it a tad difficult to wake up each morning, though a good cup of coffee does away with it.
I am almost fully adjusted to it and Effexor is almost out of my system for good.

Sadly this new medication doesn't cure my depression but makes it minor most days, though I do still have bad days.
This also brings my anxiety down to really low level (higher than NTs), which is really good but sadly not gone.
It also pretty much rids me of OCD and irritability, while stabilizing my moods most days.
I still get regular mood swings, some still can be quite bad but both are becoming less frequent.

But in my case, medication was the final solution for me.
I had been suffering from depression, anxiety, OCD, and other mental heath stuff while dealing with undiagnosed AS (was diagnosed in fall of 2010 after a near complete meltdown earlier that year at age 24/25)

Finding a good medication that plays nice with me was hard fought task that nearly brought me down as well.

Neither FDA, big pharma, doctors, therapists, and science knows the full affect of SSRIs and antipsychotic (including anti depressant) have on the body and brain, especially the long term usage.

Most medication prescribed is only supposed to be used between 6 months and year, including Effexor which I took for almost 2 years.

What one is that?

Same here. I'm on amytriptyline - an old-school tricyclic ani-depressant - and it's worked extraordinarily well. Even the side effects - the main one being drowsiness - are beneficial because I'm an insomniac and if I take it before bedtime it helps me sleep.

Meanwhile, none of the SSRIs I was prescribed in the 90s did a damn thing for me.

I'm sorry but antipsychotics saved my life. Literally. And they kept me out of secure units. I am on 20mg olanzapine as of six years now and the only side effect I get is tiredness. I also take gabapentin for severe chronic basilar migraines and without that I would be in bed all day in a dark room crying. I was also having stroke-like episodes which turned out to be hemiplegic migraines. Since getting my gabapentin increased, they have practically gone.

Yes I may be biased being a pharmacology student.

I do not agree with quite a few drugs. And yes SSRIs are not shown to perform that well.

BUT you forget that drug trials are carried out in environments where you get frequent contact with researchers, frequent appointments and generally you feel like you get more support. This means that the placebo effect increases because increased support alone for many illnesses (both psychiatric and non psychiatric) can "treat" them.

I don't like it when people say antipsychotics should be condemmed. YES they need to develop newer ones that don't have diabetes / obesity / etc risk (and aripiprazole etc are attempts at that). But they can save lives.

Without antipsychotics I'd be dead or in prison.

I believe that drugs which actually help people (insulin, heart meds, antipsychotics, etc.) who would otherwise be injured or harmed without them are necessary. Those that help in a negligible way or not at all should be reconsidered by those who accept them, in my opinion. I am glad yours have helped you, SteelMaiden.

Might be controversial to say but, for my money, the best antidepressants around are magic mushrooms.

Psilocybin is a serotonin receptor agonist. So psilocybin is to SSRIs as Adderall is to Ritalin. For me, one dose of magic mushrooms seems to have about a six month antidepressant effect.

Gee it sure would be nice if the War on Good Drugs wasn't allowed to interfere with treatment.

I read about that back in the 1970s. Hm. I had forgotten that some researchers believed that, in low doses, psilocybin might help ease depression.

Antipsychotics - don't forget that before the first antipsychotic, chlorpromazine, was discovered and utilised, schizophrenics were condemned to long stay hospital admissions and were labelled as never getting better, and subjected to things like insulin shock therapy, unguided neurosurgery etc.

Thanks AspieUtah.

I think that what people oppose is their use in kids with very mild behavioral issues.

There are plenty of beached whales who want a pill that will let them loose weight despite eating excessively and being sedentary, and there are plenty of parents who take their kids to a shrink to avoid doing the (admittedly very hard) work of managing behavioral phases. Most kids are a pain in the butt at some point (especially those with difficult families), so we could easily drug half of the population if we allow a low diagnostic standard. By the time they're old enough to be in school and subject to outside scrutiny, it's hard to figure out whether they were born troubled, or just born into trouble.


I definitely don't wish death or incarceration on you or anyone else on WP. Just be sure that the drugs aren't a substitute for a supportive, candid social network, and that you distinguish between real limitations and negative self-talk.

I know a number of people whose alleged psych conditions didn't present until years after being told that they had "warning signs" by people with whom they had unhealthy relationships.

I have had issues with some antipsychotics, but I recognize as well that different medicines work differently in different people. Actually, I place the blame at the feet at the hospital workers for refusing to call the on-call doctor when I was suffering from severe akathesia (a torturous restlessness) at night from Risperdal, forcing me to suffer until the morning. Two psychiatrists I have talked to about it said that was malpractice by the hospital workers. There are antipsychotics to which I do react well.

As usual, Ettina talks a lot of sense.

SSRIs seem to be generally better than placebo, even allowing for side effects, but some people will always get a terrible combination of effects - just as some people will receive very fortunate effects. We don't really understand why they work, we don't understand why their efficacy varies so much, we don't understand why some people can take this SSRI but not that one... and to top it all off, we're not sure why drugs that have exactly the opposite neurochemical effect also work as anti-depressants.

I don't want to add to the scaremongering atmosphere in here, but by far the worst case was when GSK quietly marketed off-label use of paroxetine for children, despite knowing it didn't work (it does work in adults). They also knew that it was causing suicides in teenagers.

Only when they wanted to squeeze extra money out of the patent by actively advertising it as an anti-depressant for young people did they have to reveal the dangers, and they were then forced to tell doctors not to prescribe it to young people and to pay damages. The law has now been changed in the UK to force drugs companies to reveal safety data for all possible uses of a drug.

Check this out: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/med ... ity_change

All I know is that I vastly prefer my life on medication than off medication.

I've never denied being happier on the drugs than I was when I first went off them. It's actually taken several years to get to a point that's really better. My reason for going off was that they were too good at making things bearable. I tolerated abusive bosses, nasty relatives and girlfriends calling me at 3 AM on a workday to vent about minor things. I would bike hard enough to get RSI strains in just 90 miles, barely notice, and then go another 40 and end up with an injury that wouldn't heal for weeks.

I stopped the drugs because (a) they were dangerous, and (b) I wanted to live my life, not some drug-induced stupor, even a contented one.

The hardest part of cessation was breaking the bad habits that I developed while drugged. I had the assertiveness and confidence of a 10-year-old, but the responsibilities and risks of a 25 year old. I could probably have worked through that in about a year with a good support network, but I wouldn't have been in that situation in the first place if I'd started with a healthy family and solid friends.

Exactly.