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“My very first dosage of Effexor I ever took, I felt a gurgling in my head, and that has been there ever since."
I saw an article in Rolling Stone last year or so, talking about how Prozac was one of the most marvelous technologies of our age. If I weren’t still so debilitated, I would write to them and ask them to print an article about how horrendous SSRIs are, but since I haven’t been able to concentrate, I am submitting the idea to you, especially since you would probably do a better job. That way, millions of people could be saved from untold agony.
Also, here is a website which you may or may not be familiar. They are a program which helps people through nutritional therapy: http://www.truehope.com They also help by giving homeopathic remedies to help cleanse the medication from the body. They work with all kinds of illnesses, especially bipolar disorder, so you might want to mention them on your website as well.
Now here is my story. Tell me if you want me to restate anything excessively inflammatory or profane:
From the pit of despair, to the pit of fire, acid, and abuse.... and now to Truehope. (with links to helpful sites)
My sophomore year I was diagnosed with about six mental illnesses, depending on how you group them, including: bipolar disorder, ADHD, OCD, severe depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and something like schizoid or schizotypal personality disorder, though I probably had about every personality disorder there was anyway. My parents finally stopped telling me to just “get over it” after about fifteen years. I didn’t want to go on medication, and although my dad, sister, and brother had the attitude of “drug that bitch up and then she won’t make us miserable” (<— anybody who says it’s easy being a teenager is full of it), my mom said she didn’t want to put me on meds. Unfortunately, my siblings were excessively emotionally abusive, and I ran away from home several times, because nobody would defend me, and they said it was my fault. After this, my mom gave me a deadline before I had to go on meds. We had tried putting me on a couple of vitamin supplements for unipolar depression, but they didn’t even care to take me to a fucking psychiatrist beyond a “talk therapist” for so long, that now that I was diagnosed as bipolar, I wanted to try a whole different regime. Really, there are a whole lot of different types of depression, and many different causes for each. I tried some supplement combinations that I read in a book called Depression Free, Naturally, by Joan Matthews Larson (http://www.healthrecovery.com), but I really didn’t do it right. I would take some of the key nutrients, but as I learned later, if I wanted results, I would have to take EVERY nutrient listed in the right formulas, because different vitamins compete for absorption and all that.
So really, because for so long I had felt bad about myself, didn’t trust myself, and carried the belief that I was a horrible person and inferior to everyone and all that nonsense, I finally broke down and let them put me on meds. I was too in despair for anything else. First they put me on Risperdal, which was an anti-psychotic medication. Oddly enough, even though it’s supposed to be helpful in mania, I ended up so irritated in school that I spent hours writhing on the floor, and could only be consoled by chewing fiercely on my friend’s shoe. So then I went on Paxil. That made me sleep for seventeen, eighteen hours a day, so I stopped it. I went on a lot of things... I don’t remember all of them, because there were so many. I even went on anti-seizure meds as an attempt to stabilize my mood, but one of them had a fatal rash as a side effect and I got off of them as soon as I started developing a rash. Mostly though, I was on Effexor and Seroquel. It was awful. My very first dosage of Effexor I ever took, I felt a gurgling in my head, and that has been there ever since, although sometimes it diminishes. The Seroquel, I discovered six months later, was making me unbearably depressed. I was sleeping so much that I had to take an anti-narcolepsy drug to get up. My grades fell even with the first dose of medication, and they haven’t really recovered. I would be stone-tired, and my mom would come in and scream at me that I was lazy and was pretending to be tired so that I could get out of school, and I would just allow myself to be dragged like a limp rag doll out of bed until she gave up. A couple of times I *did* stay home from school because I was so angry at these boys who were harassing me, that I told her I was afraid that I would kill them if I went. Since the anti-psychotics weren’t working, one time I tried going on Zyprexa and finally, even though I was miserable even single moment of my life, was almost hospitalized for the first time in my life. I was screaming in agitation at severe spasms. I told this to my psych, and he would say “Just stick with it, and see if it gets better.” I only got off of it because I finally REFUSED to go on it.
And perhaps the only reason that I even am alive today and did refuse the medication is because my mom started looking into alternative therapy again (bless her!). She found a website called Truehope (http://www.truehope.com) which is a program that administers vitamins to people and charts their progress, including that of getting off meds. Part of the introductory packet talked about restoring one’s own confidence in knowing what makes them feel good. For the longest time I had listened to everyone else’s shitty advice about what was going to make me “better”. What a load of rubbish. Needless to say, I was still being abused at home, still am, but I’m going to be eighteen soon, so watch out world.
So anyways, I got off of the meds, because I refused to take them anymore. At that time they were upping my Seroquel to about 800mg. I went off meds cold turkey. Ow. Holy crap. I was pretty much a vegetarian (vegan, nonetheless, except for eating fish) at that time, but was somewhat weight-obsessed, so my breakfast would consist of just a giant salmon steak, trying to do that Atkins thing. That probably made it much worse, my lack of balance. First of all, vegetarians have had little success with the Truehope program, and second of all, having all protein without carbohydrates made me really miserably depressed. I still had to go to school and all that nonsense, and go to summer school too, because I guess nobody ever appreciated how much pain I was in at all times.
Now, luckily, since having bipolar disorder my whole life, I was able to cope with the extreme pain a lot better, because severe bipolar disorder seems to be just as painful as being on meds. But being bipolar and put on anti-depressants makes it like, gargantuan-severe bipolar. Anyways, my manic rages were worse than ever. My whole body felt like it was on fire. I was literally bathing in acid, being burned alive. Plus the indignation of being abused caused me to pull a knife out on my brother many, many times. We only have physical confrontations like that about once a month now.
My friends, the only real friends I’d ever had in my whole life, left me after I went on meds. I did something and they got hurt. My life was lived in front of the computer screen, typing out my misery for hours. I would have violent, gory, disgusting dreams, where people were on fire, where they were victims in electrical experiments, where they were being melted alive in acid baths, being rotted from the inside out by eating poisonous vegetables. Very graphic. I would have all sorts of bizarre experiences, like trying to open my uterus, because I wanted to see what it looked like, and it made me feel better. I would think about killing people all the time, and visualize their guts hanging open like sausages. I’m still a bit morbid or possibly sadistic since being on meds. I’m sure it shows through my speech.
I don’t know what I’d do without Truehope. It is really beyond all fathoming of mine. I had to start eating chicken again, and because I’m a severe case, take more than the maximum dosage of vitamins and eat a whole lot of food and regulate my sleep patterns. But I’m okay. If I can be better, with all of that trash, I’m convinced that there is hope for everyone. I’m now in band and having the time of my life. My grades have improved enough for me to be passing, and I hope to have a job in healing myself someday. And I don’t mind the abuse as much anymore, because I’m going to leave the house, and I figure that the thing that my family resents most about me is that I have a greater capacity to love than they’ll ever realize. After all, I didn’t kill anybody, including myself.
I have seen a lot of other friends go through the meds experience. One of my friends cut a huge gash in his stomach, and almost shot himself, except that he couldn’t see straight (Effexor). One of them went on Zoloft because of anxiety about a relationship. Needless to say, she is no longer in that relationship. She went off of meds cold turkey too, due to severe vomiting, and her personality just isn’t the same. I still believe there is hope though. I plan to spread the word to as many people as possible (including the school newspaper). The anti-SSRI movement has a vicious fighter on their side.
Thanks for listening.
Sarah
childofscience@yahoo.com
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