Effects of Paxil on Behaviour

“One day Paxil will have to be banned or withdrawn from sale.”

Dear ICFDA reader,

Here it is:

I was prescribed Paxil, (known in Australia as ‘Aropax’), by a doctor who suggested I start using it at 20 mg and increase to 40 after a month then to 60. This was so that I could be weaned off Xanax. I was also taking painkillers for back pain. The doctor stated that it was a drug that very few people liked because of the side effects. 3 weeks after beginning the Paxil regime I went to another state where I was not under any medical supervision. Before I left though I was already exhibiting what one could term ‘uninhibited’ behaviour. For example, I had been sold a guitar about a year earlier that was a dud and about a week after starting Paxil I decided to go and complain to the shop keeper. When I walked in I looked around and saw that there was virtually no one in the shop so I walked up to the guitar rack and picked up a $2500 dollar guitar and walked out again. This was an unusual action for me.

Whilst away from my home state I began chronically shop-lifting as though it was some kind of exciting new challenge and when I returned, now armed with a bottle of morphine, I moved in with a houseful of punks and started trafficking in and smoking marijuana. I informed my doctor during a moment of clarity that I thought I might be a kleptomaniac but he disagreed and informed me that I’d get caught. I don’t think he’d read the patient information leaflet which states that any uncontrolled/uninhibited behaviour is a side effect which should signal the doctor advising immediate steps toward discontinuing use of the drug.

The shop-lifting reached epic proportions where I could not leave the house without returning with at least a minimum of $1000 worth of items per day. I kept a list and had an aim of reaching the target of $1000000 worth of stolen goods. I invited street kids to come into my home, initiated a relationship with a prostitute, offended all of my friends and family in a manner that in my not-really-lily-white-past had ever been managed and had the police through the house about once a month for a year or so. Eventually, I was charged with stealing and drug possession and convicted. This downward spiral presented itself to my mind as a challenging game to be survived.

I just stopped taking Paxil one day about 2 years later and withdrew also from painkillers so I don’t recall any specific side effects of the Paxil withdrawal. It took a lot of prayers to and help from God to get off all drugs.

In retrospect, I can only assume that these SRI drugs have side effects which effect each individual user differently. Side effect patterns seem to vary so much from user to user that it suggests the drug emphasizes psychotic behaviour. The problem is that when on Paxil the patient is oblivious to some or all of these side effects. This would explain why children, who are less aware of the functioning of their own minds, are likely to commit suicide whilst on them. They don’t understand that the drug is interfering with the mechanism of their identity that is self preserving and in an uninhibited moment happily succumb to the depressed desire to die. If they’re thinking self destructively and they’re on a drug which makes them feel comfortably uninhibited there is this danger. It’s logical that one day Paxil will have to be banned or withdrawn from sale.

brett
bhernan@dodo.com

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