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The Antidepressant Trap

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
Check out this superb New York Times article about trouble many have people getting off antidepressants. Just as with opioid pain killers the antidepressant studies are almost always short-term and have rarely assessed the long term effects of the drugs despite the fact that millions of people are using these drugs for long periods of time. It's really incredible.

Let's not point the finger too hard at Big Pharma - they have no incentive (other than a moral imperative which businesses often lack unfortunately - to do these studies.

The federal govt is the real culprit IMO. Since Pharma won't do them it's up to the feds to do them and to help produce validated withdrawal protocols. Because they haven't many millions of people are essentially guinea pigs....and some really suffer.

This is not to say that long term antidepressant use can't be helpful. It certainly can be but for some people it can become a nightmare....

Fascinating reading...

Victoria Toline would hunch over the kitchen table, steady her hands and draw a bead of liquid from a vial with a small dropper. It was a delicate operation that had become a daily routine — extracting ever tinier doses of the antidepressant she had taken for three years, on and off, and was desperately trying to quit.

“Basically that’s all I have been doing — dealing with the dizziness, the confusion, the fatigue, all the symptoms of withdrawal,” said Ms. Toline, 27, of Tacoma, Wash. It took nine months to wean herself from the drug, Zoloft, by taking increasingly smaller doses.

“I couldn’t finish my college degree,” she said. “Only now am I feeling well enough to try to re-enter society and go back to work.”

https://www.nytimes.com/…/antidepressants-withdrawal-prozac…
 

Wayne

Senior Member
Messages
4,300
Location
Ashland, Oregon
Let's not point the finger too hard at Big Pharma - they have no incentive (other than a moral imperative which businesses often lack unfortunately - to do these studies. ------ The federal govt is the real culprit IMO.

I personally don't think there's much of a difference between Big Pharma and the Federal Gov. Regulators. It's one big revolving door, where all the parties have very similar interests. -- I doubt that when these people eventually come up for a karmic review, that they'll be given a free pass because they didn't have an incentive to do the right thing. When their actions/inactions negatively affect many people, there's always consequences.​
 

Thinktank

Senior Member
Messages
1,640
Location
Europe
Even worse is withdrawing from benzodiazepines like xanax, klonopin, valium etc.
I have been through hell withdrawing from klonopin.

Although some people really need them, these psych drugs like benzo's and AD's are way too easily prescribed by non-specialists like G.P.'s.
 

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,679
Location
Alberta
They're not just too easily prescribed (without appropriate warnings either). The doctors give out free samples of these addictive products.
 

Learner1

Senior Member
Messages
6,305
Location
Pacific Northwest
The thing that was never mentioned in the article is that many of the drugs deplete nutrients, like B vitamins..in fact, much of the time, nutrient deficiencies or imbalances cause the depression or anxiety to begin with.

These nutrients include tyrosine, tryptophan, GABA, folate, B6, B12, zinc, copper, and lithium.

Additionally, most psychiatric drugs can damage mitochondria.

So, if the drugs were actually helping, taking them away can leave patients with these hidden problems that doctors don't address.

Two good books on the nutrients are:

New Optimum Nutrition for the Mind https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591202590/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fJMYAb5JK1TPJ

https://www.walshinstitute.org/nutrient-power.html
 

ebethc

Senior Member
Messages
1,901
@Learner1
is the info on mito damage in those books?

btw - have you seen the articles saying vitamins & supplements are a waste of money? (like below, w quotes from doctors) I always laugh because supplements have kept me propped up for years.... Of course, YMMV and you have to do your homework and not believe the hype... It's a shame that ppl can't try methylation supps and test snps, etc. before going down that road..
https://www.thrillist.com/health/nation/vitamins-and-supplements-are-a-waste-of-money
 

Learner1

Senior Member
Messages
6,305
Location
Pacific Northwest
@Learner1
is the info on mito damage in those books?
No, the books discuss how nutrients affect how the brain works, based on a lot of research.

At the 2016 United Mitochondrial Disease Conference, there were 2 presentations by scientists who had tested mitochondrial toxicity of various drugs and found about 75% of pharmaceutical drugs negatively impacted mitochondria.

As for psychiatric drugs, here are some links:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21120605/

"The results demonstrate that the apoptotic cell death observed in antidepressant-treated cells could be due to disruption of mitochondrial function resulting from multiple inhibition of mitochondrial enzyme complexes"

https://www.nature.com/articles/nrn3229-c1

"Multiple studies have shown that both typical and atypical antipsychotic medications can inhibit the mitochondrial respiratory chain. Similarly, the mood stabilizer valproic acid can inhibit the mitochondrial respiratory chain and result in secondary impairment of mitochondrial function through the induction of carnitine deficiency. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants inhibit mitochondrial function in animal models of depression and are potentially toxic in high doses, resulting in dysfunction of the mitochondrial respiratory chain and decreased ATP production."

See attached for a list of some of the known mitochondrial damaging meds from the Mito Action website. There are many others.

btw - have you seen the articles saying vitamins & supplements are a waste of money? (like below, w quotes from doctors) I always laugh because supplements have kept me propped up for years.... Of course, YMMV and you have to do your homework and not believe the hype... It's a shame that ppl can't try methylation supps and test snps, etc. before going down that road..
https://www.thrillist.com/health/nation/vitamins-and-supplements-are-a-waste-of-money
Yes, I have. I have also looked at the NAHNES database and statistics on individual nutrient deficiencies across the population.

The problem with many nutrient studies is they typically use a single nutrient without the other cofactors for the biochemical processes it's used in on a random group of people with differing health historirs, environmental fsctors, microbiome, diet, and nutrient status.

I also have found that testing for nutrient deficiencies and imbalances and responding to them through supplementation has been very powerful for me, whether it's been taking tyrosine for dopamine production, orniyhine and citrulline to help me sleep, methionine for anxiety symptoms, and B12 to help me be alert.

There is a lot of politics behind nutrients, and the pharmaceutical companies can't make much money from nutrients they can't patent, and unfortunately, the medical establishment doesn't know as much as yet should about nutrition.
 

Attachments

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ebethc

Senior Member
Messages
1,901
The problem with many nutrient studies is they typically use a single nutrient without the other cofactors for the biochemical processes it's used in on a random group of people with differing health historirs, environmental fsctors, microbiome, diet, and nutrient status.

bingo

I also have found that testing for nutrient deficiencies and imbalances and responding to them through supplementation has been very powerful for me

yes, helped me much more than any drug, although I would def take a drug if they would work...

There is a lot of politics behind nutrients, and the pharmaceutical companies can't make much money from nutrients they can't patent, and unfortunately, the medical establishment doesn't know as much as yet should about nutrition.

exactly
 

Eastman

Senior Member
Messages
526
The federal govt is the real culprit IMO...

I think the medical profession must share the blame. If the drugs are not assessed for long term use, doctors should not routinely prescribe them for long term use. But that is often what happens because most doctors are not willing to spend the time required to find the root cause of the problem.

From the article:
“Some people are essentially being parked on these drugs for convenience’s sake because it’s difficult to tackle the issue of taking them off,” said Dr. Anthony Kendrick, a professor of primary care at the University of Southampton in Britain.

...

Once a drug is approved, physicians in the United States have wide latitude to prescribe it as they see fit. The lack of long-term data did not prevent doctors from placing tens of millions of Americans on antidepressants indefinitely.
 
Messages
53
Check out this superb New York Times article about trouble many have people getting off antidepressants. Just as with opioid pain killers the antidepressant studies are almost always short-term and have rarely assessed the long term effects of the drugs despite the fact that millions of people are using these drugs for long periods of time. It's really incredible.

Let's not point the finger too hard at Big Pharma - they have no incentive (other than a moral imperative which businesses often lack unfortunately - to do these studies.

The federal govt is the real culprit IMO. Since Pharma won't do them it's up to the feds to do them and to help produce validated withdrawal protocols. Because they haven't many millions of people are essentially guinea pigs....and some really suffer.

This is not to say that long term antidepressant use can't be helpful. It certainly can be but for some people it can become a nightmare....

Fascinating reading...

My ex-wife is having the same issue trying to come off a decade of daily Effexor XR use. Messy stuff that they don't warn you about upfront. General practitioners that don't know squat about the brain passing them out like candy. I told her she needs to find a psychiatrist to help her taper down with short term use of other meds.

https://www.nytimes.com/…/antidepressants-withdrawal-prozac…
 

CFS_for_19_years

Hoarder of biscuits
Messages
2,396
Location
USA
I had a neighbour who was put on antidepressants...without being told that they were addictive. It caused her a couple of years of painful withdrawl. It hadn't done anything for her depression either.

They're not just too easily prescribed (without appropriate warnings either). The doctors give out free samples of these addictive products.

Addiction is not the same thing as discontinuation syndrome:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antidepressant_discontinuation_syndrome#Culture_and_history
In the late 1990s, some investigators thought that the fact that symptoms emerged when antidepressants were discontinued might mean that antidepressants were causing addiction, and some used the term "withdrawal syndrome" to describe the symptoms. Some addictive substances cause physiological dependence, so that drug withdrawal causes suffering. These theories were abandoned, since addiction leads to drug-seeking behavior, and people taking antidepressants do not exhibit drug-seeking behavior. The term "withdrawal syndrome" is no longer used with respect to antidepressants, to avoid confusion with problems that arise from dependence or addiction.[1]

I've gone through discontinuation and I've never exhibited drug-seeking behavior. I've also had to find my safest discontinuation schedule by trial and error. Agree here:
Yet the medical profession has no good answer for people struggling to stop taking the drugs — no scientifically backed guidelines, no means to determine who’s at highest risk, no way to tailor appropriate strategies to individuals.
For anyone who wonders if discontinuation is causing symptoms vs. something else causing symptoms (nausea, headache, flu-like feeling), take a small dose of the antidepressant and see how you feel in a few hours. If some or most of those symptoms disappear, it's probably discontinuation syndrome.

I recall reading a study that withdrawal from an antidepressant will take the same amount of time whether it's done slowly or quickly, and doing it slowly has fewer adverse effects.

Many antidepressants are also prescribed for pain and sleep, off-label uses that weren't mentioned in the article.
 
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Learner1

Senior Member
Messages
6,305
Location
Pacific Northwest
A close family member was on a cocktail of 3 psych meds with some pretty strong effects due to a serious mental health diagnosis.

A functional medicine doctor did testing and found a disrupted gut microbiome and many nutrient imbalances and deficiencies..one by one, he worked to get the patient off the psych drugs by supporting the pathways used by the drugs with nutrients, fixing the mictobiime, and replenishing and balancing other nutrients.

The patient is completely recovered, off all meds, and the withdrawal was pretty straightforward though it could have been much worse without the nutrient support. The books I posted above were quite helpful in the process.
 
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Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
I personally don't think there's much of a difference between Big Pharma and the Federal Gov. Regulators. It's one big revolving door, where all the parties have very similar interests. -- I doubt that when these people eventually come up for a karmic review, that they'll be given a free pass because they didn't have an incentive to do the right thing. When their actions/inactions negatively affect many people, there's always consequences.​
You know what I just found out - Big Pharma has been behind efforts to keep down medical marijuana research - because it will hurt their bottom line with opioid painkillers.
 

Cort

Phoenix Rising Founder
I think the medical profession must share the blame. If the drugs are not assessed for long term use, doctors should not routinely prescribe them for long term use. But that is often what happens because most doctors are not willing to spend the time required to find the root cause of the problem.

From the article:
Good point. Doctors are the ones prescribing antidepressants right and left apparently...
 
Messages
53
Good point. Doctors are the ones prescribing antidepressants right and left apparently...

I've worked in medicine for 18 years and have concluded general practitioners have no business prescribing psychotropic medications yet they make up by far the vast majority of prescriptions since nobody wants to visit a psychiatrist because THAT would make them 'crazy'. Nobody other than a psychiatrist or a neurologist should be prescribing things for the brain, period.
 

Wishful

Senior Member
Messages
5,679
Location
Alberta
People want doctors to 'do something', preferably without involving exercise, diet modification, or any other sort of sacrifice. People want magic pills. The pharmaceutical industry wants to sell magic pills, even if they have no real benefit for people. The administrative part of the medical system wants expansion of their dominion (and thus increased pay and prestige). The voices for actual health care for patients just don't have much strength compared to the money talking. Sad, but I don't see any way to solve that.
 

JES

Senior Member
Messages
1,320
AD's have evidence base for certain uses, especially for severe depression and for short-term depression treatment. There is enough data to support improvement over placebo for certain conditions. I also know people who got rid of their severe panic disorder by AD's, so it's not all black and white. The problem is the over-prescription for all sorts of conditions and the fact that AD's have a tendency to lose effect (stop working) after a longer time on them. So taking AD's for years might not provide much benefits and at very least long-term effects should be studied more.