Antidepressants: What They Don’t Tell You

As I write this, I am in my sixth day of drug withdrawal. My head has pounded with crippling dizziness for the last few days. I feel nauseous. Drug withdrawal. Those very words make me feel like a junkie. The sad irony is that I’m trying to come off doctor-prescribed SSRIs, antidepressants.

 

Depression hounded me through my teens and twenties. It was just the way it was. Not until I got married and my raging moods began to take their toll on someone else and threaten our relationship did I decide to seek help.

 

I had always been resistant to chemical solutions for depression. At the age of six months, a well-meaning doctor prescribed Valium to treat my “hyperactivity.” To this day, I shudder to think what effects that had on my young, developing brain. In my teens, as I struggled with the usual pains of high schools – extreme shyness, the pressure of exams, bullying, etc, my doc prescribed tranquilizers (not telling me what they were). After two days of feeling worse than ever, I flushed them down the toilet.

 

Fast forward to a few months before my thirtieth birthday. Everything was grey. I would go through days with no recollection of what I had done. I was disconnected from everything. My husband would take me to a movie to cheer me up and I would break down in the parking lot, unable to cope with the decision of what to see.

 

The doc put me on Lexapro. I was so tired of feeling this bad that I gave in and tried drugs. I was reassured that Lexapro was a new kind of antidepressant with absolutely no side-effects. I felt better immediately. Despite being unable to sleep for the first week, I felt great. My mood swings improved at once. I was finally on an even keel. This is how life was supposed to be.

 

So how did I get from there to where I am today?

 

As it happens there are quite a few things doctors don’t like to tell you about antidepressants. As time passes, chances are that you will need to use a higher dose and with a higher dose, often comes an increased likelihood of side-effects. Over the course of four year, my doctor changed three times. Each time one moved on and a new one took over, they would ask how I was doing and simply renew my prescription for another year. If I said I didn’t feel so good, my dose would be increased with little exploration into other possibilities. At no point was I referred to a mental health professional or a therapist. Antidepressants are one of the few medications freely dispensed without a referral to a specialist. Side-effects were brushed aside. Despite being more active than ever, I was gaining weight rapidly. My doctor told me it couldn’t possibly be a result of the Lexapro. Instead I was told to exercise more.

 

Four and a half years. Thirty five pounds. Slowly, the negatives outweighed the benefits. A few months ago, the fog began to return and my mood swings were worse than ever. I felt cold. Tired. Fat. Disconnected. Instead of seeing my regular doc, I paid a visit to my endocrinologist, thinking perhaps these symptoms were related to my PCOS. His response was instant – stop the antidepressants. He told me how dozens of his patients were often prescribed antidepressants by their family physician when the depression was being caused by other hormonal imbalances. Often, a short-term dose of antidepressants turns into several years.

 

When I did some online research, I was stunned by what I found: pages of peoples sharing their stories, describing the weight gain and other side-effects they experienced as a result of antidepressants, and how their doctors responded by increasing doses and ordering more exercise.

 

I tapered my dose down slowly. Going cold-turkey when stopping SSRIs is NOT recommended. I have increased my intake of fish oils. A daily Dramamine helps to ease the temporary dizziness.

 

I am not against the use of antidepressants. They certainly helped me at a time when most other alternatives failed. However, they do have side-effects for a large number of people. Weight gain. Loss of libido. A massive slowing down of your metabolism. How ironic it is that they very remedy I used to treat my depression eventually became the thing that fed it further.

 

Fiona

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