Wissenschaftler warn
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/antidepressant-withdrawal-symptoms-study-long-term-risks-b2789401.html
Von tylerthe-theatre
Wissenschaftler warn
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/antidepressant-withdrawal-symptoms-study-long-term-risks-b2789401.html
Von tylerthe-theatre
39 Kommentare
Yeah it ain’t fun, I arguably came off venlafaxine faster than I should have, and it was brutal, wish I can my medical cannabis back then, would have helped wonders with the intense insomnia from the withdrawals.
I went cold turkey and that wasn’t fun at all. I count myself lucky.
Personally the therapy I went for was far better for me than the anti-depressants
I ended up in hospital trying to come off of an SNRI I was put on to help with a sleep issue. This issue needs to be everywhere and widely understood.
If anyone wants more information or support in safely coming off SSRI’s and SNRI’s whilst minimising side effects then please google Dr Mark Horowitz. He literally wrote the [new] book on safely tapering off SSRI’s and SNRI’s, there are entirely new guidelines that haven’t yet filtered down to most GP’s. His YouTube channel is a fantastic resource – Outro Health.
Yep, no doctor has ever warned me about anti-depressant withdrawal when prescribing and it’s fucking brutal.
Oh boy, wait until people learn that the NHS’s advice after diagnosing PSSD (https://www.pssdnetwork.org/faq) is „that sucks, we can’t help, maybe try joining a support group“
Being in a work meeting and my brain is zapping every 20 seconds, never again.
Whoever is in charge of PR at Big Pharma inc. deserves some recognition. They managed to shift public opinion so much that we went from most people being sceptical of the industry to people demanding involuntary vaccination in about half a generation.
About 70% of people on antidepressants shouldn’t be on them – there is nothing wrong with their neurochemistry, it’s just that life sucks for them right now… They need social support, a relationship, a dog, some new healthy habits; a little pill with a chicken on it is not going to change that.
Eta: I work in preclinical pharmaceutical development and it is a very sketchy field. Things go wrong, outliers are included/excluded at will, statistical analyses are ‚tweaked‘. I’m aware of at least two current clinical trials that are being conducted without any consideration of the preclinical findings leading to increased adverse event rates. Sex-differences in particular need more attention – it’s common to find AEs at a higher rate in one of the sexes.
Horowitz and Moncrieff are outcasts, they are opinionated, while the actual study is performed by serious academics. Of course they are supported by pharma, they are the best, why wouldn’t they be? It happens in all fields if you are the best, you get funded. That funding had no influence on this study though
There’s so much to unpack here
– I generally agree with the authors of the Independent article that short term studies don’t give us the best view of withdrawal effects for those coming off antidepressants after very long periods
– The authors of the Independent article are a bit of a joke in academic circles. Their entire careers are based on predictably shallow criticism of various concepts/approaches in psychiatry. Funnily enough, despite what they say about the conflicts of interest regarding supposed financial incentives for the authors (more on that below), they themselves are selling books/talks etc from the point of view of being anti-medications. The exact thing they are criticising the authors of the research article for.
– Their criticisms regarding ‚close ties to industry‘ are insidious and underhand. Those of us who work in the field know that for a large number of researchers, it’s right to be open about COIs but I know for a fact that the particular study they are criticising was not funded, guided, or edited by anyone in industry. The general public have a very poor, conspiratorial understanding of how to interpret COIs.
– In general I don’t agree with the conclusions of the paper and would probably have done things differently had I been involved.
– If you’re someone who has had bad side effects withdrawing from antidepressants then I feel for you. I had them too having come off several antidepressants. Studies like this don’t help for the minority of those who do experience this, especially those on medications for a long time. I wish the paper had looked at more long-term data by way of comparison rather than only looking at short studies and not considering how this may have been interpreted/reported.
So I in no way recommend this, but just for the sake of sharing experiences I cold turkey’d sertraline (SSRI) after being on it for, I want to say, well over a decade, and the only withdrawal I got was a persistent dizziness for about two months.
„Just a short course of antidepressants..“
decades later they are still stuck on them.
Yeah it is, coming off various SSRIs (prozac, Sertraline, .etc) side effects not that bad, coming off SNRIs (Venlafaxine) oh boy that is a ride and a half and still feeling the effects nearly 18 months since coming off.
Wait until you learn that the epidemic in chronic depression might be down to the introduction and chronification of neurotransmitter dysfunctions caused by SSRIs via them modifying your serotonine metabolism and serotonine receptors. In other words, if you want to be cynical, the industry might just engineer its own consumer base by hooking them up on drugs that many of them can’t come off easily.
Coming off venlafaxine was the worst experience ever, laid in bed and the brain zaps felt like I was jumping off the bed. Never tried heroin but I feel it would of been easier getting off that
Used speed to get myself off SSRIs a few years back. Worked really well. I’m back on them now but whenever I want to stop it’ll be amphetamines that I use to avoid the devastating withdrawal.
This article is soo wrong, SSRIs aren’t addictive and don’t have withdrawal symptoms. Maybe they are talking about discontinuation syndrome /s
[https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/25218-antidepressant-discontinuation-syndrome](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/25218-antidepressant-discontinuation-syndrome)
And pharmaceutical companies have successfully redefined addiction so that their drugs don’t count as being addictive even though you can have a physical dependence such that stopping can put you in hospital.
When that original review was posted. I called bullshit and suggested that they must be looking at industry funded studies of the withdrawal effects after a few months of usage not long term usage. Turns out I was right.
>A new review of antidepressant withdrawal effects – written by academics, many of whom have close ties to drug manufacturers – risks underestimating the potential harms to long-term antidepressant users by focusing on short-term, industry-funded studies.
This is one of several reasons why i didn’t want to go on antidepressants for my MH. Potential for permanent side effects even upon ceasing medication was the number 1 reason opted against them.
They don’t provide doses low enough to allow you to come off them safely where there are groups dedicated to „bead counting“ just to help support those looking to come off them.
The withdrawals can be literally debilitating.
I think I got super lucky with mine. I was on Fluoxetine for about 8 years and I felt like it had stopped working. Every time I went to the doctor, I was brushed off and told to keep taking it. I got so fed up that I just stopped and didn’t order any more. Literally felt no difference at all.
I went to the doctor for tightness in my chest and was prescribed SSRIs on the basis of “have you considered you are depressed?”. They worked to give them their credit however the side effects have yet to disappear after a year of being off of them.
Had I been told that severe, irrational mood swings and my libido ceasing to exist were a potential side effect I’d have never tried them in the first place. I’d have stuck with the chest tightness.
(Can’t wait for the ED ads from this one)
Edit: I should say for lots of people they work brilliantly and don’t cause side effects after ceasing them. I would hate for people to not take life saving medicine that could help them when they need it desperately.
My experience of coming off Venlafaxine made me feel the way heroin addicts look when going through withdrawals. I was physically shivering so hard my teeth chattered, sweating endlessly, had brain zaps so intense that caused physical spasms, and couldn’t eat with how sick I felt. Doctors are worryingly reckless with people’s mental health.
This is so true. I’m a mental health nurse with depression, I’ve found guidelines about changing or stopping antidepressants fail to take this into account.
Even ’safe‘ SSRIs with long half lives can have horrible withdrawal symptoms, these symptoms just happen later than people expect.
And don’t get me started on what they can do to your sexual function even after stopping the buggers.
What are the withdrawal symptoms? Are they what Google says, but for longer, or are there more serious ones that have been pushed away from being easily findable online?
People with PSSD (Permanent or persistent sexual dysfunction caused by SSRI antidepressants after discontinuation) have had their condition ignored for a LONG time. There are 100,000+ member support groups for PSSD and still very few studies have been conducted. Its completely and intentionally ignored.
I remember coming off SSRIs 9 years ago and the GP suggested I could just come off it without tapering after being on SSRIs for 5 years. Thank God I used my instincts to taper. I slowly tapered over 6 months and I still had electric shock sensations through my body, insomnia, and panic attacks which I never had before going on SSRIs in the first place. I’m glad this is being spoken about more now.
Two words: Brain Zaps.
Those things were dreadful.
The NHS has a psychiatric deprescribing service if you want more support while coming off anti depressants
[here](https://www.nelft.nhs.uk/national-psychiatric-drug-deprescribing-clinic-pdc/)
I took venlafaxine for three months, and three years later, I still have insomnia, still struggle with social situations, I’m still overweight and the GP is still trying to get me to try a different antidepressant. When I described my withdrawal symptoms how they affected my day to day life and how strict I’d been with the GP recommended sleep hygiene, they referred me for an autism screening.
Oh 100% this is the worst to go through, i was taking 75mg of venlafaxine i felt like I was going to end up in hospital during the withdrawals.
It was absolutely disgusting. Never again.
Sexual „side-effects“ can outlast the time a person is on the medication. There are whole support groups full of people who have been off SSRI’s for years and still cannot experience *any* sexual feelings. It has destroyed people’s relationships, caused severe misery and ruined lives because they can’t get any sexual sensation back at all.
I wish I’d have known how severe some of my side-effects could actually be. Appetite increase on many of them is no joke, and all the doctor on the call really said was (despite it being listed in the leaflet itself) „SSRI’s do not cause weight gain. Weight gain is caused by eating too many calories“, like I’m a fucking idiot who is confused as to why I got fat despite having been bmi 20 and knowing fine how to maintain a balanced calorie intake practically all my life before taking the meds. Most doctors couldn’t give a shit about you really.
I’m not saying that there aren’t a great many people that these medications have been life-saving for, but I’m also not using hyperbole when I say that SSRI’s have fucked me up more than any illegal drug did.
Just wait until they hear about trying to come off neuropathic pain killers like Gabapentin and Pregabalin.
I took one sertraline and my dick went numb for three days.
Never again.
I went cold turkey from Sertraline one. Kept going dizzy/nearly passing out and developed Restless Leg Syndrome. Definitely not the worst symptoms I admit but that’s was from less than a year of being on them
No suprises there – big pharma, doing big pharma, buying researchers, publications and politicians.
The business model is not to prevent, or even cure… but to keep people on the meds. Just good business practice.
Bad Pharma by Dr Ben Goldacre (and Bad Science to be fair) is an absolute must read to understand how dodgy anti-depressants and the pharmaceutical industry are. I got lucky in that I took one SSRI andblacked out the next morning, so I threw them away and have not taken any since. I would rather never have to deal with that or any potential side effects and face depression alone than be dependent on SSRIs.
I definitely found the BNF guidelines didn’t match with my experience on citalopram. Guidelines stated I could just jump from 10mg to 20mg overnight but the side effects were too much. I had such brain fog I was barely present. Ultimately I worked out my own tapering schedule and it was fine, but others may not feel confident to do that
I just spent 3 months weaning off lexapro. Im on my first week of zero, and I still get dizzy a few times a day. I expect I’ll be feeling side effects through the end of the summer at least…
Anyone on Lexapro? Been on it for 13 years, those brain zaps are brutal. I have wondered what it would be like to stop it.
I was on low dose quetiapine and it fucked me up so bad. Took 2 years to come off