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Recovering Emotions After 24 Years on Antidepressants

pasabagi 8y ago
YMMV, but for me, anti-depressants allow me to have emootions. When I'm off them, emotions are way too intense, so I clamp them all down until they're barely there. After two years of anti-depressants, I'm finally able to listen to music I really like, read books I find emotionally affective.
- asah 8y ago
  interesting! what are you on and what dose did you settle on?
  - pasabagi 8y ago
    I'm on setraline - a pretty light dose, these days (can't remember it off the top of my head). I've been prescribed a bunch of stuff over the years, and have developed the impression that the prescription process is more art than science. Doctors tend to overprescribe, so you get sledge-hammer style effects. A good psychiatrist will usually prescribe two or more anti-depressants in light doses, so you don't really get side-effects or weird stuff. Obviously, starting and stopping drugs is always rough, but I have tried living without them, and I see no benefits. You do generally get side-effects to some degree (I have very dry skin at the moment) - but if you have even the most trivial depression, you'll probably find you prefer them to even a light episode. Also, they aren't a silver bullet. I still have depressive days, from time to time - but the difference is, it's not my life anymore. I can hold down jobs, have relationships, etc.
- Fnoord 8y ago
  For me, Prozac (SSRI) cuts off those sharp edges. But when I started using it I could barely walk with it (e.g. taking stairs gave me intense muscle fatigue, nausea, and I was very tired in general), so strong it was (eventually this initial effect faded away). I have an ASD diagnosis.
  - pasabagi 8y ago
    When I started on venlafaxin, I used to fall out of chairs. I think part of what gives anti-depressants such a bad rap is they have a god-awful beginning and end. I still go around evangelising them, because I just can't bear to imagine all the people who get put off by the (horrible) start and horror stories, and live in purgatory for years with no light at the end of the tunnel. Because, as far as I can see, side-effects usually just mean the dosage is wrong, or the drug-combo is wrong.
    - towndrunk 8y ago
      I’m working my way off Venlafaxine after years of use. It’s been a horrible experience. Brain zaps. Hearing odd noises. Crazy emotions. Feeling sick etc. I backed up and started opening the capsules so I can count the number of beads I take each day and then try to reduce by a few beads each week. It’s been really tough to get off this stuff.
      - pasabagi 8y ago
        Yeah, venlafaxine is famous for being kinda hardcore when it comes to withdrawal. I also remember the brain-zaps with little fondness. I guess I try to treat it like having the flu - a miserable, fixed-timeframe experience that requires lots of cups of tea and moping about.
      - throwaway-efxr 8y ago
        Weaning off Venlaflaxine was absolute hell until I started taking Prozac as a bridge. It still wasn’t great, but it was a fraction of its previous awfulness. Took me about nine months to wean off venlaflaxine, started the Prozac bridge in the middle and grateful that I eventually used the bridge. Feeling better now. Good luck to you.
        komali2 8y ago
        I went through the above journey as well and for me it was not worth it. Psychotherapy combined with meditation was a far better treatment and thus why I am hostile to any suggestions of medication from my psych. I simply don't trust the drugs, at all, anymore.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  I have a parallel, I used to be overly shy (crippled to a point); thus drinking two beers would de-inhibit (npi) me just enough to be able to sit in a party without feeling affraid etc. Some say that it's a bit alcoholism, but to me it just recalibrated a twisted system to be able to be stable and ~normal. Best wishes for the future.
tw1010 8y ago
How do you recover emotions without ever having been on antidepressants?
- psergeant 8y ago
  https://www.thecut.com/2016/04/what-it-s-like-to-wake-up-from-autism.html https://www.thecut.com/2016/04/what-it-s-like-to-wake-up-fro...
  - PavlikPaja 8y ago
    Autistic people were never thought to lack emotions, in fact many complain about feeling too intense emotions. The article is garbage. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2518049/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2518049/ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2010.00224/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2010.0022...
    - gowld 8y ago
      Read the article, not the parent poster's mischaracterization of it. The very first paragraph explains the autism+emotion issue. Also your own sources contradict the claim "Autistic people were never thought to lack emotions".
      - PavlikPaja 8y ago
        >Also your own sources contradict the claim "Autistic people were never thought to lack emotions". Where?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Spivak 8y ago
  Assuming you're not being snarky I would strongly recommend talking to a therapist if you feel this way. There are many reasons people have suppressed/muted emotions and a good one will help you find yours. One example of a cause that's not just 'you might have depression' is 'you might be transgender'. One of the most common experiences of trans women is severely suppressed emotions prior to recognizing their dysphoria and before HRT. Some of my favorite things to read on the internet are stories from trans women about the first time they cried (and then usually cried again because they were so happy about it), the first time they laughed uncontrollably, or the first time they felt passion/anger. Super hartwarming stuff.
psergeant 8y ago
The only thing that seems to be universally true about mental health is that we’re all different, and someone else’s experiences rarely apply perfectly to your own. I put off getting on the meds for at least 15 years longer than I should have done because of stories like this. They have been life changing lot positive for me with almost no downsides. In addition, I’ve read more than one story like this where the person eventually decides it’s time to get back on the SSRIs after a year or two off. Experiment, find what works for you, but these articles that are angry at big pharma and describe pills as primarily bad need to be seen very much as just localised experiences.
- presscast 8y ago
  In all fairness, though, these aren't isolated incidents. There seems to be some subgroup of the general population that suffers from SSRIs. That's what's interesting here -- what binds these people together as a group. In other words, brushing this aside as "just a bunch of individuals" isn't useful, nor is it satisfying anyone's intellectual curiosity.
  - psergeant 8y ago
    > brushing this aside as "just a bunch of individuals" isn't useful If it gets one person like me who was under the impression that SSRIs make you a zombie, to try them, then it’s useful.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Not if they do make you a zombie (either in general or as an individual exception that's not covered for)
  - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
    Yes, it does. Some individuals react differently. Some individuals cannot take aspirin daily for heart benefits, some cannot take ibuprofen for pain relief. Both these drugs can have reactions with other medications. It isn't an insignificant portion of the population, but we shouldn't allow those individuals create a dialogue that scares others away from trying the drug. If anything, we just need to spend a bit more time talking to folks about the possible side effects of the medications.
interfixus 8y ago
> The causes of my depression were environmental. I grew up in a very dysfunctional family in Minnesota. My parents were both alcoholics and depressed, and their dysfunction became my growth environment This may be the case, and there may be corroborative evidence for such a conclusion that we are not told about. But as presented, it's just a set of circumstances, presumably correlated. If both parents suffered depression, author might reasonably be supposed to have a strong genetic predisposition.
Random_Person 8y ago
I've been tapering off of my antidepressant for 3 weeks now after 4 years. The sudden flood of emotions has been weird, but familiar. I can't imagine going decades without.
mnm1 8y ago
It took me about a year to get to the point the author describes where I felt nothing and didn't care whether I lived or died. I wasn't suicidal--at last I don't think I was--but I was rapidly approaching that point. I was so desperate, I let the doctor put me on benzodiazepines for anxiety even though I knew from previous experience that I would not only become dependent but addicted. After seven years of that, I had enough and stopped seeing all doctors. I weaned myself off the benzos as no doctor I saw even knew how to do it nor did they want to. It wasn't as hard as I thought. After I was off that, the hard part started. Over the course of years I learned how to deal with life again. Eventually I took up running, my own meditation equivalent and soccer. Slowly things improved. It's not always great and many of the original problems are still there but they are mostly manageable. I'm lucky to be alive really. I try to remember all this suffering at the hands of doctors and the pharma industry that could have been avoided. I will have trust a so called mental health professional again, especially if they are drug pushers. The conflict of interest was readily apparent throughout the whole ordeal both when taking antidepressants and benzodiazepines. It's funny how we demonize some drug dealers while having insurance coverage for others. And all this without a single shred of proof that these medicines work, that there is even such a thing as a chemical imbalance. Because there isn't. If this is what mental health doctors call facts, the entire establishment has failed and derailed into nothing more than making humongous profits from getting people addicted to the drugs they push. It's fucking disgusting.
- simen 8y ago
  I sympathize with you, I really do. I've had some similar experiences. But you're overstating the case. Numerous meta-analyses have found that antidepressants do work for people with severe depression, much better than placebo. Unfortunately there's many people for whom they don't work, and even when they work you may have to try many different kinds to find the right one(s). The state of depression treatment is sadly not very good right now, everyone knows this. But it's just not true that there's not "a single shred of proof that these medicines work". Depression treatment doesn't depend on "chemical imbalance" as an explanation either. Research on whether antidepressants work proceeds alongside research on why they work, if they do--usually studies on the efficacy of drugs are completely independent of mechanism. They study clinical outcomes, not neurochemical or larger structural brain issues. So even if we had no idea why antidepressants (potentially) work, we could still know that they do work based on clinical outcomes. And it's not exactly true that we have no clue at all. The past 20 or so years the monoamine hypothesis hasn't been the main avenue of research into the neurobiology of depression. These days, it's at best considered one possible factor, not the defining and only factor. There's a lot of research into the structural changes that follow depression and recovery. For instance it's now known that serotonin helps regulate the expression of BDNF, which in turn regulates the growth and repair of brain cells and synapses. So it may well be that serotonin triggers large-scale "repairs" in the brain in areas related to emotional processing, such as the amygdala. Here you can see that the focus isn't so much on individual levels of "chemicals" in the brain as on the structure of the brain and how different natural and exogenous factors affect that.
dhubris 8y ago
From past experience, about four months after I've tapered off anti-depressants I'll want to die. It'll take about a year to recover once I'm back on them. But that's me. What works for me may not work for you. Unfortunately, a lot of it is trail and error, along with a lot of hard work, to figure out what is the best treatment for each individual. It sucks that this is the case. At I wrote once upon a time[1]: "There is no silver bullet. Pragmatism trumps opinion. If, and I stress, if what you are doing is working for you, then I wish you good fortune, and would never tell you you're doing it the wrong way." [1] https://dhubris.livejournal.com/14447.html https://dhubris.livejournal.com/14447.html
choot 8y ago
I am using Withania Somnifera to cure my depression. I've not experienced the loss of emotions using it.
FourthProtocol 8y ago
American use of antidepressants comes up at dinner conversation every so often. Stats are readily available, but what's less apparent is why it's so widespread in the US. Does anyone have any ideas why this is?
- projektfu 8y ago
  I'm taking a wild guess based on your domain name that you're in the UK. It appears to be about 11% in the US, 7% in the UK. So, 63% more in the US, but still a reasonably small fraction of the population. Or, if 11% is sizable, so is 7%. https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-largest-antidepressant-drug-users-2016-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-largest-antidepres... The question is how many suffer depression without medication, and how many remain on antidepressants after recovering, as an insurance policy. Is there less suffering in Korea? Or more stigma against using antidepressant drugs?
  - tk75x 8y ago
    11% of ~325 million vs 7% of ~65 million = ~31 million more people using antidepressants in the US than the UK. Also I'd hardly say >10% is reasonably small, but that's a judgement call.
- DenisM 8y ago
  I’m guessing that population density has a negative effect on social interactions, plus having to drive everywhere reduces physical exertion, plus larger distances are more likely to cut one off from their extended family, plus industrially-made produce is less nutritious, plus non-universal healthcare is non-universal.
JustThrowMeAway 8y ago
After almost 25 years of taking antidepressants, I had no emotion left whatsoever. I felt dead and wanted to be dead. I wonder how to understand this. If you have no emotions, can you still want something? Why would you want to die? I tend to understand this sentence in a way that means she was suffering. But isn't suffering the same as experiencing negative emotions? Or is this supposed to mean that she had no good emotions left, only painful ones?
- JustThrowMeAway 8y ago
  Man, all of my comments end up on the bottom of the discussions I try to take part in. This one for example. It raises a question that I truely find interesting. Does nobody else think so? It ranks as the last comment of all. Even below a single line comment "depression is not fun". Depressing.
  - egypturnash 8y ago
    Maybe if you stopped posting from ObviousThrowawayAccount47 you'd get more engagement?
- eugman 8y ago
  Think of a sine wave, with the y-axis representing the positivity/negitivity. A representation of life's ups and downs. I think what she was saying when she said "no emotion left" is that the amplitude of that wave was nearly zero. The wave didn't go up or down much. When she said, "I want to be dead", she's saying that the the average value is down in the negatives.
- egypturnash 8y ago
  nothing matters there is just endless work, endless things that need to be done to keep yourself alive and why do you bother when the reward is just more endless days like today? nothing to live for, nothing to care about, no energy to do anything but just sit around watching your body slowly fall apart fighting against entropy is constant work and actually giving a shit about anything helps give you a reason to put in that work and by "work" i don't just mean "your day job", I also mean things like "getting out of bed" or "feeding yourself" or "doing anything at all interesting"
brian_herman 8y ago
:( depression is not fun
op00to 8y ago
This article is absolute bullshit and quite frankly dangerous. It seems to me this woman was emotionally vulnerable and taken in by a snake oil huckster masquerading as a doctor. > Shortly after I started seeing him, my new doctor had me read the book Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker. Robert Whitaker's theses in that book have repeatedly been scientifically disproven. It's anti-science drivel. > The pharmaceutical industry also says that mental illness represents a physical problem with the brain that needs to be fixed. There are no studies that prove that this is true. This statement is untrue. Literally three seconds of googling showed me this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471964/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471964/ Which basically says that when we deplete the body of certain neurotransmitters, people get depressed. That sounds like a pretty clear statement that there are biological processes at play in mental illness.
- JustThrowMeAway 8y ago
  a pretty clear statement that there are biological processes at play in mental illness It's a statement that biological processes can cause mental illness. That does not mean that mental illness has to be caused by biological processes.
- mgamache 8y ago
  There are issues with the simple Serotonin model: With SSRIs it takes weeks to see an effect, but Serotonin levels are elevated within days why the delay? (There are theories, but all point to Serotonin as a secondary effect) Also, antidepressants work in a minority of people (20%-25%), but Serotonin levels are effected in almost all users. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0087089/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0087089/
  - op00to 8y ago
    That's correct - Serotonin is not the only factor. That still refutes the author's hypothesis that mental illness is some sort of personality defect.
    - 8y ago
Vaslo 8y ago
I take a very small amount of Nortriptyline for horrible IBS. It has changed my life. In addition, while the small dose does make me a little more tired, my anxiety has improved and the debilitating effects of IBS have all but vanished. These pills are like any treatment, they can open the gate to Heaven, or if poorly managed, can open the gate to Hell.
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
I was forced into antidepressants by my parents when I was younger, and after coming off of them, I realized I hadn't enjoyed things like music for years while I was on them. Definitely something that had a negative impact on my teen years and it took me years to recover. But I recognize that for others it can be crucially necessary.
justin_ht_dang 8y ago
These type of personal anecdote fuelled by a general distrust of 'big pharma' can be very misleading and discourage patients from seeking professional help. I also want to point out that the author of that book she speaks highly of also happened to be the Presiden of the publication[1]. I think not mentioning this fact make the article even less credible. [1] https://www.madinamerica.com/staff-page/ https://www.madinamerica.com/staff-page/
patrickg_zill 8y ago
How did people deal with mental illness before these drugs were around? I recall that melancholia was a real diagnosis a long time ago. My personal view is that in some cases physical exercise can be helpful. I have family that are on Wellbutrin etc., and others that studiously avoid any drugs.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  The same way they dealt with infections before antibiotics - unhealthy self-medication and at times dying.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
- nopenope412523 8y ago
  The hellish Sertraline withdrawal experience convinced me that my mental health cannot depend on Sertraline or anything like it in the future. Building up a dependence on a substance like that is just something I cannot fathom being a part of a healthy, normal life, and the way I reacted coming off it had every hallmark of dependence.
flaniganswake 8y ago
Thank you for sharing this.
odiroot 8y ago
I'm a bit worried how many people on social media and Internet in general (also here) are fighting some personal war against antidepressants. This is not helping and may cause a lot of suffering to some people. We're in some wacky second generation New Age where everything illogical is the the obvious solution, just for the sake of breaking with the old. There's really many people for whom literally no amount of talking, meditation or working out (Internet's favourites) will help. Yes, for them, before they can even start thinking about successful therapy (etc.), the chemical imbalance is so strong they need to bring their bodies to the baseline (or close to it). Again, militantly opposing SSRIs creates very dangerous situation where people in need can end up getting hurt or dead.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
  As someone who spent a good amount of time on an SSRI, I get where they're coming from. The people who prescribed them to me seemed to think I was fine, and saw no reason I should try to get off them despite personality changes and what I would term "an inability to experience". It was as though I was only able to observe my own life from the outside. The problem with SSRIs isn't that they can't be useful, it's that the medical industry is full of people who don't seem to know how to use them. They just wanted to throw a pill at the problem and get me out of their office as fast as they could to extract maximum profit out of my visits.
  - hndamien 8y ago
    Unfortunately, unless the Dr prescribing them has taken them, it is very hard to appreciate exactly what they are doing to you. There are very subtle effects that are very important to being a happy human that these drugs remove. The data supporting their effectiveness over the absence of them is dubious as well. That isn't to say they don't work, just that over large enough cohorts, the wins and the losses seem to cancel out.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
DubiousPusher 8y ago
I appreciate this person sharing their story. If you are struggling with mental illness please be cautious before following this person's example. Her circumstances may be very different from your own. If you want to consider a simillar course please talk to your healthcare professionals and the people in your support network first. For every story of someone successfully discontinuing psychoactive there is one that ends in disaster.
braindongle 8y ago
Those of us in the field of psychiatric research encounter innumerable illness narratives of this sort. Everyone has their own story to tell about what went wrong and what helps. While these anecdotes may be of value to the storyteller, they are at best worthless if you are serious about understanding your options in mental health. Evidence-based psychiatry is messy, but good people are working hard to build credible evidence, and not just for pills. "Everything is biased by pharma money" is often said by people on the sidelines. Psychiatric services researchers know better. Interested in meditation vs medication for depression? Start with a systematic review in a reputable journal, like this: https://goo.gl/yN1asm https://goo.gl/yN1asm
jccalhoun 8y ago
Who is this person? I searched her name and didn't find anything that indicated that she is someone to listen to about mental health.
zahllos 8y ago
I have had an anxiety problem for a long while now and like the author have recently stopped taking medication for it. I've developed enough techniques from a combination of therapies like mindfulness and CBT and have enough support in place to check this is working that my doctor agrees with this approach. Additionally, I felt the problems caused by the side effects of my medication outweighed the benefits gained by taking it. Finally, I realized that for me exercise simply isn't optional. I have at times in my life been extremely fit and these times have always corresponded to the periods I've handled my anxiety best. I find the article somewhat troubling in that the author seems to imply that antidepressants are a big pharma conspiracy and are difficult to stop. I personally have had side effects - insomnia, sexual dysfunction, the "fog" the author mentions, although I wouldn't describe it as zombie-like. There are other possible side effects as well, like inducing the liver to release enzymes into the blood stream that imitate fatty liver/liver failure in blood tests, significant weight gain etc. However, I have not had all of these on all tablets - on some, yes, on others, nothing at all. Regarding stopping, the worst case was venlafaxine. I've heard people describe the experience as "brain zaps". It feels a little bit like an electric shock in the brain and is fairly unpleasant (this is with tapering down properly under medical supervision). However, on no antidepressant have I ever felt the need to take the tablet, or to take more of it than the prescribed dose and I have never felt taking a lower dose while stopping to be problematic - it does not resemble fighting addiction at all (I've known people who were addicts and for some of them their addiction killed them, so I have some basis to make this comparison). Ultimately however, taking antidepressants is a trade off between how bad the side effects are (and I stress that in some cases there were none) and the benefit from the tablet (in some cases, none as well) versus the impact the problem (depression/anxiety/...) is having on your day to day life. In my case and I suspect in the author's case as well, at the time I started taking the tablets the benefits outweighed the side effects and allowed me to be a somewhat functioning member of society. By taking antidepressants I was able access other treatments such as CBT and benefit a little from them, as well as hold down a job. Also, it has to be said that when I first started having problems with my disorder I didn't have anywhere near the same emotional maturity or understanding of myself as I do today. I feel that this understanding has a significant effect on my ability to use things like mindfulness and CBT alone, without any other help - I am benefiting far more from it now. I also wonder if the author would have been so successful with meditation if they had used this and only this technique 24 years ago. I suspect in many cases finding what works takes time and is a process that can't really be avoided. I'm uncomfortable because the author is implying it can be and moreover that antidepressants should always be avoided. I disagree. I'm glad the author found something that helps and I'd also recommend mindfulness, but I feel that sometimes people need help and antidepressants are one option and that people shouldn't discount them based on articles like this - instead they should have a thorough conversation with a medical professional (if necessary, more than one) about their options.
dennisgorelik 8y ago
> I was taking 500 mg of Nefazadone in the evening --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefazodone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefazodone Nefazodone is available as 50 mg, 100 mg, 150 mg, 200 mg, and 250 mg tablets for oral ingestion. --- Why would she take such a big dosage of antidepressants? Could she try to reduce the dosage?
Nasrudith 8y ago
From my experience SSRIs are like the prince searching for Cinderella with the glass slippers in reverse - trying tons of them to find the one that finally works. I have had all sorts of fun side effects until I got a combination that was stable - the first one worked fine except for causing unsolicited panic attacks, some had lesser side effects but worse depression, another left me irritable and shifting strongly on political spectrum ironically. The combination I'm on now wound up having the reverse with sexual side effects - it improved things over not taking any medication. I find it is completely the opposite for emotions with anti-depressants. They don't suppress them but allow me to feel a wider range than just null, fear, anger, and despair. There also are some therapeutic components as well and they aren't a panacea. For one I have become more outspoken as I find repressing my emotions is a depression trigger.

YMMV, but for me, anti-depressants allow me to have emootions. When I'm off them, emotions are way too intense, so I clamp them all down until they're barely there. After two years of anti-depressants, I'm finally able to listen to music I really like, read books I find emotionally affective.

asah 8y ago
interesting! what are you on and what dose did you settle on?
- pasabagi 8y ago
  I'm on setraline - a pretty light dose, these days (can't remember it off the top of my head). I've been prescribed a bunch of stuff over the years, and have developed the impression that the prescription process is more art than science. Doctors tend to overprescribe, so you get sledge-hammer style effects. A good psychiatrist will usually prescribe two or more anti-depressants in light doses, so you don't really get side-effects or weird stuff. Obviously, starting and stopping drugs is always rough, but I have tried living without them, and I see no benefits. You do generally get side-effects to some degree (I have very dry skin at the moment) - but if you have even the most trivial depression, you'll probably find you prefer them to even a light episode. Also, they aren't a silver bullet. I still have depressive days, from time to time - but the difference is, it's not my life anymore. I can hold down jobs, have relationships, etc.
Fnoord 8y ago
For me, Prozac (SSRI) cuts off those sharp edges. But when I started using it I could barely walk with it (e.g. taking stairs gave me intense muscle fatigue, nausea, and I was very tired in general), so strong it was (eventually this initial effect faded away). I have an ASD diagnosis.
- pasabagi 8y ago
  When I started on venlafaxin, I used to fall out of chairs. I think part of what gives anti-depressants such a bad rap is they have a god-awful beginning and end. I still go around evangelising them, because I just can't bear to imagine all the people who get put off by the (horrible) start and horror stories, and live in purgatory for years with no light at the end of the tunnel. Because, as far as I can see, side-effects usually just mean the dosage is wrong, or the drug-combo is wrong.
  - towndrunk 8y ago
    I’m working my way off Venlafaxine after years of use. It’s been a horrible experience. Brain zaps. Hearing odd noises. Crazy emotions. Feeling sick etc. I backed up and started opening the capsules so I can count the number of beads I take each day and then try to reduce by a few beads each week. It’s been really tough to get off this stuff.
    - pasabagi 8y ago
      Yeah, venlafaxine is famous for being kinda hardcore when it comes to withdrawal. I also remember the brain-zaps with little fondness. I guess I try to treat it like having the flu - a miserable, fixed-timeframe experience that requires lots of cups of tea and moping about.
    - throwaway-efxr 8y ago
      Weaning off Venlaflaxine was absolute hell until I started taking Prozac as a bridge. It still wasn’t great, but it was a fraction of its previous awfulness. Took me about nine months to wean off venlaflaxine, started the Prozac bridge in the middle and grateful that I eventually used the bridge. Feeling better now. Good luck to you.
      - komali2 8y ago
        I went through the above journey as well and for me it was not worth it. Psychotherapy combined with meditation was a far better treatment and thus why I am hostile to any suggestions of medication from my psych. I simply don't trust the drugs, at all, anymore.
agumonkey 8y ago
I have a parallel, I used to be overly shy (crippled to a point); thus drinking two beers would de-inhibit (npi) me just enough to be able to sit in a party without feeling affraid etc. Some say that it's a bit alcoholism, but to me it just recalibrated a twisted system to be able to be stable and ~normal. Best wishes for the future.

tw1010 8y ago

How do you recover emotions without ever having been on antidepressants?

psergeant 8y ago
https://www.thecut.com/2016/04/what-it-s-like-to-wake-up-from-autism.html https://www.thecut.com/2016/04/what-it-s-like-to-wake-up-fro...
- PavlikPaja 8y ago
  Autistic people were never thought to lack emotions, in fact many complain about feeling too intense emotions. The article is garbage. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2518049/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2518049/ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2010.00224/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2010.0022...
  - gowld 8y ago
    Read the article, not the parent poster's mischaracterization of it. The very first paragraph explains the autism+emotion issue. Also your own sources contradict the claim "Autistic people were never thought to lack emotions".
    - PavlikPaja 8y ago
      >Also your own sources contradict the claim "Autistic people were never thought to lack emotions". Where?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Spivak 8y ago
Assuming you're not being snarky I would strongly recommend talking to a therapist if you feel this way. There are many reasons people have suppressed/muted emotions and a good one will help you find yours. One example of a cause that's not just 'you might have depression' is 'you might be transgender'. One of the most common experiences of trans women is severely suppressed emotions prior to recognizing their dysphoria and before HRT. Some of my favorite things to read on the internet are stories from trans women about the first time they cried (and then usually cried again because they were so happy about it), the first time they laughed uncontrollably, or the first time they felt passion/anger. Super hartwarming stuff.

psergeant 8y ago

The only thing that seems to be universally true about mental health is that we’re all different, and someone else’s experiences rarely apply perfectly to your own. I put off getting on the meds for at least 15 years longer than I should have done because of stories like this. They have been life changing lot positive for me with almost no downsides. In addition, I’ve read more than one story like this where the person eventually decides it’s time to get back on the SSRIs after a year or two off. Experiment, find what works for you, but these articles that are angry at big pharma and describe pills as primarily bad need to be seen very much as just localised experiences.

presscast 8y ago
In all fairness, though, these aren't isolated incidents. There seems to be some subgroup of the general population that suffers from SSRIs. That's what's interesting here -- what binds these people together as a group. In other words, brushing this aside as "just a bunch of individuals" isn't useful, nor is it satisfying anyone's intellectual curiosity.
- psergeant 8y ago
  > brushing this aside as "just a bunch of individuals" isn't useful If it gets one person like me who was under the impression that SSRIs make you a zombie, to try them, then it’s useful.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Not if they do make you a zombie (either in general or as an individual exception that's not covered for)
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  Yes, it does. Some individuals react differently. Some individuals cannot take aspirin daily for heart benefits, some cannot take ibuprofen for pain relief. Both these drugs can have reactions with other medications. It isn't an insignificant portion of the population, but we shouldn't allow those individuals create a dialogue that scares others away from trying the drug. If anything, we just need to spend a bit more time talking to folks about the possible side effects of the medications.

interfixus 8y ago

> The causes of my depression were environmental. I grew up in a very dysfunctional family in Minnesota. My parents were both alcoholics and depressed, and their dysfunction became my growth environment This may be the case, and there may be corroborative evidence for such a conclusion that we are not told about. But as presented, it's just a set of circumstances, presumably correlated. If both parents suffered depression, author might reasonably be supposed to have a strong genetic predisposition.

Random_Person 8y ago

I've been tapering off of my antidepressant for 3 weeks now after 4 years. The sudden flood of emotions has been weird, but familiar. I can't imagine going decades without.

mnm1 8y ago

It took me about a year to get to the point the author describes where I felt nothing and didn't care whether I lived or died. I wasn't suicidal--at last I don't think I was--but I was rapidly approaching that point. I was so desperate, I let the doctor put me on benzodiazepines for anxiety even though I knew from previous experience that I would not only become dependent but addicted. After seven years of that, I had enough and stopped seeing all doctors. I weaned myself off the benzos as no doctor I saw even knew how to do it nor did they want to. It wasn't as hard as I thought. After I was off that, the hard part started. Over the course of years I learned how to deal with life again. Eventually I took up running, my own meditation equivalent and soccer. Slowly things improved. It's not always great and many of the original problems are still there but they are mostly manageable. I'm lucky to be alive really. I try to remember all this suffering at the hands of doctors and the pharma industry that could have been avoided. I will have trust a so called mental health professional again, especially if they are drug pushers. The conflict of interest was readily apparent throughout the whole ordeal both when taking antidepressants and benzodiazepines. It's funny how we demonize some drug dealers while having insurance coverage for others. And all this without a single shred of proof that these medicines work, that there is even such a thing as a chemical imbalance. Because there isn't. If this is what mental health doctors call facts, the entire establishment has failed and derailed into nothing more than making humongous profits from getting people addicted to the drugs they push. It's fucking disgusting.

simen 8y ago
I sympathize with you, I really do. I've had some similar experiences. But you're overstating the case. Numerous meta-analyses have found that antidepressants do work for people with severe depression, much better than placebo. Unfortunately there's many people for whom they don't work, and even when they work you may have to try many different kinds to find the right one(s). The state of depression treatment is sadly not very good right now, everyone knows this. But it's just not true that there's not "a single shred of proof that these medicines work". Depression treatment doesn't depend on "chemical imbalance" as an explanation either. Research on whether antidepressants work proceeds alongside research on why they work, if they do--usually studies on the efficacy of drugs are completely independent of mechanism. They study clinical outcomes, not neurochemical or larger structural brain issues. So even if we had no idea why antidepressants (potentially) work, we could still know that they do work based on clinical outcomes. And it's not exactly true that we have no clue at all. The past 20 or so years the monoamine hypothesis hasn't been the main avenue of research into the neurobiology of depression. These days, it's at best considered one possible factor, not the defining and only factor. There's a lot of research into the structural changes that follow depression and recovery. For instance it's now known that serotonin helps regulate the expression of BDNF, which in turn regulates the growth and repair of brain cells and synapses. So it may well be that serotonin triggers large-scale "repairs" in the brain in areas related to emotional processing, such as the amygdala. Here you can see that the focus isn't so much on individual levels of "chemicals" in the brain as on the structure of the brain and how different natural and exogenous factors affect that.

dhubris 8y ago

From past experience, about four months after I've tapered off anti-depressants I'll want to die. It'll take about a year to recover once I'm back on them. But that's me. What works for me may not work for you. Unfortunately, a lot of it is trail and error, along with a lot of hard work, to figure out what is the best treatment for each individual. It sucks that this is the case. At I wrote once upon a time[1]: "There is no silver bullet. Pragmatism trumps opinion. If, and I stress, if what you are doing is working for you, then I wish you good fortune, and would never tell you you're doing it the wrong way." [1] https://dhubris.livejournal.com/14447.html https://dhubris.livejournal.com/14447.html

choot 8y ago

I am using Withania Somnifera to cure my depression. I've not experienced the loss of emotions using it.

FourthProtocol 8y ago

American use of antidepressants comes up at dinner conversation every so often. Stats are readily available, but what's less apparent is why it's so widespread in the US. Does anyone have any ideas why this is?

projektfu 8y ago
I'm taking a wild guess based on your domain name that you're in the UK. It appears to be about 11% in the US, 7% in the UK. So, 63% more in the US, but still a reasonably small fraction of the population. Or, if 11% is sizable, so is 7%. https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-largest-antidepressant-drug-users-2016-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-largest-antidepres... The question is how many suffer depression without medication, and how many remain on antidepressants after recovering, as an insurance policy. Is there less suffering in Korea? Or more stigma against using antidepressant drugs?
- tk75x 8y ago
  11% of ~325 million vs 7% of ~65 million = ~31 million more people using antidepressants in the US than the UK. Also I'd hardly say >10% is reasonably small, but that's a judgement call.
DenisM 8y ago
I’m guessing that population density has a negative effect on social interactions, plus having to drive everywhere reduces physical exertion, plus larger distances are more likely to cut one off from their extended family, plus industrially-made produce is less nutritious, plus non-universal healthcare is non-universal.

JustThrowMeAway 8y ago

After almost 25 years of taking antidepressants, I had no emotion left whatsoever. I felt dead and wanted to be dead. I wonder how to understand this. If you have no emotions, can you still want something? Why would you want to die? I tend to understand this sentence in a way that means she was suffering. But isn't suffering the same as experiencing negative emotions? Or is this supposed to mean that she had no good emotions left, only painful ones?

JustThrowMeAway 8y ago
Man, all of my comments end up on the bottom of the discussions I try to take part in. This one for example. It raises a question that I truely find interesting. Does nobody else think so? It ranks as the last comment of all. Even below a single line comment "depression is not fun". Depressing.
- egypturnash 8y ago
  Maybe if you stopped posting from ObviousThrowawayAccount47 you'd get more engagement?
eugman 8y ago
Think of a sine wave, with the y-axis representing the positivity/negitivity. A representation of life's ups and downs. I think what she was saying when she said "no emotion left" is that the amplitude of that wave was nearly zero. The wave didn't go up or down much. When she said, "I want to be dead", she's saying that the the average value is down in the negatives.
egypturnash 8y ago
nothing matters there is just endless work, endless things that need to be done to keep yourself alive and why do you bother when the reward is just more endless days like today? nothing to live for, nothing to care about, no energy to do anything but just sit around watching your body slowly fall apart fighting against entropy is constant work and actually giving a shit about anything helps give you a reason to put in that work and by "work" i don't just mean "your day job", I also mean things like "getting out of bed" or "feeding yourself" or "doing anything at all interesting"

brian_herman 8y ago

:( depression is not fun

op00to 8y ago

This article is absolute bullshit and quite frankly dangerous. It seems to me this woman was emotionally vulnerable and taken in by a snake oil huckster masquerading as a doctor. > Shortly after I started seeing him, my new doctor had me read the book Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker. Robert Whitaker's theses in that book have repeatedly been scientifically disproven. It's anti-science drivel. > The pharmaceutical industry also says that mental illness represents a physical problem with the brain that needs to be fixed. There are no studies that prove that this is true. This statement is untrue. Literally three seconds of googling showed me this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471964/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471964/ Which basically says that when we deplete the body of certain neurotransmitters, people get depressed. That sounds like a pretty clear statement that there are biological processes at play in mental illness.

JustThrowMeAway 8y ago
a pretty clear statement that there are biological processes at play in mental illness It's a statement that biological processes can cause mental illness. That does not mean that mental illness has to be caused by biological processes.
mgamache 8y ago
There are issues with the simple Serotonin model: With SSRIs it takes weeks to see an effect, but Serotonin levels are elevated within days why the delay? (There are theories, but all point to Serotonin as a secondary effect) Also, antidepressants work in a minority of people (20%-25%), but Serotonin levels are effected in almost all users. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0087089/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0087089/
- op00to 8y ago
  That's correct - Serotonin is not the only factor. That still refutes the author's hypothesis that mental illness is some sort of personality defect.
  - 8y ago

Vaslo 8y ago

I take a very small amount of Nortriptyline for horrible IBS. It has changed my life. In addition, while the small dose does make me a little more tired, my anxiety has improved and the debilitating effects of IBS have all but vanished. These pills are like any treatment, they can open the gate to Heaven, or if poorly managed, can open the gate to Hell.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

I was forced into antidepressants by my parents when I was younger, and after coming off of them, I realized I hadn't enjoyed things like music for years while I was on them. Definitely something that had a negative impact on my teen years and it took me years to recover. But I recognize that for others it can be crucially necessary.

justin_ht_dang 8y ago

These type of personal anecdote fuelled by a general distrust of 'big pharma' can be very misleading and discourage patients from seeking professional help. I also want to point out that the author of that book she speaks highly of also happened to be the Presiden of the publication[1]. I think not mentioning this fact make the article even less credible. [1] https://www.madinamerica.com/staff-page/ https://www.madinamerica.com/staff-page/

patrickg_zill 8y ago

How did people deal with mental illness before these drugs were around? I recall that melancholia was a real diagnosis a long time ago. My personal view is that in some cases physical exercise can be helpful. I have family that are on Wellbutrin etc., and others that studiously avoid any drugs.

Nasrudith 8y ago
The same way they dealt with infections before antibiotics - unhealthy self-medication and at times dying.

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nopenope412523 8y ago
The hellish Sertraline withdrawal experience convinced me that my mental health cannot depend on Sertraline or anything like it in the future. Building up a dependence on a substance like that is just something I cannot fathom being a part of a healthy, normal life, and the way I reacted coming off it had every hallmark of dependence.

flaniganswake 8y ago

Thank you for sharing this.

odiroot 8y ago

I'm a bit worried how many people on social media and Internet in general (also here) are fighting some personal war against antidepressants. This is not helping and may cause a lot of suffering to some people. We're in some wacky second generation New Age where everything illogical is the the obvious solution, just for the sake of breaking with the old. There's really many people for whom literally no amount of talking, meditation or working out (Internet's favourites) will help. Yes, for them, before they can even start thinking about successful therapy (etc.), the chemical imbalance is so strong they need to bring their bodies to the baseline (or close to it). Again, militantly opposing SSRIs creates very dangerous situation where people in need can end up getting hurt or dead.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y ago
As someone who spent a good amount of time on an SSRI, I get where they're coming from. The people who prescribed them to me seemed to think I was fine, and saw no reason I should try to get off them despite personality changes and what I would term "an inability to experience". It was as though I was only able to observe my own life from the outside. The problem with SSRIs isn't that they can't be useful, it's that the medical industry is full of people who don't seem to know how to use them. They just wanted to throw a pill at the problem and get me out of their office as fast as they could to extract maximum profit out of my visits.
- hndamien 8y ago
  Unfortunately, unless the Dr prescribing them has taken them, it is very hard to appreciate exactly what they are doing to you. There are very subtle effects that are very important to being a happy human that these drugs remove. The data supporting their effectiveness over the absence of them is dubious as well. That isn't to say they don't work, just that over large enough cohorts, the wins and the losses seem to cancel out.

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DubiousPusher 8y ago

I appreciate this person sharing their story. If you are struggling with mental illness please be cautious before following this person's example. Her circumstances may be very different from your own. If you want to consider a simillar course please talk to your healthcare professionals and the people in your support network first. For every story of someone successfully discontinuing psychoactive there is one that ends in disaster.

braindongle 8y ago

Those of us in the field of psychiatric research encounter innumerable illness narratives of this sort. Everyone has their own story to tell about what went wrong and what helps. While these anecdotes may be of value to the storyteller, they are at best worthless if you are serious about understanding your options in mental health. Evidence-based psychiatry is messy, but good people are working hard to build credible evidence, and not just for pills. "Everything is biased by pharma money" is often said by people on the sidelines. Psychiatric services researchers know better. Interested in meditation vs medication for depression? Start with a systematic review in a reputable journal, like this: https://goo.gl/yN1asm https://goo.gl/yN1asm

jccalhoun 8y ago

Who is this person? I searched her name and didn't find anything that indicated that she is someone to listen to about mental health.

zahllos 8y ago

I have had an anxiety problem for a long while now and like the author have recently stopped taking medication for it. I've developed enough techniques from a combination of therapies like mindfulness and CBT and have enough support in place to check this is working that my doctor agrees with this approach. Additionally, I felt the problems caused by the side effects of my medication outweighed the benefits gained by taking it. Finally, I realized that for me exercise simply isn't optional. I have at times in my life been extremely fit and these times have always corresponded to the periods I've handled my anxiety best. I find the article somewhat troubling in that the author seems to imply that antidepressants are a big pharma conspiracy and are difficult to stop. I personally have had side effects - insomnia, sexual dysfunction, the "fog" the author mentions, although I wouldn't describe it as zombie-like. There are other possible side effects as well, like inducing the liver to release enzymes into the blood stream that imitate fatty liver/liver failure in blood tests, significant weight gain etc. However, I have not had all of these on all tablets - on some, yes, on others, nothing at all. Regarding stopping, the worst case was venlafaxine. I've heard people describe the experience as "brain zaps". It feels a little bit like an electric shock in the brain and is fairly unpleasant (this is with tapering down properly under medical supervision). However, on no antidepressant have I ever felt the need to take the tablet, or to take more of it than the prescribed dose and I have never felt taking a lower dose while stopping to be problematic - it does not resemble fighting addiction at all (I've known people who were addicts and for some of them their addiction killed them, so I have some basis to make this comparison). Ultimately however, taking antidepressants is a trade off between how bad the side effects are (and I stress that in some cases there were none) and the benefit from the tablet (in some cases, none as well) versus the impact the problem (depression/anxiety/...) is having on your day to day life. In my case and I suspect in the author's case as well, at the time I started taking the tablets the benefits outweighed the side effects and allowed me to be a somewhat functioning member of society. By taking antidepressants I was able access other treatments such as CBT and benefit a little from them, as well as hold down a job. Also, it has to be said that when I first started having problems with my disorder I didn't have anywhere near the same emotional maturity or understanding of myself as I do today. I feel that this understanding has a significant effect on my ability to use things like mindfulness and CBT alone, without any other help - I am benefiting far more from it now. I also wonder if the author would have been so successful with meditation if they had used this and only this technique 24 years ago. I suspect in many cases finding what works takes time and is a process that can't really be avoided. I'm uncomfortable because the author is implying it can be and moreover that antidepressants should always be avoided. I disagree. I'm glad the author found something that helps and I'd also recommend mindfulness, but I feel that sometimes people need help and antidepressants are one option and that people shouldn't discount them based on articles like this - instead they should have a thorough conversation with a medical professional (if necessary, more than one) about their options.

dennisgorelik 8y ago

> I was taking 500 mg of Nefazadone in the evening --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefazodone https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefazodone Nefazodone is available as 50 mg, 100 mg, 150 mg, 200 mg, and 250 mg tablets for oral ingestion. --- Why would she take such a big dosage of antidepressants? Could she try to reduce the dosage?

Nasrudith 8y ago

From my experience SSRIs are like the prince searching for Cinderella with the glass slippers in reverse - trying tons of them to find the one that finally works. I have had all sorts of fun side effects until I got a combination that was stable - the first one worked fine except for causing unsolicited panic attacks, some had lesser side effects but worse depression, another left me irritable and shifting strongly on political spectrum ironically. The combination I'm on now wound up having the reverse with sexual side effects - it improved things over not taking any medication. I find it is completely the opposite for emotions with anti-depressants. They don't suppress them but allow me to feel a wider range than just null, fear, anger, and despair. There also are some therapeutic components as well and they aren't a panacea. For one I have become more outspoken as I find repressing my emotions is a depression trigger.