May 18, 2007
The charming travails of going on -- and going off -- antidepressants. A word to the wise, from someone who knows: there's apparently no FDA requirement to disclose the extent or severity of withdrawal symptoms for prescription drugs.
That's distressing. Way to feed my fear of drugs.
Side note: It is interesting (to me) that I have this absolute knee-jerk reaction to a lot of prescription meds (I'm not a scientologist, I swear!), which is entirely the opposite of how any one of my parents feels. My mom, especially, feels that using a pill to solve problems >> any sort of non-pill approach, where problem = dieting, depression, nutrition, etc.
Rebound effects occur for most medications. The example most clear to people is use of antihitamines. You may actually experience greater allergic reactions than you experienced before taking medication when discontinuing.
Psychopharmaceuticals can change brain physiology.
Our bodies are marvelous things and are "smart" enough to know that "When I'm awash in neurotransmitter X, I need to change myself to get back to "normal" levels." A sort of brain homeostasis. When you discontinue your medication the brain may have adjusted to the artificial levels (e.g., fewer post-synaptic terminals), and does not respond the way it did before medication.
It's a conundrum, but points out that use of psychopharms should not be considered casually. However, they can be very helpful, especially in extreme disorders (e.g., psychosis), or at extreme levels of impairment. Thankfully, psychology is getting much better at treating moderate to severe levels of many pathologies, at times rivaling medication effects, and has become the treatment of choice for even severe levels of anxiety disorders like OCD, panic disorder, and phobias.
Have you hugged your psychologist today?
Having taken these types of medications I can say yes, they work. Yes, they also have side effects.
Almost all treatments have side effects, I don't know what's the big deal. When you have surgery a side effect is that they have to cut through and damage skin and other tissue which causes pain during healing. The benefits of the treatment outweigh the side effects. As time progresses the treatment of mental health problems will be more targeted and hopefully that will cut down on these problems.
I thought the meds did their job well enough to justify the side effects in my case. My "brain shivers/shocks" lasted only a month or two at most even though they were pretty strange at the time.
Interesting analogy sP. I suppose the difference (as the article shows) between surgery and drugs is that there is a fair possibility that, despite the doctor's best efforts, one may permanently feel the side effects of the drug, unlike, say, surgery.
I have had surgery twice, to replace ligaments, using part of tendons as replacements and, in one surgery, they even drilled through my kneecap. I now have no side effects, in terms of strength, stability, or speed. The same length of time later, mr. dooce still has brain shocks (which sound way freaky btw).
Incidentally, a well-trained psychologist probably leaves no permanent sude effects either. (well said, TWIT-B). BUT sP, you are right in that I actually do take surgery pretty seriously and strongly dislike the idea of elective surgery.
I had major surgery right after high school, the recovery for which required an epidural. I experienced numbness in my foot that I was pretty sure would never go away due to nerve damage (as it happens, it subsided over about 2 years).
I think the chances of side effects from surgery occur less broadly (ie to fewer people) but are far deeper when they do appear. Lots of stuff can go wrong even just from anesthesia, let alone the part where they actually chop away at nerves and blood vessels.
Hopefully, the "side effects" of psychological intervention are decreased anxiety or depression, and increased "self-esteem," ego strength, etc.
there can be iatrogenic effects from therapy, but assuming basic competency on the part of the therapist, these effects should have more to do with systems than the individual. that is, as the individual becomes more healthy it changes the system in which the individual lives. perhaps a spouse needs the individual to be overly weak or overly strong for some reason, perhaps the spouse needs the patient to be an addict, whatever.
ceteris paribus, psychological treatment should only have positive effects. however, like the karate student who thinks he can whoop some ass after 2 months of training, overcoming some of our "issues" don't make us fixed.
i think the parallel in medicine would best be illuminated with medication. treating cancer can have very detrimental effects on the system as a whole. the drugs we use for that can be quite toxic. a fun psych study showed that treating axis I disorders (e.g., anxiety) reduces symptoms of axis II disorders (e.g., borderline personality disorder).
on a side note, a friend of mine studied Wing Chun for about 2 months before getting into a fight defending a couple of strangers. his opponent spent the night in the hospital.
OOOOOWAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!! Sticky Hands!
Hey TWitB, whom do you mean with that last comment? Beckto and I also do Wing Chun so I'd like to hear the story if you don't mind. My own experience defending a stranger didn't work out quite so well 'cause I didn't want anyone to get hurt, not even the attackers... Bad plan.
Heh =) Yeah, the last comment was for you and Beckto actually.
Back when I was going to UCLA in cough1988cough a friend of mine was studying there under a sifu who I believe trained with Yip Man. Alex was about 6' and athletic to start with, but super sweet and never wanted to hurt anyone, but he was from a bad part of LA... He was in Westwood when some poor guy was trying to get his date into a car unsuccessfully while a 6'4"+ hick wasn't letting her get in. Alex tried to gently intervene but made the mistake of honestly saying "I don't want to hurt you." This sounded like a challenge, the big guy swung, and Alex hit him once stunning him and making him fall and then struck him/kicked him several more times before he hit the ground. The guy was seen on campus the next day (he was scary big) and he had a big shaved spot on his head where he got stitches.
I went to a lesson with Alex once and met his sifu. A little guy who absolutely whooped a big Special Forces soldier from Australia. While it was going on the sifu was calmly discussing the Aussie's style and correctly identified who he studied with.
Sorry to hear your encounter went so poorly. A lesson I learned playing lacrosse was that the guy that backed off even just a little during a collision is the one who gets hurt. What happened to you, and why didn't you have Beckto there? I hear she scares all the little karatekas.
1988 puts me in the 4th grade. UCLA makes sense given your volleyball prowess.
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(I still get occasional brain zaps four years later.)
posted by 3dooce at 11:14AM CST on May 18