While I finish up touches on two related articles, I wanted to point your attention to a fantastic comment left today on my "Wary of Psych Meds? Here is My Personal Experience With Them." article from last May. (What a wonderfully productive month that was. Let me pause for a moment while I reminisce on what being productive felt like....ah, they call these the halcyon days of Summer. Mine feels more like a series of random squalls than a calm breeze. Fortunately, school starts in two weeks.)
Reader Cathy had a terrible time on Paxil and she shared some of the highlights with me. Here is a sample:
I don't want to make this too long because I have to get to work. To put it mildly Paxil turned my life into a living hell, especially the grueling two-plus year withdrawal that I've been through. I didn't even know the damage it was doing to myself, my family, the finances, everything until I was off and brain "woke up" seven months after my last pill. With the wakeup came intense insomnia, akathesia, crushing depression and intense anxiety, OCD, agoraphobia, claustrophobia -- things I had never experienced pre-Paxil. The physical problems are too numerous to mention here. The akathesia and intense insomnia period were the worst and lasted for a few months. I had uncontrollable urges to kill myself.
Please take time to read her heartfelt comment.
A small percentage of people find relief from their Depression with psychmeds, but a larger percentage don't. The meds either don't work for them, or they encounter side-effects which, in my opinion, are more debilitating than the actual Depression. Side-effects almost ruined my life. I lost a decade or more of time learning how to recover. The choice is yours, but I caution you to be wary of "magic pills" that might cure your ills.
Cathy passed along a site she finds help from. It is PaxilProgress.org. I've checked it out and can recommend it to my readers as a good resource for finding other ex-Paxil users who are trying to wean themselves off Paxil or find alternatives. I especially like their motto:
Freedom is in you...
You are enough. You are your solution.
If anybody knows of a similar site for Zoloft users (my particular poison) I'd appreciate a link.
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