4 ms·

Is there a reason why people are trying to stop taking it? If it helps your life, why not keep using it? For example, I have been taking antihistamine daily for

by wbkang 9y ago

Is there a reason why people are trying to stop taking it? If it helps your life, why not keep using it? For example, I have been taking antihistamine daily for the last 18 years for skin allergy. My QoL is significantly better with it, and unless there is some magical cure, I don't see why I should stop just because it's a "drug", "chemical" or "unnatural". For example, from the article, > "A year and a half after stopping, I’m still having problems. I’m not me right now; I don’t have the creativity, the energy. She — Robin — is gone" If that's important to you, why not continue?

mirimir 9y ago
Taking an SSRI more or less made me sociopathic. Sociopathic with a grin, perhaps, but still dangerous to myself and others. On the other hand, I wasn't depressed, and could work effectively. So basically, it was side effects. Friends worried about me.
jack_h 9y ago
Anecdotally I quit because I had just entered a relationship and the anti-depressants affected my sex life in a pretty big way.
- himom 9y ago
  Neither mirtazapine nor trintellix affected me at all in that dept. I can’t take paxil, zoloft or valium, so it’s probably different. I personally wouldn’t stop antidepressants because my physiology goes straight into depression without exception, and then the relationship would likely flounder.
- wbkang 9y ago
  I had to take 1/2 dose because of that but it was fine after that. Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you.
DanBC 9y ago
Because depression isn't a lifelong thing, it should be at worst episodic. Because SSRIs have side effects, and you tolerate those if it's preventing depression, but you might not tolerate them if you're now taking a medication for life.
- ineedasername 9y ago
  it should be at worst episodic. Except it's not for large groups of people. And for anyone with a history of multiple episodes, the long ramp up time needed for antidepressants is extremely risky to try an "as needed" approach.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  >Because depression isn't a lifelong thing, it should be at worst episodic. Says who? The DSM-5 specifically lists Persistent Depressive Disorder, formerly known as dysthymia, which is defined by chronic depressive symptoms for a period of two years or more. Many people suffer from frequent episodes of major depression; there's fairly good evidence that antidepressants can reduce the risk and severity of relapses. Patients shouldn't be taking antidepressants in the long term by default, but it's a very good option for a lot of people. If you've had two or three previous episodes of major depression that have been successfully treated by antidepressants and you find the side-effects tolerable, taking them indefinitely might be a perfectly sensible decision.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    Sure, for the people who find it useful it's fine. But that's not most people. Most people with depression have a mild to moderate form that responds well to medication for two years and a talking therapy. These people don't need ot be on meds for life.
    - azernik 9y ago
      And usually aren't.
CocaKoala 9y ago
There are side effects to the anti-depressants that might be unpleasant. There are several types of anti-depressants that kill your libido, for example, which can have a fairly large impact on your relationship with your partner. On top of that, some people aren't comfortable needing to take a daily dose of medication where the withdrawal symptoms are so disruptive. What happens if you forget to take your meds one morning? What if you lose your insurance coverage and can no longer afford the pills? What happens if you're traveling abroad and the bad with your medications gets stolen?
sudosteph 9y ago
This is not 100% relevant to your point, which I do generally agree with. But does relate to your antihistamine experience. I also took antihistamines for a long period of time (15ish years) and eventually I got to the point where I got multiple nosebleeds every day I took one. Nobody told me that could happen when I started taking them. I went off for a year (thankfully I discovered nose strips to get me through the night) and now I can take the occasional antihistamine again without my nose bleeding all over. As a result I'm a bit more conscientious of what long term effects I need to be looking out for in any other meds I take regularly. Living without is just unfortunately necessary in some cases.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
I was a very different person on an SSRI. Considering the state I was in when I started taking it, that wasn't really a problem. I was generally content with everything on an emotional level, but at the same time if I sat down and payed attention to how I felt I found I was still depressed, I just wasn't experiencing most of the emotional effects of it. Worse, when I took a look at how my personality had changed, I didn't like it. After I changed jobs, and therefore healthcare providers because yay America, I didn't bother getting a new prescription. It was a rough ride coming off the stuff. I remember distinctly crying, like really intense honest crying with sobbing and tears and everything, over some plot point in a stupid TV show I was watching and, honestly, it was delicious. I was so grateful to be able to experience again, instead of just passively existing. After several more years, none of them involving doctors, I finally found my way to more-or-less normality. For me, and I suspect many depressed people, it was philosophical. I had this idea of how the world should work, how I felt it should work, and I knew the world didn't work that way, and the dissonance of that manifested as depression. I think this is probably the normal reaction of the mind to this state, and under normal circumstances it is supposed to serve to motivate us to reconcile our model of reality with our observations of it, but for various reasons I once elaborated on in a different post, I think our current cultural mind-set is not only ill-suited to helping us with this, but actively making it worse.
verylittlemeat 9y ago
Personally I went off SSRIs because from the start I chose to look at them as a tool. I had no symptoms of depression until my mid 20s so I didn't buy the metaphor that SSRIs were filling some inborn defect in my brain. I got stuck in a rut of bad thinking patterns which I re-framed through therapy and SSRIs. I don't think going off them had to do with worries over "unnatural" , rather it was just human curiosity to understand my own brain. I've tried other illegal drugs for similar cognitive insights. It just so happens that SSRIs are legal and have some degree of clinical efficacy. As a side note I think therapy did more for me than SSRIs and I'm still in therapy but ymmv. Finding a good therapist is way harder than finding an anti-depressant prescription.

by wbkang 9y ago

mirimir 9y ago

Taking an SSRI more or less made me sociopathic. Sociopathic with a grin, perhaps, but still dangerous to myself and others. On the other hand, I wasn't depressed, and could work effectively. So basically, it was side effects. Friends worried about me.

jack_h 9y ago

Anecdotally I quit because I had just entered a relationship and the anti-depressants affected my sex life in a pretty big way.

himom 9y ago
Neither mirtazapine nor trintellix affected me at all in that dept. I can’t take paxil, zoloft or valium, so it’s probably different. I personally wouldn’t stop antidepressants because my physiology goes straight into depression without exception, and then the relationship would likely flounder.
wbkang 9y ago
I had to take 1/2 dose because of that but it was fine after that. Sorry to hear it didn't work out for you.

DanBC 9y ago

Because depression isn't a lifelong thing, it should be at worst episodic. Because SSRIs have side effects, and you tolerate those if it's preventing depression, but you might not tolerate them if you're now taking a medication for life.

ineedasername 9y ago
it should be at worst episodic. Except it's not for large groups of people. And for anyone with a history of multiple episodes, the long ramp up time needed for antidepressants is extremely risky to try an "as needed" approach.
jdietrich 9y ago
>Because depression isn't a lifelong thing, it should be at worst episodic. Says who? The DSM-5 specifically lists Persistent Depressive Disorder, formerly known as dysthymia, which is defined by chronic depressive symptoms for a period of two years or more. Many people suffer from frequent episodes of major depression; there's fairly good evidence that antidepressants can reduce the risk and severity of relapses. Patients shouldn't be taking antidepressants in the long term by default, but it's a very good option for a lot of people. If you've had two or three previous episodes of major depression that have been successfully treated by antidepressants and you find the side-effects tolerable, taking them indefinitely might be a perfectly sensible decision.
- DanBC 9y ago
  Sure, for the people who find it useful it's fine. But that's not most people. Most people with depression have a mild to moderate form that responds well to medication for two years and a talking therapy. These people don't need ot be on meds for life.
  - azernik 9y ago
    And usually aren't.

CocaKoala 9y ago

There are side effects to the anti-depressants that might be unpleasant. There are several types of anti-depressants that kill your libido, for example, which can have a fairly large impact on your relationship with your partner. On top of that, some people aren't comfortable needing to take a daily dose of medication where the withdrawal symptoms are so disruptive. What happens if you forget to take your meds one morning? What if you lose your insurance coverage and can no longer afford the pills? What happens if you're traveling abroad and the bad with your medications gets stolen?

sudosteph 9y ago

This is not 100% relevant to your point, which I do generally agree with. But does relate to your antihistamine experience. I also took antihistamines for a long period of time (15ish years) and eventually I got to the point where I got multiple nosebleeds every day I took one. Nobody told me that could happen when I started taking them. I went off for a year (thankfully I discovered nose strips to get me through the night) and now I can take the occasional antihistamine again without my nose bleeding all over. As a result I'm a bit more conscientious of what long term effects I need to be looking out for in any other meds I take regularly. Living without is just unfortunately necessary in some cases.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago

I was a very different person on an SSRI. Considering the state I was in when I started taking it, that wasn't really a problem. I was generally content with everything on an emotional level, but at the same time if I sat down and payed attention to how I felt I found I was still depressed, I just wasn't experiencing most of the emotional effects of it. Worse, when I took a look at how my personality had changed, I didn't like it. After I changed jobs, and therefore healthcare providers because yay America, I didn't bother getting a new prescription. It was a rough ride coming off the stuff. I remember distinctly crying, like really intense honest crying with sobbing and tears and everything, over some plot point in a stupid TV show I was watching and, honestly, it was delicious. I was so grateful to be able to experience again, instead of just passively existing. After several more years, none of them involving doctors, I finally found my way to more-or-less normality. For me, and I suspect many depressed people, it was philosophical. I had this idea of how the world should work, how I felt it should work, and I knew the world didn't work that way, and the dissonance of that manifested as depression. I think this is probably the normal reaction of the mind to this state, and under normal circumstances it is supposed to serve to motivate us to reconcile our model of reality with our observations of it, but for various reasons I once elaborated on in a different post, I think our current cultural mind-set is not only ill-suited to helping us with this, but actively making it worse.

verylittlemeat 9y ago

Personally I went off SSRIs because from the start I chose to look at them as a tool. I had no symptoms of depression until my mid 20s so I didn't buy the metaphor that SSRIs were filling some inborn defect in my brain. I got stuck in a rut of bad thinking patterns which I re-framed through therapy and SSRIs. I don't think going off them had to do with worries over "unnatural" , rather it was just human curiosity to understand my own brain. I've tried other illegal drugs for similar cognitive insights. It just so happens that SSRIs are legal and have some degree of clinical efficacy. As a side note I think therapy did more for me than SSRIs and I'm still in therapy but ymmv. Finding a good therapist is way harder than finding an anti-depressant prescription.