Withdrawal after 17 years on antidepressants

[amani]

zolofterine :)

"You’ve done great at figuring out what was going on all along": thank you for making me feel better.. but the truth is, i still can't believe that i let myself take these meds for so many years when they were not helping, and even my p-doc knew and admitted that they were not helping... now I am thinking, he must have known that it would have been too hard to get off these meds after being on them for more than a couple of years, and that is why he told me there is nothing else he can do for me and I should just keep taking these meds for the rest of my life...

re-instating: I had help with that from another forum... I never knew anything about withdrawal, I just wish that I have done some research on that before I started tapering... but .. what is done is done...

Vitamin C: i am trying to take more of it now (with lots of food of course).. and i have already increased my dose of Omega 3..

partial stabilization: I think you are totally right about that...I reinstated too late, it seems... but that is exactly what I am hoping now, that the WD symptoms will continue to lighten on this current dose... I am totally scared of making any change to the dose right now...

hope you are having a great day Sheila

[Sheila]

Thanks, amani!

You might only have gotten partial stabilization even if you had reinstated sooner, because you would still be dealing with withdrawal from a large percentage of the original dose you were on.

Look, none of us had any idea how harmful these meds would be to us. It took me three times and the Internet to realize I was having w/d every time I got off an AD.

And CFS has been a mystery illness with no one knowing what was going on. What do you think of the XMRV virus theory? I’m inclined to think CFS can have various pathways leading to it, one of which is the virus.

Anyway, the new SSRIs were looking like miracle drugs in the 90s. It was very reasonable for you to try them for your mystery illness.

I’m glad you’re going up on your C and fishies. I think there’s a lot of promise in this.

[amani]

you always know exactly what to say to make us better, dont you :)

"CFS can have various pathways leading to it": i agree with you... mine was most likely virus too but don't know which one it was... i got sick many years ago, all i remember is that at first it was like the flu, then my lungs got involved, then my joints, then my stomach.... i was sick for few weeks with very high fever..and when it was all done, i was never back to normal...

omega 3 and vit C: yes, i hope so...

[Sheila]

Aww, thanks, amani….

So, you hadn’t had any identifiable precipitating events – psychological trauma, physical trauma, medications, vaccinations, other major change? Were you ever tested for any viruses or parasites or unusual pathogens?

Have you read our Omega-3 and Vit C threads here?

[amani]

no, that illness started it all - it was as if whatever that pathogen was, attacked my body, one organ after another...
i was tested for a bunch of viruses, but all these tests can show is that i have been exposed to these viruses... nothing else...

i read the omega3 thread, don't remember if i read the vitamin C one , i think i did... i will check them out again tomorrow - my brain is so bad these days...even worse than usual... but that is ok for now :)

[Luc]

Here's the Vitamin C thread in Alternative Healing Methods subforum, Amani;

http://antidepressantwithdrawal.info...d-of-Vitamin-C

And here's something from today;

http://antidepressantwithdrawal.info...itamin-C/page3


Really worth trying out.

[amani]

Thank you Luc... i will check them out right now...

[Sheila]

Gawd, amani. What an extremely frustrating, intensely life-changing mystery. Unfortunately, a classic CFS onset story. Did you test positive for XMRV? And, just out of curiosity, do you test positive for Mono?

[amani]

Yes, it was life-changing... I don't remember anymore the "me" before I got sick...

I tested positive for mono but never tested for XMRV .. It is still in the research phase, so even if I tested positive, there won't be a treatment for it...

[Sheila]

Yeah, it doesn’t really matter at this point. I’m hopeful that high dose Omega-3 might make a real difference for you. Here’s one study about CFS and Omegas –

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16380690

You're going to be an advanced version of you, as you go forward. It's happening.