As to the op … yes there are lots of reasons already mentioned. One item important to mention is that warning box on suicidal ideation risk in adolescents in the first several weeks of starting an antidepressant is based on ideation risk. There has been no documented correlation with increased suicide attempts let alone completions. The consensus in the medical community is that the association is that medication is usually started at the period of highest risk for suicidal ideation and such occurs before the medication starts to take effect.
Yeah, and broccoli and jimson weed are both plants, but one is not only safe, it’s actually good for you, while one is very, very bad for you.
It’s ridiculous to say that because we can semantically label both crack and metoprolol as drugs makes them functionally and morally equivalent. That’s a logical fallacy.
And I can’t think of any anti-depressant off-hand that has value as a street drug. At any rate, even when a prescription drug is also a street drug, often the one you buy on the street has been tampered with the get more units from each one. That’s one reason it’s pretty rare to find something like Percoset or Ritalin in capsule form, but they still do get tampered with, so you don’t know what you are getting when you buy a street drug, like you do when you get a drug from a pharmacy.
No. And when they gave me an anti-depressant, how did they know it would be effective and have no ill side effects? And it would be worth destroying 26 years of my sobriety to have me take it? And I would not become a prescription pill junkie? Is being hooked on prescription “medication” better than being a street junkie?
They could only make me take their DRUG for three days. What effect does three days of an anti-depressant have, other than destroying sobriety?
The prime issue with “antidepressants increase risk of suicide”–as well known today as when the “Prozac kills” nonsense gained the cover of Time magazine decades ago, is this: when in the depths of clinical depression, the patient (myself, any number of times) can barely envision putting his socks on, let alone comprehend activity worthy of the name besides wondering what’s keeping away an end to misery, and even “wondering” is giving too much credit to a mental state of absolute wretched mental passivity–including emotions, surprisingly, those emotions that in normal people lead to thought or action.
The opening weeks of successful treatment of depression at this state, in the very fact of being successful, lifts you out of the lowest passivity, bringing you to a “clearer” cognitive and behavioral functioning–one where you have your shit together just enough to attempt to reason about the despair, and to be able to put your socks on and maybe figure out the best way to kill yourself.
You are only “hooked” on a prescription medication if you define it that way. Is my stepfather hooked on metoprolol, the medication that keeps his blood pressure under control? He can quit taking it any time he wants, but then he will have high blood pressure. Is a diabetic hooked on insulin? Then why is someone with a couple of suicide attempts under her belt hooked on Wellbutrin because it allows her to function and be productive, instead of lying in bed all day, thinking of ways to end her life, while collecting disability (and yes, I’m thinking of a real person).
Prescription drugs destroy sobriety only if you define it that way. I have another friend who drank for eight years, and then got sober through AA. She quit AA when she wanted to try antidepressants, and a lot of people in the program responded like you-- she wouldn’t be “sober” if she was taking antidepressants. She has been taking meds for nearly 20 years, has not gone back to AA, and has not touched a drop of alcohol. If anything, she thinks the meds help her stay sober, and those are her words. “Sober” to her means not drinking. It doesn’t mean not taking Tylenol, or penicillin.
I grant that people do define things different ways, but in my mind, some people go too far, and are irrational. I think defining “sobriety” as not taking antibiotics or non-narcotic pain medications is going too far, just as I think that Jehovah’s Witnesses are wrong when they say that blood transfusions are “consuming” blood, and violate religious law. Judaism says that “consuming” means by mouth for food, and a transfusion is clearly something else. Not only that, medical treatments don’t have to be kosher anyway, so a pill can contains derivative of non-kosher animals, or of animals and dairy products mixed, because it isn’t food. Porcine derived insulin that people used to inject before simulated insulin was invented was also beyond that laws of kashrut as well. Diabetic Jews were not forbidden from using porcine insulin.
So I will not question your right to define sobriety any way you want, but I don’t agree with it. I do not think taking antidepressants is relevant to a person’s status as a sober person. If you want an objective way of looking at it, it is perfectly legal to drive while taking Prozac, Wellbutrin, or any other antidepressant I can think of, so the law certainly considers you sober even if you take them.
I ran across a comprehensive and thoughtful article on suicide risks possibly related to the prescribing of antidepressants.
The author makes the point that suicides in young people dropped significantly after the introduction of SSRIs (like Paxil), but then at least temporarily rebounded, prompting the requirement for a boxed warning that suicidal ideation/action might be promoted by such drugs. His contention is that the warning may actually have caused more suicides/attempts, because physicians were scared off prescribing SSRIs for younger patients who then went untreated.
It’s also mentioned that in at least a small subset of patients, such drugs may promote deleterious symptoms like increased anxiety, agitation, irritability and even motion disorders (akathisia)* - or suicidal ideation. And the problem could be exacerbated when patients are misdiagnosed with unipolar major depression rather than a bipolar disorder.
It’s a complex situation, and those most at risk apparently haven’t been reliably identified, or in some situations followed as closely by their physicians as they need to be in the months after they start medication.
*if you’re already suffering from major depression, having elements of anxiety and extreme restlessness piled on as a drug side effect can’t be a good thing.
Well this is GQ and the GQ of the op has been answered (with an ample resource linked to by Jack).
The GQ answers to the above are that that they did not “know” that it would be effective and have no ill side effects but based on evidence and experience believed that the odds and benefits of it being effective significantly outweighed the risks of ill side effects (same as any treatment of any sort), and that three days of an antidepressant at appropriate starting dosing would typically have little effect of any sort on anyone. A few more days and an SSRI may begin to have some impact on anxiety for those with anxiety as a major symptom. Impact on sobriety (as in being sober) none.
I’m no mod but if you want discussion on the rest of your thoughts you may want to a request a forum change. Maybe to Pit the doctors who you believe destroyed your sobriety, or to Debate the evils of psychopharmocology, or solicit Humble Opinions on staying drug-free (and thus no insulin, antibiotics, etc.). Not up to me though.
:dubious:
What about topical meds or eye drops?
Yes, it is very different. Antidepressants have no abuse potential and do not make you high, drunk, or euphoric. No, you would not become a prescription pill junkie. Your doctor is the best person to ask these questions.
It seems like you might not be using the terms “hooked” and “sobriety” the way most people understand them.
It’s sad to think that there are people out there who think individuals taking, for example, thyroid replacement hormone are somehow drug addicts. They should suck it up, go cold turkey, and die, right???
BTW a lot of drugs like thyroid hormones have a significant impact on mood. There often isn’t a clear line between drugs for the body and drugs for the mind.
When I told the doctor I did not want to take drugs, his response was “This is not drugs. This is medication.”
If SSRI’s are so wonderful, why is the original one illegal? Crystal meth?
I believe that anti-depressants are over prescribed and are not for everyone. One commercial admits that 2/3 of the people taking anti-depressants don’t feel that they are doing much good. And the solution? Add another “medication” to them. An anti-psychotic medication, though the commercial never mentions that little fact.
Thanks to everyone who answered my question.
Crystal meth is not an SSRI.
Truly, and I don’t say this as an attack, I say it in full sympathy as a fellow sufferer of Clinical Depression (and an Anxiety Disorder) - one of the hardest parts about accepting medical treatment for your brain not working right is that your brain isn’t working right. Depression is an asshole, and finds all sorts of ways to convince us that it doesn’t need to be treated.
I’m taking an SSRI now, and it’s improved my life immensely. Never known anyone who could say that about crystal meth.
A lot of medications have more than one use. Ibuprofen is a pain reliever, and also lowers fever. Abilify can enhance the way antidepressants work, and also control hallucinations. There’s another antipsychotic that also happens to control nausea. It’s not the first-line drug for that, because there are a lot of other good antinausea drugs, but occasionally someone is allergic to the other ones, or they are contraindicated for some reason, so the person gets Risperdal for nausea.
I take two drugs for insomnia: one is primarily an epilepsy drug, and the other is an older antidepressant. I take subclinical doses if they were for epilepsy and depression, and I don’t take them on the same kind of schedule a person would for those conditions, but neither of them are “knock-out” drugs with any potential for abuse and can be taken long term, as opposed to something like Ambien or Valium. I have Ambien as a PRN, but I take it maybe once a month; occasionally I just have a bad night.
Anyway, you are probably right that antidepressants have been overprescribed, but there was sort of a fad for prescribing them when the first really clean ones came out-- the current ones do have some side effects, but the older ones, like the tricyclics WAY had side effects-- they were “dirty,” and a person had to need them so much, they couldn’t function without them-- quite literally-- they had to stand between the person and hospitalization. People with milder “dysthymic” conditions just had to cope. A lot of them drank. Then cleaner drugs came out, and now people with milder depressive conditions can be treated as well, without risking the nasty side effects of the older drugs. That’s why they were suddenly so widely prescribed.
Probably there will be a backlash, and it will become hard to get a doctor to prescribe one, then regression to the mean will eventually settle things down.
If we’re thinking of the same commercial, they said 2/3 of patients still have some symptoms, not don’t feel they are doing much good. That’s quite a difference.
Medication “cocktails” aren’t uncommon. I have to take two different meds (Lamictal and Zonegran) to keep my seizures under control, and I still have breakthrough seizures every now and then.
Why would it be any different for other ailments, like depression? :dubious:
I’ve experienced life before I had my OCD treated. No thank you. If that means I’m a junky for taking all these pills, so be it. The alternative is far, far worse.
Guinastasia, I think that sums it up quite nicely. Do you feel better taking medication? Then it’s for you.
But to say someone will feel better, and to lie to them (“That’s not drugs”) and to tell them their problems with medication don’t count because they are “psychological,” is absurd. And to tell a person who says they will take any drug if the doctor signs a statement saying it will not make her suicidal “That’s your problem. You want guarantees. There are no guarantees in life.” I have a problem because I don’t want to take a drug that makes me suicidal? RIGHT!:rolleyes:
None of us have any idea if a particular drug or other treatment is or was appropriate for you Annie-Xmas. Any provider who promised that any particular approach, drug or otherwise, would work, or would not have side effects, would be being foolish. Maybe including the drug treatment suggested for you as part of your care plan was the choice with the best risk/benefit ratio, maybe not.
What even I can say with complete confidence is that untreated and inadequately treated depression has an unquestionable and significant risk of suicide in addition to its clear negative impact on quality of life. Someone who refused to consider the balance of potential benefits vs risks of including medication as part of an approach exclusively on the basis that drugs of abuse abused are also DRUGS so therefore all medications are the same, and who demanded a statement that their risk of serious side effects was absolute zero would, to my way of thinking, be doing themselves a major disservice. Their call though.
Every decision, to do or not do or what to do, is making a choice balancing risks and benefits. Was refusing medication treatment the choice that had the best balance of risks and benefits for you? Who knows? None of us posting here anyway. But barring you being an active imminent risk of serious harm to yourself or others the choice was yours as it should be.
Best hope that you are currently doing well and that your choices are working well for you. Having lived with close loved ones with serious and hard to treat depressions I feel for the struggle and the difficulty making the decisions.
I took a drug temporarily for pain and it gave me suicidal thoughts. After only about five days the pills were putting these thoughts into my brain. I realized immediately what was going on and quit taking them. You have to be really careful.