The Challenge of Going off Psychiatric Drugs, by Rachel Aviv.
I'm looking into weening off my medication. I've been in a good place depression wise, and I'm reading all I can and trying to find a psychiatrist.
From the above article:
David Taylor, the director of pharmacy and pathology at the Maudsley Hospital, in London, and the author of more than three hundred peer-reviewed papers, told me, “It is not as though we haven’t been burned by this before.” If he hadn’t experienced antidepressant withdrawal himself, Taylor said, “I think I would be sold on the standard texts.” But, he said, “experience is very different from what’s on the page.” Taylor described his own symptoms of withdrawal, from the antidepressant Effexor, as a “strange and frightening and torturous” experience that lasted six weeks. In a paper published last month in Lancet Psychiatry, he and a co-author reviewed brain imaging and case studies on withdrawal and argued that patients should taper off antidepressants over the course of months, rather than two to four weeks, as current guidelines advise.The article also links to two resources:
The Withdrawal Project - which seems to have outlines and resources on what to expect in withdrawal, as well as ways to prepare. I'll have to read through this when I have more time. Oooooo Withdrawal Symptoms - the fun part. They have my brain zaps! I feel so seen. 😩
and
The Inner Compass Initiative, which funds that project, and describes its goal as to help people "flourish beyond the mental health system."
- - -
I know it's been a very long time since I've written anything here. I'm on my break at work, so I am taking 5 minutes.
The last two years has been all about new jobs (2), buying a duplex, moving, issues with a tenant (super long story, a real fun ride), and all sorts of just drama and life stuff.
Take this past holiday for example. This would have been my first holiday in years. I took two weeks off of work over Christmas. Instead I got a really bad cold that turned into a Bacterial lung infection and was on my ass for three weeks. I just finished taking the antibiotics.
My aunt passed away right before Christmas, so the 28th we were at a funeral.
And last week my brother was in the hospital for a perforated bowel.
2019 was busy and similarly intense, and 2020 is starting the same way.
I just hope (in a desperate way) that the issue with the tenant will be resolved sometime before this summer, because it has been a tremendous amount of stress on me in every way.
In 2020, I would like to start working on myself and my physical and mental health in different ways and try new things. But that takes energy. And the last two years have been a straight sprint "into adulthood" and adult-issues (death! mortgages! debts! parents dying! parents sick! divoce!).
I miss writing, I miss the practice of it and the expulsion of my incessant, racing mind.
I will try and make the time to write.
