The Challenge of Going off Psychiatric Drugs

I'm putting this here so I can take the time to read it through later.

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.

The Icarus Project.

Check out the Icarus Project.

The Icarus Project is a support network and education project by and for people who experience the world in ways that are often diagnosed as mental illness. We advance social justice by fostering mutual aid practices that reconnect healing and collective liberation. We transform ourselves through transforming the world around us.

I just downloaded a bunch of their literature. I'm especially interested in their booklet on harm reduction whilst coming off psychiatric drugs.

It's been raining for days. I usually take such comfort in grey days.  In the dying - but not quite dead leaves of October. These days, it's okay to stay home, it's okay to say the weather is a bummer. It's the weather reflecting me. My Nordic blood doesn't complain when it's cold. I don't complain when it's shitty out. I'll just stay home. It's okay on these days, it's understandable.

I've been thinking a lot about my physical and mental health, and about what the next step will look like for me. It's something I'm rolling around in my head.

Maria Bamford.

I've been aware of Maria Bamford for a while. First there aren't that many good female stand-ups (nothing to do with gender, more to do with stand-up, there aren't many good male stand-ups either, but yes, women are under-represented). I like her, but she also stresses me out sometimes.

This piece, however, is fantastic. Bamford is bipolar, and openly plays with themes of depression, anxiety and suicide in her stand-up.

The following is a story-time segment done for Above Average, called Psych Ward Visit.

Warning: this is her telling a story about being arrested and being placed in a psych ward, so it could be triggering.



She's just wholly original and this impresses me to no end. Brilliant.

There's also an interview with her on Modern Comedian. It's more of a personal interview. She talks about "cognitive confusion" that affected her after her new medication was administered, since thinking and speaking are a big part of being a stand-up (and you know, thinking is part of most jobs) she expresses how confusing it is to just accept that loss. Here we are, medicated and feeling incapacitated (to a degree) and needing to figure stuff out.

She references Crazy Meds, a site that helped her research her drugs, and have a laugh while doing so.

I'm also listening to her interview with Marc Maron, which is no longer available on his site (for free) but can be found on youtube. It's a fantastic conversation, there's a lot about mental health, anxiety and depression, and the way in which the neurosis of it all affects relationships, romance and basically our lives, constantly.

2015-08-03 - Update: Also watched Bamford on a public access show on mental health.

Here she is with W. Kamau Bell talking about her new special, which I need to find.