Unknown Suffering Thanks to Antidepressants

There is unknown suffering across the world that is only mentioned in hush tones and on various forums including Reddit and SurvivingAntidepressants.org . I would only hypothesize that this is the most major crisis in mental health issues right now aside for the global movement against mental illness stigmas. There are many including myself that have spent a lifetime on these drugs and cannot get off. Some do,most don't and when they try it is often with devastating effects. A slew of symptoms occur anything from brain zaps to vertigo, vomiting and those that are similar to Heroin withdraw. I would also bet that many of these people have lives that are terribly disruptive to the point of reaching rock bottom such as myself. My hope has been disappointing for now and I am hanging on day to day and while that might seem traumatic to the lay person, to those of us going through this it is nothing unheard of . My 2nd theory also surmises that the children on these drugs from early ages that try to go off of them as a young adult or through acts of rebellion are more susceptible to committing violent crimes. This being because they have withdrawn too quickly from these drugs and lose there minds in the process. One would say this is the very reason that they should be on the drugs, because they are ill . However, I think this reasoning is actually not the reality in all cases. Listen I have no evidence but I would again presume that true mental illness in children would be helped more with therapy then drugs and the withdrawal of these said drugs are not truly a representation of mental health symptoms but actually withdrawal symptoms. Also the hormone factor plays a huge role especially in young girls with early trauma. I hear only whispers of these things. I certainly don't hear about them from many doctors and I have searched a lifetime for qualified medical professionals that communicate as my "team" trying to help me be the best I can be. However, now at 53 I am stuck and I mean stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I am not the only one theorizing about the relationship of children and violence and especially school shootings In November of 2017 televangelist Pat Robertston called for an investigation between antidepressants and mass shootings . Michael Moore documentary filmmaker and author has also spoken out about the very same subject. So it is not a subject that hasn't been noticed by others.

In 1999 CNN reported that Eric Harris one of the Coloumbine shooters was rejected from the military because he was under a doctors care and being prescribed antidepressant Luvox. Was Eric so distraught over his he rejection he stopped taking his meds abruptly and hit a psychotic break?

An article in Time magazine 2017, titled 13% of Americans Take Antidepressants

writes the following statistics . A new report from the National Center for Health Statistics shows that from 2011 through 2014, the most recent data available, close to 13% of people 12 and older said they took an antidepressant in the last month. That number is up from 11% in 2005-2008.

The most recent numbers have increased by nearly 65% since 1999-2002, when 7.7% of Americans reported taking an antidepressant.

Many people who took antidepressants, which are used to treat depression as well as anxiety, also reported using them longterm: 68% of people ages 12 and up said they had been taking their antidepressant for two years or more. A quarter of people who took antidepressants reported taking them for 10 years or more.

In the study authors also found that women were about twice as likely as men to say they took antidepressants, a trend that’s been evident for a few years. (Women are twice as likely to develop depression as men.) Antidepressant use also became more common as people became older. Has this made us happier?

As for myself ,no . It has been a living hell. One that has left a residue in my waking hours. I am not sure I will ever be functional again.

Hiding is Hard

It is getting harder and harder to hide my mental illness from friends and family, in particular my son. My last new antidepressant started a series of crying jags . I had to wait a week and 1/2 to go on it then 4 days into it I sunk into a deeper depression. I had a thought about being a burden on my family and that was enough to scare me. I called the doctor tonight to see what can be done. However, I am discouraged beyond belief and I am so afraid for my sanity. I will run out soon of TV reruns to watch because I just keep trying to soothe myself but soothing is not like a warm blanket to me it is cold because depression is loneliness. If I came out of this depression, I am not sure I would know what depression does not look like. I seem to have shed a part of myself that was ever existing and to think that I will ever smile or dream again is to painful . I try to function in the real world but it is like a shadow world to me. It is dark and deep and a veil that covers the real world. It leaves me disorientated and confused and most of all disorganized and overwhelmed. My doctor finally pulled the trigger after months of trying all sorts of drugs. Now, mind you I wanted this done first of all. However, he didnt deem it necessary at the time. Would it have saved me a lot of suffering? I don't know. I am not feeling as optimistic about it as maybe I should be. This is because everything seems like it hasn't worked. Well the process can take up to 6 weeks , in the meantime I am suppose to put myself on a low dose of another antidepressant. I am not sure I will do it at this point. I might just wait and see what happens and what I call it, white knuckle it through.

Another new Antidepressant . This is the 5th one in 6 months. I am a mess. My family and house is a mess and I often don't think about suicide but I thought about Robin Williams last night . How horrible he must of felt to end it because the anguish was too much to handle. That is a bad place to go. When I can't nap my body is off. I need that time to deregulate and if I don't I suffer . However, my body is too wound up to do so.

The next pill is outside the box of antidepressants. It often is not prescribed because of the restrictiveness in food that is required when taking it. It is a MAOI . With MAOI's you can not consume foods with Tyramine. If you do it can cause a hypertensive crisis that can result in a cardiac episode and/or stroke. Great huh? However, I am trying a patch called EMSAM and if taken at the lowest dose of 6mg. This potential life threatening situation can be hopefully avoided as well as the food restrictions. However, is 6mg. therapeutic enough to wash away my depression? It is because of the lack of prescribing by doctors that there is not much discussion by people on Reddit that have taken it. In fact a lot would seem to be a more geriatric population that make positive reviews because that is where EMSAM first experimented on. So it is hard to gather hope from other users. I don't know why I always fall into those Google searches.

Trying to find some glimmer of positiveness from whatever pill I am on. I know each person is different. Each person is on a different set of drug regimes and there is no cookie cutter reaction when it comes to using psychiatric drugs. I asked my doctor to prescribe it. I said I had tried SSRI's and SRNI's to no avail. MAOI's was the only class of drug that had not tried. Could this be the answer? I cannot hope, I am fearful of hope. I try to have faith though.

However, my type of faith is not the typical God faith. I believe in a being that envelops our universe. Although, what true answers there is I cannot begin to determine and organize religion is not something for me. Am I scared? Yes. Have I been scared? Yes. That is all I have been the last 6 months since I started this. I thought the brain tumor removal was a leap of faith. The dumping of my psychiatrists that managed my meds and pursing a tele-psychiatrists was another leap of faith and now this. i wish I had a memory of when a leap of faith has helped me but my memory has been damaged by the use of all these drugs and what I think is also stress related. So I move on to this. It is a leap of faith , so remind me later if it works.

Loosing Love

It started slowly and not so noticeable and then it was gone in my life. My ability to feel love. One of the most powerful emotions to feel , the opposite of pain and the reason we give for living our lives I have ceased to feel. I feel pain in my life but love is so dulled. It is my opinion that a combinations of antidepressants for 27 years, brain tumor, and depression has caused this condition. The painful thing is I know it is missing , I don't ever know if I will get it back and I don't know what to do about it. They say life is not fair but to live with physical pain vs mental pain, the latter at this point seems worst There is no light to balance it all out. I am numb and have been numb in this way for a very long time. I can remember loving my son as my last true feeling of love . Now all that wells up inside is hurt and pain.

False Father Figures

I lost my father at 13. He never was much around, holidays and birthdays. Back when I was young there was no set time for parents to have their children. Usually the child stayed with the mother, there was no tossing the child to and fro from house to house or weekend visitations. I have since found out that I was most likely saved from a world wind of who knows. Most likely some stuff that would not have made me a better person and possibly even more messed up than I have been. Since then I followed the pattern that many follow when they loose a parent or don't have exposure to that parent, finding a substitute. It is a funny thing because as I have become older I was fully aware of the psychology behind it. Fully. However, time and time again i fell into the trap. It was usually older men, in fact all . I played the victim and they fell for it . I became to involved not always sexually and yes that happens with people and those who the hookup. It is Freudian kids. Most often it was on a level of initial friendship or protector. However, I must have always pick wrong because it never turned out well. It is always the same, they disappoint they hurt. I am now at a delicate point in my life and that disappointment is difficult and if I go through a crisis I cannot handle it and I continue to be pulled back into that little girl role. She has been hurt way to much and I must protect her now. It is vital.

It is rare to have parents that are good role models, I have just come to that conclusion. Possibly, I am only exposed to those people that are broken.

It is 40 years since I lost my dad and I have never truly seen myself through it . The day he died , no one comforted me . No one talked to me and I distinctly remember a few days later sitting on the front step playing in the dirt and someone, a figure and voice long gone in my memory saying "it's Summer you don't want to waste the whole summer do you?" I assume I didn't . Maybe that is why when I sit here today going through what I am going through I cry for the spring I cannot experience. "You don't want to waste the Spring do you?" I do find that I am starting to become bitter and know it is not my fault when these things go south . However, I recently had a incident with one such faux pa and it did send me into a tailspin. So much so I was concerned for myself and again angry at myself for my reaction. I couldn't separate what I knew was going on in my head vs. what was happening it was like being on autopilot . I hated the whole process and it only proves again that I am now at a delicate place and cannot afford to keep doing this.

"You don't want to waste the Spring, do you?"

The insignificant significant people

How significant are insignificant people in ones life? Those people you pass on the street, at a coffee shop or meet on the plane? It is my opinion more and more that those people are not as insignificant as we might think.

I have had the fortune to have such people in my life or maybe it is that I have noticed them more then others might. These people would seem like they don't have a major part in the scheme of things, maybe even their presence is a snippet in your timeline.  Some of these people in my life I don't even know or remember their names.  However, this does not them make them any less significant.

There was a young woman , I cant even picture what she looked like, that gave me a cedar jewelry box was I was about 7 years old. The smell of the cedar has long since faded as I am sure her young beauty has.  However, she is indelibly written into my mind.  Specifically her hands reaching out to me and giving me the gift.  I am not even sure I ever saw her again. Somehow I had entered her apartment even though it was a couple units from mine. In the 70's it seem pretty routine back then to let children play outside without much supervision. I assume my grandma was watching me and my mother working and I assume she said stay where I could see you. However, I am pretty sure she could not see me from the unit I was in. I still have the cedar box. It keeps traditionally what most little trinket boxes keep, pieces of my life.

In my early teens I had a paper route.  There was an older gentleman whose paper I delivered.   He would leave peaches in the paper box for me so I could pick them up when I delivered his daily.  They were large and round and the sweetest peaches I ever tasted, I can see them and almost remember their feel.  It was like he picked the best ones just for me. I never really saw him either but I still wonder if he will be one of the Five People in Heaven I will meet.

Further down my timeline, there was the gentleman who had more of a presence in my life.  When I was around 14 years old I started selling programs at the minor league ballpark. My father had died the year before and it started that internal quest of searching for a replacement. This gentleman already in his 60's took care of the baseball field, at the time it was considered one of the best natural turfs in the league.  For a short period he became my substitute father figure.  He taught me how to plant tomatoes and peppers in a small patch of land near the bullpen.  He made me laugh. He always called me Regina, even though my name was Gina because it was the name of Queens. He had that tough exterior and had served I believe in WWII just like my dad.   However, there is one memory that I have carried with me. I see him walking over a large bridge in our town approximately 2 miles from the ballpark to come celebrate my high school graduation .  He brought roses from his precious prize winning stadium garden and a small coin from his collection.  It still brings tears to my eyes to remember his gesture. I hope I was as grateful as I am now. I still go over that bridge in my car ever so often and I see that image. Although he has passed on now , maybe every time I see it in my mind he knows now what it meant to me

Then there was my first grade teacher, Miss Hartman.  She was young and pretty and it was her first job right out of college.  She entered into a classroom to find a very insecure young girl that was having serious separation anxiety from her mother.   A young girl who desperately wanted someone to understand her.  I remember she gave me the duty of washing the sink in the classroom bathroom. That one small duty set my confidence in motion.  It gave me a purpose.  I made that sink the shiniest I could.  Till this day I like a shiny sink.  Her boyfriend took pictures of her class and gave us copies.  The picture which I still possess captures not only my innocent appearance and beauty but my essence .  One thing odd sticks out about it, it is slightly soft. Meaning every so slightly blurred. Maybe he was practicing with filters, but I look at it and see a child that was out of focus in life too.

There are many others that I often think about. More recently my mind starts to fade and I periodically call to memory these small gestures of purity.  The great impression they made in my life. 

I think I have played a insignificant significant person in some peoples lives .  I guess the thing about that is you never truly know.  I tried when I would go to my sons school and give each child some kind of personal attention.  Maybe one thing I did will remain with them. I try to give people my attention if I am up to it . It becomes less and less nowadays but I still try to muster a smile or a thank you. Those things do count I believe.

Spring Bursts in Technicolor

The past week bursts with surreal saturated colors on the dull landscape of upstate NY. The depression didn't wane though it hasn't for months now. It use to give me a break but that doesn't happen anymore. So much just doesn't seem deserving of my attention. It is almost like I don't want to step out of the gentle wrap that it has encompassed me in . What do I fear? There is no answer now so I wait. I wait for the new meds to work my life to be reinvented. The pass to stop from being colored in dreariness and shadows unable to rise from a negative slant. Yet spring still comes . There is purple flowers and moss that are blooming. Moss is my favorite. It survives unbearable conditions with little sun and a lot of water (tears). Once when I took my family to Howe caverns I notice moss in the darkest parts of the cavern I wondered how it grew with so little light. It did though it survived. However did it prosper?

photo credit : Gstein 2015