Question about antidepressants

[teartracks]

Hi HeartofPilgrimage,

I've never been able to tolerate AD's, so no experiences to speak of.  But, my system is extremely sensitive to what I put in it.  Foods and medicines alike.  I have had 'reactions' to several OTC medications.  One was Benydryl.  I took it regularly over a decade as a sleep aid.  Then my body apparently got toxed up from it.  The side effect was that my eyelids could not close and stay closed.  The urge was there to sleep, but my eyelids got the signal to close and open at the same time.  I really think my eyeballs were rolling around like marbles too, but I was more aware of my eyelids jumping from closed to open rapidlly.  A MIS A BLE experience!

tt
PS  My sister was on AD's for years.  She developed odd, involuntary muscle movement of her face.  I think she quit the AD,s but the odd facial movement continued.

[SilverLining]

PS  My sister was on AD's for years.  She developed odd, involuntary muscle movement of her face.  I think she quit the AD,s but the odd facial movement continued.

Hi TT.  Somewhere in my reading on the topic this type of symptom was mentioned as a sign of damage caused by AD's.   There is a lot of negative information out there about the long term effects of these chemicals.  I still wonder if they caused me permanent damage, and I quit over 10 years ago. 

[SilverLining]

So far, the weaning myself off is working well! I have been taking my meds every 3 days or so, which is enough to stave off withdrawal symptoms for now, but at the same time the side effects are much much less. I feel so much better.

That's great HP.  One of the tricks is to realize the withdrawal symptoms are not the same as the return of the original depression.  When I first quit the AD's, I did feel lousy for quite awhile.  But then I felt better than I had in years.  For me, quitting AD's was a better antidepressant than the chemicals ever were.  Then the challenge was finding non chemical means to keep from falling back into depression.   

[HeartofPilgrimage]

I need to look this up but I think the odd twitches etc. are called extrapyramidal symptoms ... I am not sure if these are known side effects to the new generation of ADs but I know that it is a known risk when taking all kinds of psychotropic meds. I'll see what I can find out. But ... none of my side effects are listed on the package inserts in the ADs either so just because they're not listed doesn't mean they can't happen.

I was initially very scared to get off the meds because last year I weaned myself off ... and then I had an "incident" with my mother at Christmas, and I kind of fell apart. But the side effects got bad enough this time that I became wiling to try it again.