Coming off my medication?!


Question: Coming off my medication?
ive been on different medication for 5 years now.

on tuesday my psychiatrist said i have a personality disorder and it could be DPD.

at the moment im on propranalol, seroquel XL and amitriptyline and im slowly being taken off amitriptyline but i feel horrible, i feel so depressed and went to my GP today and he said i might need another type of anti-depressant.

normally when im coming off medication i end up having flu like symptoms but this time i feel so depressed and im not sure what i can do to stop feeling like this.
does anyone have any advice they could give me on how to stop feel like this

Answers:

2 out of 3 of these drugs are very old and have not been used for years. Propranolol is a beta blocker which was in the past used to reduce the somatic, (physical,) symptoms of anxiety, it is not very effective, not an anti depressant, but has no withdrawal issues.

Amitriptyline is a positively ancient tricyclic anti depressant, (though it is still used as a migraine prophylactic, in the management of IBS. in enuresis and as an atypical analgesic.) Abrupt withdrawal after prolonged administration has caused nausea, headache and malaise. Reports have associated gradual withdrawal with transient symptoms including irritability, restlessness, as well as dream and sleep disturbances during the first two weeks or dosage reduction. These symptoms are not indicative of addictions. Mania or hypomania has been reported rarely within 2-7 days of stopping chronic therapy with tricyclic antidepressants.

Quetiapine (Seroquel) is an anti psychotic used in schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, and more recently in anxiety.

If your diagnosis is indeed DPD there is are good arguments that suggest you may do better with therapy and in fact may show little or no response to medication anyway.

GP for more years than I care to remember



Call your psychiatrist (the one who prescribed this medication and is now weaning you off of it) and let him know that you are becoming extremely depressed and that you have been advised by your GP that you might need another antidepressant.

Don't wait to obtain the help that you need right now. The longer you wait, the more severe the side effects may become. It could also be life threatening, but this is a decision that your psychiatrist would need to make.



you should go to doctor.



The horrors of coming off medications..

First, you shouldn't have started them in the first place. The only reason doctors give medication to depressed patients is to correct their 'chemical imbalance' - which they believe to be true from taking MRI scans of depressed patients - but it doesn't help at all. The good news is that it's really easy to get rid of depression. Get this book: I Can Make You Happy - by Paul McKenna. May sound dumb until you read it and I highly recommend that you do.

Secondly, you need to get off all your anti-depressants - they WILL NOT help you get better. The only thing they do is drown the symptoms of feeling like ****, which is not what you want to do. You're more than welcome to keep taking the medications of course, but your life won't get any better with them and I'm sure you want to be 'happy' instead of just constantly preventing yourself from feeling like utter crap.

The problem is that it's ridiculously hard getting off them. I was traveling and lost my suitcase with all my medication sometime back and I had no choice but to go cold-turkey off 3 different prescriptions. The first 3 weeks were quite bad to say the least, but it got much better after that and I'm glad I was forced to just go cold-turkey.

You could of course try lowering the dosage periodically, with the help of your doctor (who will continue to suggest you take them), but that is a really long and painful process.

If you want a real dosage of happiness, go find the movie "The Secret" and you'll see what I mean.




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