Week 1

I have been led to believe my entire adult life that taking antidepressants to get through the tough times in life is totally acceptable and NORMAL. Well what the doctors and the drug companies fail to tell you is that when you get to that point in your life where things have calmed down and you are ready to come off that you will probably be spending the next couple of weeks or months in complete hell. I have evolved a lot in the past year and desire to be more healthy in many respects. The food I eat, physical activity and even the medicines I put into my body. A very smart and informed friend of mine who resently was pressured by his doctor to take antidepressants found a natural alternative to taking the poison. I immediately thought that I want to do that too! So I began to slowly phase off of the paxil until I thought it was okay to stop completely. It turns out that there really is no good way to come off of paxil. A week after stopping completely I began to feel what feels like electric shocks in my brain. When I wake up in the morning the shocks are so bad that I feel completely sick at my stomach. After a week of feeling like this I started doing some research and I was angry and disgusted at what I found out about what paxil and other SSRI drugs do to you. One man compared withdrawal from paxil to heroin withdrawal. Now that is a strong comparison and I have never been on heroin, but I have to say that it has been pretty rough. The ONLY thing that has made me feel better is to go to the gym and do some serious cardio. This helps to lessen the electric shocks. It doesn't make them completely go away, but it does do wonders for the shocks and the extreme anger and agitation I feel for no reason at all. Imagine trying to deal with this while taking care of two small children. I have been so ugly and all I can do is pray that they will forget and forgive.

This past Monday morning I took my nursing entrance exam. That morning I woke up with shocks, nausea, sweats and unbelievable anxiety. It really was God's grace and the prayers of my awesome friends that helped me get through the exam and do as well as I did. The entire 2.5 hours that I took the exam I did not have one single electric shock or "zap" as I've read that a lot of people call them. As soon as it was over though I was feeling like crap again.

I've never been a blogging kind of person, but last night as I was doing research on withdrawals I was so angry that the side effects and withdrawal of these drugs are so downplayed that I feel like I need to get the word out and let people know that this is NOT the way to solve the tough times in life. There ARE natural alternatives and this poison is damaging your body. I read that these zaps are doing damage to my brain. Nice huh?

I'm attaching two links that I found that are very disturbing, but very imformative. Wish I had known all this stuff a long time ago. I feel like doctors need to be a little bit more forthcoming with what the long term effects are of taking this type of medication. This is your life we are talking about!