Living without Medication (Just)

[Karlos1000]

Hello,

First time here, thought it might help to share it certainly can't make things worth i guess.

I have suffered with mental health for about 10 years and in this time i have used a number of the SSRi type of medication, which does help but can leave you felling a bit grey (i'm sure you will all understand)

So i decided 6 weeks ago to come off my current 100mg dose of sertraline cold turkey, bad mistake and one which i am still paying for 6 weeks on. It appears that time on the drug has left me with further mental issues that i didn't have before i started them, such as anxiety and more anger.

I still don't believe that these drugs are fully understood and the withdrawal symptoms are a lot worse than published data would have you believe.

Anyway back to my point, i wanted to feel less (GREY) so i instead began i course of 5-Htp, which gave me more of a placebo effect i think but helped in the short term. I have also began counselling again which is helping me, but often feel like it's very hard to put my true feelings across, i always believe that unless you are going through it yourself you can't possibly know just how bad someone with Mental health issues can feel.

One thing that did help was Mindfullness but i find that it only give temporary relief, which is sometimes enough to encourage the demons back in.

The anger is the biggest issues and once it starts, it just snowballs out of control till all i can do is sit in a dark place or sleep to elevate it.

I just thought i would write all this stuff down and ask if anyone else has the anger thing and indeed if anything has helped you.

Hope this find all of you in a good mental health state (Happy Days)

[MAS_Nurse]

Hello Karlos 1000, Welcome to this community! Well done for finding the strength to write down and express how you are feeling. I'm sure you will find folks here will empathise and share your experiences and feelings and are very supportive.

I'm not surprised you had a bad reaction going 'cold turkey' off your anti-depressants, that is something that we would never advise, for as you have found out, it can trigger a major relapse of your MH symptoms. In the future it would be advisable to wean off slowly under close medical supervision! What's done is done now, so I would advise if you haven't already, to chat with your doctor about what you've done, and get their advice on a treatment plan.

Mindfulness does take practice, so stick with it if you can,it isn't for everyone, but you can have help with a trained practitioner, as well using YouTube videos, smartphone apps, etc.

I'm glad you are back in counselling. I understand that you feel it's difficult for someone to understand MH unless they've experienced. But you don't know if your therapist has had MH problems, but if they are accredited by a professional body, then their training is long and intensive, so I wouldn't be concerned that they don't understand. There any many types of psychotherapy out there, obviously the most common is CBT but there's CAT (cognitive analytic therapy), psychodynamic psychotherapy, person-centred psychotherapy etc! It may help to write down in a journal how you feel so you can take that to your sessions to share with your therapist.

I've just put up a post about a BBC MH special programme, take a look.

OK folks it's over to you, what do think?

Take care Karlos, keep posting!

[DavidS61]

Hi Karloss1000, had a similar feeling coming off meds’ too quickly. Got over it but reduced the meds’ by half the dose, which helped but still needed CBT and used the mindfulness as well. I have felt angry enough to scream and throw things but had such headaches afterwards it just made me sleep afterwards. I have found CBT and breathing deeply has helped me. Relaxation straight afterwards has helped relieve the headaches. Don’t know if that helps but at least I hope someone who you might feel you can talk too.