When I first decided to seek help from a doctor, I had no idea what I was getting myself into or how difficult it would later be to break free from the cocktail of medications. At the back of my mind, I believed antidepressants would stabilize my disturbed nervous system. At that time (and unfortunately still in Poland), psychiatry held the belief that people with personality disorders had a dysregulated hormonal balance, which, as a budding neuroscientist, made a lot of sense to me.
The beginning of the spiral
The first drug, paroxetine, turned out to be a poor fit due to unbearable drowsiness. After several months, the doctor advised me to stop taking it abruptly. In 2009, no one had heard of tapering. When withdrawal symptoms surfaced weeks later, I returned to the doctor, alarmed. The process of finding the right medication took some time, but I eventually ended up with sertraline, which, despite numerous side effects, I tolerated the best.
Unfortunately, it was a fragile improvement. When I first started taking sertraline, I experienced serotonin syndrome (fever, photophobia, loss of appetite, insomnia, tremors), and once the medication took full effect, I entered a hypomanic state. This state made me ignore all the signals that something was wrong. For the next several years, I lived in an artificially heightened mood, doing reckless things without regard for consequences. Despite voicing my concerns to the doctor, he insisted that this was how healthy people without depression or anxiety functioned, which only reinforced my belief that the medication was helping.
Side effects
Over time, side effects began piling up: weight gain, sexual dysfunction, and severe sweating. I also developed food intolerance and persistent drowsiness. Beyond the physical symptoms, my mental state was deteriorating. The elevated mood slowly shifted to apathy, and my curiosity about the world morphed into increasing anhedonia. Memory issues also emerged, although I initially didn’t link them to the medication. I felt my personality changing—I was becoming less of a human and more like a robot.
The side effects grew stronger, and I was given more diagnoses (treatment-resistant depression, social phobia, mild cognitive impairment, avoidant personality disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder) and prescribed more medications. At one point, I was taking piracetam and memantine, which are used to treat cognitive disorders in people with dementia and Alzheimer’s. It was an endless spiral that had started with paroxetine.
Who am I without medication?
The degeneration process took several years, until I reached a point where I started to wonder who I would be without the medication. I constantly felt that my diminishing personality was a result of taking these drugs. Persistent sexual dysfunctions were another crucial factor that became evident whenever I tried to form an intimate relationship. Not only were there technical issues that complicated physical intimacy, but I also felt a loss of higher feelings like romance, empathy, and care. I was becoming increasingly cold, cynical, calculated, and empty. The question in my mind kept growing louder—was this me, or was it the medication?
Unfortunately, every attempt to quit the medication failed after a few months. Whenever withdrawal symptoms appeared, I’d return to the doctor, who would unhesitatingly claim it was a relapse of depression/anxiety and restart treatment.
A dead end
With time, physical side effects also intensified: I gained a lot of weight, developed unexplained insulin resistance, and the drowsiness worsened to the point that I couldn’t work or function in any meaningful way. I felt that my body could no longer tolerate these drugs.
When I voiced my objections to doctors, I was dismissed and told I had more “mental illnesses.” I felt alone and misunderstood. Even my closest family leaned toward the doctors’ opinions, ignoring my cries for help.
Thankfully, I found Surviving Antidepressants, where I read many stories similar to mine. I had no illusions left—what I was experiencing was not a relapse of an “illness” but a withdrawal syndrome. The realization of what lay ahead was terrifying, but I sensed deep inside that it was the only way to regain my health and life.
With immense pain and difficulty, I decided to quit the medication. Unfortunately, when I did, my condition deteriorated even further. I experienced what’s known as “protracted withdrawal” (or as I would now describe it, iatrogenic neurological dysfunction of the central nervous system) and post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD).
Was it worth it?
The following six years were a battle for survival with persistent suicidal thoughts, including one attempt. For more than half of that time, I lived with a feeling of emptiness, alienation, and dissociation. I lost friends, family, and my job. I was entirely alone in a state that’s hard to describe.
Fortunately, I managed to survive the worst, and as I decided to radically take care of my health and do everything I could for my body to recover, things started to improve year by year. Thanks to this experience, I learned a lot about myself. I feel stronger than ever, and I use the empathy I regained to support those who are struggling with the same issues.
Though the recovery process is challenging and painful, the opportunity to rebuild yourself and get to know yourself from a new perspective is a unique experience.
I’ve never taken care of myself as much as I do now. I’ve introduced many healthy habits, which have not only helped me recover from the effects of the medication but also improved my overall health.
To all those grappling with the tough decision of stopping medication: there’s nothing more valuable than regaining yourself. The only way to achieve this is with a sober, non-chemically-altered nervous system.
I firmly believe that the foundation for recovering from drug-induced neurological disorders lies in taking care of your body and mind holistically. At least, this approach helped me and lifted me from a place where I could barely function.
Even though it might seem like the suffering will never cease, this is far from the truth. The further away from the drugs, the clearer and healthier the mind becomes.
Don’t hesitate to fight for yourself; on the other side of this suffering is a life full of emotions and joy. Although the healing process can sometimes be unfairly lengthy, once you begin to recover, the time you suffered will stop being as significant and painful.
What a great story of healing and finding your true self once again. Great to hear a story of hope for others. I to believe in the role of self care and how we can and should play a role in our own healing. Of course time is key but we cannot deny our own important role in this.
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If antidepressants worked they would have met their moment today. It’s not a matter of politics to criticize deranged leaders, for example those so old and confused they call President Zelenskii ‘Putin’ in a global televised address, or one who is so undeniably, manifestly and patently pathologically deceptive that he immediately reveals evil intent in the hearts and minds of anyone who is intelligent yet defends him. He makes judgement manifest. He couldn’t even explain to himself why he wants to stir up a war of all against all and end American democracy forever. I know why. There is something far worse then nuclear radiation in this world, and more enduring still. You can scrape radium from your DNA but you can’t relocate the truth to the false. So what value has talk of antidepressants in this context? It’s like critiquing the décor of the titanic as it plumets to the bottom of the sea. And it is hardly a point of politics to point out you’ve got an insane and demonic leader who has captured your country and wants to preside over it’s destruction of the Earth. He is a nipple of the antichrist. Putin and Netanyahu are others. And there are many more. Indeed he has an opening in us all. It calls itself ‘me’ and ‘failure’ and ‘idiot’. It is the mother of all self-criticism and insults of human beings. But human beings are the facts. These insults and criticisms are the lies that hate us, the punishment by past karma. And this movement of punishing karma has captured America and the Earth. We have to shoot passed academic or social solutions for this one and launch novel spiritual ballistics otherwise it’s a spiritual apocalypse as well as the other one which clearly hasn’t troubled you as much, being the mere physical destruction of humanity and the Earth which would at least, in our reckoning, be the end. There is no end to the beginningless which begins for ever. There’s no beginning or end to what you are. We’ll bare infinite witness to our mistakes unless we solve them now. You fear only a physical war of all against all but when gasses fight their fighting lasts forever.
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Thanks for sharing your truth. It gives hope to others. Wishing you the very best for you future and equally sorry that you have had to undergo such a difficult time.
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I wanted to take antidepressants to see if it would stop me shopping there, seeming. If I don’t talk to someone I think I’m one of them over there, seeming. I took these antidepressants so I wouldn’t be a computer brained meat and bone machine stuck in California dreaming. I’m dreaming of a life where I’m still in their dreaming of a life by watching it on TV. And it isn’t even ever me, even though I’m ever mass produced by it as it extracts from me so mercilessly.
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What a great story! And I loved the headline, too.
It gave me a huge desire to read “part 2” of this blog – a detailed account of all the things that helped you.
So here it is:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/10/what-helped-and-what-hindered-my-recovery-from-protracted-withdrawal-from-antidepressants-and-pssd/
🙂
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Great story Tomasz truly inspiring I am holding on to the cliff as you said and recovery is difficult.
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Thank you for the explanation of this big problem.
I agree that trauma therapy, and for me especially body-related therapy, offers many skills that can be used to set out on a new path. And you’re right, it’s a long road, because there is no pill that changes everything.
It is very well known from trauma research, in particular physically inexplicable paralysis and numbness, can result from trauma. Many years ago I met a woman who could no longer walk. There was no medical reason for this condition.
You call it “iatrogenic neurological dysfunction of the central nervous system”. That is my opinion too. However, I would go a step further. I think the result of this “dysfunction” is a permanently altered state of consciousness. This state has the terrible effects on feelings.
Perhaps as an analogy: This is exactly what is described very well in hypnosis. The aim of a hypnotherapist is to drive another person into a certain altered state of consciousness. Even in this state, paralysis, painlessness, numbness and all these feelings that are desired for the patient can be induced. As long as this is done under controlled conditions and the patient is informed, it is ethical for the patient.
If psychotropic drugs are administered to patients at will, and they cause iatrogenic injury, it is deeply unethical.
A lot of people don’t understand that the body is able to dissociate too. They think, there is dissociation, depersonalization, etc. and on the other side there is numbness in the genitals and no sexuality. They believe, there are two different symptoms. But, there is no difference, ALL are dissociations…….in the body (numbness, pain etc. without bodily reasons), in the feelings (no more feelings as love, joy, empathy etc.) and in the mind ( the feeling of no longer being a solid body, missing limbs in perception, dissociate etc.) It is all the same on the three different levels human beings experience themselves.
I hope that many sufferers can slowly start on this path you explain. This is difficult because the induced state of consciousness by these pills must be overcome. If you are constantly in a “deep trance”, you call it “drowsiness”, it is very difficult to start moving and become active. But it is the only way to regain the body and to leave the dissociative states, which in other words are “trance states”.
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yes Tomasz it was definitely worth it. Your patience and resilience phenomenal. Sertraline what a stinking drug it is.currently 49 days on zero on my son’s long slow taper from 100mgs and he is slowly awakening. He had a previous well documented Serotonin syndrome crisis with tachycardia profuse sweating, akathisia, mania. Despite that those who know best (I’m being sarcastic obviously) recommenced this drug with a poly pharmacy cocktail including 4mgs lorazepam to hide the chronic SS and insisted the family had “imagined” this event The long term damage does not bear thinking about. And yet the body and spirit prevail !
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Ain’t worth stopping or starting antidepressants when my brain is already gone. It’s owned by a process that destroyed it yet won’t allow it to cotton on.
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It’s wonderful knowing of stories like this, but it doesn’t make the fact that it happened okay. Not everyone has the wherewithal to endure a protracted withdrawal. Poly-drugging needs to be recognized by prescribers for what it truly amounts to: pharmaceutical abuse.
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Dear Birdsong
agree completely with you its actually more than abuse in many cases it is stone cold deliberate sadistic torture. It is no surprise that Guatanamo Bay employed many psychiatrists probably still do as it is still open.They know the drugs cause profound long term damage to the brain and entire body of all creatures they are given to. Let’s not forget that much of the testing is on rats and mice. Here’s a classic example my cat was prescribed pregabalin for osteoarthritis I should’ve known better but wanted to reduce his pain within a week a cat who is always anxious was completely terrified of the entire family running away quivering.Within a week of stopping back to baseline. And so it goes on. Psychiatrists who begin to see the light (not many and only usually as a result of a personal experience) will find themselves shunned by their colleagues.
And yes long withdrawal is unmanageable for many people as it is profoundly disabling in every sense. How do you live,work or study at that time ? Take care Birdsong I love reading your posts.
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Thank you so much K. It’s good knowing you love my posts! 🙂
Positive outcomes are wonderful, but I think it’s important to never lose sight of the fact that not everyone is so lucky, that toxic positivity is positively toxic, much like the indiscriminate use of psychiatric drugs. The damage done to people in the name of mental health is inexcusble.
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The antidepressants don’t work for all because the placebo effect doesn’t work for all, even when it works. For example, I stopped taking antidepressants cuz I’m a suicide bitch – they make me wanna live. Switched to fentanyl instead. We’re loving it. “And then I get the case of vodka from the car, and walk two miles to the bus stop.”
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Your insights are beautiful No-One. Deeply sad and troubling , yet true and beautiful.
But, please do not allow fentanyl and alcohol to numb your clear mind and poison your deep heart.
We need you to stay awake.
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Hey, America talks of antidepressants yet votes Trump then Biden then Trump. You only take antidepressants cuz you know they don’t work. Because if you didn’t want to be depressed you wouldn’t vote for politicians who give you infinite justification for being depressed and indeed make happiness become a malignant and deranged pathology. Clearly you just want to blame depression on your brain because it’s easier then confessing that the whole world and therefore our lives have become insanely and ubiquitously destructive, meaningless, evil and mad. And no psychiatrist is going to make that diagnosis are they. Mental health medication is to treat those few whose is proof of the lies of our culture, and this threatens to open their eyes, making them dangerous, so obviously the social process has to slough them off as mad. They are damaged and may begin to recognize the damaging processes of this prison system of a society. Therefore mental health medication is to treat the sane and only true psychopaths, i.e. ‘normal Americans’, could not find their psychological tendencies somewhere in the DSM.
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From a Canadian’s perspective, it seems like they voted that way a couple of weeks ago, because they’re not convinced that the once-truly-progressive Democrat party will genuinely help with their cost of living crisis. Nobody has time to care about climate change/Immigrants taking away careers and housing from American Citizens/Trans people competing in the job market & other bogeymans/enemies/us vs. them/etc if they can barely pay their bills. That’s literally it.
The Health leader that the next President will have on his team said that he’d like to question canola oil/sugar/wheat products and Prescriptions of all kinds and to think critically before starting a Psychotropic Pharamceutical.
There is a very clear difference between someone who sees an ad on TV and goes to a doctor because they want to try 1 of the many non-OTC ‘anti-depressant’ products they saw in the commercial to help them cope with life, they start the Pharmaceutical and never have any iatrogenic injuries and lowered quality of life, they stay on the Pharmaceutical and never have to have it raised because it became ineffective, etc.
vs. poly-drugging, bizarre Diagnoses, losing money from it all, losing dexterity and locomotion, etc.
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Was it worth giving up my antidepressants? Do you mean economically or otherwise? All I know is that when taking antidepressants, every time I looked into the mirror, I realized it was money down the drain. Pills increase happiness within the margin of error. My face increases depression by a magnitude of forever.
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I’m paying $2/day (once as high as 250mg/day) for pretty much legal Ecstacy, if I didn’t know any better. All of the other ‘anti-depressants’ give me decreased quality of life even lower than I currently have on the 100mg of this one. The Provincial Government doesn’t want to cover it, even though I’ve explicitly and bluntly filled in the form with exactly why my physiology cannot even remotely tolerate the other ‘anti-depressants’. I was extremely detailed. May have grossed them out, but it’s the reality.
Nothing much else I can say, really. This is in Canada, by the way.
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Brilliant! Thanks so much, Tomasz. I approached the title with some trepidation (will it be worth it? please tell me it will be worth it) but what a story of hope this is. And what a sound prescription your two blogs make. (Profuse gratitude for the link, Tamar!) So grateful for your ‘waves and windows’ analogy, which fits my current experience precisely. I started actively tracking my recovery a few months ago and now have verified a pattern after each taper that seems to be robust and horrifying, but forewarned is fore-armed. Sleep was the first thing I stabilized, too, and I confirm it does make it easier to make other changes that once seemed too much. The keto suggestion is quite interesting (makes sense). I have been exploring it recently (plant-based keto is not as simple as the carnivorous variety) but I didn’t know why; maybe this is why. Have increased and am intent on continuing to increase my level of physical exercise, which indeed has improved my ability to cope, and your reasoning regarding BDNF (which seems sound) now provides additional incentive. The way you have shared the trauma of the withdrawal process in the context of practical steps to come out the other side in much better shape is a real beacon for those of us still struggling, too often at the razor’s edge of despair, and will help so many yet to enter this profoundly destabilizing process. May you live long and continue to benefit many.
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Your insights are beautiful No-One. Deeply sad and troubling , yet true and beautiful.
But, please do not allow fentanyl and alcohol to numb your clear mind and poison your deep heart.
We need you to stay awake.
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I think it’s worth it if you want to find the meaning in the suffering and use it as a stepping stone.
It’s not going to feel worth it if you want to run away from pain and dream of a happy, content, peaceful, painless life.
It’s worth it if you can grab the pain with both hands and mold it into something beautiful, even if it’s as simple as smiling at someone who looks like they could use the smile and remembering that we all go through stuff and that we’re here for each other. Sometimes it might just mean looking into the depths of a rose and breathing deep in wonder at the incredible intricacy of the world and realizing that we can give to it and not just take.
And then coming back to tell the rest of us that we can make it through even the pain of withdrawal from numb deadness, and that if we’d only stop running away from pain the psychiatrists wouldn’t have anything to offer us, and maybe they’d listen to us when we told them: I want to be alive. I don’t want your dead-content pills.
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