Medication Tapering/Withdrawal

Jenna Fogle discusses her experience struggling with depression as a teenager, and the consequent harm done by psychiatric drug treatment.

Psych meds can not only put weight on regardless of how you otherwise care for yourself, they also tend to make people feel gravely lethargic and vaguely sick all the time. I could not exercise as I had before. Could not. It doesn't matter how much mental health professionals try to tell us that if we just exercised we'd be okay in the face of neurotoxic drugs that cause weight gain, because the fact is the drugs impede that capacity. This is not widely appreciated or understood and people on psych meds are again traumatized and made to feel guilty for something that is truly outside of their control as long as they are taking these medications.

A new study explores how people manage to discontinue antipsychotic medication and examines how social supports may improve outcomes.

It was the first time in my Klonopin journey it occurred to me the problem might not be inherent in me. The problem might actually be the Klonopin. Convinced my very life was at stake, I made the firm decision to get off the stuff once and for all.

From The Times: In an age in which benzodiazepine dependence is increasingly becoming a global problem, online forums serve as a lifeline for numerous benzodiazepine...

In this piece for New York Magazine, Andrew Sullivan traces the history of the use of opiates in the U.S. and explores the social, economic,...

From Daily Express: A patient advocacy group has launched a petition at the Scottish Parliament requesting improved support services for people withdrawing from antidepressants. People from...

For a long time I have felt that there just isn’t a good enough and long enough study on the pros and cons of long-term antipsychotic treatment versus reduction and discontinuation in people who have psychotic disorders, including those who are classified as having schizophrenia. Moreover, there are increasing reasons to be worried about the effects of long-term treatment with antipsychotics. I put this case to the UK’s National Institute of Health Research recently, and proposed that they fund a trial to assess the long-term outcomes of a gradual programme of antipsychotic reduction compared with standard ‘maintenance treatment.’ The NIHR agreed that this was an important issue, and that a new trial was urgently needed. The RADAR (Research into Antipsychotic Discontinuation And Reduction) study officially started in January 2016.

In this piece for Glamour, Suzannah Weiss tells her story of SSRI withdrawal, which resulted in intense rage attacks for six months after discontinuation and...

It's been over 5 years since I started offering non-medical consultations to people in the process of coming off or hoping to come off psych drugs. I wanted to share here some things I have learned in this process. Despite how far we have come, we have a long way to go in the quest to liberate all who wish to be liberated from psychiatry.

From The Lily: In light of the recent New York Times article highlighting the effects antidepressant withdrawal, Ashley Abramson shares her personal story of deciding to...

Researchers from the City College of New York and Columbia University published a study this month testing the hypothesis that people diagnosed with schizophrenia treated long-term with antipsychotic drugs have worse outcomes than patients with no exposure to these drugs. They concluded that there is not a sufficient evidence base for the standard practice of long-term use of antipsychotic medications.

One of the first things I heard from Bob Whitaker when I joined Mad In America was this, "I get emails every single day from people asking if I know where they can get help coming off their medication, and I don't know what to tell them. We need to do something about this."Since then, I've received many messages with the same question myself, and rarely have I been able to offer concrete advice. Thankfully, that has changed! Today, we are pleased to announce the Mad In America directory of service providers featuring practitioners and programs who support withdrawal from psychiatric drugs, as well as other alternatives to the mainstream paradigm of care.

“CBS News went to West Virginia, a state that is attempting a drastic solution: allowing addicts to sue the doctors who got them hooked.”

A new special issue brings together articles exploring the harmful effects of simultaneous multiple medication use.

Psychiatrist and psychologist outline pharmacological and psychotherapeutic strategies for discontinuing antidepressants.

Psychiatric Times is offering an online continuing medical education (CME) course designed to "present information on why a patient might decide to discontinue psychotropics...

People who reduced antipsychotic use by tapering were doing just as well after five years as those who continued using the drugs.

Millions of patients find themselves caught in the web of psychiatric sorcery - a spell cast, hexed, potentially for life. They are told that they have chemical imbalances. They are told that the most important thing they can do for themselves is to "take their medication," and that they will have to do so "for life." Most egregiously, patients are sold the belief that medication is treating their disease rather than inducing a drug effect no different than alcohol or cocaine. That antidepressants and antipsychotics, for example, have effects like sedation or blunting of affect, is not a question. That these effects are reversible after long-term exposure is.

Nobody told me what it would be like when I first stopped taking antidepressants. The worst is definitely over, but I’m still experiencing some lingering side effects. When the hyper-arousal to sights and sounds kicks in and my head starts buzzing, I’ve learned some ways to cope.

This is the first of a series of excerpts from Cracked Open, a book whose unintentional beginning came after I became addicted to Ativan in 2010. After a year of following my doctor’s orders for daily use to treat insomnia, my body began to fall apart. My story is much like the stories I’ve read on MIA.

Comingoff.com is a website that "...aims to give you up to date information about psychiatric medication, how it functions and the withdrawal process. It is...

The Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) is a non-profit public interest law firm whose mission is to mount a strategic legal campaign against...

In this piece for Medium, Michael E. Lee tells his story of experiencing the horrific withdrawal effects of Effexor, and how he healed from his...

From The Guardian: The British government has ordered an investigation into the growing problem of addiction to prescription drugs such as opioids, benzodiazepines, and antidepressants. Article...