Posted by yxibow on September 17, 2006, at 0:20:03
In reply to Tonight I don't feel that antidepressants work, posted by Phillipa on September 16, 2006, at 23:23:47
> I've been thinking a lot and if they worked how come they poop out and many never respond to an ad again. Something is fishy. What do you all think? As everyone on the board has problems. I am quitting my ad and hopefully not trying anymore. For what? Can someone answer this? Thanks Phillipa ps the only meds I trust are benzos.
Its a loaded question, really. One has to remember that everybody on this board has a different disorder. Everybody. There are a lot of similarities between some, but everybody is biologicially different.
What we have is a series of case reports, usually more negative than positive, because the numerous positive reports aren't a felt need by most people to report. An antidepressant, anxiolytic, whatever, works, and there's no need to say more about it. What we see is when they don't work or dont work completely.
And what is "work" ? Its a complex set of chemistry that changes chemical imbalances in the brain for a period of time. With added psychotherapy and CBT, someone who suffers from disorder X, may be able to withdraw from medication for a period of time or maybe even for life. Those that suffer from lifetime biochemical imbalances, including a lot of us, will some day return again to medication though, to help another flareup in a completely different manifestation.
There are no perfect antidepressants or anxiolytics. What we have in 2006 is a far cry from the misknowledge that was present in 1956. Still, side effects abound, and it is a choice to take or not take medications. They don't always "work" in the sense that there will always be breakthrough depression. I have experienced breakthrough depression. At some point, you can't medicate any more because you create a toxic overload. That's where psychotherapy and CBT come in to help manage the other side, the human nature and "free will" that I had mentioned in a previous thread. There is free will trapped in the most hardened of cases, it just takes a very long time to dig at and a system of managing cases in an HMO oriented society doesn't allow for that, when it desperately needs it. We are all sapient, regardless of how "unnormal" we may feel. We are normal. We may have a biochemical imbalance, but that is just as "normal" as any other human affliction such as diabetes, MS, loss of limbs and motor control.Sometimes being sapient is cruel, as we are aware of our own mortality and our own mind being attacked from within. But our personality, our free will of expression is always there. Its just muted sometimes.
I'm glad you trust benzodiazepines as you and I know that they are the safest psychiatric medications when used as directed and not diverted.
But I would still encourage you to press on -- sometimes it takes more than one medication to help a case.
Yes, there are stories of antidepressants "pooping out". But for each of these stories there are, as I said, untold numbers of people who are helped from antidepressants who never bother to report their case. A past psychiatrist of mine was taking Prozac and I never knew that except for the NTSB report on his autopsy when he died in a small plane crash because he loved flying. He probably was a psychiatrist because he knew it intimately. That traumatically affected the hospital, but that isn't really the point -- the point is there are people walking out there on the street who are quietly taking medication and one assumes they're "normal", which is a very loaded word. Somewhere in all of us lies a "normality" waiting to be exploited in some way. There are no "cures" in psychiatry but there are medications and therapies which greatly help people carry on their lives and do something with the great and fascinating randomness of it.
poster:yxibow
thread:686696
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20060909/msgs/686706.html