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Hi. I'm new in this forum so, Im not sure what I can write about and such. Are there any rules? If so it would be helpful. Now that is out of the way, I'd like to share my thoughts and experience of having tourette's syndrome and psycholotropic drugs use including my experience with heroin to which I have successfully stopped using in 1996. So in 1996 I went to a rehabilitation center. After a month of being off heroin, my tourette's disorder started to appear. For three years of using Opiates my Tourette's was gone. I actually didn't know I had Tourette's till I was 21. The sad truth is, I was put on other drugs because the rehabilitation center didn't know what to do about my Tourette's so the councilor assigned to me called a doctor to see me. That's when I started taking antidepressants for the first time in my life. I had no problem getting clean from heroin, but the antidepressants + benzo related drugs , prescribed from doctors is worse. 2014 I suffered a nervous breakdown. My Mother gave me some of her pills, said that they were "natural" and I was desperate. So I took them. I wanted to get off them since I started. It took me three years to except I had any condition. In denial no drug worked for me. As soon as I excepted my situation, the drugs started working. Now I want to get off everything. I want to sleep a natural sleep. I know how depressed I can get. I tried to commit suicide four times. I hope this is interesting for readers. I wish to contribute to others in any way I can through my own experience.

Hello everybody this is my first time posting although I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve spent searching the web and reading this forum with hellish withdrawal effects. So my story is very complex. I’ve been on a host of psychiatric medications since I was in middle school. I am also a recovering drug addict (heroin/fentanyl and cocaine). I’ve been on and come off stimulants (Adderall), benzos, (xanax, klonopin), antipsychotics, sleep meds, and antidepressants. I have withdrawn rapidly from hard street drugs in jail with nothing but anti convulsants and Tylenol. I have never experienced such a long drawn out harsh withdrawal like I have from SSRI’s. I was started out on celexa (80 mg which is dangerous) and then was moved to Zoloft 200 mg. I was on Zoloft for 6 years. I was not educated on SSRI’s at all and when I figured out all the terrible effects they had on me I decided to come off of them. I made the mistake to come off pretty much cold turkey ( went down from 200 mg to 0 mg in a week and flushed my meds). I figured it couldnt be worse than cold turkey fentanyl and benzo withdrawal but I was wrong. I went through terrible withdrawals for a month or two. I worked out at the gym relentlessly to try to help cope, went to church, used marijuana, did intermittent fasting, and took vitamins and supplements. The initial withdrawal was bad but what’s worse is was the long lasting emotion and mental effects. I experienced chronic depression and anxiety, derealization, depersonalization, emotional instability, rage, irritability, brain fog, I lost my sense of identity. I felt like I had early onset dementia. It was terrible. Things improved only slightly over a year and I decided I couldn’t take it anymore and went to doctor and they put me on lexapro 20 mg. I was on that for 10 months before I decided to ween myself off in a two month period. The second withdraw wasn’t as severe but still bad. I still haven’t felt like myself. It’s been 6 and a half months since I’ve been off the ssri. Sorry for the long post but my question is when does the emotional numbness go away. It’s not as bad as it was but I still am unable to cry. I also deal with the anxiety and depression but at a lesser degree. But I feel emotionally detached a bit. Has anybody gone through anything similar. When we’re you able to start crying again and feeling your emotions more. Thank you and God bless!

If you had a loved one who died of overdose after trying and failing to get treatment, I would like to talk to you. I am a free-lance writer specializing in medical harm. Here is a link to my writer's website, with links to all my writing on the web: http://patrickhahn5.wixsite.com/meliponula