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Hi everyone. first off all i want to say how strong and brave all of you are to be dealing with these nightmare drugs... i have been on and off of these psychiatric drugs,for 5 years. specifically srris (prozac + zoloft) wellbutrin + gabapentin, abilify, and now currently taking lamictal (150 mg.) i am 36 weeks pregnant and terrified of the near future and as i haven't really been able to fully enjoy my pregnancy. or most of my youth... i don't even know what i am thinking or doing. i feel really alone. the reason of going on these meds was from dealing with depression + anxiety most of my life, and bpd + ptsd from abusive narcissistic parents. i attempted suicide right before. took about 50 pills. i had a very dysfunctional family. i am 22 now. i feel lost, most days i feel empty ,hopeless. i don't go out of my house, besides grocery shopping. i have no friends. maybe 1 but i barely ever see her , i have a social phobia ever since starting and withdrawing from these drugs. i developed major anhedonia from stopping the prozac + zoloft. even though i took one of the lowest doses possible. i had only been on these for 9 months or less. i remember stopping, as i was sick of depending on these. they told me they werent addicting and i could stop anytime,they told me nobody has ever had these symptoms, they lookde at me like i was crazy. made me feel isolated. i regret going cold turkey.. i remember being manic on them. severe anxiety, hallucinations insomnia, crawling sensations brain zaps major anhedonia, memory loss, etc. i hadn't been myself since. i was grieving my old self, it is one of the worst things you could ever experience. i didnt even know was possible. but here we are... anyways, i have been off the prozac + zoloft for almost 6 years now and wouldnt ever touch those things again. i took abilify for only a few weeks. amitryptiline once or twice. ambien, once. ativan only for a week. ive been off the gabapentin for almsot 3 years now. i tapered that one. after going off cold turkey off the srris, i went on wellbutrin and took that for 3 years, and gabapentin for 2 years. i went off the wellbutrin for a year, then went back on, which i regret once again. i took the wellbutrin for 9 months then stopped, again,to get pregnant at 150 mg. then went back on... at 8 weeks pregnant for about a month. then stopped. then started a drug called lamictal , i am now at 150 mg. i am just over all of this and wish to be drug free, but it seems impossible at this point and afraid ill never recover completely. i am afraid of experiencing anhedonia memory loss as i did before with the srris + wellbutrin. i have sever memroy loss. i feel like i cant even keep up with a conversation because my mind goes blank.. i have depersonalization now. i just dont want to accept this is the end, this is it,,. it can't be. but how is this any way to live? how am i supposed to raise a child into this world.. it all seems unfair and i feel like an absolute idiot for getting pregnant, i thought it was meant to be at the time, but im second guessing it all now. im very afraid. do you think i could stop the lamictal and get back to my old self one day? ive thought about natural holistic alternatives such as turmeric + lions mane, ginger + l theanine, magnesium, ashwaghanda rhodiola + brahmi + holy basil + cacao coffee, etc. and some work but i dont know if i should continue taking after the pregnancy and just rely on these. i dont want to exist if this is truly how life is.. i wish i never took these awful drugs. i feel its the worst thing that i could have ever done, i want my old life back even if it was so painful. atleast then i still felt alive in a sense. thank you all, i wish you all the best in your recorvery + healing journeys.

Hi, I've been medication-free for 14 years and I've just written to the psychiatrist who originally diagnosed me with Bipolar 1 in 2002 to see if I can get the diagnosis overturned because my mania was caused by sertraline. I'd be very interested to hear from other members who were never manic before being on antidepressants.

Hello All, This may be slightly long but I think it's worth the read for those on/coming off ADs or with significant others on/coming off of ADs. I've been a member of the Topix discussion that was recently removed since around the middle of last year. Like many, my significant other was prescribed an AD (Effexor in this case) for generalized anxiety. This was in early February. The effects were almost immediate but as I was so unaware of the possibilities with these drugs I did not notice any troubling side effects. She had a lot more energy and her anxiety really was gone, but I did not know to relate this to emotional blunting. This girl was absolutely trustworthy and honest and I know this because we were together all the time and she hid nothing from me. We were inseparable. I came to eventually realize that within the first few days of taking Effexor she began to lose feelings for me, but that "give a ****" factor had already gone away and I was of no concern to her. Within a few months she had full blown mania, she was hyper-sexual and had begun cheating. There was no selection, just whoever would take interest in her. At the same time this started, she told me that she had lost her sex drive. I did some research, found this was a common complaint and decided to give it time. We didn't have sex for many many months, all the while she was sleeping with pretty much anyone who would give her the attention. She started drinking heavily almost immediately. I just had no idea that ADs could do this. Eventually I had a growing suspicion, but I could really find nothing online. It took a lot of very specific Google searches to find what I had suspected, but that was months into it. So fast forward after I found out about the infidelity (which was gut wrenching, agonizing, horrific to say the least - it took the life out of me). I had found the Topix discussion, printed many relevant pages and showed it to her. She almost laughed it off, she would not reply to any specific questions. Like most others, she felt new and more alive. Her friend base had changed, and many of them had been given a very different story than what was really happening. She told a lot of them that she was afraid of me, suddenly cops were showing up because her new partners were calling the cops on me, for absolutely nothing. She would scream and break things and hit me, when she had only had one beer (this stuff is BAD NEWS when mixed with alcohol). At a certain point she had not only thrown me aside, but her entire family as well. They did not understand what was happening, so I began to speak to them. In October her life had spiraled out of control and she decided to begin a taper, but only because everyone insisted and she really had no choice. For what it is worth, her doctors refused to believe me. They actually suggested we up the dose because "it wasn't working". So no help there. The withdrawal was horrible. We tried all the supplements and methods that work for some people, but they had no effect on her. She cut her dose slightly about once a month, the same week she would be softer but then the withdrawal would ramp up quickly. In this period she nearly moved out of the state with her old boss. She was planning on leaving me and I had no clue until I found an email and confronted her. That is when it really hit her. She tapered more quickly (perhaps too quickly) because she just wanted off the stuff. In December she finally quit taking it. She had the very horrible brain zaps, she was insanely moody and I was walking on egg shells non-stop. But I stuck it out. The delayed withdrawal hit around January/February but at this point she knew it was withdrawal. And she absolutely was pissed that she had been given a drug like this. She is more upset now than ever that this can happen. We found out two weeks ago that she is pregnant with my child. We are getting married, and she is dedicated to un-doing these things. We are starting over fresh. It is not easy, but it can happen. The best advice I was given was by btdt on Topix. She said do not hold them to their actions, they do not know what they are doing. My fiance echoes this sentiment now. She is more than angry that she let a GP talk her into taking these meds, and then would not listen when she was a danger to herself. But that is how the stories seem to go. Don't get me wrong, it hurts. And now that we're at the one year mark since this started, there are a lot of triggers that I have to really put in an effort into pushing aside. Simple things - songs, smells, places, weather, tone of voice, etc. I'll be around to answer any questions or comments. I want to help as many as I can.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25470092# J Clin Psychiatry. 2014 Nov;75(11):e1278-83. doi: 10.4088/JCP.14m09046. Correlates of incident bipolar disorder in children and adolescents diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivitydisorder. Jerrell JM1, McIntyre RS, Park YM. Author information AbstractBACKGROUND:The greater severity and chronicity of illness in youths with co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder deserve further investigation as to the risk imparted by comorbid conditions and the pharmacotherapies employed. METHOD:A retrospective cohort design was employed, using South Carolina's Medicaid claims dataset covering outpatient and inpatient medical and psychiatric service claims with International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification diagnoses and medication prescriptions between January 1996 and December 2006 for patients ≤ 17 years of age. RESULTS:The cohort included 22,797 cases diagnosed with ADHD at a mean age of 7.8 years; 1,604 (7.0%) were diagnosed with bipolar disorderat a mean age of 12.2 years. The bipolar disorder group developed conduct disorder (CD)/oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), anxiety disorder, and a substance use disorder later than the ADHD-only group. The odds of a child with ADHD developing bipolar disorder were significantly and positively associated with a comorbid diagnosis of CD/ODD (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 4.01), anxiety disorder (aOR = 2.39), or substance use disorder (aOR = 1.88); longer treatment with methylphenidate, mixed amphetamine salts, or atomoxetine (aOR = 1.01); not being African American (aOR = 1.61); and being treated with certain antidepressant medications, most notably fluoxetine (aOR = 2.00), sertraline (aOR = 2.29), bupropion (aOR = 2.22), trazodone (aOR = 2.15), or venlafaxine (aOR = J Clin Psychiatry. 2014 Nov;75(11):e1278-83. doi: 10.4088/JCP.14m09046. Correlates of incident bipolar disorder in children and adolescents diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivitydisorder. Jerrell JM1, McIntyre RS, Park YM. Author information AbstractBACKGROUND:The greater severity and chronicity of illness in youths with co-occurring attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and bipolar disorder deserve further investigation as to the risk imparted by comorbid conditions and the pharmacotherapies employed. METHOD:A retrospective cohort design was employed, using South Carolina's Medicaid claims dataset covering outpatient and inpatient medical and psychiatric service claims with International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification diagnoses and medication prescriptions between January 1996 and December 2006 for patients ≤ 17 years of age. RESULTS:The cohort included 22,797 cases diagnosed with ADHD at a mean age of 7.8 years; 1,604 (7.0%) were diagnosed with bipolar disorderat a mean age of 12.2 years. The bipolar disorder group developed conduct disorder (CD)/oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), anxiety disorder, and a substance use disorder later than the ADHD-only group. The odds of a child with ADHD developing bipolar disorder were significantly and positively associated with a comorbid diagnosis of CD/ODD (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 4.01), anxiety disorder (aOR = 2.39), or substance use disorder (aOR = 1.88); longer treatment with methylphenidate, mixed amphetamine salts, or atomoxetine (aOR = 1.01); not being African American (aOR = 1.61); and being treated with certain antidepressant medications, most notably fluoxetine (aOR = 2.00), sertraline (aOR = 2.29), bupropion (aOR = 2.22), trazodone (aOR = 2.15), or venlafaxine (aOR = 2.37) prior to the first diagnosis of mania. Venlafaxine carries the day! Huzzah! CONCLUSIONS: Controlling for pharmacotherapy differences, incident bipolar disorder was more likely in individuals clustering specific patterns of comorbid psychiatric disorders, suggesting that there are different pathways to bipolarity and providing a clinical impetus for prioritizing prevention and preemptive strategies to reduce their hazardous influence. But the drug classes correlate with the disorders--you can't really control for them (calculate their effects away) - WC