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I thought a very long time about writing this. I know a lot of people will read this and won't believe it. These pills have a lot of different impacts on people and for some unknown perhaps largely genetic reason I was highly susceptible to the negative effects. I pretty much had the simultaneous most extreme manifestation of every potential symptom listed on these forums at the same time. I spent all day every day for years online trying to find accounts and of course cures to what I was suffering from and have only seen about 10 accounts of people with stories of such extreme severity. Most of them are from benzodiazepines but even though I had a prescription for those I was not taking them very often. I suspect most of my damage was the product of the antidepressants I took every morning. These pills did to me things few people will tell you are even possible. I used to spend hours a day reading the posts on this forum praying one day I would be me again. It took far longer than I thought was possible but it finally happened. After the first couple years I began to think I would plateau at some slightly less agonizing state at some point and stay debilitated for the rest of my life. I was on various drugs from the time I was 10 years old. I was on lorazepam, trazadone, amitriptyline, bupropion, citalopram, propranolol, concerta, adderall. All kinds of stuff at one point or another but never all of it at once. The ones I was on for the longest time were citalopram and bupropion. I took both from ages 15 to 23. I wouldn't truly realize the havoc that these chemicals caused on my body until I came off them after college. To say my life was shattered is an understatement. I went from top of my class at a top university to absolutely debilitated. I could barely walk for years. POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING BEGIN: I had a relentless throbbing migraine for over 5 and a half years. My entire body was in constant physical pain. It felt like an electric pulsing shock that emanates from your solar plexis and up through your spinal column right into the center of your brain where it becomes a relentless migraine. The migraine felt like having my head stuck in a fishbowl full of ammonia for years on end. It felt like nails on a chalkboard up your spine. All of it throbbed with my constantly palpitating heart rate. My fitbit said my resting heart rate was 55 beats per minute which is bradycardia but they told me it was evidence of my fitness. They said it is common for athletes. I am not and have never been an athlete. While they told me this I could barely stand up. Everything was spinning as if I was drunk for years. Eating anything but particularly carbs made all my symptoms worse. My vision was so bad I was nearly blind. I had double vision, tunnel vision, blurry vision, and I couldn't focus on anything because it felt like the room was constantly spinning. They told me "a nystagmus isn't that uncommon." I was also completely night blind. Anything under broad daylight and I couldn't see a thing. You know when you go into a dimply lit room like a movie theater on a sunny day and you can't see for a few seconds until your eyes adjust? I had that for five years. My eyes just never adjusted. Apparently one of the most common symptoms of drug abuse is pupil dilation or expansion because of how they impact neurotransmitters. In addition to this I had horrible tinnitus and hearing sensitivity. The cognitive impact was overwhelming. I couldn't solve puzzles intended for toddlers. This was particularly devastating as my intellect had always been the cornerstone of my personal identity. I was always the nerd growing up. I also had a tremor that was dismissed as "jitters" or "anxiety." I would later learn this is called tardive akathisia. I also had the extreme long term sexual dysfunction that is finally recognized with SSRIs. It was like having a slab of rubber hanging from my torse. Severely numbed sensitivity and responsiveness for years. I had a lesser degree of this even while on the medication. As agonizing as all of those symptoms were, none of them were the worst. The worst was the derealization and depersonalization. Everything looked so distant and unreal that it felt like being stuck in a nightmare. I couldn't see straight. It felt like being 80% dead already and you're already most of the way unplugged from the world. Every minute of every day is a literal nightmare and you can't wake up. Like I said I knew before typing all that that most people won't believe it. Aside from the derealization the worst part is dismissive everyone was of my condition. I was certain I was about to die and everyone everywhere told me it was all in my head. To be quite frank the only reason I didn't kill myself is because I was certain I was about to die anyway. I figured it was impossible to be so dysfunctional and not be about to die. It just becomes an implicit assumption. My mind ran on an endless loop of "Oh my God this can't be real. You're about to die. This is what dying feels like. Wake up. You'll be dead soon. This can't be happening. This can't be real." At first I was terrified to die. After the first year I welcomed it. It was just so relentless. Not a single moment of relief for one second of one day. My family isn't rich but I was on my parents insurance until I was 25. In the first 2 years I saw a total of 14 different doctors in one of the most developed parts in the world. Some of them had literal Ivy League medical degrees. Out of the 14 doctors there were 3 different primary care physicians and 11 were specialists. Everyone from a neurologist and psychiatrist to cardiologist and nephrologist. I spent all day every day trying to read medical journals and scour the deepest depths of anywhere finding other cases and answers. That was how I first found this site. Of all those visits the only thing I was ever diagnosed with was "pre-diabetes" from the endocrinologist because my blood sugar swings were so extreme. I do not have a single one of any of the aforementioned symptoms today. At the time I was certain the drugs caused my condition but I wasn't sure how. Initially I thought I must have had a massive stroke. An MRI ruled this out. The neurologist actually initially suspected Multiple Sclerosis but never gave me a diagnosis for anything and finally suggested I was a hypochondriac and should see a psychiatrist. I suspected everything from a brain abscess to hepatic encephalitis. No doctor sees you for more than about 8 minutes and most of them ordered some variation of the same basic blood tests. I literally didn't have a single bodily function operating as expected and every one of them told me I was perfectly fine. I eventually started paying for tests out of pocket to test additional hypotheses. The only things that really helped were vitamins and supplements. Particularly antioxidants. What finally made me turn a corner after an agonizing half decade was taking massive doses of specific nutritional supplements. I will not name any brands to prevent being accused of being some kind of shill but I will mention general vitamins. (I have also been accused of being a scientologist whenever I mention any of this. I am not and have never been and never will be. You shouldn't be either. It is a dangerous cult that happens to discourage vulnerable people from pursuing any mental health treatments besides them including psychiatry). Massive doses of B vitamins had a tremendous impact. Make sure you consume multiple variants of B12 as some people cannot absorb the most common one. Also make sure you get B1 and B6. Vitamins C, D, K, and E also made big differences. basically make sure you take all essential vitamins and minerals. I stumbled across some fringe studies done by doctors in the 70s about reversing Tardive Dyskinesia with the mineral manganese. It worked. I cured the tinnitus with a combination of supplements called bioflavonoids. Some of these are even marketed toward tinnitus relief. Tea is full of them and also helps. Particularly organic iced green tea with a lemon in it. Something about the lemon improves the antioxidant ability apparently. Red wine is full of anxioxidants too but alcohol made all my other symptoms far worse, especially the first few years. Organic products were somehow better. Basically any kind of antioxidant helped a little and massive doses combined made the recovery pretty rapid. Niacin, turmeric, and CoQ10 also yielded extreme improvements. Apparently massive doses of Niacin can reverse drug induced schizophrenia in a subset of patients if they take it for multiple years. As much as I can't wait to put all this behind me I needed to come back here and write this. I used to read this forum for hours every day trying to find a story of someone who was as sick as I was and made a recovery. I came back to tell whoever might still be there that no matter how horrible it might feel, it isn't permanent. Somehow you're still in there. No matter how long and endless it feels. I'm definitely not saying it was worth it but I am more grateful of every moment I am not in pain than I ever thought was possible. Every single moment is a blessing I will never take for granted again. Good luck.