☼ nz11 climbs onboard

[nz11]

Gotszche 'Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime' (2013) ct....

 

Introduction pg's 1-4

"Unfortunately we now suffer from 2 man-made epidemics tabacco and prescription drugs both of which are hugely lethal.

In the usa drugs are the third leading cause of death after heart disease and cancer"

"The tabacco and the drug industries have much in common. The morally repugnant disregard for human lives is the norm."

...."doctors may know a lot about diseases and physiology ...they know very little about drugs ,concocted and dressed up by the drug industry " and [patients] don't know that their doctors may have self serving motives for choosing certain drugs for them"

"Compared to other industries the pharmaceutical industry is the biggest defrauder of the US federal government under the false claims act"

ch 2 pg 13 Here is something that every human should be made aware of:

"It is illegal to market a drug for non-approved so-called off-label use."

Well it might be illegal in the USA but it seems plenty of docs in NZ are getting away with it. I was a victim of it.

ch 18

"It is abundantly clear that suicides and violence caused by ssris are grossly underestimated,
Reasons being:
1. Outright fraud
2. Many suicide events have been coded as something else
3. Drug companies bias trials by selecting people who are very low risk suicidal
4. Companies urge the investigators to use benzos in addition to the trial drugswhich blunt some of the violent reactions which would otherwise have occurred
5. Some trials have run in periods. [im not quite sure what is being meant here but appears that those who have start up effects are then taken out of the trial...]this is scientific misconduct.

6.Events occurring after the drug is stopped are not noted.
[This for me is the worst piece of misconduct by drug companies ..for reasons we are all to aware of]

7.Many trials are buried in the company archives and these are not the most positive ones. "

 

[nz11]

Here is a revealing quote from pg 200 ch 17,

"If patients have been on drugs for years the tapering period may go up to a full year. Most psychiatrists choose life-long treatment instead, which is a disaster for many reasons."

Here we see even from Gotzsche a world authority figure/knowledgeable/up with the play person, once again the complete inability whatsoever to conceive of the need for tapers longer than a year. Of course we know psychiatrists have no idea. That's a given.
Dr Peter Gotzsche has a formidable CV including scientific works cited over 10,000 times and yet when it comes to how to taper he and many like him who are aware of this terrible predicament of millions worldwide still don't get it ! imo

This doc is on the trail though, I am putting him at the top of the heroes list...
check out this quote pg 199

"Psychotropic drugs don't fix chemical imbalance they cause it ...if taken for more than a few weeks ,these drugs create the disease they were intended to cure........almost all psychiatrists - and patients interpret [wdl symptoms] as a sign they need the drug.....they have become dependent, just like a junkie is dependent on heroin or cocaine, and as adhd drugs and ssris have amphetamine effects, we should view these drugs as narcotics on presrcription...."

check this out also
"When therapists have been asked to use DSM criteria a quarter of healthy people also get a psychiatric diagnosis" pg 196

and furthermore this:
In DSM -V bereavement is a depressive disorder if it has lasted more than 2 weeks,...
In DSM-IV it was 2 months ...,
In DSM -III it was 1 year,.....(p195)

I think I see a pattern here Peter, DSM-VI, 'x' hours!, as Gotzsche rightly notes "psychiatrists are running amok"..."they are highly effective drug pushers".

 

Well here is some from ch 3

Page 38 ch 3 Gotzsche (im getting good at spelling that now) likens pharma to the mafia.

Racketeering is the act of engaging in a certain type of offence more than once. The list of offences that constitute racketeering include extortion, fraud, Federal drug offences, bribery, embezzlement, obstruction of justice, obstruction of law enforcement, tampering with witnesses, and political corruption. Big pharma does so much of this all the time that there can be no doubt that its business model fulfils the criteria for organised crime.

A previous global vice president of marketing for pfizer turned whistleblower when the company wouldn’t listen to his complaints about illegal marketing holds a similar view: “it is scary how many similarities there are between this industry and the mob, the mob makes obscene amounts of money, as does this industry. The side-effects of organised crime are killings and deaths, and the side-effects are the same in this industry. The mob bribes politicians and others, and so does the drug industry… The difference is, all these people in the drug industry look upon themselves – well, I’d say 99% anyway – look upon themselves as law-abiding citizens not as citizens who would ever rob a bank… However, when they get together as a group and manage these corporations, something seems to happen to otherwise good citizens when they are part of a corporation. Its almost like when you have war atrocities: people do things they don’t think they are capable of. When you’re in a group, people can do things they otherwise wouldn’t, because the group can validate what you’re doing as okay.

When a crime has led to the deaths of thousands of people we should see it as a crime against humanity.
.........../............
Thought id put this in as well pg 39

Gotzsche was asked to comment on the ethical standards of the drug industry...his reply " I have no answer, as I cannot describe what doesn't exist."...."what we are seeing here is organized crime in an industry that is completely rotten"
"In the usa big pharma beat all other industries in terms of crimes"

[Songbird]

Isn't that ridiculous - there's a big difference between a year and life-long!

[Babs]

Important going forward,

Note:

I realize that this is a public forum and that people can post whatever they like wherever ..i have been in the past accused of assuming ...so may i just ensure that that is not the case from here on in.

I would like to ask ask out of respect for the op that as we have only one thread per person that should it be that a potential poster has a habit of /desire to... perhaps drag a thread into a debate on the existence of two words that start with M &  I, like to talk about the existence of words that start with 'D' or rhyme with 'my molar' ...and throw in the odd words here and there like 'family history' then can i just pre-empt any posting now by saying gently yet assertively....please refrain from doing so on THIS thread as i loathe this debate and find it extraordinarily disturbing (thats the politist way i can put it).

 

Now that that is cleared up i thank you in advance for your cooperation!

 

Also please avoid declarations of one's allegedly superior level of education/psych knowledge and/or greater insight due to suffering more than anyone else on the planet.

[compsports]

I agree that Gotzsche is a hero but if I had followed his suggested tapering plan of allowing 1 year after being on psych meds for 11 before I started my slow taper that took nearly 4 years, I would have suffered horrible withdrawal symptoms.   I don't want to bash him too much but that is so frustrating that even someone like him is clueless about withdrawal.

 

Thanks for posting the exerts Markca.   Very interesting.

 

CS

[nz11]

I find the above july 2011 statement from GSK on how to taper off absolutely disgusting. In light of Breggin trials revealing unprecedented fraud, the mountain of evidence and personal testimonies now available and the many who cannot get off the drug many taking years to taper ....I cant believe the above is allowed to be distributed.

Someone on 20 mg tapering at 10% per month will need 30 months to get off the drug yet here it looks like GSK is saying one week and that's all that's needed ........boy they sure know how to ensure repeat business occurs!!

Its absolutely appalling!

 

Edit note: Nz11, I moved this post from 'Tapering' to your thread because it seems more in line with your current thoughts and not regarding tapering Paxil.

Edited January 4, 2015 by cymbaltawithdrawal5600
off topic in the thread it was in

[imac]

I find the above july 2011 statement from GSK on how to taper off absolutely disgusting. In light of Breggin trials revealing unprecedented fraud, the mountain of evidence and personal testimonies now available and the many who cannot get off the drug many taking years to taper ....I cant believe the above is allowed to be distributed.

Someone on 20 mg tapering at 10% per month will need 30 months to get off the drug yet here it looks like GSK is saying one week and that's all that's needed ........boy they sure know how to ensure repeat business occurs!!

Its absolutely appalling!

 

Edit note: Nz11, I moved this post from 'Tapering' to your thread because it seems more in line with your current thoughts and not regarding tapering Paxil.

Damn it. How can I post a picture here? I have a picture!!!

[nz11]

I find the above july 2011 statement from GSK on how to taper off absolutely disgusting. In light of Breggin trials revealing unprecedented fraud, the mountain of evidence and personal testimonies now available and the many who cannot get off the drug many taking years to taper ....I cant believe the above is allowed to be distributed.

Someone on 20 mg tapering at 10% per month will need 30 months to get off the drug yet here it looks like GSK is saying one week and that's all that's needed ........boy they sure know how to ensure repeat business occurs!!

Its absolutely appalling!

 

Edit note: Nz11, I moved this post from 'Tapering' to your thread because it seems more in line with your current thoughts and not regarding tapering Paxil.

Oops ok sorry bout that ...

 

Yeah this was my response to the gsk leaflet saying one tapers off by reducing 10 mg a week.

Well we all know that is a way to ensure a rather fast trip to hospital.

 

imac ..im still working out how to do posts/quotes ...putting up pictures sounds rather advanced to me !! What about the paste icon above ??

[nz11]

Hey.....just realized something. something really spooky as Dame Edna would say........there are 4 people following my thread....and i'm not one of them!...now thats scary!!!

Later...

Just added myself now its 5.... wouldn't want to miss out on anything!

[nz11]

This is a paroxetine timeline well worth the read want to put this in my intro so i dont forget where it came from

http://truthman30.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/seroxat/

[nz11]

Adding one more,

this also is a must read article by E Pringle on 25 april 2006 titled 'Drip drip drip -paxil info leaks out'

 

Note the extent gsk go to gag people they settle with so much so that they must not talk about paxil discontinuation or wdl even on the internet.

 

Last sentence of article quotes Glenmullen saying 66% of people suffer wdl symptoms

 

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/drugs-medical/paxil-00172.html#.VLBt03L9ljo

 

Quote also from Breggin "The drug companies settle almost all legal cases brought against them in order to seal incriminating scientific data"

[WinningThrough]

Hello NZ11. Good to see you here. I was on pp as Jupiter..didn't post much in there..you were kind to me on there.

 

I read your brilliant post on Petu's thread and found it very comforting. Thank you.

[nz11]

Thanks for the kind words WT.

[nz11]

SSRIs are addictive!

We have all been told or at least I was that they are not addictive. To argue back with the medical profession, 10 years later when one has finally got off the drug,  is difficult on this one,  because they then turn and play word definition games.

 

Gotzsche (2013) ct.......

 

However here is a great piece by Gotzsche ch17 pg 210-211

 

As doctors and regulators refuse to learn from history, I was happy to fund a Ph.D. student who wanted to carry out the research:

Why is history repeating itself? A study on benzodiazepines and antidepressants (SSRIs). [Nielsen M. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors SSRI – sales, withdrawal reactions and how drug regulators reacted to this with benzodiazepines as comparator [Ph.D. thesis]. Copenhagen: University of Copenhagen; 2013.

 

We found that the definition of substance dependence changed from DSM-lll to the DSM-lllR  revision that came out in 1987 where the criteria for dependents were narrowed so that they must include also behavioural, physiological and cognitive manifestations.[Nielsen M, Henson EH, Gotzsche PC. What is the difference between dependence and withdrawal reactions? A comparison of benzodiazepines and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Addiction 2012; 107:900-8]

The substantive change came after the recognition of benzodiazepine dependence and very conveniently just before the SSRIs were marketed in 1988. It was a smokescreen that served to deflect attention from the fact that SSRIs also cause dependence.

 

We found that discontinuation symptoms were described with similar terms for benzodiazepines and SSRIs and were very similar for 37 of the 42 identified symptoms described as withdrawal reactions for SSRIs. To call similar problems dependence for benzodiazepines and withdrawal reactions for SSRIs is totally irrational. And for the patients it’s just the same. It’s very hard for them to stop either type of drug.

 

The companies fiercely denied that their ssris could lead to dependancy even though they had shown in their own unpublished studies early on that also healthy volunteers become dependent after only a few weeks on the drug. {ref; Healy Let them eat Prozac,2004}

…………../………

In 2012 I wrote to our national Health and Disability Commissioner and made a complaint regarding these drugs saying they are potently addictive. The organization wrote to me and told me that they are not addictive because they don’t cause craving for higher doses. I wrote back to them and told them they are just playing tobacco company games. Their legal department then wrote back to me and told me to go away.

 

Which leads me into the next piece by Gotzsche (2013) ch 17 pg 211,

 

The worst argument I have heard is that the patients are not dependent because they don’t crave higher doses. If that were true, smokers are not dependent on the nicotine because they don’t increase the consumption of cigarettes! It’s unbelievable what nonsense professors of psychiatry have told me in order to maintain the level of self-deception in their specialty.

 

It is clear that most symptoms that occur after abrupt withdrawal of an SSRI aren’t depression symptoms but symptoms of abstinence.

Even when slow tapering SSRIs was attempted after successful behavioural treatment for panic disorder and agoraphobia which have nothing to do with depression, about half of the patients had withdrawal symptoms. Unfortunately, willing doctors with numerous financial ties to makers of the drugs assist in propagating the delusions in their research, above all Stuart Montgomery from the UK who seems to interpret all withdrawal symptoms as relapse. In 2003, a systematic review of the Lancet reported that 41% relapsed when they continued with placebo compared to 18% that continued on active drug, but its plainly wrong to interpret the symptoms that occur after abrupt drug withdrawal as relapse.

 

Pg212

Until 2003, the UK would drug regulator propagated the falsehood that SSRIs are not addictive, but the same year, the World Health Organisation published a report that noted that three SSRIs (prozac, paroxetine and sertraline) were among the top 30 highest ranking drugs for which drug dependence had ever been reported.

.........................................//.......................................................

Here is another piece (that is similar to Gotzsches) info taken from:

 

D Healy. In Communication to the UK Medicines Control Agency in letters of 7th and 19th June 2001.
 Sarah Boseley. Murder, Suicide. A Bitter Aftertaste for the ‘Wonder’ Depression Drug. The Guardian, Monday 11 June 2001.

Read Sarah's article here:

http://www.whale.to/drugs/seroxat3.html

 

In 2001 the World Health Organization ranked paroxetine as the most difficult and problematic drug to withdrawal from of all prescribed drugs by doctors worldwide. Coming in at number 2 was venlafaxine/effexor, and  just for interest sake valium was number 13.
In other words venlafaxine/effexor and paroxetine are the most addictive drugs being prescribed.

........................................//................................................................

Just on this topic of addiction i would like to add a quote by Dr A B Tracey

 

 Dr Ann Tracey in a 2006 report to the American Free Press was quoted as saying,
“…anti-depressants are extremely addictive and that extreme care must be taken when a user begins to wean him or herself off of the medication. The dosage has to be reduced carefully and gradually and the weaning period should be about half the time the person has been on the medication. Any abrupt changes in dosage can cause suicidal and homicidal reactions.”

This quote was taken from here ...7th paragraph from the end of the article...

http://www.hugequestions.com/Eric/Columbine/Columbine-Bollyn.html

 

Dr. Ann Blake Tracey, is the executive director of the International Coalition for Drug Awareness and author of Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? - Our Serotonin Nightmare is an expert consultant in cases like Columbine in which anti-depressant medications are involved.

 

In tracking down the above quote by Tracey i found this as well and i like this quote so im putting it here and the link although this link seems to end up with Tracey pushing her CD  anyway maybe this link shouldn't be here mods can decide

http://www.drugawareness.org/ann-blake-tracy-testifys-before-the-fda-on-dangers-of-antidepressants-in-2006/

This link leads on to a youtube 2006 FDA testimony link :

The FDA Advisory Committee held an additional hearing on the safety of antidepressants for young adults ages 18 – 25 in December of 2006. Click here www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qz0-XzEq3x8 to watch Tracey give her testimony to them after which they expanded the Black Box Warning for increased suicidal ideation from those 18 and under to anyone under age 25.

 

And here is the quote i like, for we all know it to be true :

"The FDA also now warns that any abrupt change in dose of an antidepressant can produce suicide, hostility or psychosis. And these reactions can either come on very rapidly or even be delayed for months depending upon the adverse effects upon sleep patterns when the withdrawal is rapid!"

......................................//............................................................

[nz11]

Don't want to breach copyright here so i shall be selective on future pieces of gold.

[nz11]

Correction : after the pg 212 above delete the word 'would'  '..2003 the UK would drug.'..

 

Disclaimer: I have a repetitive strain injury in my hand from keyboard overuse thanks to the employer from hell 15 years ago. As such i cant type for too long or for too much. So i often use dragon naturally speaking software to type, i talk the computer types its amazing. Then cut and paste it. Sometimes as brilliant as it is, it makes spelling mistakes, ludicrous spelling mistakes. It has no idea how to spell 'Gotzsche'. Mind you neither did i for that matter.  I shall be more thorough in future but sometimes i am lazy and miss them. Apologies in advance. I am only here because i went to the doctor to get an opinion on my sore hand and was told, here take these they will fix it. I asked the right questions addictive? no, safe? yes. Well the rest is history a 10 yr drug addiction...and a trip through hell to escape. And another maiming to boot. Yeah they fixed me all right but in a way i could never have conceived. Thanks to a clueless ignorant dangerous doctor.

[nz11]

Gotzsche (2013) Ch 9

 

Whatever the industry does whatever it calls it, and whatever it says about its noble motives, it all boils down to one thing: selling drugs. This is done very effectively by tightly controlling the flow of information about its drugs, both in scientific papers and marketing. Its clinical trials are really research in the true sense of this word; it is marketing disguised as research. The trials often flawed by design, additional flaws are introduced during data analysis, and the misleading results are spun to make sure that whatever an honest trial might have shown, the trial concludes something that is useful boosting sales. (p87)… With an abundance of flawed literature at hand it is not difficult to let marketing do the final kill, and even without such literature, marketing works.(p91)

 

Ghostwriting p89
The misleading information in original research papers subsequently propagated in scores of ghost written and other secondary articles. Ghostwriting is very harmful to public health, as it misleads doctors about the benefits and harms of drugs. It is also fraud, as doctors are deceived deliberately. The very purpose of not informing the readers about who wrote the paper is to make it appear as if it came from disinterested, prominent academics and not from a corporate sponsor. Ghost written papers are subsequently cited in prominent materials and in other ghost-papers, as if they provide independent verification that the drug is effective and safe and better than other drugs. Thus, marketing people produce ghost-papers that are used by the same marketing people, a perfect incestuous way of fooling unsuspecting doctors into believing what they think their own leaders have written.

Ghostwriting is deceitful and a scam. p90

Ghostwriting corrupts the trust that is so essential for scientific communication. It looks like a win- win situation for the doctors and the company that share an interest in not telling anyone about the arrangement, but lawsuits have made it possible for everyone to get a glimpse of the dirty business. Gotzsche looked into 44 industry initiated trials and found evidence of ghost authorship for 75% of the trials, which increased to 91% when they included cases where a person qualifying for authorship was acknowledged rather than appearing as an author. p.90

 

Gotzsche then gives examples of this.

One such example is an experience that Healy had.

 

Scott describes this same encounter in his book America Fooled in more detail so I shall take this example from Scott’s retelling. p135 “Usually, ghost written articles arrived with a covering letter authorising me [Healy] to alter the piece in whatever way I see fit. One such letter arrived linked to a meeting aimed at promoting Wyeth’s SSRI effexor This laguna Beach meeting came complete with honoraria, expensive travel and accommodation provision and the opportunity to have one’s article ghosted, in this case by CMED, a medical writing agency based in Toronto.” [Not sure why Healy calls effexor an ssri ...its an snri...not that these names mean anything anyway.]

 

Healy decided he could not simply attach his name to the glowing report for effexor. He was aware of the research indicating an increase in suicide risk was also aware that effexor’s claim to be superior to other antidepressants was false. But instead of notifying the writing  agency that he did not want his name on ghosted articles, he decided to test the system. He accepted the article, inserted what he termed ‘two viruses’ and then returned the article without making any other changes. The first virus was a statement that Effexor was not superior to another drug- Remeron. The second virus simply reported the increase in suicide risk for some individuals on SSRIs. The medical writing agency asked him to remove the Remeron statement. He wouldn’t. So did the agency decide not to publish the article? No. They simply reworked it and published it – with the Remeron  and the suicide risk comments removed – under the names of some new “authors.”

 

Scott says this practice is not rare. eg As a result of a lawsuit against Pfizer documents were made public which revealed they had used a New York ghost writing agency to produce nearly 90 articles for the antidepressants Zoloft. By 2001, 55 of the articles had been published, many in well respected journals.

 

Gotzsche p92
Physicians believe that their actions are motivated by how good the drugs are, but studies have shown that their beliefs more closely match marketing claims. A survey of 85 physicians of which one third were specialists in internal medicine, showed that 71% believed that impaired cerebral bloodflow was a major cause of senile dementia, and one third had found cerebral vasodilators useful in managing confused geriatric patients. However dementia isn’t caused by impaired blood flow and the drugs didn’t work! Half of these doctors also believe that a morphine derivative propoxyphene is more effective than aspirin although it’s worse and hardly better than a placebo.

 

pg 92

"Drug companies have institutionalized deception"...Doctors are surprisingly naive and don't realize how much they are being manipulated"

 

pg 95

"The industry has armies of paid bloggers that distribute pharma material disguised as opinion on the internet, and most media outlets have pharma ties....the industry also tries to get access to making changes in Wikipedia to ensure pharma friendly messages appear there too."

[nz11]

Ch 10 can be summed up in one opening quote

 

"If the American people knew some of the things that went on at the FDA they'd never take anything but Bayer aspirin." Len Lutwalk, FDA scientist.

[nz11]

Ch 11-16 basically covers drugs in other areas of medicine , epilepsy , statins, etc and how cheap drugs are switched for expensive ones.

[Muddles]

Adding one more,

this also is a must read article by E Pringle on 25 april 2006 titled 'Drip drip drip -paxil info leaks out'

 

Note the extent gsk go to gag people they settle with so much so that they must not talk about paxil discontinuation or wdl even on the internet.

 

Last sentence of article quotes Glenmullen saying 66% of people suffer wdl symptoms

 

http://www.lawyersandsettlements.com/articles/drugs-medical/paxil-00172.html#.VLBt03L9ljo

 

Quote also from Breggin "The drug companies settle almost all legal cases brought against them in order to seal incriminating scientific data"

I know of one from paxil progress who was paid out under a gagging order. God knows how many more there were.

[nz11]

Well if i was offered a million bucks to not talk about protracted wdl ....i guess i would seriously consider it ! Probably take it.

Does that sound immoral ...maybe it is.

I am only human and whats been done has been done.

Of course i would still run over burning coals, answer the ph any time of day or night, to ensure no loved one or friend ever took any of these chemicals.

[Songbird]

Well if i was offered a million bucks to not talk about protracted wdl ....i guess i would seriously consider it ! Probably take it.

Does that sound immoral ...maybe it is.

Or you could play them at their own game and ghost write it, get someone else to be the official 'author' so your name is not connected.

[imac]

Well if i was offered a million bucks to not talk about protracted wdl ....i guess i would seriously consider it ! Probably take it.

Does that sound immoral ...maybe it is.

I am only human and whats been done has been done.

Of course i would still run over burning coals, answer the ph any time of day or night, to ensure no loved one or friend ever took any of these chemicals.

Id take the money. Its the VERY least they could do that could help me continue to recover. Being able to afford to not work is gold in WD! Time and space to recover and not have to stress about finances and good holistic healthcare expenses! It's one thing to get to recover on a beautiful beach in Hawaii stress free then have to slug through crazy winters and hectic schedules with working all along. Perhaps most people take longer to recover because of some of the everyday life stressors that one could eliminate should they be able to afford it. The money in their pockets should most definitely be in OUR pockets. Id also continue to find other ways to help others.

[Frustrated]

I think they should pay all of us for our pain and suffering whether we talk or not.  That's my 2 cents lol.

[nz11]

No one listens to me anyway when i do talk about it. Doctors refuse to listen, family's listening ears met their expiry date long long ago and friends ...well thanks to a 10 yr paxil induced loner lifestyle they are difficult to find.

 

In fact protracted wdl for years is so inconceivable that no one can believe it ...just pointless talking about it anyway.

Don't know why GSK even bother to pay millions and put gagging orders on people telling them not to talk about wdl. How sick is that though....for a drug thats proclaimed as safe and not addictive.

 

Heroin wdl, so i am told lasts for 2 months. 2 months of hell...who is going to believe you when you say ssri wdl lasts for years !

[nz11]

This is some info that Songbird gave me about getting liquid made up in NZ .

 

( I kinda thought this should go in the NZ members thread).

Songbird says:

................................................................................

The company I use is called Pharmaceutical Compounding New Zealand, see http://www.pharmaceutical.co.nz/

 

It is quite expensive to get the liquid made up, about $55 for a 150ml bottle.  I just pay by credit card over the phone.  I get 3 bottles at a time, they will last 6 months if unopened and refrigerated.  Once opened, a bottle lasts for a month and must be kept refrigerated.  (It makes travelling a bit of a hassle - usually I pack a bottle in a cooler bag with some small ice packs around it).  They courier the bottles all packed up in bubble wrap in a big cardboard box.  I'm assuming they can courier anywhere in NZ.

 

When I first contacted them, it took a while for their pharmacist to figure out the 'recipe' as they hadn't done it before, but now they have it so it should be easy for anyone else who wants it.  I imagine they should be able to figure out the recipe for other SSRIs as well.  You need the doc to specify the concentration on the prescription, I am getting 1mg/ml so I don't need to do any kind of dosage conversion (unlike the commercial liquid they have in the US which I believe is 2mg/ml).

 

I use a 1ml syringe which you can get from some pharmacies - this allows very precise dosing and the ability to do very tiny dose drops.  I'm doing twice-daily dosing so I syringe half my dose in the morning and the other half at night.

..........................................................................//.........................................................................................

I have already passed this info on to another kiwi paroxetine addict.

 

Thanks Songbird.

[imac]

No one listens to me anyway when i do talk about it. Doctors refuse to listen, family's listening ears met their expiry date long long ago and friends ...well thanks to a 10 yr paxil induced loner lifestyle they are difficult to find.

 

In fact protracted wdl for years is so inconceivable that no one can believe it ...just pointless talking about it anyway.

Don't know why GSK even bother to pay millions and put gagging orders on people telling them not to talk about wdl. How sick is that though....for a drug thats proclaimed as safe and not addictive.

 

Heroin wdl, so i am told lasts for 2 months. 2 months of hell...who is going to believe you when you say ssri wdl lasts for years !

Heroin WD takes a few weeks, not months. I was married to a man who ended up being a chronic crack addict. Everytime he got clean it took a few days but he couldn't stay clean for long. I left him because of his addictions. Little did I know that Id be the one to end up on this BS ( because of my stress with dealing with him) and being the one in living hell WD for YEARS because my doctor tried to help me when all I needed was therapy and to leave my ex's sorry ass!! It's quite humorous now! But we seriously live in a secret society. A whole other universe that people don't even know EXISTS!

And nobody listens to me either, Mark. No doctors, not therapists even, no family ( except my AWSOME supportive husband - who is not the crack addict) or friends. ALL my old friends are on meds and I KNOW they look at me as the " poor girl who refuses to take her meds and look hoes she's been all these years". All I can say is I'll be here when they come running! LoL

[nz11]

Well imac i guess all we can say is "I am wise because once i was foolish'...(saw that somewhere on pp and i liked it.)

 

Thank heavens for the internet.

I honestly thought there was something wrong with ME. At about 4 yrs on the drug someone once said to me nz11 why are you taking these drugs ..i replied ...wait for it ...."Well every time i stop i just start crying ...so maybe i need it."  In hindsight how #$% ignorantly cluelessly stupid is that!! And i wouldn't have thought i was the dimmest lightbulb on the xmas tree ..but then again maybe i was/am !

[imac]

Well imac i guess all we can say is "I am wise because once i was foolish'...(saw that somewhere on pp and i liked it.)

 

Thank heavens for the internet.

I honestly thought there was something wrong with ME. At about 4 yrs on the drug someone once said to me nz11 why are you taking these drugs ..i replied ...wait for it ...."Well every time i stop i just start crying ...so maybe i need it." In hindsight how #$% ignorantly cluelessly stupid is that!! And i wouldn't have thought i was the dimmest lightbulb on the xmas tree ..but then again maybe i was/am !

I love it. LoL. Dumbest lightbulb on the Xmas tree. I was the one that kept flickering in and out. Lol

I was stupid and ignorant too. Attempted to taper God knows how many times and for the longest time my doc kept saying " it must be your original condition coming back". I believed it EVERYTIME and never once stopped to consider, wait a minute. Anxiety and depression and panic attacks were NEVER an original condition. I never had these before meds. LoL

Glad we can laugh about it now. Id say that's progress!!

[imac]

I think they should pay all of us for our pain and suffering whether we talk or not. That's my 2 cents lol.

I agree 100%

[nz11]

I want to put this here before i loose it again.It is a great peice of writing jammed full of info and stats. Well worth having.

 

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/side-effects/201107/antidepressant-withdrawal-syndrome

 

In May 2007,... New York Times,.... Bruce Stutz wrote a long and thoughtful piece on his own difficulties ending a treatment of Effexor (Venlafaxine). Stutz also reported some of the clinical literature to-date on the phenomenon.

 

In 1997, he explained, "nearly a decade after the introduction of Prozac, its manufacturer, Eli Lilly, sponsored a research symposium to address the increasing number of reports of patients who had difficult symptoms after going off their antidepressants. By then it had become clear that drug-company estimates that at most a few percent of those who took antidepressants would have a hard time getting off were far too low. Jerrold Rosenbaum and Maurizio Fava, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital, found that among people getting off antidepressants, anywhere from 20 percent to 80 percent (depending on the drug) suffered what was being called antidepressant withdrawal (but which, after the symposium, was renamed ‘discontinuation syndrome')." (The percentages noted in the study in fact ranged from 22% to 78% of patients discontinuing, with 78% still representing a distressingly high number.)

"The symptoms of discontinuation syndrome could be fierce," Stutz added, as he recounted in considerable detail, at varying doses, his own harassing problems with "brain zaps," panic attacks, insomnia, and despair on lower and lower doses of Effexor. Fava, he noted, went on to publish in 2006 a paper citing further withdrawal symptoms, such as "agitation, anxiety, akathesia, panic attacks, irritability, aggressiveness, worsening of mood, dysphoria, crying spells or mood lability, overactivity or hyperactivity, depersonalization, decreased concentration, slowed thinking, confusion and memory/concentration difficulties." To the authors, these symptoms and their widespread recurrence looked increasingly like a drug-related syndrome.

 

After Rosenbaum and Fava drew clinical attention to "discontinuation syndrome," several more studies unearthed comparable difficulties among those trying to end SSRI antidepressant treatment. Sometimes couched as a dependency issue, and sometimes also mistakenly viewed as a form of relapse in which the original depression or anxiety treated is said to recur, withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants have come to be seen among these researchers as a serious pharmacological problem in their own right. The symptoms stem, the researchers argue, from the neurological effects of the drugs' retention of serotonin and the consequent downregulation of neurotransmitters that are once again needed (though in short supply) when treatment ends.

 

As Kramer's silence on the topic last week helps illustrate, however, there has been enormous resistance among advocates of SSRIs (and, naturally, among their manufacturers) to addressing this issue. Only recently have a few researchers tried to isolate for withdrawal syndrome, rather than group such symptoms with adverse effects and with assumptions about relapse.

In "Rebound Syndrome: When Drug Treatments Fail," a chapter of my book Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, I focused extensively on

 

GlaxoSmithKline's own "product monograph" for Paxil (Paroxetine hydrochloride), which the drug-maker updated in 2005, following a chorus of complaints about the drug's well-documented side effects. Those bear a rather startling resemblance to the discontinuation syndrome that Rosenbaum and Fava earlier documented. The side effects range, the drug-maker conceded, all the way from "agitation, anxiety, headache, tremor, confusion, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and sweating" to "mental status changes that include extreme agitation progressing to delirium and coma" (qtd. p. 142; the manual can be downloaded here).

"Recent analyses" of the drug's effect on patients under the age of 18 recognized "behavioral and emotional changes, including an increased risk of suicide ideation," GSK noted with obvious reluctance, following the FDA's decision in August the previous year (2004) to add a black-box warning about the drug-related risks of suicide on teens and young adults prescribed the antidepressant.

 

Since the list of "severe agitation-type adverse events" in teens and adults included "self-harm or harm to others," GSK went on to add, as well as "disinhibition, emotional lability, unpredictable mood swings, hostility, aggression, depersonalization, [and] akathisia," a serious condition marked by extreme motor restlessness, apparently none of the several million people taking the drug could safely be said not to require "rigorous clinical monitoring for suicidal ideation"—an almost unbelievable outcome, voiced by the drug-manufacturer itself, for a company still encouraging the public to take Paxil for anxiety about going to parties and fear of being criticized. As USA Today noted at the time, "20 percent of patients treated with Paxil in worldwide clinical trials in major depressive disorder and 16.1 percent of patients treated with Paxil in worldwide trials in social anxiety disorder . . . discontinued treatment due to an adverse event."

In the same chapter, I documented further evidence of such "adverse events" by citing the extant literature on discontinuation syndrome and interviewing one member of paxilprogress.org who has continued to track the research on SSRIs and withdrawal syndrome with impressive diligence and care. "Kate," as she's dubbed in the book, following her request for anonymity, described to me at the time how she was given Paxil because she thought she had social anxiety disorder, and how, after initially responding well to the drug, she carefully tapered her dose when she felt better. "I immediately had a whopping reaction," she despaired. "Three months of quasimania . . . followed by six months of anxiety, insomnia, periodic brain zaps, and total uninterest in sex." Other drugs, prescribed by "well-meaning psychiatrists," only worsened her anxiety, weepiness, and sense of hopelessness. She said she felt worse, coping with Paxil's aftereffects, than she did before starting treatment.

 

There are clear neurological reasons, Kate explained and follow-up research corroborated, why an SSRI antidepressant like Paxil would generate a withdrawal syndrome. First, while this class of drugs artificially raises the amount of serotonin in the brain, the serotonergic system doesn't ignore the increase, but adjusts to and compensates for it, downregulating the number of 5-HT1A receptors because the drugs, altering serotonin levels, put them in less demand. At the same time, the serotonergic system needs more 5-HT2 receptors to soak up the excess of the messenger, a situation many studies have linked to patients' widespread complaints of sexual dysfunction, because those receptors send saturation signals to the brain. In 2002, in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, to invoke just one study, Adam Opbroek and his colleagues found that "80% of patients with SSRI-induced sexual dysfunction also describe clinically significant blunting of several emotions" (p. 147).

 

When patients try to end treatment, even stepping down their dose very gradually, many of them (22% to 78%, according to Rosenbaum and Fava) find that the receptors in their serotonergic system--saturated artificially for months, even years--experience the drop to predrug levels as starvation. Some patients then find themselves at the mercy of hair-trigger symptoms that register as intense anxiety, aggression, and insomnia.

Several receptors--including 5-HT1A--aren't especially malleable, moreover, and take longer to sprout anew after drug treatment ends, delaying the patient's return to neuronal health. Indeed, some studies I consulted found that in certain patients those receptors fail to grow back at all, in effect leaving the patients worse off than before. (See for instance "Dissociation of the Plasticity of 5-HT1A Sites and 5-HT Transporter Sites" in Paxil Research Studies 19.3 [1994], 311-15.)

 

As the proportion of SSRI-takers found to suffer from discontinuation syndrome is, by pharmacological standards, astronomical, and "one in ten Americans"--roughly 30 million people in the U.S. alone--"ingests" the drugs each year, as Peter Kramer noted only last week, it seems incredible that clinical trials have been so slow to recognize, and isolate for, withdrawal syndrome in patients trying to taper and end SSRI treatment. The number of people affected would, in any normal situation, drive a lot more targeted research on the problem.

 

However, while drug-companies have done their best to redefine withdrawal syndrome as relapse, to confuse doctors and patients into thinking the original depression or anxiety had returned, the good news is that research is starting to focus exclusively on the widespread problem of SSRI withdrawal syndrome.

Today, in her 7th year of recovery from severe Paxil withdrawal syndrome, "Kate"--also known as "Altostrata"--runs a website called "Surviving Antidepressants" that compiles research and data explicitly on the syndrome. She is still "hypersensitive to neuroactive medications," she reports, and recovering from severe setbacks 33 months after discontinuation, but with the help of a doctor who treats and has studied withdrawal syndrome, she is slowly recovering.

In addition to providing peer support for patients struggling to end their SSRI-treatment without massive, harmful problems, "Surviving Antidepressants" notifies readers of research-in-progress, including by Dr. Carlotta Belaise, a colleague of Fava's and a frequent co-author with him of scientific papers challenging the long-term use of antidepressants. While Dr. Fava's research recently has been publicized on sites such as The Daily Beast, Dr. Belaise, a research fellow in the Affective Disorders Program of the department of psychology at the University of Bologna, Italy, is collecting data on antidepressant withdrawal syndrome, "which," she writes, "we strongly believe is a very important, common and delicate clinical problem." (Update, October 19, 2012: the published results appear here; they're also summarized here.)

 

Precisely because of that delicacy, patients concerned about the drugs' adverse effects should NOT terminate their treatment abruptly, but should instead taper their dose very carefully and gradually, over a course of several months, always in consultation with their doctor, to ensure their own safety.

What follows is a list of links to articles (compiled by Altostrata for this blog), which those wanting to know more about SSRI withdrawal syndrome will find on "Surviving Antidepressants." The vast numbers of people suffering from this syndrome are very much in Altostrata's debt for helping to document this phenomenon and for giving it the medical attention it so clearly needs and deserves. The results of Dr. Belaise's study can be found just below. They indicate that 58% of the patients studied (7 out of 12) "reported persistent postwithdrawal symptoms: 3 of 3 paroxetine patients, 2 of 2 citalopram, 1 of 1 fluvoxamine, 1 of 3 escitalopram and none of both sertraline and fluoxetine patients."

 

Further References

(2012) "Patient Online Report of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor-Induced Persistent Postwithdrawal Anxiety and Mood Disorders": http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/3132-belaise-2012-patient-online-report-of-selective-serotonin-reuptake-inhibitor-induced-persistent-postwithdrawal-anxiety-and-mood-disorders/page__fromsearch__1

(2011) "Blue Again: Perturbational Effects of Antidepressants": http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/749-2011-blue-again-perturbational-effects-of-antidepressants/

 

Background

(2001) "Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndromes: Common, Under-recognized and Not Always Benign": http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/781-2001-antidepressant-discontinuation-syndromes-common-under-recognised-and-not-always-benign/

 

Frequency

(2006) "The Nature of the Discontinuation Syndrome Associated with Antidepressant Drugs":
http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/822-2006-the-nature-of-the-discontinuation-syndrome-associated-with-antidepressant-drugs/

(2006) "Antidepressant Discontinuation Syndrome"
http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/823-2006-antidepressant-discontinuation-syndrome/

(2005) "Do Antidepressants Cause Dependence?":
http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/826-2005-do-antidepressants-cause-dependence/

(2003) "SSRI Discontinuation Syndrome": http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/824-2003-ssri-discontinuation-syndrome/

 

Prolonged Withdrawal Syndrome

(2007) "Effects of Gradual Discontinuation of Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors":
http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/669-effects-of-gradual-discontinuation-of-selective-serotonin-reuptake-inhibitors-in-panic-disorder-with-agoraphobia/

(2006) "Persistent Tardive Rebound Panic Disorder, Rebound Anxiety, and Insomnia":
http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/779-2006-persistent-tardive-rebound-panic-disorder-rebound-anxiety-and-insomnia/

(2006) From Dr. Richard Shelton on "Prolonged Withdrawal Syndrome":
http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/778-2006-from-dr-richard-shelton-about-prolonged-withdrawal-syndrome/

Neurobiology

(2003) "Neurobiology of Antidepressant Withdrawal":
http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/671-2003-neurobiology-of-antidepressant-withdrawal/

 

 

more info from this site

http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/392-one-theory-of-antidepressant-withdrawal-syndrome/

[nz11]

Got up this morning and logged in ...as you do ...and found this lovely quote i liked it so i put it here...

This member on wdl  makes this analogy ..

 

'serving time for a crime i didn't commit but parole is coming. 

 

Brilliant. I think its interesting that we often are drawn to similar analogies i can remember once saying ' I've been done by a crime now i must do the the (wdl) time'

 

angie007, on 25 May 2011 - 04:08 AM, said:

    Hey Healing and all here, when these horrible symptoms eventually go away, the last thing i need ever is to be reminded of this awful experience. I learned my lesson the hard way, good and proper - like us all, and the further away from paxil and all the misery it brings, the happier i am going to be. I already have an image of myself " healed and living in the normal world as a normal human being YIPPEEE, now........ Just serving my time for a crime i did not commit, but parole is coming lol.

................................................

Read a great analogy by moderator Rhi likening  wdl and the drugs brain alterations to a vine growing on a trellis and then the trellis is suddenly taken away. Unless that trellis was taken away very slowly there will be chaos and time needed for the plant to regrow and establish itself once more.

I once likened it to a rose that is suddenly staked hands tied and placed in front of a fire ...the petals close and shrink up and try to pull back then one day the stake and fire are removed and that poor rose now has to try to reestablish itself after such a torture.

 

I like Rhis wonderful articulation though and here it is:

 

A lot of people, including healthcare practitioners; in fact, I guess, most people-- are operating from entirely the wrong paradigm, or way of thinking, about these meds. They're thinking of them like aspirin--as something that has an effect when it's in your system, and then when it gets out of your system the effect goes away.
That's not what happens with medications that alter neurotransmitter function, we are learning.

What happens when you change the chemistry of the brain is, the brain adjusts its chemistry and structure to try to return to homeostasis, or biochemical and functional balance. It tries to restabilize the chemistry.

For example: SSRI antidepressants work as "serotonin reuptake inhibitors." That is, they cause serotonin to remain in the space between neurons, rather than being taken back up into the cells to be re-used, like it would be in a normal healthy nondrugged brain.

So the brain, which wants to re-establish normal signaling and function, adapts to the higher level of serotonin between neurons (in the "synapse", the space between neurons where signals get passed along). It does this by removing serotonin receptors, so that the signal is reduced and changed to something closer to normal. It also decreases the amount of serotonin it produces overall.

To do that, genes have to be turned on and off; new proteins have to be made; whole cascades of chemical reactions have to be changed, which means turning on and off OTHER genes; cells are destroyed, new cells are made; in other words, a complex physiologic remodeling takes place. This takes place over time. The brain does not grow and change rapidly.

This is a vast oversimplification of the amount of adaptation that takes place in the brain when we change its normal chemistry, but that's the principle.

When we stop taking the drug, we have a brain that has designed itself so that it works in the presence of the drug; now it can't work properly without the drug because it's designed itself so that the drug is part of its chemistry and structure. It's like a plant that has grown on a trellis; you can't just yank out the trellis and expect the plant to be okay.

When the drug is removed, the remodeling process has to take place in reverse.

SO--it's not a matter of just getting the drug out of your system and moving on. If it were that simple, none of us would be here.

It's a matter of, as I describe it, having to grow a new brain.

I believe this growing-a-new-brain happens throughout the taper process if the taper is slow enough. (If it's too fast, then there's not a lot of time for actually rebalancing things, and basically the brain is just pedaling fast trying to keep us alive.) It also continues to happen, probably for longer than the symptoms actually last, throughout the time of recovery after we are completely off the drug, which is why recovery takes so long.

With multiple drugs and a history of drug changes and cold turkeys, all of this becomes even more complicated. And if a person is started on these kinds of drugs at an early age before the brain has ever completely established normal mature functioning--well, it can't be good. (All of which is why I recommend an extremely slow taper particularly to anyone with a multiple drug history, a history of many years on meds, a history of past cold turkeys or frequent med changes, and a history of being put on drugs at a young age.)

This isn't intended to scare people, but hopefully to give you some idea of what's happening, and to help you respect and understand the process so you can work with it; ALSO, because you are likely to encounter many, many people who still believe these drugs work kind of like aspirin, or a glass of wine, and all you need to do is stop and get it out of your system.

Now you can explain to them that no, getting it out of your system is not the issue; the issue is, you need to regrow or at least remodel your brain. This is a long, slow, very poorly understood process, and it needs to be respected.
http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/6655-dignan-pre-work-for-an-eventual-taper-attempt/?p=98469

..............................................................................//..............................................

I like Rhi's call that doctors think this is an 'aspirin' type drug that can be taken intermittently whenever ...boy she is right on the money there. No one can take this intermittently without causing blunt force trauma to the brain triggered by continuous sequence of ct/ri, ct/ri ct

...................................//.............................................

Here is another from somewhere other explaining the process to another in another yet similar way.....

 

A simplified theory on what’s going on,
Start Paxil
serotonin builds up in the synapses in the brain
in response to the elevated serotonin, dopamine decreases.
Elevated serotonin results in increased adrenaline (a stress reaction that initially feels pretty good)
continued low-level adrenaline results in increased cortisol (weight gain).
The body attempts to regulate the serotonin by decreasing production, reuptake shuts down. So now you have normal to low serotonin in the brain, reuptake is still shut down, dopamine is low.
Now wean too fast and:
Reuptake starts up rapidly clearing serotonin from the synapse, production is still low, dopamine is still low and neurochemical chaos results.
Obviously this is very simplified since there are a ton of other processes going on, but you get the idea.

So while it doesn’t feel like Paxil is doing anything, it’s maintaining the imbalance it created.

At some point the body just can’t keep up with this and withdrawal can begin while still swallowing the pill.

................................................//...................................................................

One day i hope to be able to articulate this cacophany of jargon for myself. In the meantime ...........printed and filed !

 

............................//.......................................................................................

Just finding so much good stuff at the moment but .....yes......... i will get around to putting up my past yearly updates instead of ad hoc stuff i find...i promise.

[Ever]

"Every time I stopped I'd start crying"

 

That was my reason also for staying on the drug nz11.  

 

I have a friend who has been on some sort of sickness benefit for many years.   All she does to collect, is go off the drugs for a couple of weeks and then goes to the doc - she cries and cries and they then approve her benefit once more.  

[nz11]

Ever did i put that in another thread cant remember....

 

yeah that's right at about the 4th yr on paxil someone said to me ...

' nz11 why are you taking these drugs ..i can still remember my reply .....i replied 'because everytime i stop taking them i start crying so maybe i need them'  How &^%* ignorantly clueless was I ....it was just so wrong! I mean it had to be me right the drug is not addictive and safe right !

 

Its absolutely criminal.

 

If you google a oct 2011  issue of the listener you will find 400,000 people are on ad's .....front cover says "Antidepressants over 400,000 kiwis take them. What are they doing to you." If you can get this issue its well worth the read. In it a prominent Wellington journalist talks about being on prozac for 10 years and how he has terrible anxiety when he misses one dose....but he thinks it is HIM that is the problem, he is totally unaware that it is the drug. I made email contact with him once and tried to gently point this out...all to no avail.

It is truly outrageous ...

 

There even appears to be a follow up to it as i found this googling in March 2014 issue cant read it as one must subscribe but i might go to the library and track it down.

 

Just yesterday ....i heard of someone ...a family members friend who has now decided to stay on effexor/venlafaxine for life because he thinks he needs it.....! Last time they wdl him too fast he ended up in hospital and they gave him  ECT ..then sent back home ...with double the dose.

His speech is slurred, his hands shake and he has become as round as a telly tubby!

Edited January 16, 2015 by cymbaltawithdrawal5600
removed link per poster's request

[Junior]

I've talked to people who say things like, "I tried to come off but I'm not ready yet". They think the w/d is the real them and that they haven't healed from whatever their original was.  I've mentioned w/d too but they don't want to know.  It's frustrating.

[Ever]

It's depressing, thinking that even when you tell someone that it's not them, it's the drug, that they don't believe you.   Will this ever change?    Depressing...