TedDykle: hi

[TedDykle]

I'll just go by Ted.  20+ years on some sort of AD.  Mostly lexapro last 10 years, 20mg nightly.  Depression came and went usually helped in the short term by the pills and I would stop and the restart the "meds".  Finally lost their efficacy and I went CT 13-14 months ago.

 

I am no longer myself.  I don't really know who the hell I am anymore.  I don't want to do anything.  I have withdrawn from anything that requires social interaction.  I can't seem to find the motivations to do much of anything at all.

 

I have always been considered higher than average intelligence.  Now I feel like an idiot.  Memory and cognitive impairment, lack of any feeling/emotion, tinnitus, muscle twitches, rapidly degrading eyesight, etc., etc..

 

Had a full-on seizure about 3 mo after stopping lexapro.  Never had one before in my 50 yrs, and havn't had one since. 

 

I can't say that many of the posts here have given me a warm fuzzy about ever recovering from this fully.  I wish I had never met these drugs.  I am, however, functioning. 

[Altostrata]

Welcome, Ted.

 

We very often see people experiencing emotional anesthesia after going off these drugs in a less than very gradual manner. This tends to fade, but you have to work at it in the meantime.

 

How did you go off Lexapro? Did you have any withdrawal symptoms afterward? Did you get prescribed drugs after the seizure? (This could very well be related to going off Lexapro too fast.)

[ChessieCat]

Hi Ted and welcome to SA,

 

We ask all members to create a drug signature.  Please follow this format:

 

A request: Would you summarize your history in a signature - ALL drugs, doses, dates, and discontinuations & reinstatements, in the last 12-24 months particularly?

• Please leave out symptoms and diagnoses.
• A list is easier to understand than one or multiple paragraphs. 

• Any drugs prior to 24 months ago can just be listed with start and stop years.
• Please use actual dates or approximate dates (mid-June, Late October) rather than relative time frames (last week, 3 months ago)
• Spell out months, e.g. "October" or "Oct."; 9/1/2016 can be interpreted as Jan. 9, 2016 or Sept. 1, 2016.
• Link to Account Settings – Create or Edit a signature.

 

This is your own Introduction topic where you can ask questions and journal your progress.

[Marmot]

On 29/11/2017 at 10:50 AM, TedDykle said:

I can't say that many of the posts here have given me a warm fuzzy about ever recovering from this fully.  I wish I had never met these drugs.  I am, however, functioning. 

 

Hey TedDykle,

 

Thanks for sharing your story. I'm also a new member. You might want to check out the success stories section if you haven't yet, because it looks like people are making it out of this mess intact; it does seem to take a lot of time and effort though. I'm still coming to terms with that myself, as I would ideally be back at work by now. By the way, I don't see any reason to think that your cognition won't come back!

 

Cheers,

Marmot

 

[nz11]

Ted welcome to SA so glad you found this site.

Oh my goodness I cant believe that you CT 20mg of Lexapro after 10 years use.

I cannot imagine the drug induced wdl suffering (hell) that would trigger. (I think I could have a good guess though).

Are you currently drug free ? Are you able to do a drug sig as cc requested?

 

You are not alone.

nz11

[TedDykle]

Oh yes, it was hell.  Still is.

 

I would like to add that I was drinking large quantities of aspartame sweetened drinks for the 2 years prior to quitting the lexapro.  Do some research on that stuff if you want some entertaining reading.

 

lexapro/aspartame free now.  I was put on klonopin 1mg nightly that I cut to .5mg 10 days ago.  That's some fun stuff too.

 

I think it's hilarious that these substances are legal, but if I smoke a joint I'm a criminal.

 

For the minute, not feeling too bad.

[TedDykle]

Update.

 

Two weeks of half dose of klonopin and things have leveled out.  Not sure how much of what I feel is the klonopin and how much is the after effects of SSRI's.  Flu-like symptoms are mostly gone, as are the random aches and pains.  Ringing in ears is still pretty bad.  Anxiety is about a 5 on a 10 scale.

 

I'll go a little longer and cut the klonopin in half again and see how it goes.

[manymoretodays]

Hi Ted,

 

Have you visited or started a thread on our Benzo forum?  You might find that helpful at this stage of your journey.

 

Best,

mmt

[TedDykle]

11 minutes ago, manymoretodays said:

Hi Ted,

 

Have you visited or started a thread on our Benzo forum?  You might find that helpful at this stage of your journey.

 

Best,

mmt

I did briefly.  Right now I think the klonopin is doing more good than harm.  I'm ok with the .5mg dose at night and I believe the long half life of clonazapam is helping keep anxiety at bay.

 

Thank you for the reply.

[RealMe]

TedDykle said:  I have the tinnitus after CT lexapro 14 months ago.  Constant from the time I wake up. Diet stress, etc., has no real effect on it.

 

I've learned to live with it and consider it to be one of the more benign WD symptoms.

 

Hi TedDykle,

I'm still trying to learn how to live with tinnitus, and I was encouraged that you have had some success with that.  How are you doing?  I see you haven't posted for a while.

Best,

RealMe

[TedDykle]

Hi Realme, It's not so much that I've had any success fixing it as I've just learned to live with it.  Most times if I don't think about it I don't notice it so much.  It's always there.

[Rosetta]

Ted,

 

Your cog function will come back.  I understand how scary it is to feel you have lost your intelligence, but it's temporary.  (All the symptoms are temporary.). You may find that hard to believe until you start to feel your intelligence coming back.  

 

As you can see below, I took ADs for 15 years.  My cog function is coming back.  I felt very "stupid" for many months.  This was one of the scariest symptoms for me.  It was as scary as the intense anxiety because it was constant rather than intermittent.  A lot of people have anxiety and physical symptoms such as tinnitus, aches, joint pain, etc.  I didn't see too many people on this site complain about the loss of cog function or executive function.  I thought I was more severely injured than they were and that I was permanently brain damaged.  I wasn't.  

 

This is may shock you: in the midst of all that deeply impaired cog function I could read books and understand them, and I learned to play the violin!  The brain is/was working, but it is/was focusing on something other than what I might believe I want it to.  My husband would insist that I wasn't dumb; he could give me many examples to support that assertion, but I felt dumb each time my brain did not work the way I expected it to work.  The brain is healing, and it's ignoring everything we want it to do while it rebuilds what has been lost to the AD. It can't worry about finding words or whether the dishes are being washed.  It's busy rebuilding the structures that use neurotransmitters and making neurotransmitters that it hasn't had to make in a very long time.  It's diverting energy and focus from all the things it used to do -- all the things we took for granted while it was getting the AD.  That is very confusing and upsetting to us, but it has to happen.

 

Why do so few people complain about this symptom?  I believe that the loss of cog function is very hard to describe -- hard to put into words -- and it's the least of one's worries if sky high, constant anxiety is a daily battle.  I wonder whether by the time a person in ADWD has realized she had lost cog function it had started to improve.  Many people don't want to admit they feel "dumb."  Of course, constant anxiety is going to impair cog function in anyone.  I suspect many people assume the fear is making them unable to think. There must be many reasons that this symptom is not reported, but I am certain that it has been one of my worst, most worrisome symptoms, and I am so relieved to find it is lifting.

 

For a long time I didn't know about ADWD.  So, I didn't know what had happened to my brain.  It helped me to find SA.  I found the knowledge that the ADs and WD had caused my cog abilities to degrade somewhat comforting.  At least there was an explanation.  

 

For me the loss of cog function was very gradual for years while I took Zoloft after a cold turkey from Celexa.  In fact, I think I had impaired cog function while I was on Celexa given how hard it was to do my job sometimes.  (My job was to think, analyze, write and convince others that I was right.  Imagine that in the midst of AD impaired cog function.). When I quit Celexa cold turkey and started Zoloft I had a new baby.  So, I didn't connect the cessation of Celexa to declining cog function.  Then, 5 1/2 years later after a rapid taper from Zoloft the cog function declined dramatically.  I can see now that it was compromised long before I quit taking Zoloft, but not to the same degree.  After the rapid taper it was obvious that I had lost cognitive and executive function quickly and drastically.

 

Now, I can feel my brain and my intelligence coming back even from one day to the next.  I can understand more easily and quickly.  When I came to the site at first I couldn't understand anything.  I was probably too anxious, but I believe it was more than that.   You should read this site regardless because one day all the information will coalesce.

 

For me there have been various incarnations of impaired cog function: demotivation is caused by ADWD.  One isn't simply confused, one is uninterested in taking action, or if one does feel inspired to take action - has motivation -- one can't follow through.  The executive function isn't working.  I would/will think of something I wanted, or more often needed, and I couldn't take the steps to get that object.  Either I lost motivation or I couldn't turn motivation into action.  Inability to plan is another symptom.  Sometimes I could not/cannot formulate a plan.  I would try to write one out, but I would become confused and feel that my plan wasn't complete or was nonsensical.  Ability to remember and form memories may be impaired, too.  Often, I cannot find the word for a simple object -- a spoon -- I'm was looking at a spoon; I needed that spoon, but I couldn't tell my husband what I needed.  I could say "that metal thing that I use to eat," but I couldn't say "spoon."  The inability to find a word is a frequent complaint on this board.  

 

Bottom line -- try to keep your most demanding cognitive activities in the time of day you are least anxious.  Remember two things:

1. You will improve and completely heal eventually;

2. Healing is not linear.  SA calls it "windows and waves."  Windows are when symptoms are less intense or cease.  This non-linear preogression is very surprising and even if one knows and accepts this fact, it is still very, very hard to handle.  It's disheartening and even scary.  After having a symptom improve its hard to fall back to having a symptom become more intense, but the overall progression is positive.  Many people cope by believing that when they have more intense symptoms the brain is healing a great deal.  This is as likely the case as not.  I believe it's true that the brain diverts it's attention to repair when I am expecting it to focus on what I want.  I become very anxious about it sometimes, but that doesn't help matters.  

 

I hope this is useful to you.

 

Rosetta

 

 

[TedDykle]

Rosetta, thank you for the detailed post of your experience. 

 

Right now some days are better than others and I have to force myself to concentrate on things.  I have a class I'm teaching that forces me to break things down to a beginner level and somehow I think that helps to get my mind working and jog some things loose from the cobwebs.

 

To throw some extra gas on the fire, I'm learning how to deal with losses, both personal and professional, that have accumulated over the years and that adds to the anxiety, guilt, and feelings of worthlessness.

 

Life is a soup sandwich.

[Rosetta]

I see.  The professional and personal loses are tough.  In light of that, let me caution you about a couple of things:

 

You mentioned that you might cut the benzo in half at some point.  Carefully tapering the benzo is probably very important for your brain in particular because you have experienced WD symptoms from the AD cessation.  I say this because of what I have seen on this forum and because of my experience stopping Celexa without a taper and then stopping Zoloft without a proper taper.  There were 5 1/2 years between my sudden cessation of each AD..  I can't be sure, but it's possible that the first cold turkey cessation made the second too fast taper result in more severe WD symptoms.  That's the theory.  You could look up the concept of "kindling" on this forum to understand why I urge caution  You might wish you had learned as much as possible about quitting a benzo before cutting a dose in half.  Please have a look at the SA members only benzo forum, start a thread and ask around about benzo tapers.

 

The second point I have is about the losses you said you have suffered.  As your brain changes, you might experience some intense emotions that you would not feel so intensely were it not for the AD having been in your system previously.  SA calls them neuro-emotions.  Not everyone will experience them, but if you do start to feel a lot worse about your losses, take a look at the neuro-emotions information here.  Let it assure you that things are not in reality as bad as they may seem to you.  

 

The neuro-emotions can intersect with a sort of "time travel" phenomenon.  I went through a period of remembering past loses, both distant and more near, and experiencing very intense emotions about those losses.  My husband could not convince me that did not feel as badly about those losses when they were more near.  To me it was as if those losses had happened yesterday.  It was as if I had never had any time to heal or as if time had never mollified the grief.  Some people call them "time travel" emotions.  They fade and one suddenly returns to being the person who has processed that grief normally.  I have to wonder if as the brain is repairing itself there is a sort of amnesia like experience surrounding those memories of loss.  Intellectually, one knows the time has passed, one even remembers having healed from the grief, but the grief is suddenly there again as if no time had passed.  On top of this time travel like emotional upheaval, one is experiencing real-time grief, of course, over the loss of normal functioning.  

 

I gave up my career midway through WD.  I also had a child who was beginning to grow out of toddlerhood when the Zoloft stopped working properly (about one year before I stopped taking it.). Literally, I felt as if my child was dying every time I noticed that she had changed as she was transitioning from a 4 1/2 year old toddler to a 6 year old the little girl.  I experienced this increasingly distressful recurrent grief over 2 1/2 years.  No one around me could understand.  The other mothers felt normal sadness that their babies were growing up and so did my husband.  The emoticón eventually morphed into a mor rational but still outsized fear that my child would die, and I found it very hard to let her go on about normal life, riding in cars, having colds, being away from me for even a minute.  Now, I'm sad when I see my little one has changed, but it's not the level of grief that her death would have caused by a long shot, and I don't worry too much more than might be normal about losing her.

 

Reading the neuro-emotions topic might help you to avoid becoming more worried and it might prevent you from trying another med to address what may seem to be a worsening of depression or anxiety.  A fair number of people in ADWD are told by a psychiatrist that the underlying condition is reemerging and that they may need ADs for life.  This is because the psychiatrists have no research that follows patients more than 3 months after they stop taking ADs.  The psychiatrists believe any WD should be completed at that point and the brain should be operating as it would if it were a "virgin" brain never touched by ADs.  The sheer number of almost identical stories on this site indicate that belief is hogwash.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if many psychiatrists suspect there is another explanation, but until someone documents it in a study the psychiatrists don't dare to contradict the findings of the currently published, but too short studies (all controlled and funded by the pharm companies.). 

 

So, there's your unsolicited advice! Lol, Have a nice day.

 

Rosetta

[TedDykle]

Thanks again for taking the time to make such a well written and articulate post.  That's a lot to think about.

 

Yesterday was a bad day.  I'm hoping for better today.

[Rosetta]

You are welcome.  I, too, hope your day is better.

[TedDykle]

Hi all,

 

Sorry I just kind of dropped off the map for the last 10 months.

 

Coming up on 2 years AD free and I'd love to tell you that I have made a miraculous recovery, but that would be bullsh*t.

 

Don't get me wrong, things are better than they were 10 months ago.  I went back and re-read my old posts and tried to remember what exactly I was feeling.  I find myself struggling with feeling nothing except anxiety.  A collection of stupid little issues (along with a few large ones) that add up to a dumpster fire in my head.   The only peace I seem to have is when I sleep, and that is compliments of the klonopin. 

 

A day with nothing to do is an invitation to a day of self inflicted misery.  There is no "relax".  This is taking a toll on my relationship with what I thought was the most patient and tolerant woman I've ever met who is ready to run into the hills screaming along with many professional relationships that have just quietly atrophied.  

 

I have it all.  Job, home, toys, property, and still am miserable.  Any of you several years off AD and have hope to offer?

 

 

[jozeff]

Hi Ted!

 

I was wondering how you are doing these days?

 

Cheers

 

Jozeff

[TedDykle]

Hello everyone,

 

It has been a little over three years since I CT'd 20mg/day lexapro.  I'm still alive, though it has cost me dearly.

 

I took my retirement because anger issues have left me completely unable to deal with idiots and mediocrity.  I can easily live on my pension so money really isn't an issue.

I lost a 5 year romantic relationship due to anger issues along with many, many "friends".

 

4 close friends have died in the last two years.  Now I am alone and dealing with the impending death of a parent.  I cant really tell where the damage that SSRI's did end, and the $^itshow that is my life begins.  I AM STILL NOT RIGHT AFTER THREE YEARS would be the bullet point here.  I'm still 80% dead inside.  What does come to the surface is tears.  So, I can feel something. 

 

Sometimes I just have to shake my head that pot and vaping are bad, but antidepressants are good. 

 

 

[Altostrata]

Hello, Ted. Thanks for returning.

 

I'm sorry you're still feeling the effects of having gone off Lexapro. Are you still taking Klonopin or another benzo? How's your sleep?

 

How has your symptom pattern changed over the last 6 months?

[TedDykle]

Yes, still on the Klonopin.  1mg before bed.  I usually wake up at least three times a night.

 

As far as the symptom pattern, I guess with everything that has happened in the last 6 months, I lost track of it.  Symptoms from the SSRI's have just kind of blended into the emotional chaos of my life this last 6 or 9 months.

 

I feel like I have been left at a disadvantage to deal with life emotionally.

[drugged]

"For me there have been various incarnations of impaired cog function: demotivation is caused by ADWD.  One isn't simply confused, one is uninterested in taking action, or if one does feel inspired to take action - has motivation -- one can't follow through.  The executive function isn't working.  I would/will think of something I wanted, or more often needed, and I couldn't take the steps to get that object.  Either I lost motivation or I couldn't turn motivation into action.  Inability to plan is another symptom.  Sometimes I could not/cannot formulate a plan.  I would try to write one out, but I would become confused and feel that my plan wasn't complete or was nonsensical.  Ability to remember and form memories may be impaired, too.  Often, I cannot find the word for a simple object -- a spoon -- I'm was looking at a spoon; I needed that spoon, but I couldn't tell my husband what I needed.  I could say "that metal thing that I use to eat," but I couldn't say "spoon."  The inability to find a word is a frequent complaint on this board." 

 

Thank you for this @Rosetta  This really resonates with me.  

 

 

"I think it's hilarious that these substances are legal, but if I smoke a joint I'm a criminal." 

 

@TedDykle I like this.  I've often thought along similar lines.  Hanging on to a sense of humor or, as I sometimes think of it, a sense of the ridiculous is, for me,  an important coping skill.  When I can manage to find something (darkly) humorous about the effects of these drugs and the effort to withdraw from them it helps immensely.

 

 

 

[Altostrata]

Hello, @TedDykle, how are you doing?