Gonzo: Sertraline 50mg chaos and withdrawal

[Gonzo]

I noticed with all these new insights that these withdrawal sensations that I learned years ago trigger when my early "maladaptive" schemas/early traumas get triggered, and it doesn't take too much for that to happen because I have a lot of them and almost anything can trigger them.

[Gonzo]

I made huge and painful progress these days and I think I have lots of ideas that could help many people suffering this hell. Maybe I'll share them soon.

[Gonzo]

I think I finally made it to the other side.

[didiyana]

Hello, @Гонзо!

I tried to read your entire topic, and maybe it was excerpts in some places. I'm also recovering from Sertraline withdrawal, I had terrible headaches, but I endured them for a whole month before doing CT - because that's what my doctor told me. I don't have ADR, because I felt good 10 days after the cancellation, but on the 10th day I felt sick, and it's been like this for 6 months.

 

Do you really think that you recovered after the cancellation? It sounds great 🙏

Have you had depression or derealization? These are two of my worst symptoms

[Gonzo]

Hi @didiyana if you read my whole topic that's incredible and it must have been exhausting, so congrats haha I hope you found something useful.

 

I think my withdrawal is over, these days I'm dealing with identity disturbances caused by the drug and lifelong trauma among other not so great life circumstances. I realize this is why I called my introduction topic "Sertraline 50mg chaos and withdrawal", because of the identity disturbances and reality shock that happened to me when I stopped taking the pills and I was in acute withdrawal.

 

I called these chemically induced identity disturbances pill brainwashing, essentially the pills made me confuse my real and normal self with my drugged self, that is because my Sertraline chemical self(/persona) actually became my normal self for the 3 years I took the pills and I had no clue how it was affecting me, so when my real non drugged self came back I couldn't recognize myself and I felt that there was something wrong with me.

 

What is ADR?

 

I had the issues you mentioned, headaches probably too I can't remember now so many things have happened inside of me and in my life since I stopped taking the pills.

 

I have a different approach regarding psychiatric drugs withdrawal than the one this site uses because I also take into account previous trauma and the mental and emotional state that people had when they started using these drugs to cope with whatever was happening to them. From my point of view withdrawal is a triggering event that can unleash chemically suppressed and psychologically buried traumas.

 

My understanding is more holistic.

 

If you have any question don't hesitate. DM too if you need It.

 

Hope you do well.

[BaccatePlayer]

6 minutes ago, Gonzo said:

What is ADR?

From the context, it looks like "adverse reaction".

[Gonzo]

By Sertraline chemical self/persona I meant they way you feel and behave under the numbing and stimulant effects of these SSRI, when they "work", also related to medication spellbinding.

[Gonzo]

2 hours ago, BaccatePlayer said:

From the context, it looks like "adverse reaction".

It could be idk.

 

Thinking about this pill brainwashing I told about is the worst thing that happened to me for the past 7 years of my life.

 

This led me to believe that there was something wrong with me, not even happening to me, but with me, as a person, when my real self came back, and I tried to "fix" it while led me to finally fall into psychiatry trap while trying to "recover" "myself" and come back to my "normal" self.

 

There is also trauma happening here because my real self didn't feel valuable to me, because how other people treated and abused me, including psychiatry, so in my traumatized and chemically confused mind my real self was a danger and an invasor, an enemy.

 

I've been myself, my real self, since I stopped taking the goddamn pills in 2020, but my mind has been confused all this time and terrified of my true character because It felt "disordered" to me and its reactions too intense to be "normal".

 

Ain't all this crazy?

 

This is what happened to me.

[didiyana]

I agree 😅

 

In recent days, I've been spending a lot of time on my phone to find my ray of light at the end of the tunnel

 

I don't even know if it's good that, according to you, you have changes in personality after the drugs, it sounds like you haven't fully recovered yet

 

ADR is an immediate side reaction, I think. I'm not a native English speaker, I apologize if there are mistakes in my words.

 

Regarding the condition earlier, in my case, I had not experienced such symptoms before, which I faced now. Thank you for your experience, I hope you have fully recovered from these symptoms.

[Gonzo]

Yes there are lots of great people online that will help you, @BaccatePlayer is a great example you should follow him and take a look at his introduction topic.

 

My chemically induced identity disturbances are getting better tho.

 

Hope you do well.

[didiyana]

I'm very sorry that you had to go through this, I think a good psychotherapist may help you forget this unpleasant experience. I work with a psychotherapist, but I couldn't say that it's very successful, since my symptoms are psychiatric, and nothing affects them so much, only distraction, if possible

 

Thank you very much for sharing your experience, it is very valuable!

[Gonzo]

For me no, they didn't help me that much for many reasons, I'm in fact strongly against the mainstrean understanding and view regarding mental health and my personal experience has taught me that even if a therapist can help with certain issues you have to play Russian roulette to find a good one and I played enough that game. But I hope you find the understanding, support and validation you need with the current one or another one. If withdrawal is your only issue then I really really suggest you to follow the previously mentioned user, he is awesome and helped a lot of people already with that. My experience and "expertise" with psychiatric drugs withdrawal is more towards the traumatic side of it, you know, because it's really a scary and very complex experience.

 

Another thing, most MH workers really don't know anything about withdrawal and they can diagnose you with mental disorders and illnesses instead, please be careful.

[didiyana]

Yes, I've already been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but it's complete nonsense, of course

 

Yes, the conclusion is really my only problem, as it made me not functional in my waves of depression, with derealization a little easier to work. Before Zoloft, I had problems, and they were related to life situations where it was normal to worry, but for some reason my doctor decided that I had a generalized anxiety disorder, although I did not even fall under those criteria. Now those life situations are over, and I no longer have anxiety, which is very surprising with WD.

[Gonzo]

So glad to hear that @didiyana. I don't know if you know about the antipsichiatry movement but there are a lot of victims of psychiatry like us there and I found that many of them are very kind and smart as hell but also lots of people with many issues of course that psychiatry doesn't help to solve. If you wanna take a look you can go to r/Antipsichiatry in Reddit, I'm very active there in fact. Lots of problems with psychiatry. Sadly I can't offer too much advice regarding the withdrawal experience because for me it was more about trauma coming back and other traumatic things that I experienced at the time, including these horrible chemically induced identity disturbances.

[didiyana]

I'll watch this thread on Reddit

I don't really deny that some people may need drugs, but it should be as an extreme measure of treatment, when all other attempts are tried, and other medical problems are excluded, and not as a "vitamin for all problems". The doctor assured me about the safety, how much he was mistaken..

I heard that Reddit has a lot of bad things, but I don't know if it's for sure

[Gonzo]

Yeah I agree with you. There a lot of sh*tty things about Reddit personally I use it mostly just for that subreddit and another one related to complex trauma (C-PTSD), anything else I'm not interested in.

[Gonzo]

I feel like I finally got my stuff together in my mind, like I collected all the pieces that I needed to make sense of my experiences, but still have some difficulty changing gears, but now it's just a matter of time. The chaos is solved.

[Gonzo]

I realized something very crazy these past days... I've been trying to "recover" "myself" since Jan 2021 but what I was actually doing was to repress my real, true character self and real emotions that came back when I came off of Sertraline cold turkey in August 2020, because I wanted to recover my chemically tranquilized persona, ie to be the way I was when I took the pills, emotionally sedated, to be "good" AKA "moral", "functional" and "myself", because I believed my drugged self to be my true and normal self due to the pill brainwashing and moral brainwashing as well, but it was impossible because to be like that again I'd need to be drugged as well and I never did again nor I wanted or want to, but I didn't realize it either because for me, in my chemically altered and confused mind, my drugged self was simply my normal and authentic self and it had nothing to with Sertraline, I had no idea that Sertraline was making me feel and behave the way I did, for me it was just me and I was in charge of my inner experiences and world. This happened because the anger and hate that came back when I stopped taking the pills were "immoral", abnormal and alien in my mind, not me. I was terrified of my true self and real emotions then. So regarding my real identity I've been recovered since late 2020. Just insane inner chaos, confusion and identity disturbances.

[Gonzo]

And since Jan 2021 my top priority in my life has been "self" "recovery" from "OCD", my psychiatric diagnosis, which I don't believe in anymore, and then from withdrawal, which I really suffered but I used to explain my change of personality, ie. why in my mind I stopped being "myself", lost "control", my "immoral" anger and hate came back and I became "evil". This is what I call moral brainwashing (or moral indoctrination), to see certain emotions and inner experiences as malignant, such as my anger and hate, which in reality they come from the oppression and traumas that I suffered in my life, so they are understandable reactions to traumatic life events, but I forgot my traumas and the oppression while I was taking Sertraline, sedated, numbed, detached, under the effects of its medication spellbinding.

 

I didn't change because of "OCD" or withdrawal, but because of Sertraline, and when I stopped taking the damn pills I came back to my senses, my true self returned, but it didn't feel like so in my mind, because due to said pill and moral brainwashings it felt just wrong, dangerous, defective, so my true self became my némesis, my enemy.

 

I guess in my mind my drugged self was essentially my non drugged and authentic self, and when my my REAL non drugged self came back it was like something wrong happening with me.

 

I wasted 4 years of invaluable time and energy just to recover this fake, chemically tranquilized and distorted Sertraline persona, and its all psychiatry fault.

 

No words can't describe what I feel. The sense of betrayal, the fear, by realizing all this.

 

It's beyond insidious and depressing, overwhelming.

[Gonzo]

Never in my life I could have imagined that I would have experience such madness, pure mind****.

 

I just wonder how all this happened, 7 years of my life vanished.

[Gonzo]

I definitely solved all this inner chaos but god I'm so exhausted...

[Gonzo]

I made this post in r/Antipsichiatry to explain the brainwashing that I experienced in the MH industry:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Antipsychiatry/s/4S9Kdyw4jO