The answer is NO . Try reading the works of Peter Breggin ( on stack) and watch the four corners episode S 2023 ep 31. All eye opening. Then I found out on one stack the drugs come with a black box warning ‼️ n the US and 70% of school shooters are on SSRI ‘s and or SNRI’s. Also a lot of meds for anxiety like Xanax and the benzodiazepines are highly addictive- if you don’t keep increasing the dose the panic attacks escalate. I found that out through personal experience. With Xanax at the time (80) I couldn’t get doctors to believe me. I ended up shaving the pills down with a razor, and it was as bad as withdrawing from heroin. Cramping gut parts n sweats nausea vomiting the whole deal. The other thing, if you gain weight while taking this stuff it stores in fat, and every couple of kilos you loose the withdrawals come back ( also personal experience)
I wonder what might have happened if a doctor had prescribed Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for you in the first place, rather than put you on medication?
You say “neither of the two doctors who prescribed me these drugs warned me about how difficult they can be to withdraw from. I wasn’t properly informed about potential side effects either”.
This is the big problem, these ‘doctors’ often have no idea what they’re doing, prescribing medicines and vaccines like sweets, they’re often not authentically qualified to obtain informed consent.
General practitioners…what are these people doing prescribing anti-depressants?! How much damage are they causing in the community?
And now they want to flog antidepressants over the counter, with not even any pretence about people being informed about these products.
The entire situation is INSANE!
Aren’t other people seeing yet that the medical industrial complex has gone batshit crazy, with no curbs on the pHarmaceutical industry, with so-called ‘regulation’ (the TGA) actually funded by industry, aka the foxes in charge of the chicken coop.
The diabolical Covid scam should be bringing this into high relief now, with the community deliberately terrorised about a disease it was known from the beginning wasn’t a serious threat to most people.
We have to rise up against this travesty, pursue the actual people accountable for the gross over-medicalisation of society with never-ending testing, medicines and vaccines, coupled with the impact of misinformation, pressure, coercion and manipulation.
The public health terrorism being played out in our society is the very antithesis of health.
What a nightmare you’ve been put through! I made 4 attempts before I came off steroids. With the medical profession I finally adopted the approach “you don’t live in my body, I do, so how can you know what’s right for me? “ I started to experiment with dosages…one 10mg tablet daily, or would 5mg do it, or a 5mg every 2 days? The worst experience was when my rheumatoid specialist changed the steroids to a new drug I later learned was a malarial drug. I told the 2 tablet prescribed dose and immediately my eyesight went. I stopped immediately but it took 10 days for the drug to clear my system. I later looked up the drug in a medical lexicon, and lo and behold one of the potential side effects was blindness! When I told him months later he blithely said “you should have stopped taking item”. Yeah right. It’s not his body so let’s experiment. I no longer trust doctors with anything. You have to monitor your own body. Doctors on the whole are simply taking a shot in the dark.
I was put on them as a child of 8... (I look back on this with disgust at the 'medical professionals' who thought this was a good idea. I don't blame my family as they love me and were doing what they were advised to by the 'experts' and all they wanted was for me to be healthy and happy). I have been on anti-depressants for decades now.
Because of the events of the last 4 years, I have made a decison to try alternative therapies for my depression and anxiety. I have found a psychiatrist to help me safely taper off the drugs, as well as seeing a naturopath and a social worker. I am looking at my diet, exercising, spending time appreciating God's creation, and above all, praying to the God who loves me and wants me to have an 'abudant' life.
I am now on a dosage that is 1/4 of what I was on last year. So far, so good.
Praying for all those in the same situation as me.
If there was an honest Doctor in the world they would book everyone straight into a CBT course, send them on a nutritional medicine course, provide a personal trainer and gym membership. Instead they get a nice backhander to ply everyone with dangerous and ineffective pills. Revolting.
My 40 year journey through medicine has involved 15 years in general practice before retraining in sports and exercise medicine, an area in which I have practiced for the last 18 years.
Part of my reason for changing disciplines is the growing adherence of mainstream medicine to pharmaceutical/ surgical paths for virtually all conditions (obesity, mental health, diabetes, heart disease, etc).
Sports and exercise medicine involves lifestyle assessment first with very few prescriptions, and even minimally invasive procedures often involve non-pharmaceutical regimes, such as autologous blood products.
I now also take between 30 and 60 minutes for each consultation, which enables a full social, diet and activity/ exercise assessment, and treatment emphasizes lifestyle improvements.
I find this kind of practice to be much more fulfilling and beneficial to both patients and myself.
Accordingly, I do not feel antidepressants should be available OTC.
I gradually tapered off SSRIs for 18/12 and stopped at Xmas 2023. Even though I had reduced the dose right down, the effects of withdrawal was not fun. Certainly nothing like your experiences though but still feelings of dissociation and of being very unstable mentally. I rode it out and now seem to be ok. Certainly scary stuff and there is no way it should be over the counter.
Yeah you had it rough. I came off them hard too. First time I failed and ended up in a psyche ward. The brain snaps are the most weird thing and floods of anxiety are horrific. Second time I stepped them down - Broke the pills up and reduced the dosage by about 10% per week until I was free of them. It worked. Horrible bloody things.
Yes I found out about the fat issue from a Dutch production late 80’s broadcast on SBS I think. I also found out that the receptors in the brain for anti depressants also share receptors for narcotics and synthetic narcotics. I discovered that one by accident when I was prescribed a synthetic narcotic when still on a maintenance dose of antidepressants. Violent reaction - crushing headache, projectile vomiting. I should disclose I’m an ex nurse, was married to a psychiatrist, and I’m under no illusions about big pharma employing “ inflluncers” I’ve seen that first hand. That 4 corners episode has psychiatrists exposing it . They are from a highly respected psych institution called Maudsley in the UK.
Australia is the second highest user of antidepressants per capita (around one in 10 adults) among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries excluding the USA.2 In the year to June 2020, for the first time an antidepressant (sertraline) was in the top 10 Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme/Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medications by defined daily dose/1000 population/day.3 Evidence suggests long-term use (>12 months), rather than new diagnoses, is driving the increase.4–6 GPs prescribe most antidepressants in Australia (86.3%).7
Often, antidepressant prescribing is not consistent with clinical guidance. According to the most recent Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (BEACH) survey data, 12.4% of general practice encounters are mental health–related, and most of these encounters are managed with medication (61.6%).7 Clinical guidelines recommend psychological therapies for mild depression and anxiety, and 6–12 months of antidepressant therapy for a single episode of moderate-to-severe depression.8,9 Yet in Australia the average duration of therapy is now approximately four years,4 and half of users are long-term users.5 There is also concerning variation in antidepressant prescribing, with rates higher for people in lower socioeconomic or inner regional areas and nearly double in older (≥65 years) when compared with younger people.10 Nearly one in three older Australians admitted to residential care in 2008–15 was taking antidepressants on admission, and this only increased after admission.11
There remains ongoing debate about what constitutes appropriate prescribing, but every GP knows that antidepressants cannot treat common social issues such as grief, loneliness, unemployment or poverty. There is general agreement that antidepressants are no more effective than medication placebo in less severe depressive disorders,12 and there remain questions regarding whether antidepressants have any useful effects against more severe depression over and above the placebo effect.13 It has never been substantiated that antidepressants reverse an underlying chemical (serotonin) deficiency or other brain abnormality, yet they modify the brain in ways that are not fully understood, with potentially harmful consequences.14–16
We have a huge issue with the under-training bordering on blind ignorance of doctors. I have recently had a high blood pressure crisis to go with everything else I am dealing with, and my normal herbal recourse simply did not work. I am happy if I am in the 140's over something under 100 but my doctor had written me a script for high blood pressure medication to treat that, that I had refused to fill or take. But then it exploded to between 180-200 over around 100, which is getting pretty serious. So he wrote me another script for a different medication which i filled and conceded that I had to take - at least short term while we investigate the cause. I proceeded to have the reaction that I have to almost all drugs and cheaper nutraceuticals, I got serious pain and neuropathy in my legs that stopped me from sleeping. Which of course, is just going to make my blood pressure worse. The doctor simply told me that pain in the legs was not a side effect of the drug I was on and refused to even address the leg pain issue.
Realising that I needed to keep taking it while we investigate WHY it had skyrocketed, I wondered if it might be the fillers that I was reacting to, so I rang a dispensing chemist to see if they could make them up with no neurotoxins in the fillers. I gave the names of both medications that the doctor had prescribed at different times. The chemist came back to me with an impossible price, but also with information on both medications. One has side effects of leg cramps, the other has side effects of leg pain and neuropathy, which means it might be the drug itself and not the fillers I am reacting to. That has left me with no solution, and no way to talk to the doctor in question because HE EITHER DOESN'T KNOW OR HE HAS LIED to me, and neither is a good look.
While doctors are little more than drug pushers with no real understanding of the drugs they are pushing, and while they do not even bother to read the inserts for themselves, let alone address the issues posed by just how dangerous even the most commonly used drugs are, we have little choice but to do our own research and self-medicate where we can.
During my crisis, the chemist who dispensed the nitro-glycerine that the same doctor ordered for me to use in a crisis, asked me how I was using it and I told him the doctors instructions. He looked very concerned and told me "that is not the way you use this drug". But he had not choice but to dispense it, frowning all the way. Then on my doctors instructions, when my blood pressure went over 190/100 at home, I called the ambulance. The paramedic also saw the nitro and said "you haven't taken that have you?". To which i answered yes, on doctors instructions, and he explained that the nitro will take the BP down into a safer zone but only very briefly after which the body will rebound to a higher BP than it was administered at. Oh goody. Fortunately he was willing to hang around for long enough to watch it go well over 200 in the rebound, and stayed with me until it had dropped again to 180 over something. HE also recommended I did not go to hospital because the beds were all full so i would be left sitting in casualty for hour, which would also cause my BP, and may be my brain, to explode. His recommendation, lie down and watch TV. It turns out there is nothing much we can do when we have a BP crisis like the one I was (and maybe still am) having.
So here we have a paramedic AND and two different chemists, giving advice contrary to the advice given by my doctor. So maybe we would be better buying our drugs over the counter, from a qualified chemist, or a paramedic, rather than trusting a doctor.
No - even though we are all guinea pigs when it comes to drugs - the doctors still need to be in charge of that prescription for anti-depressants & let them know of any adverse events. I tried about 6-7 different classes of SSRI's SNRI's and I experienced intolerable side effects with all of them (over a period of 20 years) The last one was prescribed by my oncologist (Effexor) for menopausal symptoms/night sweats/sleepdisorder etc. This drug was a diaster in every way - my therapist mentioned this drug should be withdrawn. I am now off ALL drugs and have found Vitamin D & exercise to be a a successful solution. It has calmed me down and allowed me to function as normally as possible.
A friend of mine going through a divorce part of the Court order was to take her child (6 years) to a psychiatrist. He prescribed anti-depressants fortunately Mum had the foresight to buy some lollies that looked similar to the medication and gave him one every night telling him it was his ‘antidepressant’ to make him better. This happened for 3 months until the psychiatrist brought my friend into the room saying ‘look how much better he is’. ‘I was right to put him on medication’!!!! They should be banned. My partner got off them with mindfulness and exercise. Although knowing what we do now I would have used homeopathy. It is very successful in mental cases and was the main medical system used in early 1900’s. There is a great book ‘Sane Asylum….the success of homeopathy before psychiatry lost its mind’. Very safe as well.
WOW! This post couldn't be any more timely. I just saw a PCP last week about tapering off the antidepressant I've been on for about ten years. He seemed so nonchalant about it. I asked him if he knew of any pharmacies that offered titration of medications so I could come off of it really slowly, since I'd had horrible withdrawals from other antidepressants I've taken over the decades (yes, decades!) He dismissed me by saying tapering the doses with what was available should be fine. So, I've been trying to find a pharmacy on my own that might be able to provide that service. If anyone knows of such a thing in California, I would love hearing back from you as that is where I live. Thank you and much luck to others who find themselves in this horrendous pharmaceutical-built boat.
This resonated with me in so many ways. Thank you for sharing your story. And no way should they be over the counter. I personally don’t believe they work besides the potential placebo effect.
The answer is NO . Try reading the works of Peter Breggin ( on stack) and watch the four corners episode S 2023 ep 31. All eye opening. Then I found out on one stack the drugs come with a black box warning ‼️ n the US and 70% of school shooters are on SSRI ‘s and or SNRI’s. Also a lot of meds for anxiety like Xanax and the benzodiazepines are highly addictive- if you don’t keep increasing the dose the panic attacks escalate. I found that out through personal experience. With Xanax at the time (80) I couldn’t get doctors to believe me. I ended up shaving the pills down with a razor, and it was as bad as withdrawing from heroin. Cramping gut parts n sweats nausea vomiting the whole deal. The other thing, if you gain weight while taking this stuff it stores in fat, and every couple of kilos you loose the withdrawals come back ( also personal experience)
Crikey Rebekah, what an awful experience.
I wonder what might have happened if a doctor had prescribed Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) for you in the first place, rather than put you on medication?
You say “neither of the two doctors who prescribed me these drugs warned me about how difficult they can be to withdraw from. I wasn’t properly informed about potential side effects either”.
This is the big problem, these ‘doctors’ often have no idea what they’re doing, prescribing medicines and vaccines like sweets, they’re often not authentically qualified to obtain informed consent.
General practitioners…what are these people doing prescribing anti-depressants?! How much damage are they causing in the community?
And now they want to flog antidepressants over the counter, with not even any pretence about people being informed about these products.
The entire situation is INSANE!
Aren’t other people seeing yet that the medical industrial complex has gone batshit crazy, with no curbs on the pHarmaceutical industry, with so-called ‘regulation’ (the TGA) actually funded by industry, aka the foxes in charge of the chicken coop.
The diabolical Covid scam should be bringing this into high relief now, with the community deliberately terrorised about a disease it was known from the beginning wasn’t a serious threat to most people.
We have to rise up against this travesty, pursue the actual people accountable for the gross over-medicalisation of society with never-ending testing, medicines and vaccines, coupled with the impact of misinformation, pressure, coercion and manipulation.
The public health terrorism being played out in our society is the very antithesis of health.
What a nightmare you’ve been put through! I made 4 attempts before I came off steroids. With the medical profession I finally adopted the approach “you don’t live in my body, I do, so how can you know what’s right for me? “ I started to experiment with dosages…one 10mg tablet daily, or would 5mg do it, or a 5mg every 2 days? The worst experience was when my rheumatoid specialist changed the steroids to a new drug I later learned was a malarial drug. I told the 2 tablet prescribed dose and immediately my eyesight went. I stopped immediately but it took 10 days for the drug to clear my system. I later looked up the drug in a medical lexicon, and lo and behold one of the potential side effects was blindness! When I told him months later he blithely said “you should have stopped taking item”. Yeah right. It’s not his body so let’s experiment. I no longer trust doctors with anything. You have to monitor your own body. Doctors on the whole are simply taking a shot in the dark.
Definitely a NO from me too.
I was put on them as a child of 8... (I look back on this with disgust at the 'medical professionals' who thought this was a good idea. I don't blame my family as they love me and were doing what they were advised to by the 'experts' and all they wanted was for me to be healthy and happy). I have been on anti-depressants for decades now.
Because of the events of the last 4 years, I have made a decison to try alternative therapies for my depression and anxiety. I have found a psychiatrist to help me safely taper off the drugs, as well as seeing a naturopath and a social worker. I am looking at my diet, exercising, spending time appreciating God's creation, and above all, praying to the God who loves me and wants me to have an 'abudant' life.
I am now on a dosage that is 1/4 of what I was on last year. So far, so good.
Praying for all those in the same situation as me.
If there was an honest Doctor in the world they would book everyone straight into a CBT course, send them on a nutritional medicine course, provide a personal trainer and gym membership. Instead they get a nice backhander to ply everyone with dangerous and ineffective pills. Revolting.
My 40 year journey through medicine has involved 15 years in general practice before retraining in sports and exercise medicine, an area in which I have practiced for the last 18 years.
Part of my reason for changing disciplines is the growing adherence of mainstream medicine to pharmaceutical/ surgical paths for virtually all conditions (obesity, mental health, diabetes, heart disease, etc).
Sports and exercise medicine involves lifestyle assessment first with very few prescriptions, and even minimally invasive procedures often involve non-pharmaceutical regimes, such as autologous blood products.
I now also take between 30 and 60 minutes for each consultation, which enables a full social, diet and activity/ exercise assessment, and treatment emphasizes lifestyle improvements.
I find this kind of practice to be much more fulfilling and beneficial to both patients and myself.
Accordingly, I do not feel antidepressants should be available OTC.
I gradually tapered off SSRIs for 18/12 and stopped at Xmas 2023. Even though I had reduced the dose right down, the effects of withdrawal was not fun. Certainly nothing like your experiences though but still feelings of dissociation and of being very unstable mentally. I rode it out and now seem to be ok. Certainly scary stuff and there is no way it should be over the counter.
Yeah you had it rough. I came off them hard too. First time I failed and ended up in a psyche ward. The brain snaps are the most weird thing and floods of anxiety are horrific. Second time I stepped them down - Broke the pills up and reduced the dosage by about 10% per week until I was free of them. It worked. Horrible bloody things.
Yes I found out about the fat issue from a Dutch production late 80’s broadcast on SBS I think. I also found out that the receptors in the brain for anti depressants also share receptors for narcotics and synthetic narcotics. I discovered that one by accident when I was prescribed a synthetic narcotic when still on a maintenance dose of antidepressants. Violent reaction - crushing headache, projectile vomiting. I should disclose I’m an ex nurse, was married to a psychiatrist, and I’m under no illusions about big pharma employing “ inflluncers” I’ve seen that first hand. That 4 corners episode has psychiatrists exposing it . They are from a highly respected psych institution called Maudsley in the UK.
QUOTE
Australia is the second highest user of antidepressants per capita (around one in 10 adults) among Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries excluding the USA.2 In the year to June 2020, for the first time an antidepressant (sertraline) was in the top 10 Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme/Repatriation Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme medications by defined daily dose/1000 population/day.3 Evidence suggests long-term use (>12 months), rather than new diagnoses, is driving the increase.4–6 GPs prescribe most antidepressants in Australia (86.3%).7
Often, antidepressant prescribing is not consistent with clinical guidance. According to the most recent Bettering the Evaluation and Care of Health (BEACH) survey data, 12.4% of general practice encounters are mental health–related, and most of these encounters are managed with medication (61.6%).7 Clinical guidelines recommend psychological therapies for mild depression and anxiety, and 6–12 months of antidepressant therapy for a single episode of moderate-to-severe depression.8,9 Yet in Australia the average duration of therapy is now approximately four years,4 and half of users are long-term users.5 There is also concerning variation in antidepressant prescribing, with rates higher for people in lower socioeconomic or inner regional areas and nearly double in older (≥65 years) when compared with younger people.10 Nearly one in three older Australians admitted to residential care in 2008–15 was taking antidepressants on admission, and this only increased after admission.11
There remains ongoing debate about what constitutes appropriate prescribing, but every GP knows that antidepressants cannot treat common social issues such as grief, loneliness, unemployment or poverty. There is general agreement that antidepressants are no more effective than medication placebo in less severe depressive disorders,12 and there remain questions regarding whether antidepressants have any useful effects against more severe depression over and above the placebo effect.13 It has never been substantiated that antidepressants reverse an underlying chemical (serotonin) deficiency or other brain abnormality, yet they modify the brain in ways that are not fully understood, with potentially harmful consequences.14–16
END OF QUOTE
Recommend reading the entire article, see: RACGP - Antidepressant prescribing in general practice: https://www1.racgp.org.au/ajgp/2021/december/antidepressant-prescribing-in-general-practice
No way over the counter! I think GPs shouldn’t be able to prescribe either.
We have a huge issue with the under-training bordering on blind ignorance of doctors. I have recently had a high blood pressure crisis to go with everything else I am dealing with, and my normal herbal recourse simply did not work. I am happy if I am in the 140's over something under 100 but my doctor had written me a script for high blood pressure medication to treat that, that I had refused to fill or take. But then it exploded to between 180-200 over around 100, which is getting pretty serious. So he wrote me another script for a different medication which i filled and conceded that I had to take - at least short term while we investigate the cause. I proceeded to have the reaction that I have to almost all drugs and cheaper nutraceuticals, I got serious pain and neuropathy in my legs that stopped me from sleeping. Which of course, is just going to make my blood pressure worse. The doctor simply told me that pain in the legs was not a side effect of the drug I was on and refused to even address the leg pain issue.
Realising that I needed to keep taking it while we investigate WHY it had skyrocketed, I wondered if it might be the fillers that I was reacting to, so I rang a dispensing chemist to see if they could make them up with no neurotoxins in the fillers. I gave the names of both medications that the doctor had prescribed at different times. The chemist came back to me with an impossible price, but also with information on both medications. One has side effects of leg cramps, the other has side effects of leg pain and neuropathy, which means it might be the drug itself and not the fillers I am reacting to. That has left me with no solution, and no way to talk to the doctor in question because HE EITHER DOESN'T KNOW OR HE HAS LIED to me, and neither is a good look.
While doctors are little more than drug pushers with no real understanding of the drugs they are pushing, and while they do not even bother to read the inserts for themselves, let alone address the issues posed by just how dangerous even the most commonly used drugs are, we have little choice but to do our own research and self-medicate where we can.
During my crisis, the chemist who dispensed the nitro-glycerine that the same doctor ordered for me to use in a crisis, asked me how I was using it and I told him the doctors instructions. He looked very concerned and told me "that is not the way you use this drug". But he had not choice but to dispense it, frowning all the way. Then on my doctors instructions, when my blood pressure went over 190/100 at home, I called the ambulance. The paramedic also saw the nitro and said "you haven't taken that have you?". To which i answered yes, on doctors instructions, and he explained that the nitro will take the BP down into a safer zone but only very briefly after which the body will rebound to a higher BP than it was administered at. Oh goody. Fortunately he was willing to hang around for long enough to watch it go well over 200 in the rebound, and stayed with me until it had dropped again to 180 over something. HE also recommended I did not go to hospital because the beds were all full so i would be left sitting in casualty for hour, which would also cause my BP, and may be my brain, to explode. His recommendation, lie down and watch TV. It turns out there is nothing much we can do when we have a BP crisis like the one I was (and maybe still am) having.
So here we have a paramedic AND and two different chemists, giving advice contrary to the advice given by my doctor. So maybe we would be better buying our drugs over the counter, from a qualified chemist, or a paramedic, rather than trusting a doctor.
No - even though we are all guinea pigs when it comes to drugs - the doctors still need to be in charge of that prescription for anti-depressants & let them know of any adverse events. I tried about 6-7 different classes of SSRI's SNRI's and I experienced intolerable side effects with all of them (over a period of 20 years) The last one was prescribed by my oncologist (Effexor) for menopausal symptoms/night sweats/sleepdisorder etc. This drug was a diaster in every way - my therapist mentioned this drug should be withdrawn. I am now off ALL drugs and have found Vitamin D & exercise to be a a successful solution. It has calmed me down and allowed me to function as normally as possible.
A friend of mine going through a divorce part of the Court order was to take her child (6 years) to a psychiatrist. He prescribed anti-depressants fortunately Mum had the foresight to buy some lollies that looked similar to the medication and gave him one every night telling him it was his ‘antidepressant’ to make him better. This happened for 3 months until the psychiatrist brought my friend into the room saying ‘look how much better he is’. ‘I was right to put him on medication’!!!! They should be banned. My partner got off them with mindfulness and exercise. Although knowing what we do now I would have used homeopathy. It is very successful in mental cases and was the main medical system used in early 1900’s. There is a great book ‘Sane Asylum….the success of homeopathy before psychiatry lost its mind’. Very safe as well.
WOW! This post couldn't be any more timely. I just saw a PCP last week about tapering off the antidepressant I've been on for about ten years. He seemed so nonchalant about it. I asked him if he knew of any pharmacies that offered titration of medications so I could come off of it really slowly, since I'd had horrible withdrawals from other antidepressants I've taken over the decades (yes, decades!) He dismissed me by saying tapering the doses with what was available should be fine. So, I've been trying to find a pharmacy on my own that might be able to provide that service. If anyone knows of such a thing in California, I would love hearing back from you as that is where I live. Thank you and much luck to others who find themselves in this horrendous pharmaceutical-built boat.
This resonated with me in so many ways. Thank you for sharing your story. And no way should they be over the counter. I personally don’t believe they work besides the potential placebo effect.