Thousands
of people believe that they cannot function without their prescription
medications for depression, attention deficit disorder, insomnia and other psychological
problems’. But is that always true?
In 2006,
the Vice-President of the Swedish Psychiatric Association admitted that many patients
actually get worse on antidepressants, with increased anxiety, panic
attacks, insomnia, hostility and mania, as well as deepening depression. And
that’s while they’re still on medications. Psychological drugs can also leave
us with devastating post-drug effects, something I learned for myself many
years ago.
In
my early twenties, I developed severe, stress-related eczema on my hands, and
was put on what were then called ‘tranquilizers’ for almost a year while my hands
were treated with ultraviolet light.
As my hands started to heal, I stopped the
medication, against my doctor’s recommendations. Well! Was I in for a shock?
Like a tightly sprung wire, I bounded from emotion to emotion, jumping wildly
from sudden tears to unstoppable chattering to mental deadness, and was in
constant motion. I cleaned my small apartment several times over in one night,
slept about 4 hours a night, ran around the block in the evenings, and at work,
shuffled and re-shuffled papers until I had no idea where anything was. I could
go from nasty to sweet to depressed or dense-as-a-doorbell within minutes, and
worst of all, I had absolutely no control over what was happening.
Fortunately, I had the good sense to recognise that
my body-mind was simply releasing a year’s worth of repressed, numbed feelings
and emotional responses, so I was not afraid.
And I did not take any more tranquilizers. I knew that I had to allow
my body to clear out the effects of the drug, and find its own balance once
again, which it eventually did.
I had (and still have) friends, however, who did
not share my faith in the body’s own wisdom, and who truly believed that they
needed their prescribed drugs. So when they tried to reduce the dosage or stop
altogether, they soon felt so bad that they ended up on their meds again, and
often, on an even higher dose than before. These friends were not only biochemically
addicted to their medications, and experiencing the inevitable withdrawal symptoms,
but they were also emotionally addicted, and convinced that they could not cope without their medications. So
they went back on medications which they believed had helped them in the past,
and would do so again.
Now I do know some people really need their medications, but for most, they are not as helpful as you might think. After reviewing clinical trials on antidepressants, the U.K.
University of Hull concluded that only severely depressed patients showed any
improvement; for other patients, the results were the same whether they were
given anti-depressant drugs or placebos.
In other words, the patients’ belief in the
medication had the same effects as the real medication. This healing response
due to a person’s belief that they are taking an effective medicine is called
the placebo effect, and it’s one of
the most under-rated medical discoveries of all time.
Among the most commonly prescribed drugs are sleep
medications. But Dr Raj Persaud writes in his book, ‘Staying
Sane’ : “Almost all of these drug in the
end themselves become causes of sleeplessness, as withdrawal from these often
addictive drugs makes it difficult to get a good night’s sleep without them”.
Since the withdrawal begins approximately 24 hours after you take the drug,
your sleeplessness the following night is most likely due to withdrawal
symptoms rather than to insomnia.
Yet once a person has come to rely on anti-depressants, even the thought of being without them can trigger panic. One day after stopping her medications, a friend sat in my front yard in tears,
believing that she was falling apart …. But what I saw was extreme fear. She was afraid because she believed that
her depression was all powerful and that she was helpless before it.
What my friend was actually experiencing were the emotional
effects of biochemical withdrawal, and for the first time in ages, she was
experiencing the raw emotions that had been previously numbed and covered up by
medications. And it was frightening.
Yes, she
needed help at this time, but not, in my opinion, from medications. These had
turned her from a woman who had been depressed due to some very bad life experiences
and relationships to a woman who now defined herself as A Depressive, and felt
unable to cope with the normal ups and downs and changes of life. I knew her
well enough to know that she was, and is much stronger than that. But she could not see it. Sometimes, we feel so utterly helpless when we hit rock
bottom that we lose all faith in ourselves.
Whether
my friend went back onto medications of not, what she really needed was help
reviewing her life to define which strategies had worked for her, and which had
not worked and should be discarded. She 
needed help learning to eat the kinds
of foods that support nerve and mental health, help to improve gut health, and to
get started on regular exercise. She needed help to stop focusing on her issues and problems, to be herself
rather than trying to please everyone, and to develop a more positive,
accepting, patient attitude to herself and others, She needed help to come up with stress-relief
and mood-changing strategies that she could and would use.
Yes, my
friend could also probably benefit from a little extra support from Bach flower remedies, meditation, deep relaxation, chakra realignment and other gentle therapies, but with the understanding that true
healing comes from within.
