This post covers difficulties primarily on antidepressants that medicines can cause to people in schools or universities who end up unable to study or do course-work, as well as the difficulties people can have trying to get off medicines, a process that can be pretty disabling. The materials linked to this post are being put […]
See accompanying MAiD in Canada and Sex. Illustration: Meds © created by Billiam James The provision of Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) is under review in Canada with debate about access for patients with mental illness. An amendment to the draft legislation eliminating the exclusion of people with mental illness was proposed by Senator Stan […]
Antidepressant Withdrawal and Dependence is one of the greatest public health crises of our time. Ed White has recently featured in the UK recounting his experiences he drifting into dependence on antidepressants and finding that the people best placed to help him and you were others in same position supporting each other through groups on […]
This 2020 closes in the middle of Covid19 and with the package leaflets of SSRI and SNRI antidepressants just updated in Europe with a new but evasive Warning: ‘Cases have been observed where symptoms of sexual dysfunction have persisted after discontinuation of treatment‘. Doctors, did you notice? Here I am. My sexual symptoms caused by […]
Stimulated by the recent Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) discussion, the following began as a comment from one of RxISK’s background activists but grew into a post. RxISK is not about to desert orthodox medicine and turn to herbalism but herbalism may well have a lot to offer. It looks like many traditional remedies actually do […]
We first mentioned Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) Channels/ Receptors in several RxISK posts about withdrawal and they feature on the RxISK Complex Withdrawal Page under Ion Channels. The table on that page gives a fascinating list of herbs and other compounds that could conceivably play a part in stabilizing people who are having withdrawal problems. […]
This post by J is about his withdrawal. He takes a different approach to the ones outlined in Side Effexor Withdrawal through to Helping H – an engineering approach rather than a therapy one. Next week we will feature a post about some of the TRP (Transient Receptor Potential) Channels he mentions. I usually work […]
A recent RxISK post on SSRI triggered Movement Disorders – My Doctor Thinks I’m Faking It – put together by Stevie Lewis, attracted less attention than we expected. This may be because it featured strange movements and few of us figure we are in a good position to make sense of strange movements. The movements […]
The following email arrived last week from someone who is unknown to me – has never filed a RxISK report about PSSD, never contributed to the RxISK Prize, never previously been in touch that I know of – at least under the name offered – doesn’t sign off, and is unwilling to engage in a […]
Two posts last week on RxISK Biohacking and david healy Stormy Weather raised issues about the Enduring Sexual Dysfunctions (ESD) linked to SSRIs and related drugs (PSSD and PGAD), finasteride and related drugs (PFS), and isotretinoin (PRSD). In the biohacking post both sides of the “debate” were concerned about the people with these conditions […]
This ambiguous picture comes up when you search under grave robbing – nothing you can make money out of is sacred. But its entitled grave digger. Digger, robber, it can be hard to tell. We had an email a few days ago about a young man desperately seeking help who had in good faith took […]
Editorial Note: This post by Stevie Lewis raises a very tricky area. There is no doubt that SSRIs cause movement disorders and not just temporary disorders but permanent problems like atypical Motor Neurone Disorder (ALS), Steele-Richardson Syndrome, Osmotic Demyelination Sydrome (Pontine Myelinolysis) and Multiple System Atrophy. There is also little doubt that most neurologists have […]
The expert inputs Managing Efexor and SSRI Withdrawal and Protracted Antidepressant Withdrawal to and comments on H’s case Side Effexor Withdrawal have been wonderful to get and hopefully will be a resource for others. Helping H H’s original problem and the idea of a commentary came about because 3 of us considered her case in […]
Following H’s report of difficulties with Effexor, we asked Will Hall, Altostrata, Bob Fiddaman and Josef Witt-Doerring, all experienced in this area, how they would Manage her Withdrawal. We also asked Peter Groot who helped develop the first Tapering Strips for Antidepressant withdrawal – who with colleagues has demonstrated that this can help many people […]
H’s nightmare with Effexor withdrawal was laid out in last week’s post. Experts on antidepressant withdrawal were asked to comment – Will Hall, Altostrata, Peter C Groot, Bob Fiddaman, Josef Witt-Doerring have generously given time to do so. James Moore, Stevie Lewis and Ed White, administrator for a Facebook venlafaxine withdrawal group, who have substantial […]
About 12 years ago I was diagnosed with mild depression and prescribed 75 mg effexor. I did achieve relief from my symptoms on this dose. Later, maybe a few years, my dose was increased to 150 mg when my job became more stressful. There was no discussion about duration of treatment. I used to be […]
Samizdat has just published Children of the Cure – the Preface of which is here This Book is not a Game. Quotes from the text are in Hand of History on davidhealy.org. Most of the first chapter is below. Flying to Philadelphia Shelley Jofre was 32 when she got on a plane to Philadelphia in […]
Dozens of these buttons flooded the United States Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) headquarters at a meeting for the widely prescribed asthma/allergy medication, montelukast (brand name, Singulair). The message was simple: “The benefits did not outweigh the risks.” As each button approached the podium, the panel of experts heard gut-wrenching testimonials about the unimaginable psychiatric […]
There have been some major developments on the RxISK Prize front. First we are hovering around the $66,666 point – depending on how exchange rates go we may be wandering back and forth over this line as I write. More important however is that San Marino has raced out in front as the donor leading […]
There are 3 bits to this post – an interview with Joan-Ramon Laporte. An article by Ariane Denoyel and a Q and A with Laporte and Healy. Laporte Interview As part of a series for ROAR Magazine, Frank Barat has run some striking interviews about aspects of the Covid pandemic not usually mentioned. Here […]
Read the accompanying Sex, Withdrawal and Boundaries post first. We are looking for anyone interested in the material raised there to comment on or add to the set of questions below. We are so insensitive to the fact that our skin and gut principally, but also bladder and maybe the inner linings of our lungs, […]
“Do you think studying monolayers of cells will tell you why you fall in love with a girl?” The quote comes from Rudolf Hess, who won the Nobel Prize for physiology in 1949. His students remembered him as telling them never to study a neurotransmitter or even a cell without thinking about where this bit […]
Up to 1800, no-one went near a doctor if they could avoid it. At best doctors might amuse the patient while nature cured the disease – the doctor’s business was to take as much of the credit and the money as possible. The best was rare. In an effort to get the money, doctors liked […]
The images, which are a wonderful metaphor for the coming back to life, the restoration of emotions and senses that stopping an antidepressant can bring, comes from this news item – its worth clicking on the video link There have probably been more posts about withdrawal from antidepressants – especially if PSSD is included as […]
It is well known that antidepressants can interfere with a person’s sleep, but it’s less clear what happens after they stop taking the drug. One of our earliest blog posts from 2012 was written by someone experiencing terrifying nightmares while withdrawing from Cymbalta. The post received a number of comments from other people reporting the […]
I stopped Depakote – See Going on Depakote. First Try This was a nightmare to cold turkey off. I felt crazy, like my brain was going to explode and was on fire. I kept an ice pack on my head for days and listened to meditation tapes. I am not sure how I managed to […]
Beginnings Childhoods are difficult to remember in detail. My first few memories were about the age of 2 1/2, maybe 3. I had chickenpox and I got an encephalitis. I didn’t know that this is what it was until years later, when I became a medical provider. My experience was that I visually hallucinated (the […]
Last week’s post on Montelukast Withdrawal Syndrome has attracted comments at a higher rate than any prior post in 7 years of RxISK posts. It followed a post on Asthma causing Suicide and Homicide two weeks previously, which had links to the QuarterWatch 2015 report of adverse events in children fingering montelukast and suicidality as […]
When my happy, full-of-life, adventure-seeking 11-year-old son experienced severe, debilitating neuropsychiatric symptoms after stopping his asthma medication, I embarked on a journey in a desperate search for answers. How could a medication that acts on the respiratory system reduce my healthy child to a lifeless shell? How could our beloved doctor not discuss the potential […]
The European Medicines Agency has just concluded a review into sexual dysfunction after the discontinuation of SSRIs and SNRIs. Before we discuss their findings, it’s worth looking back over the events of the past year. RxISK petition In 2018, we put together a petition requesting changes to SSRI and SNRI product labels to warn about […]