Depression & Suicidal Thoughts

I was told I have depression after going to therapy. To make a very long story short, I was told my brain does not work and that I needed medication for the rest of my life. I pushed back and said I didn’t want it. Doctors explained why I needed it.

It’s hard for me to pull everything apart but over the next 13 years on and off mental health medications my mental health only got worse. I spent 10 of the years where my brain would tell me I wanted to die. I was so scared to take my own life but trapped in a prison. I got anxiety and then panic attacks. My depression got worse. Mind you I never had any of these severe symptoms prior to the SSRIs.

I then learned about root cause healing and after many failed attempts at getting off them I was able to address my body properly and wean off over the course of a year. Note that all of my tapers before, done with medical professionals, were done way too fast with awful rebounds and terrible side effects. They would then say “see, you need to be on this.” But what I didn’t know at the time is that they were just tapering me too fast and my brain was rebounding. Once I got the proper functional help, I took the taper to a full year.

Since properly getting off the medication and addressing the root cause of my health issues, I no longer have any suicidal thoughts. I then saw a documentary that talked about SSRIs causing suicidal thoughts, and I had this huge lightbulb moment — I had never had those thoughts prior to taking the medication and had them the majority of the time on the medication. Which means what they gave me to help with depression not only made my depression worse but it gave me repeated thoughts of wanting to die and created anxiety.

I’ve been off them for 7 years and have not had any of these severe mental health symptoms. I can now see they made me worse and the wild thing is my body just needed help. My gut needed to be fixed. My blood sugar balanced. Inflammation down and given the proper nutrients. I mean, think of this — they gave me a toxic SSRI, which actually made me worse and never even asked: Are you drinking water? Are you having enough protein? What’s your vitamin D status or your omega-3/omega-6 balance? Had someone helped me properly I would have never had all of those dark years.

Separate from this, I believe that Accutane led to some of the mental health issues. I ended up with chronic health issues for eight years. It got so bad that I could only eat six foods for a long period of time. It’s taken me a very long time to regain my health, but I would say I am in remission and medication free.