My story starts in 2007. I was doing my annual physical and my doctor asked about my symptoms, and I admitted I had high levels of anxiety and depression. I didn't even ask for these to be treated. I had tons of other symptoms that for me were higher priority, such as my debilitating migraines and myofascial pain syndrome/fibromyalgia and endometriosis and uncontrollable body odor problems. My doctor refused to even discuss the symptoms that actually bothered me and hyper-fixated on the symptoms I didn't think I wanted to treat. Anyway, after that appointment he put me on the lowest possible dose of SSRIs.
From the first dose, my anxiety started to spike. I could feel my heart beating heavily and in irregular ways. It seemed to lead with anxiety, but my depression also increased significantly. I think my depression was the safety valve for my anxiety and would kick in to numb my anxiety. I reached out to my doctor and was told that was a normal reaction and that it often takes 6 weeks to adjust, so to stick with it. I at the time treated doctors like gods, so I stuck with it religiously while regularly reporting my symptoms, which kept escalating.
Finally, at 6 weeks I said my symptoms were getting worse, not better. So my doctor responded to that by doubling my dose. On day 1 my symptoms got worse. Then I had a really bizarre experience. Not only was my anxiety spiking followed by depression crashes, but I started having these weird out-of-body experiences. I remember I was walking through a neighborhood for exercise and sunlight, and all of a sudden I was just an observer. I knew what I was doing, but I couldn't control it. This weird part of me took over that to me seemed evil. The first thing it did was say I needed to start trespassing and hiking on private property, which I did. That is not me at all. I didn't actually want to do it. I tried desperately to stop it. But I had zero control over my body. And I even started injuring myself in minor ways for the sake of injuring myself. Once again, I didn't want to actually do it, but I had zero control.
This terrified me. For the first time ever I went against doctor's orders. I instantly stopped taking the SSRIs. Within 24 hours all of my symptoms had gone away.
Next, I tried to tell my doctor I needed to go off the SSRIs, but I could tell he wasn't going to sign off on that. He actually told me if the SSRIs seemed to be harming me, the only possible explanation was that I wasn't taking them correctly. I tried to get a different doctor, saying it wasn't a good fit, and was treated like a criminal trying to get the diagnosis I wanted. I was also very conflict avoidant and subservient to authority, so I couldn't stand up for myself. So I did the only thing I knew how to do. I lied and pretended I was still taking the SSRIs for 6 months and basically stage-managed my recovery as I got better a little at a time and was able to slowly taper down the dosage until I was "cured" and didn't need the medication anymore.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of my story. I saw 17 different therapists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and others. Even the one that I selected because she wasn't legally allowed to prescribe medication, who told me she understood and agreed, tried to bully me into SSRIs that her friend was going to prescribe for me, and she terminated my treatment when I said no based on past injury because she "couldn't work with someone who clearly didn't want to get better." I was put on several SSRIs and also bupropion and experienced injury on every single medication, though the injuries on bupropion weren't nearly as severe. These medications messed with my sense of reality, ability to feel love or passion, ability to concentrate, gave me extremely vivid dreams and erratic, unrestful sleep patterns that have never fully recovered, mild hallucinations, digestive problems, and many other symptoms.
My story is too long to go into here, but let's just say it took me a long time to figure things out. I learned the second someone says, "I'm not going to diagnose you because it won't change how I'm going to treat you," it's time to run the other direction. If it's talk therapy, that might be a fine approach. However, every professional who ever said that to me instantly jumped in with prescribing SSRIs even knowing I had a history of injuries from SSRIs, and every last one of them would double the dose after 6 weeks when I once again didn't respond well.
Years later, I discovered an interesting concept of Number Needed to Treat, which is the number who need to receive the treatment for one patient to have a better than placebo effect, and Number Needed to Harm, which is how many need it before getting harmed. I researched the SSRI I had been on most recently, and at the time the Number Needed to Treat was 9. I wondered why my doctor thought it was a wonder drug that worked for everyone, but then I remembered this was better than placebo. The math wasn't clean, but I did some amateur research and estimated the placebo effect for this SSRI was about 7 in 9. This means 8 in 9 patients seem to receive benefit and only 1 in 9 doesn't. The Number Needed to Harm was 39. That's high, but that's not so high that a doctor seeing say 100 patients in a year wouldn't see a handful of patients that are harmed. Also, keep in mind that is only known harm.
And then I reminded myself that my doctor blamed any patient that was harmed for their harm, and if the other harmed patients were like me, my doctor believed I was a great success story for SSRIs because I pretended they cured me so he would stop blaming me for the failure of his intervention. My doctor was seeing 9 out of 9 patients being helped even though only 1 out of 9 was actually being helped.
I also discovered it is known that people on the autism spectrum are more likely to be harmed by SSRIs. So all of those professionals who refused to diagnose me before treating me could have instantly known I was a higher risk for SSRIs if they had at least screened me for autism.
I am one of the lucky ones. It took me a bit, but I eventually stood up for myself and have been standing up for myself ever since. I finally found those who would actually diagnose me. I also discovered Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which was better than the therapy that came before. Then I discovered NLP, which is even more powerful. Then I discovered hypnosis. Quality of hypnotists is all over the place, but I was lucky enough to be trained by one of the best (Dr. David Snyder). You have to be careful with all of these interventions, but every last one of these interventions was way more beneficial than any medication I have been on, and every last one has fewer side effects.
The fact that they started with SSRIs and other medications instead of one of these less serious interventions likely comes from poor industry practices that professionals are just following in good faith, but to me the industry practices are grossly negligent, and cognitive dissonance makes most professionals blame and gaslight and shame and bully patients instead of listening and blaming the intervention and looking for alternatives.
I still believe my migraines and sleep today are impacted by the SSRIs from two decades ago even though I can't conclusively prove it. But I got off easy. I didn't get caught committing a crime on them. I didn't get long-term serotonin syndrome. I am still alive. I actually found other systems that allowed me to reverse some of the damage. Because I had such strong reactions, I couldn't lie to myself and ignore the symptoms and continue with treatment for long periods of time.
I learned a ton about what to look for in medical professionals and early on lost unmerited trust in the professionals. I was never hospitalized and pumped full of extreme doses of SSRIs in the ER like some of my friends who went out of their mind because of the SSRIs, weren't allowed to leave, and then were presented with huge bills afterwards for treatment they didn't even consent to and which actively harmed them and temporarily took away their freedom.
If you were injured by psychiatric medications, know you are definitely not alone.