Symptoms: Brain zaps, sexual dysfunction, cognitive impairment, suicidal ideation, severe anxiety/panic, muscle/joint pain, fevers, emotional meltdowns, extreme irritability, anger, endless crying
My story began like a million others. I was an anxious and depressed young woman that sought out therapy in order to get myself out in the world and functioning. In the year 2000, at age 18, I had recently moved out of my parents' house and was struggling with anxiety (phobias) and mental health challenges, and I began seeing a psychologist. He, being unable to prescribe meds himself, recommended I get my general practitioner to prescribe Zoloft. So off I went to my GP asking for Zoloft. He happily obliged and wrote the prescription.
In the first week of taking the drug I felt relief. In the following months, I was really able to get my life together. My anxiety lessened, I felt hopeful, I was working, socializing, and soon I would get married. I eventually stopped seeing the psychologist because I felt stable and "normal" on the medication. Years went by, the prescription was re-issued at every annual visit. Over that time, I felt the medication wasn't really helping with anxiety like it once did, and the dose was increased. But even then, it never worked like it did when I first began. I never noticed any severe side effects during this time. As long as I didn't forget my pill, I felt okay.
At 22 years old I had my first child. I took SSRIs throughout the pregnancy, which I regret tremendously. They told me it was perfectly safe to take them during pregnancy, but I have since decided it definitely wasn't. Late in the pregnancy I developed severe preeclampsia and was in the hospital near death until they could induce labor to save my life and the baby's life. My daughter was born 6 weeks premature in 2003. She was in the ICU for 5 weeks and in the pediatric unit for one. Needless to say, I was an emotional wreck during this time. A doctor at the hospital, watching me cry (keep in mind my baby was in the ICU), said, "You have postpartum depression and need to get on meds immediately." When I said I was already on Zoloft, they recommended I increase my dose again. I was suspicious that I really had PPD, but I did what I was told. I was now on the maximum dose of Zoloft.
Fast forward all the way to 2012. I now had two children, had been on the max dose of Zoloft all of that time, and I was having increasingly frequent episodes of emotional volatility, crying, anxiety, and depression. So, desperate for relief, back to the psychologists I went. From one, to another, and then eventually to a psychiatrist. This was a mistake.
The psychiatrist saw me for about 10 minutes, had me fill out a questionnaire that had maybe 15 questions on it, and said to me, "You actually have Bipolar Type II." He told me to stop the Zoloft and prescribed Lithium, Lamictal, Xanax, and maybe even something else. I thought, "Maybe this has been my problem my whole life, maybe now I'll be cured!" Of course I wasn't.
Going on these additional psych meds (and stopping the Zoloft cold turkey) was the beginning of the worst years of my life. Immediately upon starting these meds, I started feeling worse. I was crying, depressed, anxious, panicking, feeling like life wasn't real, lethargic, irritable, constant brain zaps, confusion, totally useless. I began having outbursts, like meltdowns. I was falling apart almost daily. And worst of all, I thought all of these things were a symptom of my "illness" and considered that maybe I was autistic, maybe I had this disorder or that, maybe I needed TMS treatment that my psychiatrist was strongly trying to sell me, likely to pay for his expensive new TMS machine. After a while I realized this guy was not helping, and I went to a new psychiatrist.
The new doctor gave me hope. She seemed to want to get to the bottom of things, and after lots of history and explaining, she said to me, "You don't have Bipolar Disorder. You were misdiagnosed. You actually have Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder." This made sense to me, as it was obvious that my most severe symptoms happened at a certain time in my cycle. It's also worth mentioning that I recently stopped taking oral contraceptives after being on them for years, something no doctor ever suggested would cause issues. I won't bore you with the details, but we started discontinuing meds, starting new ones, finding no relief, just cycling through pretty much everything on the menu. Eventually I said I can't keep doing this. My life was falling apart. My marriage, my relationship with my young kids, completely strained. I was miserable. I told her I just want to stop all these drugs and go back on Zoloft, thinking how that helped me to begin with so many years ago.
Taking Zoloft again was nothing like taking Zoloft the first time. Not only did it not help my psychiatric symptoms much, but suddenly I had side effects I never had before. I had terrible emotional blunting. I felt like I couldn't feel love for my own children, I felt like I didn't care about anything at all, I couldn't feel pleasure, I could barely laugh, and I had total sexual dysfunction: genital anesthesia and complete anorgasmia. Back to the psychiatrist I went.
She tried her best, prescribing other drugs to counteract the side effects that Zoloft was now causing. She also tried me on pretty much all the other SSRIs available, ending with Paxil I think. The side effects were the same no matter which variety I took, even trying herbal supplements. It was awful. I had hit my limit. I decided I'm done with big pharma, I want off this train.
Now it's almost 2014. The doctor had me taper off the Paxil, and even though she gave me what seemed like a slow taper compared to what the previous doctor had done (just stop taking it), the taper was still probably far too fast. By the time I got to zero pills, I was in hell. The signature brain zaps of course, but also crying, yelling, wanting to die, so irritable that everything set me off. Screaming at my kids and my husband, totally out of control. In addition to the psychological hell, I was also in a physical hell. My whole body hurt all the time. I felt like I had the flu. I began to run low-grade fevers, 100°F, that corresponded with my ovulation cycle. I thought maybe this is just what I am like without drugs. I felt hopeless, I felt damned. But I stuck with it. I didn't want to go back.
About 6 months in, I finally started having days where I wasn't in constant suffering. By 1 year, I was having more good days than bad. Each year I felt a little more normal than the last. Now, here I am over a decade since I took any psych meds, and I finally am free of the nightmare. I have regained my ability to feel and to enjoy life, my sexual function is restored, I feel basically like a normal person now. Sure, I have anxiety sometimes, sometimes I feel sad or down in the dumps, but through faith and prayer and lifestyle changes, I am able to cope. It's not pathological, it is just the normal sufferings of life. I felt angry for a while that I was pathologized, made to feel defective, handed diagnoses arbitrarily, commodified and victimized by a money-making, drug-dealing system. I'm not angry now, just deeply sad that this happens. Sad that we are in the position we are in. But it is a fallen world, and I am just grateful that I was able to survive that period of my life. I give the glory to God.
Maybe my story can give you a little hope. No matter where you are right now, don't give up. The road can be very long and very rough. Sometimes you'll feel like things are getting better and then getting worse again, but there could be healing. There could be joy and light at the end, if you just keep going. There was for me, thank God.