Anyone Who Takes Antidepressants?

Hello. My doctor prescript me the antidepressant enlift ( cipralex - escitalopram) for the depression and also for tinnitus. Today after the third half pill (0.5mg) i have a spyke on my tinnitus. Do you think this is from the drug or just happen? Do you think i have to continue taking this or i have to quit?

On one hand i have depression and anxiety and on the other the tinnitus... i really dont know what to do. My doctor suggest me to wait the drug start working (almost a month)

Is there anyone who taking this drug?

 

I'm an extremist, but I think most doctors hand out psych meds like candy without understanding their long term effects or mechanism of action.

You can no doubt find people here who believe they have been helped by these drugs; I go the other direction, and after years of bouncing from drug to drug and doctor to doctor, the thing which has brought calm and happiness to my life is staying the hell away from all that garbage.

So, yes, I have taken many of these drugs including the one you mention, and I did not find any of them helpful; quite the contrary.

 

Well they can increase anxiety within the first two weeks so perhaps it's only temporary (if the drug at all) do you get spikes often?

 

Escitalopram does nothing for tinnitus. Well, maybe it causes it...

Also,

Read up on SSRI's. Nothing good can come from them in the long term.
Even their mechanism of action is ridiculous.
Just the fact that they need at least a month to work is evidence of how severely they can fuck up a brain.
You are better off trying to slightly increase your serotonin levels by trying a supplement like 5HTP.

Also, 0.5mg? Are you sure about the dose?

 

I'm tapering off Effexor. This did nothing to help my T situation and is now a nightmare to get off of.

I don't want to say this too early but my H has improved drastically since cutting back.

 

Been there Telis! But I wrote that once so you know.
It worsened my T and was also a nightmare to come off...Felt like being eletrocuted inside my brain
That piece of sh... is called Venlafaxine in europe

Cipralex / Citalopram was also very bad for the T. All those drugs were given out like candy like linearb says :X

I can only "recommend" Mirtazapin/remeron...Seems quite "safe" for T. And there are many T people who take it and it doesnt seem to make it worse. But you will always find some people who got their T worsened by some drug.
But it seems to me there are drugs that are more likely to worsen your T.

 

Hi Spiiros,
You will usually only hear the negatives of SSRI's, because the people that were helped by them do not come on support sites. It is true they are not perfect, but I took lexapro for 15 years and it saved my life. They are not a cure-all nor do they work for everyone, sometimes you need to find the right one and the right dose. They generally take 4 to 6 weeks to reach theraputic levels, i dont know why one poster finds that a reason 'it fucks up your brain?". I don't believe that they can help T at all, and yes it can cause it or increase it as well, it is meant to help with the depression, and if it biological, like mine they are a lifesaver. It is tough to ride out the side effects in the beginning, they are different for everyone, but anxiety is usually a start up side effect. if side effects are still bothering you after a few weeks you should talk to your Dr. I am not saying you should or should not take them , only you and your Dr should decide that. My reasoning is why do millions of people take them and do well on them if they were so terrible?? There are 2 sides to every coin and like I said you will usually only hear the bad on web sites. Good luck, if you do decide to stay on them you need to have patience.
God Bless,
Kevin

 

My doctors decided for me to stay on a drug (even up the dosage) that completely worsened my T until I demanded a change of medication.
So why not just try another AD if he's feeling that it's worsening his T...I dont mean after 1-2 pills. Thats too early to tell. But I wouldn't stay weeks on it if the T gets worse after a week.

 

Yeah I want to stay away from all this poison, it just doesn't do a thing for me except make me feel worse.

 

i thought u said u didnt take anything ?

 

SSRI' for some work for others its pure hell. They didnt work for me, infact I believe they along with cipro caused my downward spiral. I am currently weening off of Effexor. I fell better but Im not out of the woods yet.
Like I say, bless us all and the people who care about us.

 

I did? I probably meant sleeping pills or benzos. I take half 37.5mg dose of Effexor, this is kind of considered nothing I guess. I was at 37.5 (starting dose) at onset of T and tapered to half over a year ago.

 

I am on anti depressants for organic depression which is not a chronic form but still has a huge impact on one's life.

My medication is CITALOPRAM ARROW Ta 20mg pills, it helps with your natural serotonin levels and is working brilliantly, with no side effects for me at all.

I, and the people in my life have noticed the difference in me after 1 to 2 months on it, I am back to my happy self which for me has been a life and marriage savior!

As far as having an effect on T, because I am happy in my life and not miserable and bursting into tears out of the blue, I think I have been able to handle my new level of T better, I think maybe it may have gotten a little quieter as well, but that maybe an emotional effect because of the way I now feel.

 

I was on Sertraline (Zoloft) for 9 months, which I tapered off from last month.

Didn't do anything for my T, but it did calm me down from the absolute panicked state I was in during the early T days.

I know these drugs don't work for everyone but they worked for me. Perhaps it was all a placebo effect, who knows. Some people report their T worsening on this drug and others like it, but I can say from experience this didn't happen for me.

 

I was given Citalopram after I started having severe anxiety at the beginning of my tinnitus. I have 2 small children. I pretty much can't panic every day. I felt better after a month although I don't know if it was the drug or the fact that the prednisone I took for sudden hearing loss was finally out of my system. I recently tried to come off citalopram by halving my dose. I didn't have increased anxiety, but I did feel really spaced out, tired, and had a slight pressure headache. I went back on because I have 2 major vacations coming up, but I am going to try to taper more slowly after they are over. My doctor said most people are not sensitive to the drug in that way. On the other hand, it didn't seem to affect my tinnitus at all. If you want to stay on it give it a month to start working. I am happier now, I just don't want to be on it forever.

 

Millions of people take them... That's quite an argument.
Millions of people IV heroin, I guess that's a good thing then.

SSRI's work by altering the brain chemistry so that more serotonin is retained between the relevant synapses.
If you do not have a chemical imbalance in your brain, an SSRI will do absolutely nothing.
However, on a severely depressed person, where a chemical imbalance might be the reason for the depression, an SSRI might do wonders.
If you just have t it doesn't mean you have a serotonin deficiency.

Haven't you ever wondered why SSRIs are given out like candy when there is no actual blood serum or other exam to quantify or justify the need for them in the first place. Even their mechanism of action is poorly understood.
It's just that they work for some people and doctors say 'what the heck, lets try that'.
It's a total shot in the dark. And it would be ok for @spiiros to use one if he didn't have t but there are a lot of people even on this forum that claim t aggravation from antidepressants.

 

There's no evidence that anyone has a "chemical imbalance". It's a buzzword theory. Measuring neurotransmitter activity inside living people is very difficult and generally involves radiolabeled isotopes which are not actually identical to the drug in question.

http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020392

That said, placebos can't hurt you; SSRIs can. These drugs do nothing for your "natural" serotonin level other than decrease it. They increase the efficiency of serotonin by blockading the receptor. Over a moderate period of time, this results in a decrease in serotonin because of downregulation:
http://www.jneurosci.org/content/19/23/10494.full.pdf

I personally found the SSRIs a lot less problematic than benzos or lithium or ADHD drugs, but I wouldn't call them completely benign, either.

I was prescribed many drugs, usually in conjunction, during most of my developmental years. I have subsequently been told by MD pharmacologists that some of my neurological problems are likely to be iatrogenic damage from these drugs unrelated to any "underlaying condition". Buyer beware!

 

Mirtazapine is great as it makes me drowsy before bed.

 

I certainly agree with what you wrote except the above...
Obviously you cannot slice a living person's brain and try to measure the serotonin levels but pathologists have performed autopsies on depressed patients and found lowered levels of serotonin.
(but then again, in other studies, other scientists have found raised levels of serotonin after autopsies on depressed patients, go figure).

It's obvious that there's no definitive measure or test to statistically (or mathematically) define depression, except maybe some made up questionnaire that's bound to be subjective.
So the usefulness of any antidepressant can be questioned because of the very nature of the affliction.
However, some people swear by them.
I wouldn't even go close to one.
It's certainly a very personal choice.

 

I absolutely agree, and also admit to being heavily biased by my own very negative long-term experiences with these drugs.

 

While "chemical imbalance" is just a theory and almost archaic that docs and psychs still use this term ( I laugh to myself when they do) SSRI's certainly do something.

My opinion and leading research is pointing to treating our guts and not our brain for depression, anxiety and other co morbid disorders.

 

They sure do! They are relatively potent 5-HT2a agonists...

The rodent research that showed you can modulate intracranial GABA receptor counts just by dietary augmentation with specific probiotics is pretty damn fascinating:
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/38/16050

That work is one of the reasons I start every day with Kiefer. "Kief" is a turkish word for well-being, which is also where it comes from as a slang term for marijuana. Those turks knew what they were talking about, despite predating the research by a couple millennia...

 

Did you happen to read about the research that was conducted on children using heavy doses of probiotics and it eliminating their ocd?

 

Yea my point about SSRI's about doing something is how I've watched my family members become vacant, emotionless beings while on paxil and upping their alcohol content significantly.

I have a psychiatrist who feels I could benefit from lithium because I have a " mood disorder"..yea, my chronic pain has nothing to do with my moods...or my T or my H. Oh and this after speaking to me for an hour.

I didn't take it, my lovely therapist said " Hell no!" I tended to agree. So next appointment she suggested prozac and said it was as mild as St Johns Wort..really not much to it.. (then why would I take it?) Call me paranoid but I think she is trying to undermine my intelligence.

lol

 

I haven't; that sounds interesting! Do you have a link handy?

I actually take lithium orotate occaisionally, though that ends up giving you a lithium dose that's pretty consistent with what you get from the water supply many places in nature. Taking pharmaceutical doses years ago had... unpleasant side effects.

I'm always suspicious of anyone who's claiming to make any prediction about how a drug is going to impact me. It's always a big question mark, and honest doctors are upfront about this in my experience.

Speaking of 5-HT2a agonist drugs, someone on reddit has recently reported subjective improvement in tinnitus following LSD ingestion I'm not clamboring to go drop a bunch of acid, but it's an interesting thread regardless.

 

I will find the link.

Oh really?? hmmm, could you provide that reddit link and or just tell me what it is? ( a t group?)

You know how I feel about psychedelics

 

It's linked there in my post, clicking the word reddit in the text should take you there

 

Dude, I am not making an argue ment, I am only pointing out these meds have helped people, that is it. I see you are very down on them and that is fine, u are entitled to your opinion. I have been greatly helped by them in the past, and have many friends who have as well. I certainly would not dispute they have fucked up,people as well, aspirin has as well. I am struggling to get well right now and that is my main goal, if I can offer a little insight to a fellow suffere from depression all the better, it is a very lonely disease. Yes, it is a shot in the dark,but when you are deeply down, sometimes you need that hope my debating is over

 

haha..oh right..

 

People thank you very much for the respone.

today i take another 5mg and after a nonday sleep i woke up with a strong ringing.

The sure is i have the worst ever tinnitus after the third day on AD. The problem is im not sure if this is because of the drugs or just happen. At the same time i have brain fog and i fill too tired.

Also when the tinnitus started before 2months i was on high dosage of st john wart.

I speak tomorrow with my doctor ..but i dont think that he can help me.

Generally im struggling from depression the last 5-7 years, my doctor told me for organic depression - chemical imbalance and i dont have many choises except AD.

I would like to have a chance to cure me depression ..but do you think if keep taking the pills i risk for permanent tinnitus?

which AD you think is the most safe for tinnitus?