Bookmark

Brilliant post; I agree 100%. Thank you for your wisdom, @Un0wut2du.

And @NameK, that's exactly why you can't listen to people on these health forums. You cannot trust the horror stories. Do you know how many things - from cold turkey antidepressant withdrawal to some Ehlers-Danlos symptoms that were clearly worsened by stress to bladder issues and much more - were deemed "incurable" on the health forums I looked at? And yet here I am.

As an example, there came a point when I was so paranoid about antidepressant withdrawal being permanent that I was sure my life was over. ~98% of the posts on withdrawal forums claimed that I was in for a lifetime of excruciating hell. Even if the brain zaps eventually went away (but some people said it was possible they never would), I'd likely have crippling anxiety, depression, mood swings reminiscent of bipolar disorder, headaches, etc. forever. Some people even posted links to scientific articles claiming that antidepressants can cause brain damage via the disruption and corruption of important neurons. I started becoming super paranoid about my entire life, like when I began freaking out about the time I had taken other things that affected my serotonin - what if I couldn't recover from antidepressant withdrawal because my serotonin receptors were already sensitive? I drove my neurologist as well as my psychologist crazy with these scenarios.

I had to cut myself off from the forums and keep rereading messages from doctors like Schubiner reassuring me it'd end once I stopped being so stressed out. Withdrawal is real and valid, but it's not permanent, and symptoms that don't eventually go away are totally mind-body/TMS. I later saw a friend on social media complaining that insurance issues led to her antidepressant script being filled late. She was describing horrific withdrawal, and one of her friends commented that she'd better refill her prescription soon or she'd be risking "permanent damage." I was at the point where I was so confident in myself that I was able to say to myself, "I know that's not true. Antidepressant withdrawal does not cause permanent damage, and I am safe and OK." I believed this to be 100% true deep in my core, and that belief was everything.