I will share my own experience. I take Zoloft for PTSD. It isn't a large dose and never has been. I had a very good psychiatrist when I first did seek help. She started me at the smallest dose and told me to increase to my comfort when symptoms went away. It stopped me from remembering my nightmares and still does. Other providers have t…
I will share my own experience. I take Zoloft for PTSD. It isn't a large dose and never has been. I had a very good psychiatrist when I first did seek help. She started me at the smallest dose and told me to increase to my comfort when symptoms went away. It stopped me from remembering my nightmares and still does. Other providers have told me that it doesn't, but it really does work for that. Providers have told me a lot of things that I should and shouldn't feel. Maybe they should have joined me on the battlefield and see if their view changes. :) I personally am thankful that she knew this aspect of this drug. How those nightmares affected me, I remember well. I know I still have them sometimes, but I don't have to deal with the effects of them any longer. I think many just throw medication at people. I know someone that was diagnosed with bipolar and was on 6 meds. Moved to another state and saw someone else and diagnose her with ADD. Stopped all those meds and changed her to just one. She was a changed person after that. Like anything in life, finding those that truly understand, listen and help is a challenge. I took responsibility for my PTSD. No one else understands what is happening inside me anyway, even if I tell them.
It's great that you, J.T., have a competent physician who is able to monitor the results of treatment. This makes a huge difference in the successful choice and use of any drug.
A major truth in the article is that few acknowledge the need for these drugs to be tapered when withdrawing, and that patients who are on them should take them regularly.
Prozac is very long acting so it self-tapers to a significant degree. Paxil is the shortest acting SSRI, and irregular use, or failure to taper could cause problems with this drug and other short acting drugs of this class. Concomitant use of Paxil and Celexa, mentioned in the article, seems like a particularly bad idea. SSRIs and SNRIs with approval for different indications has caused duplication of therapy and harm to patients. Duloxetine has a pain indication and this has caused it to be used together with other similar drugs. Interactions of SSRIs and SNRIs with other drugs have been a huge issue.
Lots of patients complain about the difficulty of withdrawing from Effexor.
Duloxetine is another drug which is a serious problem when not taken on schedule.
The combo of SSRIs, SNRIs and other psych meds, and tramadol can result in serotonin syndrome.
I conclude that there's a place for most of these meds, but they have been OVER-prescribed, incorrectly prescribed, and monitored VERY poorly, leading to disastrous results.
8 minutes is not long enough for a decent patient evaluation.
points out that all of the antidepressant drugs have difficulties in tapering. Note that 44% of people coming off Prozac have difficulties. If you went to a car mechanic, and he said that there was a 44% chance that you would be in danger, would you go to that mechanic? These' aren't good numbers! Worse on this list is venlafaxine (Effexor) with 82% of people having trouble, escitalopram (Lexapro) 75%, paroxetine (Paxil, Arapax) & duloxetine (Cymbalta) at 69%. Medium troubles with sertraline (Zoloft) and citalopram (Celexa) at 62% and 60% respectively. The "easiest" on this list are fluoxetine (Prozac) at 44% and mirtazapine (Remeron) 21%.
The length of half-life does make for important considerations in tapering, paroxetine is particularly evil with it's tiny half-life. Other considerations are how many receptors it hits (this gets really evil with antipsychotics like Zyprexa) - like Cymbalta & Effexor. BUT - that does not eliminate the fact that each neurotransmitter adjustment takes 3 weeks (ever wonder why the doc said, "it might take a few weeks to start working" = ?) - so if you just cold turkey Prozac, you will still stack up about 9-12 months of symptoms all at once. Prozac's 48-62 (depending on which metabolites you are counting) long half life does not even last 3 weeks.
JC, the site that you specify agrees with me that (long acting) Prozac "self tapers to a significant degree" by rating it as "low" on the risk of withdrawal issues.
The withdrawal problems are individual, with some people having much worse problems than others. When the patients don't know what to expect from withdrawal, it's worse.
I have worked with people who irregularly took the shorter acting meds, and exhibited behavioral issues, likely exacerbated by their inability/unwillingness to keep a regimen.
People might favor the longer acting meds for seasonal affective disorder because they don't need them all year round, and can generally go off of them more easily. They might also favor the long acting meds in the real setting of
unstable medication supplies,
unstable health care environment with unstable health care professionals,
strikes and shutdowns in health care,
unstable economic and social circumstances, etcetera.
Coming down off of them is not going be without problems, but it's less dangerous than suddenly withdrawing from the short acting ones.
I'm not a fan of turning to pharmaceuticals as the top choice to treat depression.
My friend, all of these drugs are dangerous. The "long acting" one has been most highly linked to violence. I certainly would NOT recommend that someone go on Prozac for half a year, every year (use a light box!), and taper off.
Whether a drug is dangerous because of half life (like Paxil) or because of multiple receptors (like Cymbalta, Effexor, Lexapro) or because of how it sits in the individual's system - they are all dangerous.
If you were told that your car had a 60% chance of being fixed, would you pay for that service?
I can send you a list of 100 people who have struggled with Prozac. Maybe more (this is a rough estimate, just based on what I've seen on Surviving Antidepressants website).
That's the general reasoning for placing them in prescription category, so that they are utilized with some sort of oversight. The U.S. FDA has gotten more unreliable in their judgements lately. And since health care professionals are bailing, the oversight necessarily will be decreasing, so we will see more medication disasters of all kinds in the near future.
I see more of the problems as being related to misuse and lack of monitoring. Prozac has been in far greater use than the others of its general class, (to the extent that it was famously found in Britain's drinking water supply), and therefore one would expect that it is linked to more behavior issues. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/aug/08/health.mentalhealth
60 percent auto fix?? Depends upon the condition and the car. Don't know if you ever had a car, but people really are willing pay for attempts to fix a car that might not be successful. And analogous value judgements are made every day by people with varying appetites for risk, and varying medical conditions.
Some people prefer to take no prescription medications, and others are willing to load up.
Regarding your list of 100 patients: If you go to a place where people who have had adverse reactions to a drug gather online, you'll find people who have had adverse reactions to that drug. I can't send you lists of people who love their Prozac, because in the U.S.A., there are HIPAA (privacy) regulations. Also, Lexapro, escitalopram has eaten up a lot of the market share.
Most people (I'd say up to 70%) love their antidepressants and believe they couldn't live without them.
Dr. Peter Breggin calls this "medication spellbinding," and it's a form of brain damage.
What these people don't realise is that it's not working just on their mood & brain. It's also affecting gut, endocrine, cardiac - entire systems. There are no studies on long term use (other than - as you say - the forums which have a lot of people suffering. Then, after 5, 10, 15 years, they start to get mysterious ailments, like IBS & Crohns, or autoimmune problems, Chronic Fatigue and/or Fibromyalgia...they never connect the mysterious ailments to the damage from the drugs. (and their doctors would never do so) But the damage is real.
I have friends on long term drugging who are going blind (just one example of a symptom). That's not on my forum - that's out here, in the real world.
It would have to be a pretty special car to roll the dice on a 60% repair. I like my mechanic to be closer to 95-100% (which is actually higher than I expect from doctors).
So this is a lot to ask, but would you (and your forum) be open to writing a draft article for me about all the different the harms of the SSRIs, how frequent they are and how to treat them. I don't expect you to know all of it, so just what you can and I can fill in the rest and then get it to a lot of people.
This is a topic I really want to cover, but I haven't had the time to go into it in depth so crowd sourcing part of it (I have to review the sources etc to make sure it's correct) would be really helpful.
All of the antidepressant classes have considerable side effects and drug interactions, and the free will and informed choice should be whether the benefit for each individual outweighs the risk. Using the drugs while in isolation vastly increases the risk. (All medical care involving isolation increases the risk.) When the drug companies hide data, dissatisfaction and risk are greatly increased.
It's vital to remember that many older antidepressants had more immediate and severe side effects, which, along with $$ is what motivated a push for new drug development. The biggest issue is that a higher proportion of people have a want or need for more psych meds, and too few them have competent, continuity of care. The more time consuming methods of care are not available, or priced out of reach.
So many of our social, corporate, and government leadership use antidepressants and other psych meds, along with their self medication habits.
With everyone connected to the government for their well-being they are less connected to their community for survival and social needs, and turn to drugs as first line for relief.
This is what must be reversed.
The pills are seen as the easy fix for anything. Perhaps the increasing distrust of health care, and the pain of the present and coming drug shortages will change culture so that people are forced to more ownership of their own health and social circumstances.
At the same time, spiritual awakening is happening, and it should be encouraged. All of us will be safer when connected more with our Creator and our neighbors, and much less with the government and corporate run health care.
Our founder, Altostrata, likely has the statistics you may be looking for. She has worked with doctors in the past - always striving to get the word out! Here is more about her:
She is one of those "citizen scientists" I have so much praise for.
In brief, in my experience, every one of these drugs causes long term damage. It may not be perceptible for 5, 10 or more years. But what will happen (and I'll bet this relates to zeta potential!) is the systems start to break down. All of a sudden, there's IBS, Crohns, thyroid, adrenal and endocrine problems (may relate to the sexual dysfunctions). Most people believe the drugs are helping them, until they try to come off. They do not connect their other ailments to the drug (I had one come in with pancreatitis, they linked it to Lexapro - but - did not suggest that she come off it! Instead they loaded her up with pancreas drugs.)
Then, as one comes off, the symptoms start coming out. All the metabolic pathways that have been hampered or blocked - start coming alive.
People on these drugs for 20 years may just think they have poor health.
I would need more detail of what you are looking for to comment more.
I hope I've given you a place to start - I'm planning on posting a link to your page on my "Success Story" - which is not without risk, as SA does NOT discuss COVID (too worried it would turn into an "antivax" site). But your articles on antidepressants are excellent, and should be shared widely!!!!!
Not trying to be mean, but do you have any idea how long it would take me to synthesize those into a single one (I've looked at tons of similar ones to them).
Basically I'd like to get something like this together out to help people with these issues, but it's presently years down in the cue because I just don't have the time to. Presently the articles I put up here get around 60-100k views so I need to make sure they are written well.
When you understand SERT, you realise that the top 50% of your dose is likely not doing anything. Under doctor's care, that "cut in half" is probably fine, except that then the doc says to quit, and that's not fine. The last 50% of the taper is where the most SERT occupancy takes place, and why those last milligrams are so vital to a successful taper.
Fact of the matter is, on most of those articles (it is a forum, after all) you can just read the first post, or first 5 posts tops. All the rest of the threads will be comments which are not relevant to your work. At your level, that's less that 20 minutes.
To spell out what I think you are looking for: IF you take an antidepressant what are the chances it will work? What kind of problems can being on the drugs cause? What systems do they affect?
IF you try to get off an antidepressant, what are the chances it will be damaging? What kind of symptoms crop up when you come off too quickly? How long will it last? If you are destabilised, how do you get stable again? (reinstatement)
Are there differences between the different antidepressants? (CLUE: yes, there are, but the techniques for dealing with them are the same: 10% per month, parabolic) What about benzos and neuroleptics (called "antipsychotics" but they are truly "anti-brain.")? (CLUE: same procedures apply, but you may have to go even more slowly to get off benzos!)
Most people consider themselves too busy for the work of getting off of their pills.
Soon they will be deprescribed by circumstances, and it's going to be tumultuous.
There are no meds without side effects. We now have an autoimmune industry. I think much of the G.I. autoimmune issues are correctable by ceasing the antibiotic abuse, and correcting the diet, but that would be too time consuming and not sufficiently profitable. The gut flora also impinge upon activity in the CNS and the immune system. Everything is interrelated.
The auto and health metaphor is extremely apt and useful.
For such things as an oil change and tire rotation, and break pads replacement you should expect very high success. For such things as drivability, automatic brake systems, and all aspects involving the electrical systems and the "brain" computer control of the car, you do not get such high success with the repair attempts. Diagnosis and repair is not easy, and the cost risk goes way up. Likewise with the body, you do well with routine minor surgeries which don't require general anaesthesia. Anything involving the brain, and central nervous system, from pain, to tumors, clots, infectious diseases and psych, the success and satisfaction rate goes way down.
Really JC and weedom1 have a general agreement that the antidepressants are over and mis-used. We're having a battle of the vantage points between an on-the-ground view, and an aerial view, both of which are needed for the whole picture and decision making.
And we really need our free will and informed consent as much as possible.
I’m so glad to hear that you found what was right for you! Agree with you that many just prescribe any old thing and hope it sticks. My SSRIs were “prescribed” to me initially because the guy had samples in his closet.
I will share my own experience. I take Zoloft for PTSD. It isn't a large dose and never has been. I had a very good psychiatrist when I first did seek help. She started me at the smallest dose and told me to increase to my comfort when symptoms went away. It stopped me from remembering my nightmares and still does. Other providers have told me that it doesn't, but it really does work for that. Providers have told me a lot of things that I should and shouldn't feel. Maybe they should have joined me on the battlefield and see if their view changes. :) I personally am thankful that she knew this aspect of this drug. How those nightmares affected me, I remember well. I know I still have them sometimes, but I don't have to deal with the effects of them any longer. I think many just throw medication at people. I know someone that was diagnosed with bipolar and was on 6 meds. Moved to another state and saw someone else and diagnose her with ADD. Stopped all those meds and changed her to just one. She was a changed person after that. Like anything in life, finding those that truly understand, listen and help is a challenge. I took responsibility for my PTSD. No one else understands what is happening inside me anyway, even if I tell them.
I'm happy that worked for you. Prazosin is the most commonly used drug for PTSD nightmares that people find works.
It's great that you, J.T., have a competent physician who is able to monitor the results of treatment. This makes a huge difference in the successful choice and use of any drug.
A major truth in the article is that few acknowledge the need for these drugs to be tapered when withdrawing, and that patients who are on them should take them regularly.
Prozac is very long acting so it self-tapers to a significant degree. Paxil is the shortest acting SSRI, and irregular use, or failure to taper could cause problems with this drug and other short acting drugs of this class. Concomitant use of Paxil and Celexa, mentioned in the article, seems like a particularly bad idea. SSRIs and SNRIs with approval for different indications has caused duplication of therapy and harm to patients. Duloxetine has a pain indication and this has caused it to be used together with other similar drugs. Interactions of SSRIs and SNRIs with other drugs have been a huge issue.
Lots of patients complain about the difficulty of withdrawing from Effexor.
Duloxetine is another drug which is a serious problem when not taken on schedule.
The combo of SSRIs, SNRIs and other psych meds, and tramadol can result in serotonin syndrome.
I conclude that there's a place for most of these meds, but they have been OVER-prescribed, incorrectly prescribed, and monitored VERY poorly, leading to disastrous results.
8 minutes is not long enough for a decent patient evaluation.
It is a myth that Prozac is self-tapering, as it is also a myth that depot shots are self-tapering. Chart from: http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/healthadvice/treatmentswellbeing/antidepressants/comingoffantidepressants.aspx
points out that all of the antidepressant drugs have difficulties in tapering. Note that 44% of people coming off Prozac have difficulties. If you went to a car mechanic, and he said that there was a 44% chance that you would be in danger, would you go to that mechanic? These' aren't good numbers! Worse on this list is venlafaxine (Effexor) with 82% of people having trouble, escitalopram (Lexapro) 75%, paroxetine (Paxil, Arapax) & duloxetine (Cymbalta) at 69%. Medium troubles with sertraline (Zoloft) and citalopram (Celexa) at 62% and 60% respectively. The "easiest" on this list are fluoxetine (Prozac) at 44% and mirtazapine (Remeron) 21%.
The length of half-life does make for important considerations in tapering, paroxetine is particularly evil with it's tiny half-life. Other considerations are how many receptors it hits (this gets really evil with antipsychotics like Zyprexa) - like Cymbalta & Effexor. BUT - that does not eliminate the fact that each neurotransmitter adjustment takes 3 weeks (ever wonder why the doc said, "it might take a few weeks to start working" = ?) - so if you just cold turkey Prozac, you will still stack up about 9-12 months of symptoms all at once. Prozac's 48-62 (depending on which metabolites you are counting) long half life does not even last 3 weeks.
Please taper. Please taper. Please taper.
JC, the site that you specify agrees with me that (long acting) Prozac "self tapers to a significant degree" by rating it as "low" on the risk of withdrawal issues.
The withdrawal problems are individual, with some people having much worse problems than others. When the patients don't know what to expect from withdrawal, it's worse.
I have worked with people who irregularly took the shorter acting meds, and exhibited behavioral issues, likely exacerbated by their inability/unwillingness to keep a regimen.
People might favor the longer acting meds for seasonal affective disorder because they don't need them all year round, and can generally go off of them more easily. They might also favor the long acting meds in the real setting of
unstable medication supplies,
unstable health care environment with unstable health care professionals,
strikes and shutdowns in health care,
unstable economic and social circumstances, etcetera.
Coming down off of them is not going be without problems, but it's less dangerous than suddenly withdrawing from the short acting ones.
I'm not a fan of turning to pharmaceuticals as the top choice to treat depression.
My friend, all of these drugs are dangerous. The "long acting" one has been most highly linked to violence. I certainly would NOT recommend that someone go on Prozac for half a year, every year (use a light box!), and taper off.
Whether a drug is dangerous because of half life (like Paxil) or because of multiple receptors (like Cymbalta, Effexor, Lexapro) or because of how it sits in the individual's system - they are all dangerous.
If you were told that your car had a 60% chance of being fixed, would you pay for that service?
I can send you a list of 100 people who have struggled with Prozac. Maybe more (this is a rough estimate, just based on what I've seen on Surviving Antidepressants website).
Yep, most drugs are dangerous.
That's the general reasoning for placing them in prescription category, so that they are utilized with some sort of oversight. The U.S. FDA has gotten more unreliable in their judgements lately. And since health care professionals are bailing, the oversight necessarily will be decreasing, so we will see more medication disasters of all kinds in the near future.
I see more of the problems as being related to misuse and lack of monitoring. Prozac has been in far greater use than the others of its general class, (to the extent that it was famously found in Britain's drinking water supply), and therefore one would expect that it is linked to more behavior issues. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2004/aug/08/health.mentalhealth
60 percent auto fix?? Depends upon the condition and the car. Don't know if you ever had a car, but people really are willing pay for attempts to fix a car that might not be successful. And analogous value judgements are made every day by people with varying appetites for risk, and varying medical conditions.
Some people prefer to take no prescription medications, and others are willing to load up.
Regarding your list of 100 patients: If you go to a place where people who have had adverse reactions to a drug gather online, you'll find people who have had adverse reactions to that drug. I can't send you lists of people who love their Prozac, because in the U.S.A., there are HIPAA (privacy) regulations. Also, Lexapro, escitalopram has eaten up a lot of the market share.
Most people (I'd say up to 70%) love their antidepressants and believe they couldn't live without them.
Dr. Peter Breggin calls this "medication spellbinding," and it's a form of brain damage.
What these people don't realise is that it's not working just on their mood & brain. It's also affecting gut, endocrine, cardiac - entire systems. There are no studies on long term use (other than - as you say - the forums which have a lot of people suffering. Then, after 5, 10, 15 years, they start to get mysterious ailments, like IBS & Crohns, or autoimmune problems, Chronic Fatigue and/or Fibromyalgia...they never connect the mysterious ailments to the damage from the drugs. (and their doctors would never do so) But the damage is real.
I have friends on long term drugging who are going blind (just one example of a symptom). That's not on my forum - that's out here, in the real world.
It would have to be a pretty special car to roll the dice on a 60% repair. I like my mechanic to be closer to 95-100% (which is actually higher than I expect from doctors).
So this is a lot to ask, but would you (and your forum) be open to writing a draft article for me about all the different the harms of the SSRIs, how frequent they are and how to treat them. I don't expect you to know all of it, so just what you can and I can fill in the rest and then get it to a lot of people.
This is a topic I really want to cover, but I haven't had the time to go into it in depth so crowd sourcing part of it (I have to review the sources etc to make sure it's correct) would be really helpful.
All of the antidepressant classes have considerable side effects and drug interactions, and the free will and informed choice should be whether the benefit for each individual outweighs the risk. Using the drugs while in isolation vastly increases the risk. (All medical care involving isolation increases the risk.) When the drug companies hide data, dissatisfaction and risk are greatly increased.
It's vital to remember that many older antidepressants had more immediate and severe side effects, which, along with $$ is what motivated a push for new drug development. The biggest issue is that a higher proportion of people have a want or need for more psych meds, and too few them have competent, continuity of care. The more time consuming methods of care are not available, or priced out of reach.
So many of our social, corporate, and government leadership use antidepressants and other psych meds, along with their self medication habits.
With everyone connected to the government for their well-being they are less connected to their community for survival and social needs, and turn to drugs as first line for relief.
This is what must be reversed.
The pills are seen as the easy fix for anything. Perhaps the increasing distrust of health care, and the pain of the present and coming drug shortages will change culture so that people are forced to more ownership of their own health and social circumstances.
At the same time, spiritual awakening is happening, and it should be encouraged. All of us will be safer when connected more with our Creator and our neighbors, and much less with the government and corporate run health care.
We may have articles up already that you can work from. We are writing there, all the time!
For example:
https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/topic/23081-are-we-there-yet-how-long-is-withdrawal-going-to-take/
https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/topic/2207-taking-multiple-psych-drugs-which-drug-to-taper-first/
https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/topic/4291-again-chemical-imbalance-is-a-myth-stop-the-lies-please/
https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/topic/6632-the-rule-of-3kis-keep-it-simple-keep-it-slow-keep-it-stable/
https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/topic/82-the-windows-and-waves-pattern-of-stabilization/
https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/topic/27800-hypersensitivity-and-kindling/
https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/topic/7562-about-reinstating-and-stabilizing-to-reduce-withdrawal-symptoms/
Our founder, Altostrata, likely has the statistics you may be looking for. She has worked with doctors in the past - always striving to get the word out! Here is more about her:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2020/11/surviving-antidepressants-adele-framer/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33796265/
She is one of those "citizen scientists" I have so much praise for.
In brief, in my experience, every one of these drugs causes long term damage. It may not be perceptible for 5, 10 or more years. But what will happen (and I'll bet this relates to zeta potential!) is the systems start to break down. All of a sudden, there's IBS, Crohns, thyroid, adrenal and endocrine problems (may relate to the sexual dysfunctions). Most people believe the drugs are helping them, until they try to come off. They do not connect their other ailments to the drug (I had one come in with pancreatitis, they linked it to Lexapro - but - did not suggest that she come off it! Instead they loaded her up with pancreas drugs.)
Then, as one comes off, the symptoms start coming out. All the metabolic pathways that have been hampered or blocked - start coming alive.
People on these drugs for 20 years may just think they have poor health.
I would need more detail of what you are looking for to comment more.
I hope I've given you a place to start - I'm planning on posting a link to your page on my "Success Story" - which is not without risk, as SA does NOT discuss COVID (too worried it would turn into an "antivax" site). But your articles on antidepressants are excellent, and should be shared widely!!!!!
Not trying to be mean, but do you have any idea how long it would take me to synthesize those into a single one (I've looked at tons of similar ones to them).
Basically I'd like to get something like this together out to help people with these issues, but it's presently years down in the cue because I just don't have the time to. Presently the articles I put up here get around 60-100k views so I need to make sure they are written well.
Probably the single most important fact is SERT occupancy, which is why it is dangerous to reduce at lower doses of the drugs: https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/topic/6036-why-taper-sert-transporter-occupancy-studies-show-importance-of-gradual-change-in-plasma-concentration/
When you understand SERT, you realise that the top 50% of your dose is likely not doing anything. Under doctor's care, that "cut in half" is probably fine, except that then the doc says to quit, and that's not fine. The last 50% of the taper is where the most SERT occupancy takes place, and why those last milligrams are so vital to a successful taper.
Aw doc - I figgered you were a speed reader!
Fact of the matter is, on most of those articles (it is a forum, after all) you can just read the first post, or first 5 posts tops. All the rest of the threads will be comments which are not relevant to your work. At your level, that's less that 20 minutes.
To spell out what I think you are looking for: IF you take an antidepressant what are the chances it will work? What kind of problems can being on the drugs cause? What systems do they affect?
IF you try to get off an antidepressant, what are the chances it will be damaging? What kind of symptoms crop up when you come off too quickly? How long will it last? If you are destabilised, how do you get stable again? (reinstatement)
Are there differences between the different antidepressants? (CLUE: yes, there are, but the techniques for dealing with them are the same: 10% per month, parabolic) What about benzos and neuroleptics (called "antipsychotics" but they are truly "anti-brain.")? (CLUE: same procedures apply, but you may have to go even more slowly to get off benzos!)
What other questions are you looking to answer?
http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/1024-why-taper-by-10-of-my-dosage/
Most people consider themselves too busy for the work of getting off of their pills.
Soon they will be deprescribed by circumstances, and it's going to be tumultuous.
There are no meds without side effects. We now have an autoimmune industry. I think much of the G.I. autoimmune issues are correctable by ceasing the antibiotic abuse, and correcting the diet, but that would be too time consuming and not sufficiently profitable. The gut flora also impinge upon activity in the CNS and the immune system. Everything is interrelated.
The auto and health metaphor is extremely apt and useful.
For such things as an oil change and tire rotation, and break pads replacement you should expect very high success. For such things as drivability, automatic brake systems, and all aspects involving the electrical systems and the "brain" computer control of the car, you do not get such high success with the repair attempts. Diagnosis and repair is not easy, and the cost risk goes way up. Likewise with the body, you do well with routine minor surgeries which don't require general anaesthesia. Anything involving the brain, and central nervous system, from pain, to tumors, clots, infectious diseases and psych, the success and satisfaction rate goes way down.
Really JC and weedom1 have a general agreement that the antidepressants are over and mis-used. We're having a battle of the vantage points between an on-the-ground view, and an aerial view, both of which are needed for the whole picture and decision making.
And we really need our free will and informed consent as much as possible.
I’m so glad to hear that you found what was right for you! Agree with you that many just prescribe any old thing and hope it sticks. My SSRIs were “prescribed” to me initially because the guy had samples in his closet.