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Hi all, I have been on antidepressants for 15 yrs and have tried getting off of them about 6 or 7 times but with no success. All those times though unbeknownst to me I was still toxic with mercury. I have recently got all my fillings replaced and I am optomistic about the possibilities of going slowly off again AFTER Im done detoxing. Anyone have experience with this. All my symptoms of depression are the same are merc poisoning. Ths for help. Diane

hi Diane,

While I've experienced bone-crushing, soul-sucking, depression in years past, I had been able to wean myself off anti-depressants. However, I was still plagued with mild to moderate depression.

One thing that has really helped me, was getting an Organic Acids Test done. You can Google for this and see what the test can reveal. It basically is just a urine test that will attempt to assess the body's metabolic and detoxification pathways and pick up weaknesses. It will also make nutritional recommendations to help recover from those weaknesses.

I had this test done after my amalgam removal and it detected many things. And it sort of proved to me that my wanting to delay in beginning formal detox was a good thing because I have to bolster some detox pathways first.

But regarding the depression ... the test picked up that I was quite deficient in Vitamin B6, Magnesium and Tryptophan. It picked up the fact that I have a weakness in the the pathways that are responsible for Serotonin metabolism. And this can be a cause of depression.

Even though I'd been supplementing with B6 and Magnesium for years, I still wasn't taking enough. So my doc has placed me on nearly orthomolecular doses of B6, Magnesium and L-Tryptophan and the effect has been astounding. Now I only experience very mild depression when I've not had enough sleep or premenstrually.

Mercury is a huge endocrine dysruptor. It's placed me in estrogen dominance, exhausted my adrenal glands and impaired my ability to metabolize serotonin. All this has been discovered through functional testing. I'm so glad I've had the tests done so I can begin to support all these weakneses through supplementation, diet and bio-identical hormones. Then maybe I"ll be in a stronger position to do a formal detox some day.

SomedaySoon (Sharon)

Dear Sharon Thanks for the feedback and guidance. What is "functional testing" exactly anyway? And where do you get an Organic Acids test? Do you know how much they cost? Does it let you know all your deficiencies? Is there a way of finding out which brain chemical exactly Im deficient in like tryptophan, 5htp or whatever so I can take those supplements on my own. Im really getting tired of what it does to my sex drive. Sounds like your pretty knowledable. I appreciate the help. Thanks again, Diane

Diane, if you're still around, then I hope you're OK.

15 years is a long time to be on ADs. You will need to taper very slowly so as not to shock your system and make yourself ill. Make cuts of 5-10% or less (of the previous, not the original dose), and wait until you are feeling OK again before making the next cut.

And yes, diet and supplements are critical for success too, both in getting off the drug and staying off. I belong to an internet list where people go to discontinue ADs and the protocol there is to eat the Paleolithic diet, and to take a range of good supplements which should go a long way toward remedying any nutritional deficiencies. These include a high-quality multivitamin, colloidal minerals, fish oil, and magnesium and calcium.

Let me know if I can be of further help. It's possible to succeed but you have to be firm and determined with the nutrition and the slow taper.

Regards,
Linda.

Thanks for your reply Linda. I appreciate the feedback. I know 15 yrs is a long time but Ive tried SO many times to go off. But these attempts were prior to the discovery of amalgam poisoning. Now that I am doing the diet and the detox procol I believe my chances are superior in eventually being AD free! On top of that I have the power of God and prayer working for me. I am doing everything in your post except the colloidal minerals. Thats a great suggestion! Thanks! Diane

That's excellent news Diane <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Yes it sounds to me like you will succeed too. Keep us posted please?

Linda.

I took antidepressants and other psychiatric meds for 6 years beginning at the age of 16. In December, it'll be one year since I was able to successfully quit after reading a book that convinced me the drugs simply weren't necessary for me anymore.

I've been through some of the most horrible "discontinuation" symptoms imaginable, including seizure, pseudoparkonsonian reactions, suicidal thoughts, violent outbursts, nightmares, crying, and feeling as though I was going insane. It's very easy to get caught up in the withdrawal symptoms and feel like it will never go away, like that's your REAL personality. You start thinking, "is this why I started these meds in the first place? Was I REALLY this crazy?"

The answer is no.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that the way you're feeling is a symptom of drug withdrawal, not a regression into your "pre-drug" state of being. You will never feel as bad as you do during discontinuation syndrome. Since most doctors and psychiatrists don't inform people of the seriousness of these effects (or in my case, didn't even MENTION the possibility of such horrors), it's very easy to feel like the drugs are more benign than they are, that you NEED them to be normal, etc. Do some research on discontinuation syndrome and you'll find all the symptoms that make you feel crazy and see that they're merely side effects of quitting the drugs. Some of them go away relatively quickly, others can last for up to 2 years after quitting, especially in someone who's been on the drugs as long as you have. I experienced a sharp increase in my appetite after quitting Prozac and an immediate weight gain that's just now starting to even out. There's no limit to what you can potentially experience upon quitting psychiatric meds, but it does help to educate yourself extensively beforehand. If not for the book I read, I would have NEVER had the wherewithall to successfully stop drugging myself. You need to know what to expect and how to best deal with it before setting out on this journey...and it IS a journey. Best of luck to you!

what book was it?

The book was called "Your Drug May Be Your Problem" by By Peter Roger Breggin and David Cohen.

It discusses every class of psych drug, including SSRIs, atypical antipsychotics, benzos, etc., the drug's effects on the brain/body, and tapering schedules for quitting safely. It's pretty balanced and not too "extreme" one way or the other.

I've got that one. It's good <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Now if Dr. Breggin and others like him would also realise the importance of diet and supplements, they will be helping to heal a lot of people.

You're right about that, LindaLou. I have read Breggins work and I own one of his books (Toxic Psychiatry). He does a good job of pointing out the dangers of psychiatric drugs but he really doesn't give any good alternatives. He's a big proponent of psychotherapy but that won't help people suffering from severe mental illness.

In mental illness the physical aspects of the illness (nutritional deficiencies, toxins, hormonal imbalances, food sensitivities, etc.) need to be addressed before psychotherapy will help.

Most mentally ill people that I know take psych drugs because they are the lesser of the two evils and they don't know about natural alternatives or don't have access to them.

That's absolutely true.

I belong to a SAD forum. It was the first thing I diagnosed myself with, back in autumn 2004. I stuck around the forum after I started figuring things out because I wanted to share my knowledge of alt med; if someone had been there to do it for me, it would have saved me a lot of suffering.

A few people have thanked me for it in the past. Unfortunately at the moment the clientele there seem to be pill-poppers, almost all of them. As far as I can tell, none of them are interested in alternatives; it's as if they'd rather suffer every winter than entertain the notion that there could be an actual cure for them if they did some work. I try to be patient and quiet until someone wants to talk to me but mostly what I see at the moment on any thread is people saying "go see your doctor . . . if your med doesn't work, find another that "suits" you . . ." It's hard to endure that.

One person who seemed very glad to have had my help in coming off an antidepressant, recently panicked and is now on Seroxat (Paxil). God what an idiot. I have said nothing to him, which is probably the best thing.

At the end of the day we need to be there for people who are open to this knowledge, which can be hard to come by. People need to choose this path for themselves. It just makes me very sad to see them rejecting that knowledge in favour of drugs. It's going to take a big, big shift in people's thinking to ever get them away from the idea that drugs can fix you and accept that their health is actually their own responsibility.

Well, there are some decent alternatives out there, but it kinda depends on what you're suffering from. 5-HTP is an excellent serotonin precursor that I felt almost immediately. It works differently than SSRIs in that it actually increases the amount of serotonin in the brain rather than just inhibiting its reuptake. I've also heard good things about SAM-e, but am not sure how it works. St. John's Wort is an MAO-type herb that "promotes a positive mood" and has worked wonders for my roommate.

For anxiety, insomnia, and obsessive-type disorders, Valerian root works wonders. It's effects are similar to Valium, but it's neither addictive nor toxic if taken in the recommended amounts. I also take that to help with sleep problems and some of my friends take it for anxiety.

In addition to herbs like St. John's Wort and Korean Ginseng, there are other natural ways to boost serotonin, such as eating foods that lead to serotonin production--walnuts are the best--and getting plenty of sunlight and exercise. Of course, if you have a more complex disorder like bipolar disorder, true OCD, or schizophrenia, these more modest approaches will likely prove insufficient. Many bipolar people are found to have a problem metabolizing acetylcholine and should therefore avoid it in food and supplement forms. Blood sugar problems like hypoglycemia are also linked to BPD, as are lithium and B vitamin deficiency.

Because there are so many potential factors and causes of mental illness, no one treatment can be ruled out until tried for a significant period of time. Some things take up to a month to build up in your system, while others work immediately. Nutritional approaches cannot be overlooked, as depression, anxiety, and many other disorders can be caused or exacerbated by even mild deficiencies of any one of the 40+ nutrients needed daily by the body. Each deficiency has its own list of symptoms, too. Other things to consider are your physical environment and stressors (abusive spouse, loneliness, money troubles, and other ongoing stressors), unresolved emotional issues, and family history of mental illness. If, for example, you are dealing with the ongoing stress of caring for an ill relative--a situation that cannot be improved and that you can't really get out of--it might be best to keep taking the antidepressants until the situation resolves. Basically, if you're living with ANY environmental stressor that would be too much to bear without taking psychiatric meds, or if you suffer from a severe, persisting mental illness such as schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, or OCD, a "heavy" approach including drugs and psychotherapy might be the best treatment for you. I believe those situations are the ones for which these drugs were intended, but they're given out to those of us with milder problems too often. I guess it all just depends on your reasons for taking the antidepressants in the first place. If you have any questions, please ask...I've dealt with this problem for years and have tried/researched many different potential treatments!

My ND firmly believes that OCD is treatable with diet and supplements.

I agree with you about looking at psychological and environmental factors. Where we get into treating things with herbs and "natural" things like 5-HTP, though, is more of a grey area. For example, if mercury poisoning is your problem but you don't know it and you are looking for ways to boost your serotonin, you're pretty well going to be sunk. I think there is too much made out of the idea of boosting neurotransmitters. Originally it was big pharma propaganda to sell Prozac because they discovered it acted on serotonin (it was originally developed as a drug to lower blood pressure). Lilly then started to sell the idea that depression is caused by low serotonin, though this has never been proved, and it is currently impossible to measure the neurotransmitter levels of a living human being.

I tried 5-HTP myself. It made me very groggy. I tried St. John's wort. It gave me severe stomach cramps. Diet, supplements, amalgam removal and chelation have worked for me where nothing else did; and in a way I'm lucky, because if all the sticking-plasters I tried did work to mask my symptoms, I never would have gone beyond them.

There's great advice about herbs, vitamins, etc on the Mercury forum. One of the best places for that on the internet, I would guess. It's nice to be someplace where people aren't pushing their psych meds. Many people here have already been down that route and have not been helped.

I don't believe that anti-depressants target serotonine, research doesnt support the idea that serotonine causes depression. What the anti-depressants are likely to target is the adrenals. The adrenals affect our blood pressure, and even how the thyroid hormones work, so they also affect our mood. They also affect when we are able to sleep, too low/high cortisol means no sleep. I wonder whether people going off anti-depressants suffer from screwed adrenal activity, e.g. too high cortisol.

Bingo. Have you been reading my bio? When I came off my own med a year and a half ago, I got cortisol dysfunction that was occasionally crippling. I was over-sensitive to sound; had to use sunglasses when on the computer or watching TV; even reading more than a few pages in a book was too much for me. When the temperature outside rose past the mid-70s F, I would get sick. I worked for 6 weeks last autumn but had to quit because the cortisol made me a jittery wreck.

The good news is that through healing with diet and supplements, this improves over time. I'm getting better and I've been able to cope with working in a school 2-3 days a week. Strangely, what's harder on my cortisol is sitting still in a seminar for hours on end (which is also part of this return-to-teaching course I am on). Fortunately I use some herbs that help a lot with this.

I wish someone would investigate your ideas about how these meds affect adrenals, because I have no doubt you are on to something there. Problem is, no one ever seems to be all that interested in how meds do what they do, as long as they can point to them being "superior to placebo" in clinical trials. (Don't even get me started on that.)

I've been thinking about this. I understand where you are coming from Tracii, but respectfully I disagree, for several reasons.

First, I think it's important for people to understand that psych meds are poisonous to the body. They have effects that aren't always noticed; for example, they interfere with glucose metabolism. Neuroleptics like Zyprexa are particularly well known for this; it can cause diabetes. Also, the actual effects on neurotransmitters are not understood. 5% of serotonin is in the brain, most is in the gut -- there isn't a single person who can explain what increasing serotonin in the gut does to a person. There is also evidence that the brain makes physical changes to accommodate these drugs because the brain actually acts to try to keep itself in a state of homeostasis. Psych meds interfere with that. They do not cure chemical imbalances, they cause them. But you're probably familiar with msot of this if you have been reading Breggin.

Therefore, suggesting that someone take one of these meds should not be taken lightly, especially as many of them have been shown to only be slightly superior to placebo in clinical trials -- and these trials typically only last about 6 weeks. Many people are actually made worse by these drugs, and some are incapacitated long-term or permanently. I know quite a few.

Secondly, I am uncomfortable about recommending a psych med for someone in a "difficult" situation. I believe that depression acts as our body's warning that something in life needs putting right. Symptoms are there to make us act. Not, generally, to be masked by drugs so that the underlying problem can be ignored. If someone is in a difficult situation, surely it would be better to find a way to better deal with that situation, or to extract oneself from it, than to drug oneself and just carry on as normal? People get these drugs because they are stressed at work, or grieving, for example. What they need is help to cope with these situations, not drugs to numb their feelings.

Finally, all of the conditions you listed can have root causes that are treatable. Orthomolecular medicine offers a number of solutions. There are so many things a person can consider, including amalgam removal, which is presumably why we are all here.

A couple of websites you might be interested in:

http://www.orthomolecular.org/

http://www.doctoryourself.com/

http://www.mercola.com/index.htm

http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/

http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm

I agree with you, LindaLou, on a lot of your points. Mental illness is one of the few conditions that can't be "proven" the way heart disease or cancer can. For instance, if you were to take xrays of someone with heart disease and show them to doctors from all over the world, all would be able to pinpoint where the problem was and tell that the heart was diseased. With things like depression and other psychiatric conditions, all that can really be done is to make a diagnosis off of symptoms and outward appearance of the patient, which leaves questions about the true cause of the symptoms. I am in no way a proponent of psychiatric medications and don't feel that they helped me personally, but I just didn't want to be responsible for telling someone with severe, disabling depression or other problems to quit without knowing what to expect or how to counter the effects. The fact that most antidepressants performed equal to or WORSE than placebos in clinical trials (Prozac) is important to keep in mind before starting these drugs, as are the horrid discontinuation symptoms, side effects, and unknown effects of the drugs. It's best to never start them in the first place, but for someone on them as long as the originator of this thread, it can actually be physically dangerous to quit unless done properly. I also agree that symptoms of many mental illnesses are there to serve as warnings that things aren't right in our lives, but there are genuine cases of severe, genetically-linked disorders like schizophrenia, where the environment is NOT the cause.

The fact remains that for a select few who failed to improve using other interventions and are unable to function in life outside of an asylum, medication is the only thing with noticeable effects. For about 98.9% of those on meds, that's not the case. They should be a last ditch effort to try only when the potential benefits outweigh the risks and when everything else has failed. Nutritional approaches, biomedical therapies, psychotherapy, changes in physical environment, and healthier living practices are usually sufficient when undertaken in the correct manner for the appropriate length of time.

I wouldn't recommend prescription drugs to ANYONE I know or have met online, as their conditions don't appear grave enough to go down that road. In fact, I've never met a person I think was so severely impaired that I would tell them to start taking these drugs...I only wish physicians and psychiatrists felt the same way. My experience with these chemicals is that I noticed an improvement in the first month, and then nothing but apathy and lack of creativity thereafter. Quitting was absolute HELL each time, whether I'd taken the drug for 6 weeks or 2 years, and many people have reported the same thing. Never again. I've come to realize that depression isn't a normal state of being and that there is a cause behind such unnatural conditions, which is the reason I joined this forum. Heavy metal intoxication can DEFINITELY mess with your mind in about any way imaginable, something I discovered from hours of internet research. Psychiatric drugs only mask these symptoms (unless they don't work at all or make it worse), and that's worthless in my book. I will forever be bitter toward the doctors who started me--a 16 year old high school student--on these drugs (Risperdal, Luvox, and Anafranil) all at once and gave me a drug called Cogentin, which they said was to prevent "side effects", which I later learned meant "Tardive Dyskinesia", the irreversible movement disorder similar to Parkinson's or Tourette's (Cogentin is marketed as a Parkinson's drug, actually.) Anyway, it was all downhill from there, with me trying about 9 other drugs, some of which gave me seizures and violent outbursts upon quitting. The best advice is to never start, but for those wishing to quit, the best advice I have is to do the research, consult a doctor you trust to monitor your condition (most don't approve of quitting these meds), and taking precautions to avoid stressful sitiuations until withdrawal is complete.

It's very true, people need to be cautious when coming off these meds. I started my original diet and supplement regime on the advice of my ND, who has been helping people get off and stay off psych meds for over 20 years. These things help a lot, particularly when there is damage to the CNS; this won't exactly heal overnight.

I wish the people on my SAD forum talking about which drug "suits" them as if they were trying on a new jacket for size, could hear the stories of people like you. I don't think they are aware of the damage these drugs do.

I am not a doctor or an expert, but I do question how much genetics plays a part in mental illness. You might be interested in learning about Dr. Abram Hoffer, who is the editor of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. He had a patient once whose psychotic episodes were traced to a dairy allergy (as well as other allergies). He pioneered the use of megadoses of niacin and vitamin C in treating schizophrenia.

Allergies can be inherited. So can nutritional deficiencies, and individual needs for certain amounts of nutrients. Some people simply need more than others because of their biochemical individuality. If this runs in the family then what ends up getting noticed is the resulting symptoms, which can include mental illness. Some families indeed seem to be predisposed to express certain symptoms in certain ways. But the mistake doctors almost always make is just to say that the mental illness itself is the inherited disease and nothing can be done about it.

Schizophrenia is not a natural state, and as you said neither is depression. I honestly think that unless there is physical brain damage, you will find the root cause of a problem if you know how to look. How many people are crippled by mercury alone, don't know it, and wouldn't believe it if you suggested it to them? The problem is MS, fibromyalgia, OCD, depression, chemical sensitivity, they'd say, and sometimes that becomes the label that they seem to want to live with, even if it means suffering.

Sorry, those people at the SAD forum have got me down. I ought to quit there, but part of me keeps thinking that if I can help just one or two people, it's worth it to stick around and listen to the crap that the others are writing. Sometimes people go there from Google because they are having problems with ADs and they found a thread where it's been discussed, and often I can give them advice. Mind you, those people will always be around, whether I am or not . . . difficult call to make.

Well it looks like Schizophrenia, OCD and Borderline are often just mercury toxicity so drugs and talk therapy are NOT the best treatment in many cases. The best treatment is addressing the cause doesn't matter if the illness is severe or not.

I know a person suffering from Borderline personality disorder and years of therapy and drugs have NOT cured anything. And guess what? Of course this person has black fillings in the mouth.

There is a lot of money to be made with these poor people... <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/reallymad.gif" alt="" />

Well yeah i noticed that some people here suffered from excess cortisol when coming off anti-depressants. There is also a striking similarity between the symptoms of serotonine syndrome, adrenal crisis, and serious mercury poisoning, just different words for symptoms that are really those of the adrenals. If you read the side-effects of anti-depressants, they are just those related to adrenals.

ADs do hit the adrenals, but I think it's an oversimplification to say that serotonin syndrome and mercury poisoning involve the adrenal system alone. They affect the whole central nervous system as well, and the endocrine system. It's a very long list of diverse symptoms that can be ascribed to mercury poisoning and psych meds.