Doctors failed to warn Clare Marks of possible withdrawal effects when they prescribed her the drugs
Ein Artikel des Telegraph, UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/we ... sants.html
I’ve been taking antidepressants for seven years now. I don’t blame the doctor for prescribing them – it is the lack of information and support I am angry about. No-one warned me there would be withdrawal symptoms. In all the years of repeat prescriptions the GP surgery never got in touch to say 'we need to review this’. I saw the GP twice, both times initiated by me, when I was trying to come off the medication. I wish the doctor had advised the counselling option instead.
I was first prescribed antidepressants when I was 18 and had just started university. I had such high expectations of student life, but everything went wrong. I didn’t like the course I’d chosen - geography – and had nothing in common with the students I lived with. My enormous disappointment gave way to increasing unhappiness and isolation. I stopped going to lectures, cried a lot and was unable to sleep. Eventually I stopped leaving my room for weeks at a time.
The GP said I had two options: counselling, for which there was a 10-week waiting list, or antidepressants. His advice was to take the drugs. It was a short consultation in which nothing was said about the side effects of withdrawal. I was prescribed a medicine called citalopram, at a dose of 20mg a day.
After a few weeks of taking it I began to feel more like my normal self and was sleeping properly, which helped. But a couple of months later the depression crept back. The GP suggested my body had probably grown accustomed to the low dose, and he upped it to 40mg.
When I tried to come off them, I felt dizzy and sick. At first I thought I was ill but it soon became clear it was linked to quitting the pills. I felt so bad, I never lasted off them more than 48 hours. It was the “head zaps” – a sudden feeling of complete dizziness, where you feel out of control of your body - that prompted me to Google the topic and find out if this was normal.
Around six months later I returned to the GP, who advised me to halve my dose to 20mg daily instead of coming off the drugs straight away. She said I would have no withdrawal symptoms by doing this. So I tried it, but the symptoms remained. Every time I tried reducing the dose, I ended going back up to 40mg.
By my third year, I thought there was only one thing for it and decided to go “cold turkey”. This left me a complete wreck, locked in my bedroom and crying for about 10 days. My boyfriend was terrified. And it didn’t work: I started taking the drugs again.
Another GP from the same practice advised me to take it very slowly – to take 40mg and 30mg on alternate days. That was nearly three years ago, and ever since I’ve been trying to lower the dose. I gradually got down to 30mg a day, then 20mg. But I can’t seem to get down from 20mg to 10mg. I try it every couple of weeks but the terrible dizziness returns, which is something I can hardly afford now I’m working a busy job.
I can almost manage taking 10mg every other day but still feel awful on those days. I tend to take the pills when I first wake up because this way, if I begin to feel withdrawal before my next dose, at least I’m in bed.