New Blog

I started a mission blog for Luke. I'll be posting all his letters there, so if anyone is interested in following along on his journey-- head over there---> http://ejohnsoninjamaica.blogspot.com

Mental Illness...take 37?

I'm starting to spiral down. It's been about 2 years since I started on my new meds, and that is typically about how long it takes for my brain to become resistant to the drug. My options are A. Up the dosage  B. Switch meds  C. Deal with it  D. Taper off the meds and try something else.

I KNOW! I can hear you all screaming from here DON'T GO OFF! I even made you all pinky promise to never let me do it, the last time I spiraled out of control. And I already tried upping the dosage. It did not help my symptoms, only increased the negative side effects, so I went back down. I wouldn't say I'm in Hell yet, but I can see the writing on the wall.

The anxiety at night makes it hard to sleep. I still dream about Luke's bloody face. My legs have started twitching at night, so you know, restless leg syndrome + anxiety = ZERO REM sleep. I wake up in the morning and don't want to get out of bed. Ever. I've trained my kids well though, see, so I don't HAVE to get up till much later. Kate and Ella get themselves off to school sans help from me. Zeke will sit and play his iPod for hours if he has to. He will eventually come wake me up though, if no one has made him breakfast before they left.

Actually, what usually gets me out of bed, is Lucy, whining at my door. I don't know why, but these dogs LOVE me and can't stand it when they know I'm shut off from them somewhere. They follow me around all day, lay under my desk while I surf the web, lay on my lap if I sit down on the couch. Boog sits under my feet while I cook, and sleeps in my closet on a pile of my dirty clothes until I get out of bed. It's comforting, and also added responsibility that I don't want all at the same time.

Where was I going with this?

Oh yeah. What to do. What. to. do...

So, I tried to exercise. Bleh. I hate it. I can't make myself do it, even though I'm starting to get a little pooch. That usually motivates me, but it's not this time. I don't care if I'm overweight. Whatever.

The apathy is the telling sign for me. I'm not sad, blue, 'depressed', just.... blah. Clean house, filthy house, clean kids, filthy kids, Dinner, cereal, shower, maybe not... you know, whatever. I don't really care.

Chris suggested I try going 'offline' for a while. This after I read a very disturbing paper on the Monoamine Theory. This is where the Mental Illness market began, when scientists 'discovered' that serotonin is what causes depression. Yeah, well, except come to find out, they didn't really discover that at all. This is a clip from that paper:

A now famous 2008 study in the New England Journal of Medicine by Turner et al sought to expose the extent of this data manipulation. They demonstrated that, from 1987 to 2004, 12 antidepressants were approved based on 74 studies. Thirty-eight were positive, and 37 of these were published.  Thirty-six were negative (showing no benefit), and 3 of these were published as such while 11 were published with a positive spin (always read the data not the author's conclusion!), and 22 were unpublished.

In 1998 tour de force, Dr. Irving Kirsch, an expert on the placebo effect, published a meta-analysis of 3,000 patients who were treated with antidepressants, psychotherapy, placebo, or no treatment and found that only 27% of the therapeutic response was attributable to the drug's action.

This was followed up by a 2008 review, which invoked the Freedom of Information Act to obtain access to unpublished studies, finding that, when these were included, antidepressants outperformed placebo in only 20 of 46 trials (less than half!), and that the overall difference between drugs and placebos was 1.7 points on the 52 point Hamilton Scale.  This small increment is clinically insignificant, and likely accounted for by medication side effects strategically employed (sedation or activation).

When active placebos were used, the Cochrane database found that differences between drugs and placebos disappeared, given credence to the assertion that inert placebos inflate perceived drug effects.

The finding of tremendous placebo effect in the treatment groups was also echoed in two different meta-analyses by Khan et al who found a 10% difference between placebo and antidepressant efficacy, and comparable suicide rates. The most recent trial examining the role of "expectancy" or belief in antidepressant effect, found that patients lost their perceived benefit if they believed that they might be getting a sugar pill even if they were continued on their formerly effective treatment dose of Prozac.

The largest, non-industry funded study, costing the public $35 million dollars, followed 4000 patients treated with Celexa (not blinded, so they knew what they were getting), and found that half of them improved at 8 weeks. Those that didn't were switched to Wellbutrin, Effexor, or Zoloft OR "augmented" with Buspar or Wellbutrin.

Guess what? It didn't matter what was done, because they remitted at the same unimpressive rate of 18-30% regardless with only 3% of patients in remission at 12 months."

It continues with EVEN MORE GOOD NEWS!! 

"An important analysis by the former director of the NIMH makes claims that antidepressants "create perturbations in neurotransmitter functions" causing the body to compensate through a series of adaptations which occur after "chronic administration" leading to brains that function, after a few weeks, in a way that is "qualitatively as well as quantitatively different from the normal state."

Changes in beta-adrenergic receptor density, serotonin autoreceptor sensitivity, and serotonin turnover all struggle to compensate for the assault of the medication.

Andrews, et al., calls this "oppositional tolerance," and demonstrate through a careful meta-analysis of 46 studies demonstrating that patient's risk of relapse is directly proportionate to how "perturbing" the medication is, and is always higher than placebo (44.6% vs 24.7%). They challenge the notion that findings of decreased relapse on continued medication represent anything other than drug-induced response to discontinuation of a substance to which the body has developed tolerance. They go a step further to add:

"For instance, in naturalistic studies, unmedicated patients have much shorter episodes, and better long-term prospects, than medicated patients. Several of these studies have found that the average duration of an untreated episode of major depression is 12–13 weeks."

Harvard researchers also concluded that at least fifty percent of drug-withdrawn patients relapsed within 14 months. In fact:

"Long-term antidepressant use may be depressogenic . . . it is possible that antidepressant agents modify the hardwiring of neuronal synapses (which) not only render antidepressants ineffective but also induce a resident, refractory depressive state."

So, when your doctor says, "You see, look how sick you are, you shouldn't have stopped that medication," you should know that the data suggests that your symptoms are withdrawal, not relapse."

Depressing isn't it? All these YEARS I have been a pro-drug! Pushing meds on all my sick friends and family members, only to discover, that I have been lied to all along. And NOW, thanks to these deceptions my condition is actually a whole lot worse, and there may be no hope of ever regaining normal brain chemical activity. 

I just want to climb into bed and never come out. 

If you look at all the studies cited here, and I did, it shows a pretty convincing picture, but as I was lamenting to Chris last night, he suggested that maybe it's all true, and maybe it's not. And maybe I just needed to take a break from reading so much information. I'm an information junkie, I admit it. He even suggested I was 'addicted' to it. He's probably right. I become obsessed with 'uncovering the truth'. Here's the rub though, we never know for sure who's lying. Studies can be manipulated to show untrue outcomes. Researchers can lie just like everyone. Pharmaceutical companies get caught doing this so much you wonder why they are still allowed to pedal meds to the unsuspecting public. Yet, I feel so... disheartened. I know some drugs work for me, but only for so long. Changing them is such an exhaustive process, and one I will have to do every couple of years for the REST OF MY LIFE, and what if I never had to start down this rabbit hole in the first place? What if I just rode out that first initial wave of depression after Luke was born, with the hope that once my body hormones normalized, I'd find peace again. What if? 

I'll never know. It's too late. It's been 18 years of off and on drug dependence and now I don't know if I'll ever be free of it. I'm sorry if I influenced you to join me in this rabbit hole. 

I don't know what to do. In my present state of 'slipping'-- the path of least resistance seems the no brainer... keep taking the drugs...till, what? I hit rock bottom and become suicidal again? THEN do something about it? We'll have health insurance again in August. I guess I will just have to wait until then to figure this nightmare out. 

In the meantime, I think I'm going to try going 'information free'. I'll just read for fun, or maybe not. I'm halfway through my transcribing of Isaiah (I'm writing out Gileadi's translation, with my own notes, so that I can understand it better. The process of writing it down, helps me process and understand things, hence, the reason I blog.). That's pretty depressing too though. Isaiah's nothing if not doom and gloom. Maybe I'll find a good crochet project and work on that. Anyone want a hat? 

*sigh*