A story that you can learn from

[rossthekid]

I have wanted to write this down somewhere for a few weeks now. It the story of my ongoing struggle with anxiety and the lack of understanding contributed to the length of the illness.
13 years ago I was a normal married guy, with a small baby, nice house and decent job. Yes I had life stresssors, money, a new baby, weird in laws that caused trouble. ON my way to work I had what I found out to be a panic attack. I was really ill with it vomiting/dizziness etc. I was off work for a while and was never away from the gp. They reviewed everything diabetes etc. Eventually one gp thought it maybe anxiety. It all clicked for me that was why I was walking everywhere, panic flushed waves over my body, couldn't settle. I must of tried several AD meds all made me worse or felt side effects after a few weeks and was then changed onto something else. Eventually escitalopram was prescribed to try, and yes it eradicated the anxiety by zonking me completely. I thought it was the only drug of choice and I lived like this for several years, working just and sleeping every other minute I could. Nobody ever say me down and said listen these AD meds will make you worse before better, stick with it it will come good. I am learning this lesson far to late and feel I have wasted many years. Guess what the escitlopram didn't work anymore and my gp recently changed me to Prozac and by finding this resource I can see where I went wrong in terms of meds please don't make the same mistake.

[SADnomore]

Thanks for this, Rossthekid,
I have said it before and I'll say it again. Until I found this forum, I didn't know that side effects occur with most antidepressants. Nor did I know that they would pass. And that it is in the nature of the way they work that many of these medications will have us feeling worse before we begin to feel better as they stabilize in our system. This is critical information, and I have no idea why physicians don't seem to see fit to pass this along when handing out prescriptions. Thankfully the pharmacist had suggested taking my med in the morning, because that made it possible for me to feel okay about it again by the time I went to bed, and to sleep. 3 days in I had no idea what was happening to me, and if I hadn't found a member's helpful thread on my med, I would probably have given up and halted it. (And it's helping now.)

Just to hear that okay, here are the most common (list), you may get some of these, but you are unlikely to get them all. They will pass in a matter of days or weeks at most, please try to get past the side effects stage to see if the drug will work for you. It will work on an empty stomach, but to avoid stomach upset, take with a meal. If you find that it makes you restless, take it mornings instead of evenings; if it makes you feel tired, take it after dinner. ... This would be extremely helpful instead of letting us bounce from one drug to another unnecessarily. Titrating up too quickly can really exacerbate side effects and make people bail. Why do they do this? Considering their training pretty much revolves around pharmaceuticals, you would think they'd consider it part of the treatment to support patients with a bit of education around the drugs they are meant to get better with?

Good luck with the Prozac, my friend. It has helped lots of people longterm. May you be one of them. :hugs:
Marie

[swgrl09]

I agree, physicians don't say much about the side effects. I had to ask mine about them because I already had been on the forum and knew what to expect. She originally wasn't going to even mention the side effects. She said to expect either sleepiness or insomnia and maybe a headache or stomach ache. The only one that they were right about was the sleep issues ... I had a couple other side effects that I would not have known were normal if it wasn't for other people here. Of course, most of it passed in a few weeks and I was fine but I was a bit disappointed that it felt like I already was more educated about it than the doctor was.