medication petrified

[tricia56]

Im petrified of taking meds my doctor keeps asking me to try them because as she feels they will help me because I'm not getting any better as I've tried getting better on my ownfor the 8yrs but I'm so scared to try them as I keep thinking wat if they give me suicidal thoughts or they can make do it and that scares the life out of me.I did google to see if they can do that to you and it does come up saying that they can give you suicidal thoughts and I did read some ware I think it was the nice guide that in some people that taking antidepressants it gives the the energy or something to do it so I dint know if reading that had just reinforced this thoughts about taking them . Every day I just battle with my mind shall I just try taking them and see wat happens or not try and take them i just cant seem to stop thinking about it all and it making my anxiety fo thro the roof . Sorry for such a long post but I'm hoping that maybe someone on here will be able to give me some advice especialy about if its true wat I've read about antidepressants thk you .

[Fishmanpa]

Tricia,

You know what I'm going to say right? 8 years of struggling and not getting better vs. trying a med for a few months to see if they would help you? It's a very easy decision IMO.

Good luck and positive thoughts

[NoPoet]

As I wrote in my citalopram guide, get em down your gob. Suicidal thoughts are a rare side effect and IMO indicate the medication isn't right for you. They may also be intrusive thoughts, which are different from actually being suicidal and indicate anxiety rather than a death wish. Also remember that most people who start a medication are at their lowest ebb, so is it that strange some people link this to the medication?

Take the medication then forget about it. Before you take your first dose, screw up all your courage and focus it like a laser. Salute yourself and your courage in taking this step. Then say "to my recovery" and take it. Do it. Own your recovery. Resist, don't serve. Go for it!

[Sunflower2]

Tricia, taking sertraline was the most difficult thing I've ever had to do, and it was also the best decision I've ever made. I was so scared I took an 1/8 of a tablet ( half of a half of a half). Nothing bad happened, and they have helped me turn my life around. If you never try you never know, but for me I had nothing to lose. My life was pretty much over and I couldn't have felt much worse. It's coming up to a year on them now in June and since then I have done so many things I wouldn't have had the courage to do.

[Tardisbrain]

Tricia I too am really scared to take meds as I've had a bad experience however I have taken more since then and I have just started a new one last night. If you are not getting any better then it would probably be a good idea for you to try but start with a very small dose and work your way up. That's the way I do it now. Hope you feel better soon x

[tricia56]

Thk you all for geting back to me , I'm going to see my gp on the and talk about the meds,i know i haven't even got the meds yet so i don't know why i cant stop worrying about it all because like I said I haven't even got them yet and that's worrying me if that makes sense.

[Sunflower2]

Yeah I had that worry too. I was so stressed about it that when I spoke to my doctor he told me to just leave them until I'd calmed down a bit more. Then I worried about not taking them, and kept on worrying about it for months. Then, one day I just thought, that's it, I'm doing it and what will be will be. Didn't mean I wasn't terrified taking them! I very nearly chickened out too.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Tricia,

I think a lot of us understand this one, many of us have had mixed experiences with meds and when we do get side effects, they can be hard to push through. Some people are lucky and have few, or even none (jammy buggers!!!) and you know the other end of the see-saw from reading about it all.

Many of the meds come with "suicidal ideation" as a side effect. If we look at a common SSRI like Citalopram, there is the following:

Common (1% to 10%): Abnormal dreams, aggravated depression, agitation, anxiety, apathy, confusion, depression, impaired concentration, nervousness, suicide attempt
Rare (less than 0.1%): Catatonic reaction, melancholia, suicide-related events

That's just a cut of them to show where your worry of suicide is shown. BUT, and it's a very big BUT, prior to this in that very section it also states the following:

Antidepressants may have a role in inducing worsening of depression and the emergence of suicidality in certain patients during the early phases of treatment. An increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, adolescents, and young adults (aged 18 to 24 years) with major depressive disorder (MDD) and other psychiatric disorders has been reported with short-term use of antidepressant drugs.

Adult and pediatric patients receiving antidepressants for MDD, as well as for psychiatric and nonpsychiatric indications, have reported symptoms that may be precursors to emerging suicidality, including anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, insomnia, irritability, hostility, aggressiveness, impulsivity, akathisia, hypomania, and mania. Causality has not been established.

I've bolded some red bits. This may seem scary BUT what you have to also consider is that they haven't established the connection between the med and the events that you worry about. So, as Adam has mentioned above, it could be a matter of what these patients were suffering from and how severe it was. We have to remember that whilst Citalopram is commonly used for anxiety, it was intended for depression and it is NOT licenced for anxiety, hence the info we see about it from our medical professionals is based on trials with people with depression. This may mean some seriously depressed people so the med may have made a bad situation worse in their case. That's a big difference to someone like you going from being afraid of that to feeling like them.

I also know that the fear of suicide is a big one for you from your previous threads. Your anxiety is about it really shows just how opposed you are too it. Now if you took a med and you started to feel so incredible depressed, you would have time to speak to your GP and let them do something about it. The people in those trials were already in those situations potentially, so they don't compare to you and many of us on here who suffer anxiety as opposed to more severe forms of depression like Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and beyond.

The reason I put that in above is not to be triggering, although it may be (and I apologise for this) but I want you to see the whys involved here and see how we can dispel them logically. If you can look at something like this and agree with us that the scare stories may not be based on your situation and that where these issues with the meds come it is because of factors potentially outside your situation, maybe it gets you a little step closer?

What I do believe is that if your GP conforms to the norm and slams you on 20mg Citalopram or 50mg Sertraline, they need to reconsider their plan because with your fear of meds you need to build your confidence. GP's often look at treating us now & quickly but Kimberley's GP showed how that plan needs to go out of the window with someone resistant to meds because of their fear of them. Why spend the next couple of years trying to convince someone to start on a dosage that opens them up to side effects when they can spend a bit more time helping the patient "expose" themselves in smaller doses to build up? You know how it is, GP's want it all now and us out of their surgeries. Your GP needs to throw that NHS treatment BS out of the window and help YOU!!!

The way to do that is like Kimberley's GP. Start very very small and build up. I read many of Kimberley's posts going back quite a way and she will confirm this to you. I wasn't the only one either. But we have said how far she has come and Kimberley I'm sure will agree when I say that what I am reading in your threads about your fear of meds is pretty much identical to what she was saying over a year ago. Look where she is now!

...and, we will be on here when you need help & support. The Meds boards are very supportive, the most common SSRI's like Cit & Sert have regular posters and loads of us on here have been on one or both of those. The Cit board even have a bit of a club on the go at the moment and I've seen the same on the other boards in the past when a load of people are all going through it together.

Like Adam said, You are in control. If you can't get through it, your GP can try to adjust it or try another. With your worries over meds, some anxiety is bound to happen just as it did over the antibiotics you had to take BUT look at you...you took them. Yes, you had some increased anxiety but you saw them through and they made you better. If your GP did what Kimberley's did you could be taking doses so low at first that you won't feel much if anything from them. Sure, your anxiety will go up a bit because you are scared of taking them and then the fact you have swallowed it because of the lack of control BUT that anxiety is all you and it will decrease, just as it did with your antibiotics.

[tricia56]

Hi terry thank yuou for helping me and the advice ,this morning I keep having tese thoughts and I dint know weather they are intrusive thoughts or a suicidal thoughts and they are scareing me abit because I'm not sure wat the difference is so I'm getting myself in abit of mess over it,I don't know if its because the past few days I've been worring and talking about suidal thoughts that its triggers these thoughts off sorry terry for keep asking you for advice .

[MyNameIsTerry]

You have nothing to apologise for, don't worry about that.

Intrusive thoughts just pop into your head. You can look at something and POP it comes out of nowhere. Something you see or hear, maybe an event or experience, or even you could be thinking about something connected but it will just flash into your mind whether it's a thought, image or both. And they are things that provoke fear in us.

Proper suicidal thoughts are conscious ones that you are creating yourself and are often going to be about your mood e.g. you might feel extremely low and you start consciously thinking about how ending things could take that pain away.

BUT you also have to remember that suicidal thoughts even in that context don't mean you would ever do anything. I had many of them out of frustration or moods where I was walking the streets in tears thinking how pathetic I was. I didn't want to die, I just didn't want to feel all this pain anymore.

It's not just mental health conditions which can bring on moods like that, look at people with pain conditions for a start. At some point it can grind then down because life doesn't feel like living but it's the pain they are in, they would prefer a life without that pain not to be without life.

To get to a point where you feel so bad you do something must be a whole new level. I obviously haven't experienced it despite how I did feel. And therapists monitor us for this. Mine told me they only very concerned when they hear someone talking about method or researching it. They even questions about what keeps you from taking action to determine if you can point to things to keep you here.

For instance, on nearly ever form I filled in during therapy I ticked that I had had thoughts of life not being worth living. But then I ticked No every time to the one about deciding on methods and researching it. Every time I marked my likelihood of doing it as 0 out of 10 and in the next question about what keeps me from doing anything I would always answer "family". That told my therapist that I had thoughts but presented no risk.

I bet even if you had such thoughts, you would think of your family. Being seriously fed up from the pain is natural.

Talking about these thoughts could be triggering me of them, higher anxiety certainly does seem to increase intrusive thoughts. But they can't harm us, only try to scare us. Your deeper beliefs guide you and that's why such thoughts clash and come to your conscious mind because the subconscious checks to see if they address appropriate against our beliefs (think about how we know right from wrong as we learnt early in life, as an example of them) sees they aren't appropriate and sends then off to the conscious mind as if to say "ok conscious mind, I've checked and they are inappropriate so what should I do with them? ". That's all it's doing.