Antidepressant Horror Stories

While the pharmaceutical companies would like the public to believe that SSRI and similar medications do not have serious side effects past the occasional upset stomach or mild headache, the internet has enabled the true scope of adverse effects and conditions caused by these drugs to become known. For many years doctors simply took as ‘verbatim’ that the side effect profile listed on the package insert was the “whole” story and that reports of extreme reactions, even suicidal and violent, were mere aberrations or ‘exaggerated accounts.

The Vioxx tragedy opened the public’s eyes…and some doctors…to the reality that many, if not most of the time, pharmaceutical companies do not reveal the whole truth about the drugs they submit for FDA approval. In fact, the FDA approval process itself is largely contaminated as board members and those in positions to evaluate drugs for approval are often on the payroll or promised positions in the pharmaceutical industry as long as they ‘play along’ and approve the billion dollar earning drugs that pharmaceutical companies want them to.

It was revealed in a landmark 1996 report that fully half of the initial research studies conducted for the preliminary approval of SSRI drugs had negative, even suicidal results. Patients that took SSRI drugs had a TWELVE TIMES risk of attempting suicide than other antidepressant drugs yet this data was buried and never mentioned during the FDA approval process. More recently, the most elaborate and sophisticated study completed yet found that SSRI and similar medications had no statistical improvement over placebo and in fact caused a number of adverse reactions that made the use of the drugs questionable at best.

There are many true stories about the kinds of bizarre and dangerous unintended reactions and side effects that antidepressants can cause. The most dangerous are the relatively frequent reports of suicidal ideation as well as unexpected rages and violence. Some patients have slipped into psychosis acting and behaving in ways totally unlike themselves and having no memory of it afterwards when removed from the drugs. Less violent, but perhaps no less important side effects of taking SSRI and similar drugs include changes in likes and dislikes.

Numerous people have experienced effects such as a person that always loved chocolate that suddenly couldn’t stand it after being put on the drug. Another reported not caring that local teenagers were riding over her lawn with their cars and bikes when it used to always bother her. There are numerous reports of people ‘not caring’ about important things in their life, such as career duties or relationship boundaries after being placed on these drugs.

The impairment of judgement is a theme that runs through many reports of people that have had adverse reactions to SSRI, SNRI and similar drugs. There is the case of a doctor who for 25 years had always been conscientious, on time and a perfectionist running a successful medical practice. Shortly after beginning antidepressants he started coming into work late, making careless mistakes during work and ‘not caring’ or ‘not thinking it was important’. He eventually made medical mistakes that caused him to lose his practice and his medical license and the entire time he ‘didn’t really care’…because he was on SSRI drugs. When he finally was removed from the antidepressant, his ‘senses’ came back to him and he was ‘aware’ of how his personality had changed.

If he had never been on the medication, would he have ever let himself do those things? Probably not. Therein lies the problem. Once you are on a drug that changes your mind, it is too late. Unless an outside observer notices the changes in you, it is too late. You don’t have another ‘brain’ to make sure the one that is on drugs is acting properly. This story is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other stories of lives ruined by antidepressant drugs.

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	Pharmaceutical Industry Corruption and The Truth About Antidepressants