Anti-depressants - what do people recommend?

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Thanks for peoples' suggestions

I've been in this situation numerous times in the past ie I'm not on my tablets for a while - then I sink back into depression which gets worse and worse and I frantically have to go back on them or face death!

I'm too scared to commit suicide but at the moment I don't feel I have a much to live for - I seem to carry on living as some kind of dare to myself each morning! Then I feel better by evenings usually and it starts all over again in the morning.

I am semi-agoraphobic and each time I do leave the house I will feel the way people act towards me makes me wish I had stayed inside and plunges me further down!

Either I really am too weird for 99% of people to accept and respect me or my head has become so f-ked up with this idea that it's as if it's real anyway. I just want to permanently avoid people but I know this isn't practical. People rarely make me feel good about myself though - they stare and ridicule me to each other and I can't deal with it any more. How am I ever supposed to have any self esteem when this happens so often- it's not logical that anyone would! Any good feelings I have about myself are instantly wiped out each time it happens and each and every instance of it gets catalogued away in my brain to the extent that if the memories all start coming back out one after another, as they do when I get depressed - it's such a deluge of negative feedback that I feel really ashamed and horrible, as if it's my fault for being me. I keep thinking if this was anyone else they'd have been long gone! It's like evolution in progess with society saying 'Yes you are too defective, go off and die somewhere!' and I feel less and less strong to fight back. I generally agree with these people as I have internalised the message and it's too hard-ingrained to shift. How can I deal with things if even my own brain isn't on my side?

I can tell instantly when a person has put me in the 'weird'/too diferent category just from
their expression and I see them do it to other people sometimes and they seem completely oblivious to it! - why can't I be like that?? I will feel like saying 'Can't you see that derisory/judgmental look that person is giving you??' Why do I have to have such an excrutiatingly accurate awareness of just how beneath them other people consider me?? And why can't my brain challenge it more instead of just rolling over and agreeing?? It's like my brain is both masochistic and on a self-destruct mission against me! A frontal lobotomy would probably improve my happiness 100%!

And when I explain myself like this, why do 99% of people look consternated, as if I'm blowing their mind and they can't compute it? - there's both a non-verbal barrier and a verbal barrier! I use words from the English language but the way I put them together seems to alienate most people. I'm incapable of dumbing it down sufficiently. I used to think it was due to me being more intelligent but I doubt even that now and anyway, what's the point in intelligence if most people don't relate to you??

I've noticed that people really don't like you to post anything TOO depressing lol
Be a little depressed and we will talk to you but TOO depressed and we might catch it!

Luckily I took one of my 35mg Effexor tablets this morning and whether by placebo effect or because it works so quickly in my system I felt an almost instant improvement.

It does concern me a lot though how people just don't want to relate to severe depression - it's kind of like a self-preservation mode people go into whereby they avoid the depressed/depressed thoughts but this is why a lot of depressed people end up dead!

Is it the biological imperative in action though ie the depressed are meant to go to the wall because they're weak/mentally ill?

Thank f-k for anti-depressants is all I can say because if I had to rely on the support of my fellow man I'd be long gone!

mitrazapine = able to talk no barrier in brain and no buzz in my head

Hi nessa,

Sorry I didn't respond to you last post - this thread must have slipped to the second page by the time I was online last night (I never go past the first page).

You'll probably get more responses to posts that heavily discuss depression and/or suicide in The Haven rather than here. I think in here people might be surprised and not want to respond but in The Haven people pretty much feel the same way do are a bit more forthcoming about such discussions. Also it is sometimes difficult to tell if someone is just "venting" or if they actually want a response to their questions.

I think about suicide a lot (and have acted on those thoughts several times in the last few months - unsuccessfully or aborted because I felt too much guilt towards my husband). I am not scared of te act itself. My thoughts are worse, and I am more likely to act on them, in response to stress - and for me that comes from interacting with others - especially if it is a negative interaction.

I am glad the pill you took this morning has helped you feel better, placebo effect or not!

That another poster suggested lithium is interesting as it is primarily used as a mood stabiliser rather than an antidepressant.

It does seem to me that you could benefit from such medication - because you sound so much like me - either instead of or in addition to antidepressants. For me they don't necessarily stop the stress that triggers my suicidal thoughts but do stop that spiral downwards afterwards into a place I can't get out of. The addition of the amisulpride (low dose antipsychotic with antidepressant properties) seems to enhanced the effect of the mood stabiliser.

As always, I wish you luck. Are you receiving any non-medication based support? I think medication has an important role to play but I don't think it is everything. My aim is to get off medication but I know I won't be able to do that until I have found a way to be more resilient - and for that I need extra help. I am receiving support from the local autistic society, support from work and am on the waiting list for specialist psychotherapy.

Hi YellowBanana

Yes I did think it was probably not the best forum for such a post really but the thread had started off as just about anti-depressants and I thought of this as a more general subject.


I'm very sorry to hear you've been feeling so down lately. I think the thought of people left behind is often a strong motivator to not carry somethign through. I live with an ex partner and I know he'd struggle a lot if I wasn't here, plus my Dad had Alzheimers and I'm the only member of the family who bothers to oversee his care on a regular basis so he'd suffer if I wasn't here too.

I've taken several overdoses in the past but not enough to have to go to hosiptal - I've deliberately not gone 'too far' with it as I'm a coward really!

I find it very weird that from feeling I couldn't deal with the feelings inside me this morning I feel almost neutral now having taken a single 37.5mg Effexor tablet! That's some placebo effect!

It's almost like the Efexor acts like heroin on me - no matter how many months I've been off it, even a tiny amount gives me an almost instant good reaction! It's very disturbuing!

I've never taken more than one medication at a time as I get enough side effects from the one. I've been put on anti-psychotics in the past and found them to have to strong an effect on my system, causing either depression due to not being able to think about anything in depth any more and great tiredness and also making me act in a risk aversive way; I felt also felt a strong violent impulses on them at times which scared me.

I think my whole system, both physically and mentally is far too sensitive, to the extent that life becomes easily unbearable to me. Everything hurts far too much when it hurts and I can't just shrug it off as most seem to be able to do. It's like any unpleasant or hurtful things is like rain or hail on the average person's skin whereas it's like an arrow through my heart each time and
my system has become incredibly weak as a result and only the medication can prop me up now!

For example, the very idea of either having to have all my teeth out and false ones fitted or have a major operation make me feel instinctively that I'd never cope - I just seem to lack normal human resiliance/coping skills in my brain. I think I'd rather die from some illness at home than have to have an operation in hospital - the mental trauma would be too great.

I haven't worked out yet if this is basic immaturity (in which case I'm permanently stuck in it even at 46!) or if there is some protective mechanism inherently lacking in my brain so that I experience things on a 1000% more intense/severe level than others. I feel sure most people have some kind of dampening down effect that occurs that means they don't experience things anywhere near as much as me as they are so unbothered by stuff that wipes me out!

I don't think I'd want lithium...I mean everything I can find points to it being a heavy metal and the side effects don't look very fun so not sure I really want that in my body even if it did reduce my anxiety. Weed on the other hand, that is a different story.

Hmmm well it can induce paranoia and psychosis so I don't think it's the answer to everyone's prayers.

http://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mentalhealthin ... nabis.aspx

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/p ... 082196.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/p ... #devpsycho

In my opinion, society's attitude towards cannabis is like it used to be towards smoking - ie it's a cool thing to do that does no harm. Attitudes changed with smoking as they are slowly with cannabis.

Never indicated cannabis was for everyone. Also there are studies that show lots of medicinal uses of cannabis, not to mention it is safer than cigarettes or alcohol. Still not for everyone, just like lithium would be for anyone....from what I heard that wouldn't be for anyone, but hey I could be wrong was just pretty sure lithium was a heavy metal so if it is I have an idea of how it might go about reducing symptoms.

Wow, relate. When I was a kid, especially, I felt like most people were sort of wrapped in armor that I didn't have. So, they could poke each other with pointy sticks and it was no big deal, but for me it would be overwhelming/piercing. The world has always felt like a place with too many jagged edges in it.

I've wondered if it's related to childhood stuff; not being able to rely on anyone for comfort at bad/distressing times (parents weren't evil, just caught up in their own problems). I also recently read an article about "orchid children" and "dandelion children" that was interesting.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/12/the-science-of-success/7761/

Elavil/amitriptyline is my pill for dulling the sharp edges and keeping me from obsessing on every little thing that goes wrong and every little odd look from someone. It's famous for having the worst side-effects of any antidepressant, but those side effects are physical rather than psychic and for me that's easier to deal with.

With SSRI's I get extreme apathy and worse anhedonia which is hard to fight because of the problem itself (apathy). With Elavil it's dry mouth and hypotension (and sleepiness for the first month).

Oh it also it tends to cause weight gain and is more deadly in overdose than the other tricyclics, which are more deadly than SSRI's and SNRI's. So, there are definite downsides. Fortunately for me I haven't had nearly as frequent suicidal impulses since starting the stuff.

That's a very interesting article - it makes a lot of sense for it to be a genetic/environment type thing. I was very shy and quiet as an child but no one determined there was anything specifically 'wrong' with me and as I grew up in the 70's/80's I think the culture was generally less judgmental/more intelligent. When I reached adulthood it all changed though as I was then having to compete with others far more and it's like between childhood and adulthood I've been two different people in terms of how I fitted into society. I seemed to be accepted as a child but rejected as an adult and I've never been able to develop a confident persona to enable me to cope with the harshness of adult life - it's as if childhood was all I was up to and I'm still trapped in childhood mode having been either unable to or unwilling to take on all the adult ways of thinking and acting.

My parents weren't abusive but they weren't physically affectionate and I never felt really loved or wanted - I felt my parents went through the motions of what they were meant to do as parents more than anything and they never gave me the impression they were proud of me or saw me as special or anything. I think it was just their personality types. I just never made them particularly enthusiastic.

We're all different... I tried that one, it made my legs hurt in a very weird way. Besides it was more like I had ADHD in pill form, I couldn't sit still and I couldn't focus.

Different people will give you a different answer. What some swear by others have a bad reaction to.

I'm personally of the stoic school of thought. Stiff upper lip and all that, what?

Actually I was doing remarkably well with that approach until I was coerced into starting anti-depressants. My personal experience is that they make a bad situation much worse.