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John_Browning
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24 Jul 2012, 11:05 am

Leafpool wrote:
Firstly my apologies if there's already a thread similar to this. I didn't notice one and I felt like making this because this is a big issue for me.

Alright, so about 2 years ago I was prescribed Sertraline for my severe depression. I took just 3 or 4 50mg pills before experiencing intense chest pain, muscle spasms and excessive sweating. Terrified, I freaked out and stopped the pills. Now, years later, I am still suffering from these symptoms. I overheat all the time and my sweating is through the roof (before the pills I was one of those people who pretty much never sweated. I rarely ever needed deoderant and only used it because it smelt nice rather than for sweating), my muscles (particularly in my chest and abdomen) spasm often, and spasms in my lower abdomen and groin area have caused me to suffer loss of bladder control (again, I had above average control of it beforehand, often holding it in for 8-9 hours during things like school without difficulty).

I am obsessed with being healthy and any abnormal symptom terrifies me. This has destroyed my life almost as badly as my depression has. I want to be back to how I was before. My psychologist and doctor both lie to my face saying it wasn't the pills that caused it, but I know it was because I never had this until I took them. They're just afraid I'll sue them or something. Please, has anyone else suffered long term effects from anti-depressants? If so, did you manage to find a way to cure them? I'm terrified my chest spasms is a sign of damage to my heart or something. If these don't go away I'm probably going to off myself. I can't handle this, I'd rather die than live crippled.

Edit: Sorry if I was unclear about this, but I'm not looking to sue anyone. There's no way I'd win and to be honest I'm not interested in getting compensation, I just want a cure. I'm young (17) and just don't want to be suffering these symptoms all my life, since I hope to live for some time longer. Sorry if I sounded hysterical, I'm not trying to get sympathy or revenge on my doctors I just wanted to ask if anyone else had experienced long term side effects from these sorts of medications and what they did about it. If anyone's found some sort of cure I'd be interested to hear it.

Have you considered consulting a neurologist.


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Raziel
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24 Jul 2012, 11:11 am

Hm, I was thinking that chest pain and excessive sweating are also found in anxiety disorders. I'm not shure about the muscle spasms. But maybe it has something to do with anxiety since then?
You su allready wrote about being anxious if I understood it right.


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TalksToCats
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01 Aug 2012, 10:00 am

I have seen anecdotal reports on the web from people who say they have experienced serious side effects / withdrawal effects from just one or two doses of an anti-depressant, however it seems very rare so there is little or no formal research on it; so it seems it can happen to some people but is very unusual.

There is a forum callled SurvivingAntidepressants where this has been discussed (if you google you should find it). Some people on that forum are very anti SSRIs, I personally am neutral about SSRIs, but think they can cause some people some very problematic side effects and need to be treated with caution.

I currently take an SSRI but do not want to do so long term.

I have experienced sweating as a regular side effect of one SSRI I took (citalopram) but not another (prozac / fluoxetine). My understanding is if you take anti-depressants for any length of time, it is best to come off them very gradually to avoid withdrawal effects and stopping cold-turkey is usually a very bad idea (although some people seem to be ok with this).



archraphael
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02 Aug 2012, 6:27 pm

pretty much all SSRI's and SN/DRI's are stimulants and have some stimulating effect on the nervous system.. as for me the most long term effect is the permanent hand tremors i get from having used prozac on and off for long periods of time since i was 11.
as for wellbutrin, i have some kind of long-term psychosis since using it (voices, etc)