Saying goodbye to antidepressants:

What it's been like for me

Written for Mental Illness Awareness Week – October 7 – 14, 2018

I thought I would get back to writing my blog about living with a mental health disorder, specifically, what it’s been like to come off of antidepressants.

Part of my reasoning for undergoing all those rounds of Trans-Cranial MagneticStimulation, or TMS, was to be able to stop taking so many antidepressants. The idea was if the neurons in my brain could be stimulated and to make those feel-good chemicals (dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine) naturally again, then I would no longer have a need to seek those chemicals from antidepressants.

Many people taking antidepressants refer to the “cocktail” of meds they take in order to live and function with their mood disorder. I have certainly had my own prescription cocktail of drugs over the past decade; everything from Buspar, Bupropion (Wellbutrin), Cymbalta, Klonopin, Abilify, Xanax, Zoloft, Lexapro, and Venlafaxine (Effexor), among others that I’ve probably forgotten. I have also had three rounds of TMS therapy – once in February 2015, again in the winter of 2016, and most recently, the winter of 2017.

I consider my TMS experiences successful because each time I did a round of treatment, I was able to either stop taking a drug, or the dosage of one of my drugs was significantly decreased. For example, after my first round of TMS in 2015, my psychiatrist reduced my Effexor from 300mg a day to 150mg. After the second round of treatment the following year, I was able to reduce the dosage of Abilify from 5mg a day to just 2 mg.

This summer was successful for me in that my mood was fairly stable. I was still sleeping during the day more than I’d like, but overall, I felt that my depression was fairly under control. I felt the normal sadness I feel with the onset of the fall season and the end of summer – my favorite time of year – but I have been through this so many times that I have come to expect it, and I now have things I can do to help ease the transition: trying to spend more time outside, getting out and moving my body a little more, making sure that I am making better food choices and cooking more meals at home, journaling, continuing talk therapy, etc.

I met with my psychiatrist again in late August. I was considering talking with him about the B-I-G question that had been on my mind for quite a while: “So doc, how about weaning me off of all of these drugs?” Now, I have several reasons for wanting to do so, some of which I’m not ready to share with the world, but one of them is that I simply want to remember who I am and what my life is like without the aid of so many psychotropic drugs. With the help of my health coach, I am working hard on replacing my “cocktail” with more natural medicine, mainly movement, stress management, sound nutrition, and a healthy sleep regimen. Now, am I successful at all of these things all the time? Of course not. But I am learning to celebrate the small wins. For right now, the important thing is that I have supports in place to help and guide me as I make this transition off of my medications.

After that visit with my doctor at summer’s end, I had a new routine. No more Abilify. No more Wellbutrin. I was told that I could stop taking those medications whenever I was ready with no withdrawal affects.

Coming off of the Effexor has been a completely different story. In late August, my doctor prescribed me 75mg/day of Effexor. This is half the dose of what I had been taking. I did not anticipate any problems. After all, I did not remember having any trouble when my daily dosage went from 300mg to 150mg. But for some reason, my mind and body were deeply affected by this most recent change.

The first 7 – 10 days of switching to 75mg of Effexor were some of the worst days I’ve had in a while. I was absolutely exhausted all the time; I spent a solid week in bed. No matter what I did, I could not get the rest I needed. My anxiety went through the roof. For the first time in a long time, I started having panic attacks. Real, terrifying panic attacks where I could not catch my breath. When mid-week rolled around and it was time to go to work for rehearsal, I just couldn’t do it. The thought of being in a room in front of twenty people for an hour and a half seemed insurmountable to me.

And then, there was the constant, unrelenting sadness of being alive.

My husband, who watched all of this unfold, urged me – begged me – to call my doctor. I was stubborn and proud and didn’t make that phone call. I felt that if I could just push through the next few days, I would be okay.

And I was.

After I resurfaced and was able to return to the realm of normal functioning, I decided to go visit my family in Indianapolis. It was my niece’s third birthday, and I had been collecting all things Peppa Pig to surprise her with on her big day. During my visit, my sister and I treated ourselves to a spa pedicure. I plunged my feet into the bubbly water and turned on the chair massager when I began to notice a searing pain in my feet. “That’s weird,” I thought. I brushed it off, but I couldn’t help but notice how painful it was when the woman began massaging my feet. And the pumice stone? Yikes - it hurt so bad! It was concerning at the time, but I was more focused on spending time and talking with my sister.

A few weeks later, I started noticing how bad my feet would hurt in the morning when I got out of bed. Those first few steps are pretty painful, and going downstairs to get the dog ready for her walk was pretty uncomfortable as well. I tried to brush it off again, but a few days later, I finally admitted to myself that the pain was getting worse. The best way I can describe it is the beginnings of neuropathy: my feet are tingly and more sensitive than usual. Sometimes, I feel shooting pains when I lay in bed at night, which makes falling asleep (and staying asleep) difficult. Sometimes, my feet even feel hot and burn. Then there are times where I don’t have feeling in my feet, especially in my toes. I was getting scared. I thought neuropathy only happened to people with diabetes, and thankfully, my numbers are pretty good right now.

So, I consulted the doctor one night – Dr. Google – and read that warm, tingly, sometimes numbing feeling in the feet can be a symptom of withdrawal from Effexor. I came across a helpful forum on the Mayo Clinic website where I read several peoples’ accounts of what it was like for them to come off of Effexor after years of taking the drug. Many of these accounts could have been mine, which was comforting.

The next day I called my psychiatrist. His advice was to stop taking the Effexor immediately and begin taking Klonopin twice a day for 10 days until the symptoms went away. I was pretty discouraged. I wasn’t sure what the doc would be able to do for me, but I was really hoping that he wouldn’t throw more pills at me, which was exactly what he did. I ended up trying other things to help relieve my symptoms: warm Epsom salts baths, aroma therapy/essential oils, walking around in my bare feet, wearing socks and comfortable, breathable shoes, over-the-counter pain medication, CBD oil, massages, etc. Nothing really worked; I still went bed and woke up with pretty significant pain.

I finally ended up going to my family doc. He examined my feet and as I winced in pain he said, “Yep, that’s some plantar faciitis; you’d better get rid of those flip flops.” He wrote me a prescription for a heavy-duty ibuprofen and sent me on my way. I drove straight to Fleet Feet, spent some serious cash on some super cushy athletic shoes and threw my flip flops in the trash (sad!) Since then I’ve tried to incorporate a lot of stretching and heat therapy into my routine. I spent a good week feeling pretty frustrated, defeated, and pissed-off. Here I am trying to get healthier and this news felt like I was taking ten steps backward. After a good bit of moping around, I began confiding in a lot of people who deal with plantar faciitis & have discovered that it can go away overtime.

The most interesting thing in all of this is what started as withdrawal symptoms ended up as a new diagnosis. I discovered that Effexor is sometimes prescribed for pain, so it was likely masking the symptoms of plantar faciitis, meaning who knows how long I’ve been walking around on bad feet – in flip flops!

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I would not change my decision to go off of my meds. It has been the right choice for me at this point in my life. Now, is this the right choice for everyone? No, of course not. Is there anything wrong with needing to take psychotropic medication? Absolutely not. Despite my love-hate relationship with my meds over the years, they helped me navigate some very dark times and helped me function, keep a job, and maintain important relationships despite living with debilitating, chronic depression. Will I need them again? Who knows; maybe. Will I stay on them for 10 years again if that happens? I hope not, but…?

I try not to dwell too much on these questions and instead spend more time getting to know myself again. It has been interesting to get back in touch with my emotions; for so long, I just felt so numb and flat – so…medicated. Now, I have been able to reclaim feelings I haven’t had in many years. Today when I was driving home, I happened look up and saw the sun shining so spectacularly through the leaves on a tree that was completely golden. I started to cry. I was filled with gratitude as I celebrated a new awareness that I have not known for so long. For so long, I missed the beauty of the fall because fall was just a gateway to the winter – a season where everything is gray, cold, and dead. But of course, things are not dead. The trees may not bloom and flower like they do in the spring and summer, but under the ground, in the cool and dark of the dirt, stuff is happening. Life is regenerating itself. Nature is taking the rest required for spring rejuvenation.

This is what being on meds and coming off of them has been like for me. I may have spent a lot of time hibernating in the cool of darkness, but there were things happening in the stillness: my mind was resting. My brain was healing.

But now, I am awake. Really awake. So awake, it almost feels manic, ironically.

Thanks be to God.