Prozac

[blackbird]

Hi all
Just wondering if anyone has tried alternatives to prozac and found them successful. I came off a low dose - 20mg a day - a year ago and gave myself that time to see if I wanted to take it always (it had been 10 years). Though I'm not depressed in the sense of hopeless, I suffer from more physical symptoms and feel a tightness and aching through my body, particularly upper right back, which is very difficult to live with. And more anxiety and anger. I am thinking of going to a herbal clinic to see if I that would be more me, as I don't like suppressing who I am with drugs. But my whole system needs supporting more it feels like.

B

[splorange]

I don't have much experience in this area. However my sister has taken St John's Wort and found it helpful. You do need to be careful though - it's a plant but it still has side effects and particularly can suppress the effects of other drugs you might be taking. So just read up before trying. There seems to be an awful lot of good press for 5- hydroxytryptophan. It's an amino acid, so you could think of it as a natural dietary supplement rather than a drug. It stimulates serotonin production, and has been known to help with pain, insomnia and PMT as well as anxiety. It may not be as good as all that, but I'm sure it couldn't do any harm either. I think you would be right to try a herbal clinic, and as well as their own suggestions maybe ask them about 5-HTP.

[Ice-cream]

[blackbird]

Hi ice-cream

Your post was just the tonic I needed! Is the Russian thing serious!?

Am and will try quite a lot of what you suggest. Just been osteo'd this morning so feeling doolally. And pilates is my next stop.

Love what you wrote to Splorange. I think we are somewhat at the vanguard of defining ttwd - taking it from fetish to proper inclusion in our lives.

Many thanks

Blackbird

[JigsawAnalogy]

Therapy helped me a lot. Of course, I also realized last fall after four months entirely off of nicotine that *that* also helps to reduce my depression. So I use the gum as a self-administered antidepressant. It works for me.

And spankings definitely help me to be more grounded and balanced mentally. So do getting enough food, and rest, and time to do things that help me to feel stable (those are probably very individual, but for me they include things like listening to music and reading books).

I don't tend to do well with antidepressant medications (too many paradoxical reactions, which means that they have the opposite effect intended). But I've found that figuring out what does work has made an incredible difference in my life--incredible at the level of people who have a religious experience. If I didn't object to proselytizing, and if I knew which factor it was that led to that transformation for me, I would totally go out sharing the news with the world. The difference is amazing.

For just general lower levels of depression, I get the most help by eating a balanced diet, getting exercise, stretching, making sure my vitamin levels (particularly iron and vitamin D) are where they should be, and doing things that make me happy. It has also helped me to just pay attention to where the feelings are coming from, and to take control of the things where I have some control. And also to accept that sometimes, things are just depressing, and that unhappiness is a feeling that will come from time to time. So sometimes when I'm depressed, I give myself time to experience that feeling, and allow it to pass through me.

[splorange]

[bodack]

You might want to look into SAM-E
http://altmedicine.about.com/od/treatme ... a/SAMe.htm

I got too much from a bounce from it. Going from really good to really bad. I have that issue anyway so it probably made it worse. If you are just slightly down all of the time it might help.

[wicked nurse]

Just wanted to throw in that many of the symptoms you describe have been documented as side effects of SSRI withdrawal, which nearly no psychiatrist will speak with you about since they never seem to be willing to let anyone off the damn things anyhow.

Remember how they told you it could take up to 8 weeks for your body to adjust to taking the medication or a dosage change? It actually takes even longer for withdrawal symptoms to fade as the body readjusts to regulating serotonin. I mention it now because technically, you could still be suffering from these symptoms as a result of quitting the medication and for no other reasons.

Just because something is natural doesn't mean that it isn't powerfully effective at whatever it is that nature designed it to do! (IE cyanide) St. John's Wort is the only antidepressant ever tested in a double blind study that actually outperformed placebo at relieving symptoms of depression! The only thing SSRIs did more than placebos were increase risk of patient committing homicide and or suicide. (The book Bad Science by Goldacre is excellently researched and does a good job of pointing out where pharma has pulled out charts with data that illustrates something entirely different than what they claim right below it in text.)