The report says that the drugs don't do what's advertised, not that they don't work.

I'm by no means trying to be disrespectful, but there's a lot to digest here.
Top Chicago ad exec Paul Tilley, 40, dies apparently of suicide

At Northwestern University, Mr. Tilley studied journalism and played bass guitar in a band called Scuttlebutt. Upon graduation, he worked in the marketing department at LaSalle Bank writing brochures and speeches.

"I think he always wanted to be in advertising," his wife said. "He loved words, and he loved wordplay. The thing he loved about advertising was that it involved words in the service of an idea."

drew patrick wrote:

DazeyDiver wrote:this is fucking ridiculous. i'm pretty beside myself with anger. having taken these several times, i can't believe (i know i know it was harmful naivete') that our govt. allowed pharmaceutical companies to market and sell HIGHLY ADDICTIVE drugs with no medical value.

WHAT

THE

FUCK

Are you really surprised? Please advise.

Check this recent 60 Minutes story out and think again about what the "regulating authority" lets into the marketplace.

advisement: not surprised. just ranting like a little baby. please advise unsaved to go fuck self.

Colonel Panic wrote:

etch wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:I was on Zoloft for about a year and a half, and I didn't feel it did me any good. The thing that eventually got me out of my depression was rediscovering things I enjoyed doing and keeping busy. Accomplishing small things and going on to bigger challenges, that's what eventually worked for me.

Did you have severe withdrawal symptoms? I know someone who got off the stuff and she went through hell getting it out of her system.

I've read elsewhere that exercise for people with mild depression is a superior treatment method than these drugs.

Nope, none whatsoever.

I second that opinion about the exercise. It definitely does wonders. Sedentary living tends to make me feel like shit.

I never had any problems when I quit taking Zoloft abruptly either.

lemur68 wrote: It's too bad your fundie parents were probably against abortion. Especially since I'm guessing you were born before Roe v. Wade, so your mother's uterus, as well as you, would have been looking like stromboli at the business end of a coat hanger. Then maybe your dad would have shot himself.

Is this too long for a sig?

Slightly. But with minimal tweaking, one still gets the message.

I had no problems getting off Zoloft either. I also don't remember anything too bad about getting off of Prozac. But Paxil, that one was a motherfucker. I don't remember vomiting, but everything else sounds right for what happened to me. I also shake a little bit at all times. I blame Risperdal on that one.

For the record:

Three years after my last bout of depression/burn out/bullshit and I seem pretty much back to normal. Thankfully been off the pills for almost two years now.

Escitalopram (Lexapro, etc...) was great. Made me high as a kite for a week or so and got me through the worst of a bad patch. Found I couldn't concentrate and had zero motivation while on it though, so asked to change pills. Of course, there's no way of knowing whether these side effects were just symptoms of my mood at the time, since it was hardly like I could concentrate before anyway.

Was then put on Zoloft (or Lustral here in the UK), which was absolutely useless. Made me short-tempered and aggressive, although that could of course have just been the depression.

Neither of these drugs were in the study being discussed.

There seem to be vested interests on both sides. Drugs companies fixing studies for profit vs. people with an ideologically driven motive to prove the exact opposite. It's a shame that whenever any of these studies are reported in the media, no attempt is ever made to report the actual methodology or data within the study in a meaningful way.

* * *

By the way, I totally agree with the benefits of exercise/diet in treating depression. However, it is pathetic the way it is often used as a stick to further beat the downtrodden - it becomes a convenient way of insulting someone, of showing supposed superiority, under the pretence of caring. People who say suggest stuff like that are automatically assuming that the depressed person has not made any efforts to improve diet or exercise, which is more than a little condescending. They're also ignoring the possibility of chronic fatigue, where excessive exercise can actually set back recovery.

i'm not depressed, but i've always been a solitary person -- we moved to a different city every 2 years -- and fairly sensitive, which lead me to a psychiatrist after 9th grade geometry teacher had the school nurse call me into the teacher's lounge for a private conversation due to concerns that i was depressed because i spent a lot of time alone and didn't love to chat it up.

they thought i was an insomniac, when really i just liked to stay up all night, and that i was clinically depressed, so i was initially prescribed welbutrin and sleeping pills. when i was still a lonely, attention-seeking, sad teenager (imagine that) they switched me to zoloft, which gave me the shakes, so for that i also got xanax. while on zoloft i found it unusually difficult to deal with upsetting situations and did a lightweight attempt at killing myself, but they took that as meaning i was STILL depressed (rather than suddenly depressed) and switched me to paxil (still with xanax and sleeping pills).

at that point, being a compulsive liar and really into drama, a diagnosis of clinical depression was sort of inspiring for my increasingly melodramatic self and thus provided me with the perfect get out of jail free card to act like a retard. therapists also used chemical imbalance as a scapegoat; eventually i actually believed that i had one and began to forget that i was depressed because of my environment, and not because i was born with an emotional handicap.

by age 19 i stopped taking everything. weening off had no effect on me either way except that i started to wise up and correct my behavior by confronting the problems head on -- you know, actually questioning my motivation behind unruly emotions and behavior rather than relying on the crutch of mental illness. although when i was 2o i gave the psych one last shot and she prescribed serazone (after a 20 minute conversation) which i took for 4 days before throwing away.

when i was 23 i began having my very first real psychological 'illness' which was not depression, but rather anxiety. i am always in an even mood but anxiety will warp and confuse your mind, especially if you aren't depressed and can't figure out where the hell it came from. initially i thought i was having heart problems or dying of some horrible disease. of course, i wasn't. so i was put on celexa, which made me insanely depressed from day one, so i stopped cold turkey and was all better within two days (anxiety still in full effect). i considered finding some xanax and, for once, using for something other than recreation but decided to deal with it myself. good move.

the anxiety comes and goes but i've learned that it's just a hyper mind focusing on situational issues i generally try not to think about (in this case, family), but once i brave up and deal with these things anxiety is gone like magic (after being debilitated for many months when i couldn't, and didn't, leave the house even to buy a soda because i'd go into shock!).

depression is real, i'll bet; anxiety is real, i know; and both can be exhausting and sometimes horrendous, but that doesn't mean one can't regain control of that creative brain, using the very same brain. i consider depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior to be an allergic reaction -- you just have to pick through and figure out what it is that's making you break the fuck out and then work on a mental prescription.

exercise and diet do help, if only to help you feel in control -- a healthy control -- of two aspects of your life. (especially true if you normally eat like crap and never exercise).

anyway, point is... yr brain will do some fucked up things, but 9 times out of 10 it's an external problem you (universal you) internalize. maybe you can't fix that something, but you can learn how to confront the issue, even if it takes months or years. that's what coping and mourning is all about -- working through rather than condemning it. psychiatrists, however much they say therapy first prescription last, don't abide and have no idea what they're doing like a girl trying to use red lipstick as undereye concealer -- colorblind experiments.

obviously meds help some people, say honest to god schizophrenics, but the majority of people are just looking for a quick fix or "a way to stabilize their emotions so they can deal with their problems with a level head" (which is code for: quick fix) while others are just into another excuse to feel out of their own control. you are born alone and you die alone, and unless you are very fortunate, have to deal alone so you may as well get on with it -- as with anything, the more you practice, the better you get.

also, if you want to read about how prozac is a mindfuck, wikipedia cage (the rapper).

the end!

Rick Reuben wrote:

happyandbored wrote:There seem to be vested interests on both sides. Drugs companies fixing studies for profit vs. people with an ideologically driven motive to prove the exact opposite.

Hilarious. Since the drug companies have about a 10,000 to 1 funding advantage over whoever these 'people with an ideologically driven motive' are, it's a little hard to slide that 'vs.' into that sentence and call it a fair fight.

Right, it's not a fair fight - I don't see where I was commenting on fairness, just that there is a clash. However, in the UK we have the NHS so reporting is a little more 'balanced' so to speak. I was simply commenting on the two sides I commonly see represented in the debate over here. This clash of commercial and ideological interests makes it very difficult for the lay-person to get any idea of what is really true, let alone anyone seriously studying these issues.

Also, congratulations on calling the scientists who ran this study 'ideologically driven' as if they skewed their whole study to verify some 'ideologically driven' hypothesis. It's really hard for you to accept that these scientists came by the data honestly, isn't it?

They may well have skewed the study. Or then again they may not. We'll never have much of a clue* because the newspaper report has about as much depth as a toddler's paddling pool. (*Unless either of us are going to devote our lives to studying psychiatry and maybe read the studies themselves - and others for balance.

The quote you gave from the 'Washington Post' is no better - where is the critique from certified professionals of the methodology? So they reviewed 35 studies - Which studies? How were they selected? Why should those 35 studies be trusted above the previous studies which supposedly show the opposite? etc...

By the way, I didn't call the scientists in this *specific* study ideologically driven. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that the reporting itself may be, given the anti-psychiatry trend often on display in the Guardian newspaper quoted which started this thread. Since the article has no real backbone, there is little way to guage whether the trials are any *more or less* trustworthy, when compared with any of the myriad of bland reports mindlessly praising antidepressants.

As I pointed out, I've had both good and bad experiences with antidepressants. One, in my experience, was completely useless, the other was incredibly effective and provided me with a stepping stone out of a very dark place. I am largely agnostic as to the overall effectiveness of these drugs. On the face of it, this report seems pretty damning of those four specific drugs, but that wasn't exactly what I was commenting on...

Troll away.

One good thing about excercising is that it makes you less neurotic.