Learning How to Take Care of Myself
This post is a reproduction of a SurvivingAntidepressants forum post I made in December 2017. It details my significant improvement once getting off of the antidepressant. To see the full context, including the responses to my post, I recommend you check out the whole thread (I’m Icebat)!
This post is a follow up to my previous post Full Panic Lexapro Living.
Posted December 19, 2017:
Update: My last dose of Lexapro was on 4/16/2016, over a year and a half ago. My sleep finally improved once I insisted on a sleep study, was diagnosed with moderate Sleep Apnea and got a CPAP machine. For god’s sake check your Vitamin D levels too, mine were really low. My lexapro-induced depression I would say is completely lifted, I feel optimistic and not depressed at all anymore, at least unless I forget to take my B vitamin. I am still working on other health stuff though.
The biggest key for me was to (1) make sure I was eating super healthfully (and it took a long time for me to figure out what that was - pay attention to your poops, make sure you are regular and that you don’t eat too little, nor too much beyond your digestive capacity) and (2) find a really good therapist to help me learn mindfulness, which I use alongside gentle cbt techniques. A large daily dose of B vitamins does wonders for me on the chemical side, I just need to remember not to take it too close to bed or it disturbs my sleep. And my sleep by the way - it’s not perfect but it actually feels ok now! I mean, I finally don’t get nightmares anymore, and once in a blue moon I even get a GOOD dream :o I don’t wake up feeling amazing yet, I’m still working on that, but I wake up feeling a bit rested instead of literally more tired than when I went to sleep.The difference is mind-blowing.
I went to work (desk job with a lot of typing) for about 9 months working 20 hour weeks, between about Oct 2016 and Jul 2017. I could have never dreamed of that while on the Lexapro. I was really tired at work but I was able to get stuff done, and the social/friend connections with my coworkers were absolute aces and made me feel great. HOWEVER, in July of this year (just over 1 year after stopping the Lexapro), I started getting strange symptoms at work like diarrhea all the time, terrible nightmares and being unable to think straight, especially right after eating lunch. I have been off of work since then (since July this year) trying to figure out what is wrong, I saw a few doctors and read a bunch online and figured out that my digestion took a wrong turn somewhere, I probably have gut dysbiosis and might even have a bacterial/viral parasite, probably because I was overeating due to not really having a hunger reflex since the whole lexapro thing, so I would just eat on a schedule because I would never really get hungry. Also the intense stress of the lexapro probably caused a bacterial die off in my gi tract. So I saw a couple of alternative doctors and they put me on a diet of basically just cooked organic vegetables, fruit, high quality meat, bone broth and seeds, as well as giving me betaine HCl (extra stomach acid) and digestive enzymes. And now I am no longer getting diarrhea all the time. I reintroduced quinoa and allergen-free dark chocolate, and I am adding more stuff slowly. I learned a lot about the Ayurvedic health system, which focuses on achieving strong digestion/assimilation, not just of food but of emotions and experiences as well.
I vaguely remember one of those little sun icons you put on success stories in these forums… I would say that from the Lexapro I am like 98% better. I no longer feel like a disembodied consciousness floating in a sea of antidepressant-induced terror. I just feel like a normal person working on my (admittedly still a bit poor) health now. I’m not “healthy” yet, but I am much better than right before the doctor prescribed the lexapro because I am no longer clueless what it means to lead a healthy lifestyle (Hint: Unlearn everything about health and diet that you learned as an American, make your health role model a compassionate and loving buddhist monk). There is no more hopelessness, I love myself and take care of myself, and I get little moments of joy here and there (a couple times a week) where I just feel super relaxed, not anxious at all, I’m smiling and cracking jokes with my family and stuff, and just… happy.
I look back on my forum post and see I only posted my initial post 2 years ago and I think “wow”, I am a totally new person now. Feels like a lifetime ago (certainly feels like at LEAST 5 years). Good thing I took my health into my own hands and stopped trusting my doctor and psychiatrist.
Oh and I have been reading a LOT, too.
Book List
The Mood Cure - Good intro to neurotransmitter levels, very simplified though, It was helpful but I realized it was dangerous to only attack my mood from that one narrow angle. I would recommend to read this book but don’t look at it as the end-all be-all, realize it is just a tiny slice of the pie.
The Antianxiety Food Solution - I was very hopeful about this one, it seemed to make a lot of sense as I was reading it. It didn’t end up working for me but it might work for others. Had some good info but I wish it had told me how to gauge how much I should be eating.
In Defense of Food - Opened my eyes to how messed up the food system in America is. Big impetus for me to cut out processed food entirely and eat unprocessed plant and grass-fed/free-range animal products ONLY, which I do to this day.
Comfortable with Uncertainty by Chodron - Didn’t mesh with me, this book is a recipe for an existential crisis, I can’t recommend it. I think it’s for people with great brain chemistry who are distraught over their life circumstances, it basically just tries to tell you that nothing really exists or matters lol
Hope and Help for your Nerves - This was really useful back when my body was super whacked out. It basically reassured me that I would be able to get it back into balance and that I wasn’t stuck having panic attacks every day forever. I put it down when I stopped having panic attacks.
Declutter Your Mind - Very easy read that points out some of the things that some people get hung up on easily, like overcomplicating their life and not setting priorities/goals. Short intro to meditation/breathing. This is one for when you start feeling the grip of the antidepressant slowly releasing.
Gut and Psychology Syndrome - Talked about the link between gut/digestion issues and mental/neurological issues. Followed their plan of drinking a lot of bone broth and taking sauerkraut and probiotics, and very slowly but surely my diarrhea started improving and my mind became less foggy.
The Good Gut - You are not just your own cells, you are also the bacteria in your gut. Antidepressants, stress, and malnourishment affect your gut, which then go on to affect mood and disease progression and even personality. This one is huge. It’s based on cutting-edge research, I strongly recommend reading it.
The Hot Belly Diet - Don’t bother, it’s overhyped, skimmed it and other books have better info. If you want a better thing with less hype check out The Prime:
The Prime by Kulreet Chaudhary - A western-trained Indian neurologist who started getting neurological issues and neuro meds weren’t working. She finally, stubbornly, turned to Ayurveda out of desperation and her symptoms improved and she wrote the book. I am currently reading this one and putting it into practice.
Could it Be B12? - Yes, it could be, but if you are eating well and still have a B12 deficiency, you likely have a nutrient absorption problem which means poor digestion, for which I might recommend a different book like The Prime, or Gut and Psychology Syndrome. I’m not saying don’t get this, but it’s hard for me to believe that B12 deficiency could exist in someone with strong, efficient digestion who is eating really well. Taking a B12 supplement might be very useful but don’t stop looking for the underlying cause.
Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome - Not bad but the writing style and illustrations didn’t really appeal to me. You learn a lot about adrenal fatigue, but I noticed my adrenals started falling into line naturally as I found a diet that worked for me and learned mindfulness and how to cope with stress.
Say Good Night to Insomnia - Good if your are psyching yourself out about sleep. If like me though you had a great sleep routine, you felt relaxed before bed, you were sleeping enough, it didn’t take you too long to fall asleep and you didn’t wake up in the night but you still woke up feeling awful, then this book is pretty useless.
Sleep Soundly Every Night, Feel Fantastic Every Day - This is the real sleep book you want. Goes into a lot more than just “stop psyching yourself out”. Talks about PTSD and sleep, and other comorbidities. Talks about how drugs interact with sleep. Plus it has all the info from the previous book.
The Healing Power of the Breath - Book about how to breathe deeply and properly, and do regular breath training. Couldn’t get super into it, though it sounds really good in theory. I did end up doing the breath exercises for a few weeks with my mom. Ended up dropping the breath exercises after I realized that deep breathing during my meditation seemed to do a similar thing.
The Edge Effect - Not bad but is kind of redundant to Depression Free Naturally, which I would recommend over it.
Why Isn’t My Brain Working - Great book with fantastic info, but has absolutely no info on how to put any of it into practice. Good to gain background into aging and combating cognitive decline. Just don’t expect him to give you a roadmap.
Ayurveda Lifestyle Wisdom by Acharya Shunya - What a positive, uplifting book. If you want a kind, gentle and inspiring intro to Ayurveda with practical tips, this is absolutely the book. I put the tips into practice, especially getting up at 6am to meditate, and I felt great for a week or so with a bunch of energy. It’s hard for me to keep that schedule long-term, but I am always working my morning alarm earlier. It reminded me of my belief that the universe is love and light, even the darkness is light, to me on a visceral level the book just felt true. I really need to re-read this one again soon…
Fat For Fuel - The best intro to Keto diet imo. Unlike most other diets, keto is actually a natural way that people have eaten historically, and it has actual proven results in weight management and the treatment of certain types of mood and neurological conditions. I cycle into light keto every few weeks and make sure with my test strips that I hit ketosis. Usually it is just by doing a low-carb day of bone broth, meat and sauteed veggies. Just to keep my body’s metabolism on its feet.
50 Things to do Before Seeing a Psychiatrist - Story of how a guy bootstrapped himself out of a really awful drug addiction, panic attack, hospitalization, and turned into a successful musician who leads a happy and stable life. The intro starts a little terrifying but just remember that he got way better, and the Things To Do are pretty good tips.
–> Depression Free Naturally <– - This one connects all of the tiny biochemical bits in a very good, comprehensive and actionable book on depression. They go into histamine imbalance, mineral and vitamin deficiencies, diet, lifestyle, basically they cover a LOT of topics. If you only read one book, especially if you are struggling with depression, start with this one imo.
There came a point for me in learning about alternative health (several years and dozens of books in, as well as the complete failure of western doctors in treating my disease), where I started connecting the dots and realizing that some alternative medicine is more scientific than Western medicine, you just have to read a lot and know it inside out so that you don’t fall into any of the health craze/fad stuff and only follow advice that is backed by science and common sense. It is impossible to make your own opinions when you just mirror the ones society feeds you. Educate yourself, western medicine is often a lot less scientific than you think, in the strictest definition of the word. Take your health into your own hands and only trust what makes sense and rings true to you, I did and I’m glad.
Posted December 19, 2017:
Thank you LexAnger! :D To be honest I was afraid to come back and post here, and dredge up this trauma from my past and have to think about it again. But I had just been watching an interview earlier today where the speaker urged people not to just suppress trauma, but to meet it and integrate it, so I wanted to come check in with this fantastic community that did so much for me. It’s been a long time but I finally feel like the emotional block is beginning to lift and I am closer to processing emotions somewhat coherently again (another wip, but I am on a positive path now), and I have to always remember that since I survived it in the first place, I am more resilient than I think.
To the best of my memory, after I stopped the Lexapro my symptoms just very gradually got better and better, over the course of, well until here I am today (minus the digestion hiccup I had in July that I am still working on). As the depression started to lift, the other symptoms got a bit easier to deal with, because I started to freak out about them less and be more optimistic that they would go away in time. Then they started to slowly get better too (though notably some of them like nightmares and “brain lurches” didn’t actually go away until I started my ultra-clean diet in July, even though I thought I was eating healthy before). I realized I had a LOT of inflammation in my gut which led to inflammation in my brain (a few of the books I read talked about this), and when I was able to get the inflammation under control using an anti-inflam diet (currently gluten, grain, soy, dairy, legume, and nightshade-free, though eventually I will add legumes, nightshades, non-gluten grain and a little soy back in) and gut supplements (homemade bone broth I consider to be a supplement due to how powerful it is at healing the tight junctions of the gut), it was like my mind is going from a sputtering, lurching engine to a smoother ride (still a work in progress). I am also considering a fecal microbial transplant to re-establish some beneficial bacteria that I believe I was born without a lot of, but then lost even a lot more of during the lexapro experience (the book The Good Gut convinced me of this).
I have been able to really connect the dots using my books, and integrate a lot of different viewpoints and medicinal modalities on my quest to figure out the root of what’s up with me. It’s kind of funny how my research took me from neurotransmitter deficiency to amino acid deficiency to vitamin deficiency to poor digestion, then I find Ayurveda and it teaches that the root of health is strong digestion / assimilation of nutrients. I just think about all the Americans who eat terrible just like the commercials tell them to (and even some health institutions like the American Heart Association!!), have digestion issues and then chronic diseases start to creep in (and it’s not their fault, because that’s the way American society pushes everyone towards). I am still learning more and more things from my books, and they have allowed me to improve myself from many different angles at once - from my thoughts, from my diet, from my routine/lifestyle, from supplements, etc.
I see from your sig that you have hit zero mg yourself recently? How’s it going? Like I said, it absolutely blows my mind that my initial post here was just a short two years ago, I have seen so much progress since then, and I wish the same for you! I am happy to take a shot at any specific questions if you have them!
Posted December 21, 2017:
On 12/19/2017 at 9:45 PM, LexAnger said: You mentioned you felt confused, and disoriented when you were at high dose. How did those improve over time? I have many severe symptoms, but these two are the most heart breaking as I’m like living in a coma or dream with a paralyzed brain.
I’m very sorry to hear you are going through that too, LexAnger. I know how you feel, I remember on the Lexapro having entire days where I would wake up and barely be able to tell the difference between when I was awake and when I was asleep, aka dreams and reality. I feel like reality is really finally congealing on me again after floating around in that sea of strange consciousness while on the Lexapro, and I feel pretty decent in general in that department now (no dp/dr for over a year now). I would say 80% of days I feel grounded enough in reality that I don’t really think about it I just have a normal day, the other 20% I am still functional but I am aware that something is off with my brain/chemistry but I don’t feel “disconnected” really, just say to myself “I’m feeling right now what it feels like for my brain to be inflamed” or “I’m feeling right now what it feels like to be a bit low on seratonin or catecholamines”, or “I have low blood sugar I should eat a piece of fruit” (I used a diabetes meter for a couple months and found that my blood sugar was crashing at times) or “what I am feeling is being exacerbated by normal sleepiness, I need to get to bed early tonight”. I figured out by myself what some of the more common issues feel like by reading The Mood Cure and doing trials of some of the amino acids mentioned in the book (I started doing these trials a few months after my final Lex dose), then using mind/body meditation as they kicked in to study the differences in my consciousness and the way my body felt and the way my thoughts flowed. I took it extremely conservatively at first (like opening up a capsule and weighing out 1/5 of it on a tiny scale), to make sure I didn’t make anything worse by experimenting with the amino acids too aggressively. GABA was one that was particularly good for “body anxiety”, when my body just felt super wired and I wanted it to calm down. I ended up only taking 20mg (that’s right 20mg not 200mg) and I could feel a difference from that, just enough for me to finally relax a bit in the evenings. Way later I would read that hypersensitivity to GABA is a sign of a leaky blood-brain barrier, that THAT is a sign of a leaky intestinal lining, and that THAT is a sign of poor diet / poor digestion that needs to be addressed.
At one point (at high dose on the Lex) my sleep was so bad that I was literally feeling more tired after waking up than when I would go to bed. But for months after stopping the lexapro I would still sleep terribly and get nightmares and very strange dreams. I have noticed that my sleep quality is very strongly tied to how closely tied to reality I feel the next day (how “grounded” I am). Nowadays, on the rare occasion that I have a great night sleep with great dreams, I tend to feel energetic and great the next day. But mostly I just sleep “ok” and then feel “ok” the next day, not complaining because “ok” is worlds better than the lexapro. I got my cpap in early April 2016 just before finishing the taper, and that helped my sleep a lot, which helped my groundedness during the day. My doctor never thought to check for sleep apnea, I even mentioned it and he said I didn’t have it and it wasn’t worth testing for, well I insisted and was diagnosed positive (in the “moderate” category too, not like barely or slight). He was wrong about a lot of things though including the lexapro.
My sleep quality started to slowly improve after the last Lex dose, but like I said the really big improvement I saw in my sleep quality was when I restricted my food groups a ton, started tracking calories and eating more with a goal of 2300cal/day (I only hit 2000 most days though because my digestion gets overloaded), and started pounding down home made bone broth to try to fix my gut (thank you for helping make it when I wasn’t feeling up to it, family!) My hunger reflex is still absolutely shot since the Lexapro (I maybe feel real hunger every week or so if I’m lucky) so I have to keep careful attention to when and how much I am eating, and just eat on a schedule. There were points on the Lexapro that I was only eating 800 (!) calories a day for weeks at a time because I was just never hungry and I wasn’t tracking my calories in a food log. I would eventually realize that digestion and assimilation of food is how the body repairs EVERYTHING, and that eating very healthy and eating enough every day (but not beyond digestive capacity so as to get diarrhea or feel awful after meals) are critical. Earlier this year I would also learn that my poop was trying to tell me a story that I was ignoring, and that getting diarrhea all the time meant that I needed to change my diet.
Whereas I used to remember my dreams every night and even wake up confused and disoriented, after about 6 months I was getting consistently good enough sleep to drag my sleepy butt into a part time job consistently every day (I called in sick a day or so every month or two, but they were flexible). I still get vivid dreams but mostly they have neutral content, a small amount of them are good and a small amount of them are bad, but it’s not the bad like on the Lexapro where I would wake up and question reality and whether I was actually awake, or wake up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom feeling like I was literally in a very strange, dark, depressing and inhuman dream. Nowadays it’s more like I wake up and I’m like “well that was a bad dream” and then I just forget about it and get on with my day, like I imagine normal-people nightmares are.
So it got better by itself, but I did do a lot to “help” it along, including diet, lifestyle, light lamp / sun exposure, meditation, amino acid supplements, vitamin supplements (and blood tests), which I would be happy to get into detail with if you’re interested. I quite literally feel like a new person though, I am very pleasantly surprised by the progress I have made over the last year and a half. I attribute a LOT of it to my reading and understanding my health better in a more holistic way, so I could start to break down what I could improve in my life to support my mind and body, and what habits I could break that were drilled into me by my childhood and general american lifestyle.
Granted I was only on the Lexapro for a couple years and even shorter on the large dose, but I do feel like I am pulling a 180 and I truly believe that another 2 years from now (ok maybe 5 at the most) I will be feeling better than before I started the lexapro due to all the new health knowledge I am gaining. I could have never seen this while I was in the lexapro hell. I feel like I will probably be a “real” person again within the next few years, and be able to work a normal job and have a normal joyful life again (and travel without freaking out or falling asleep in the car, still working on that one!)
On 12/20/2017 at 1:26 AM, TheWayBack said: Now my questions: how did the taper went from 0.8mg to 0 for you? And how long did it take to stabilise at 0.8mg-1mg for you? Because I’m still in bad shape at the moment. Did you have an increase of anxiety at 0? Or while tapering from 0.8mg to 0?
I’m too thinking of going down faster than recommended because of the bad effects Lex has on me now. I’m wondering what I could be in for the coming weeks/months…
Hi The WayBack! Thank you for your questions. I am going to be real with you and say that I don’t remember the last bit of my taper very well. It’s been over a year and I’d be lying if I said my memory is great, though it’s better than when I was still really recovering from the Lex. But I’ve had a really bad memory my whole life (I was that kid who always forgot important stuff in middle school) so that’s at least something that is not new and I have learned to compensate for. What I do remember is that the Lexapro continued to have a hold on me for a few months afterward until I was really feeling good enough that I could concentrate on a job and not be overly distracted by my consciousness throwing strange things at me. Even then I would feel dark clouds of depression and anxiety during work, and I would have to remind myself that I was still in the healing process, but it wasn’t anything that took away my concentration for too long, though I did have some pretty unproductive days here and there. As I mentioned above, the depression/anxiety got kicked down a notch once I started working directly on repairing my gut and eating extremely healthy food, which I am now able to digest for the most part.
Looking back at the spreadsheet I used to rate my anxiety while I was finishing my taper, I don’t note any huge spikes in my anxiety scores during or immediately after the taper. That’s not to say the anxiety / disorientation wasn’t there, because it was still with me in its normal strong force for a couple months, just that it didn’t spike or do anything wacky or more scary than usual near the end of the taper. I was very gradual and consistent with the taper, before I hopped off I was doing 1 drop of the liquid stuff per day, which I estimated at 0.03mg. To give you an idea, I held 2drops/day for a week and then 1drop/day for a week before hopping off.
I attribute probably about 60% of my success so far to my body healing in time, and about 40% to the changes I’ve made to my life after reading so many health/depression books. Though the changes didn’t make me feel great within a week or even within a month or a few months, they definitely helped reduce symptoms over the course of a half year to a year or so. There are so many variables at play with anxiety/depression that you can give yourself a little competitive edge against the antidepressant by learning how everything interacts in your mind and body. As an example, I had my mind blown a couple months ago when I read The Good Gut and learned that vitamin (and even neurotransmitter) deficiencies (and then exacerbation of depression/anxiety) can be caused by too many bad bacteria living in your gut and not enough good ones, and that this bacterial profile starts at birth with whether you are natural or c-section, then whether you receive antibiotics as a baby that change the composition of your gut flora and can predispose you to disease later in life. They are doing studies where they take poop out of brave mice and put it into depressed/anxious mice, and those mice become brave. And there is other evidence starting to pop up that shows that the standard american diet makes you lose gut diversity, just like biodiversity in a forest for example, and it makes your entire system less resilient including your brain (the gut is quite literally a second brain, and it interfaces with your main brain all the time). Certain probiotics are being studied for their ability to reduce anxiety and depression. I’m not saying everybody should rush out and get a fecal transplant, but it goes to show you that there is a LOT that science (not big pharma or the medical system, but real scientific science) is learning about anxiety/depression, and it helps to understand it better and give your body the edge in its fight back to your true, happy “inner self”, which I believe every day our bodies are doing their best to fight for no matter how bad shape we are in.
Apologies I feel like I am starting to ramble. I have just never shared this stuff with anybody else for the most part, so it’s just all coming out here. I don’t mean to romanticize any of this or say that it was easier to get out of the Lexapro trap than it was - it was absolute hell that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and before I started the Lexapro I had no idea that that unique brand of torture on earth (and seemingly off of earth and outside of my body/self) was even possible. But that all said, I am beginning to integrate my experiences and I am beginning to heal. Just thinking about it no longer sends me into a state of psychological shock (it’s about a 4/10 discomfort thinking about it), and I can envision a time in the future when I have fully healed from it, integrated all the new things I have learned about health and happiness, and become wiser and stronger than if the Lexapro trial was never thrown my way (my life had started to devolve into pot smoking, junk food and drinking when I started the Lexapro, now I am 100% clean of all 3).