SSRI Withdrawal Success!

[Guest guest]

Since this group focuses on altnerative healing most people here

probably will not need this information personally but these days it

seems that everyone knows someone who is on an SSRI (Paxil, Zoloft,

Celexa, Prozac).

 

I was on Paxil for about 2 years. I tried to quit twice but the

withdrawal symptoms were so severe that I ended up staying on the

medicine and looking for helpful ways to quit.

http://www.prozactruth.com/sideeffects.htm lists side effects of SSRIs

but it fails to mention that mostly these are the side effects one

experiences when coming off the drug not when one is on the drug.

 

http://www.quitpaxil.org was a great help. It was so good to know that

I was not the only one going through this hell. The worst symptoms

were the nausea, severe dizziness (!), headaches, hot flashes, heart

palpitations, inability to concentrate and " low grade shock "

electrical sensations (like when you touch your toungue to a battery)

throughout my head and upper body. Oh! And head congestion! The first

time I tried to quit Paxil I thought the symptoms were due to a bad

sinus infection... only as they worsened did I put it together with my

quitting.

 

But now I seem to have quit successfully and I owe it mostly to the

article below! Frank posted this article a few weeks ago... shortly

after I reduced my dosage from my regular 20 mg dose to a 10 mg dose.

I had light symptoms but not unbearable. When I reduced it two weeks

ago my symptoms became increasingly worse.

 

I work in a chiropractor's office and had forwarded the article below

to the doctor because we've had several patient's with meniere's. On

one of my really bad days I mentioned to the doctor's wife that I

needed to go pick up some more dramamine (meclizine) after work

because the dizziness was so bad. (I'd been taking four to six per day

with very limited results.) She said, " why don't you try the kali

phos? " Well, I had completely forgotten about the article. I was like,

" duh!? " I went to the pharmacy after work and they didn't have kali

phos (potassium phosphate) but they did have potassium gluconate. So I

picked up potassium gluconate, niacin and zinc. (I also picked up more

dramamine in case it didn't help.)

 

Well, I've been on the potassium, niacin and zinc for eight days, and

seven days ago I completely quit my Paxil. I've had very, very little

dizziness and virtually none of the other symptoms (except the hot

flashes). I've taken one or one and a half dramamine per day.

 

So, I've been off Paxil a week! Yay! Thank you, Frank, for posting

such pertinent information (even if you did it unknowingly ).

 

Have a wonderful day!

 

Lorene B.

 

* * * * * * * * * *

Message 13800

Fwd: DOCTOR YOURSELF Newsletter (Vol. 3, No 17) July 20, 2003

 

Written and copyright 2003 by Andrew Saul, PhD, of

http://www.doctoryourself.com , a free online library of over 350

natural healing articles with nearly 4,000 scientific references.

 

IT SHOOK ME DEEPLY to see my father have to crawl to the bathroom to

vomit. Dad was only in his mid 50's and was already using a cane to

stand up, when he could stand at all. He had a really bad case of

Meniere's Syndrome, a miserable collection of symptoms including

recurrent ringing in the ears, dizziness, and nausea. Perhaps it

proved to be a defining moment for me. Seeing your father reduced to

helplessness is enough to make anyone want to know more about getting

well. When you look this one up, the treatments you come across,

whether pharmaceutical or surgical, are primarily aimed at the

symptoms, because the cause of the illness is pretty much unknown.

 

Enter natural healing.

 

By trial and error, I have found that there are some drugless,

scalpel-less options for Meniere's. While the solutions shed some

light on the cause, I am interested in results. I have seen success

with what follows:

 

CHIROPRACTIC or osteopathic adjustment of the upper cervical (neck)

vertebrae is worth trying, first thing.

 

Some 20 years ago, I met a young man so dizzy that he could not read

or even watch TV without having to lie down. Meniere's, aptly

described in the Merck Manual as " prostrating, " certainly is capable

of flooring a person. Such was the case with Lowell, a college

dropout. He had a gentle but persistent series of manipulations which

restored his life. He was able to read again, to return to school, and

live again. How so? The practitioner discovered that his two top neck

vertebrae, the atlas and the axis, were practically at right angles to

each other, and to the skull on top of that. This seemingly impossible

state of affairs turned out to be due to a summer job Lowell had a few

years before: he was a sparring partner for boxers in training. He had

almost literally had had his block knocked off.

 

The closest to such an experience my father had was when he was

knocked out of the box, figuratively speaking, while in training to

become a New York Yankee pitcher. Well, he did not quite make it to

the farm team. Still, my Pop twice struck out the guy who would become

the Commissioner of Baseball, and in one game no less.

 

But I digress, as usual.

 

Pa refused to go to a chiropractor until his Meniere's was so bad he

could not take it any more. He'd been on various ineffective

medications from various ineffective physicians, none of whom gave

chiropractic the time of day. But I managed to get him to a D.C. for a

visit or two.

 

Pa said it did not help one bit.

 

He then began taking vitamins, notable the B-complex in fairly high

doses. Pa had no praise for that, either.

 

But over a period of months, his specialist-diagnosed Meniere's went

away.

 

I had persistent suspicions that the natural approach had helped him.

 

NIACIN

Since then, I have come across references showing that niacin (vitamin

B-3) was used for Meniere's syndrome since the 1940's. In long term

therapy, improvement has been obtained with only 150-250 mg daily

(Bicknell and Prescott, The Vitamins in Medicine, 3rd ed., p 379).

This may explain why Pa's improvement was so gradual, yet in the end,

profound.

 

VITAMIN B-12

I think that Meniere's syndrome, and perhaps a number of other

difficult-to-tag neurological problems, could be a manifestation of

untreated, long-term B-12 deficiency. I discuss this, and what to do

about it, at http://www.doctoryourself.com/nasal.html

 

ASPARTAME

My Dad never drank anything with aspartame in it. However, the late

Lendon H. Smith's newsletter " The Facts " (October 1991) mentions that

aspartame ( " Nutrasweet " ) may " trigger or mimic " a Meniere's attack.

Dr. Smith specifically lists nausea, vertigo, hearing loss and

tinnitus as symptoms that say, " Stop using aspartame. "

 

OTHER NUTRITIONAL FACTORS:

A low-fat, low-sodium, no alcohol and especially NO SUGAR diet may

help a wide variety of illnesses. Meniere's seems to be closely

connected with chronic low blood sugar, sometimes diagnosed as

hypoglycemia or Type II diabetes). Caffeine may aggravate the

condition, as might manganese deficiency. (Balch and Balch,

Prescription for Nutritional Healing, p 239-240)

 

Zinc supplementation and moderate additional amounts of B-6

(pyridoxine) are also worth a several-month therapeutic trial.

(Werbach, M. Textbook of Nutritional Medicine, p 475-482)

 

HOMEOPATHIC KALI PHOS.

For uncomplicated simple ringing in the ears, dizziness or nausea, a

6X potency of Kali Phos. may be surprisingly helpful. I have

personally used this remedy for 30 years, as I have a motion sickness

problem that my flight instructor has insisted cannot be matched. If

it were not for Kali Phos, I think I would have thrown up right in the

FAA examiner's lap at Batavia airport.

 

For what it's worth, these can't-hurt-to-try-them approaches may help

someone you love stop crawling, and start living.

 

My Dad, fully recovered from Meniere's, would walk four miles a day

for the rest of his life. His dizziness and nausea were gone for good.

His sense of humor was not, however. If you ever asked my father how

his hearing was, he'd invariably shout back at you:

 

" WHAT? "

 

But he did it smiling, and standing up straight.

[Guest guest]

Dear Lorene,

 

I hope that you read some of the other articles about SSRIs. You have

been off for one week, so you need to be aware of after effects too.

 

Paxil is addictive and can have severe withdrawal side effects while

coming off it.

 

After coming off of Paxil or any of the other SSRIs, you may

experience the possible after effects too.

 

Your seratonin levels could fluctuate as well of all of the other

neurotransmitters. You may experience cognative problems, sleep problems or

emotional problems. Anger, rage, weeping, sadness, etc. is very common side

effect to these medications and the imbalance caused by using them

and then coming off them.

 

If you have any of these things, just remember that it is the

medicine an it's after effects. Take lavish amounts of all the

nutrients to help rebalance. Especially niacin, tryptophan, vitamin C

to detox, E to heal, same-e, and all nutritious foods. Oh, a lot of Omega III

fish oils too.

 

After coming off Paxil or many, many other pharmacueticals a lot of people

have trouble with stomach and intestines also. The majoity of the

seratonin receptors are not in the brain but the intestines, so look

for imbalance problems there also. The taking of SSRIs can cause

disbiosis (sp?).

 

 

 

The medical establishment damages your stomach/intestinal tract and then tells

you " We don't know what causes this, but someday maybe science can tell us " and

then sells you some pills to take the rest of your life to suppress the syptoms.

And you then become a lifelong customer for some doctor and some pharmacuetical

company, drug store, hospital, etc.

 

To all who have stomach/intestinal problems, you must take all the

nutrients to heal. You must have a healthy intestinal flora to

utilize foods, produce B vitamins within the body and keep out bad

bacterias etc.

 

To acheive a healthy flora and kill the bad in there, use homemade

Kefir. I don't believe that anything else even comes close. There are

some kefir links on our links page. There is very little money to be

made concerning kefir so it isn't publicized very much.

 

Homemade Kefir is very easy to make. It is basically just adding a

kefir grain to milk and letting it do all of the work to make kefir.

No cooking needed.

 

Kefir bought in stores is NOT real kefir. (including health food

stores). It is made differently for the commercial market.

 

Kefir has hundreds of beneficial bacterias, yeasts, etc, not just one

or two as in a probiotic capsule. When you take medicine, you alter

the ecology of the intestal flora and kill much of it. You cannot

replace that by a pill. Kefir is the only thing that I know that omes

close. Drinking a glass of kefir or two a day will put back a quatity

of flora that would require a hundred pills ot more. And the

diversity of the flora would be imposswible to duplicate in a tablet

or pill.

 

So, this started out on Paxil and wound up on Kefir. That is OK,

because health in your body or diet is an ecological system and

process. Everything is connected. You change one element and you

affect the rest of the ecology. When your ecology is in balance by

having all of the nutrients and necessary parts health isn't

something you have to even think about. In our society though, you

have to be aware of all the things that can damage your health though.

 

Inadequate foods, waters, and air for a starter. Damage from toxins

(including pharmacueticals) can cause your body to malfunction etc.

 

Education is the Key to regaining health when someone is sick.

 

good luck,

 

Frank

 

 

 

, " Lorene "

wrote:

> Since this group focuses on altnerative healing most people here

> probably will not need this information personally but these days it

> seems that everyone knows someone who is on an SSRI (Paxil, Zoloft,

> Celexa, Prozac).

>

> I was on Paxil for about 2 years. I tried to quit twice but the

> withdrawal symptoms were so severe that I ended up staying on the

> medicine and looking for helpful ways to quit.

> http://www.prozactruth.com/sideeffects.htm lists side effects of

SSRIs

> but it fails to mention that mostly these are the side effects one

> experiences when coming off the drug not when one is on the drug.

>

> http://www.quitpaxil.org was a great help. It was so good to know

that

> I was not the only one going through this hell. The worst symptoms

> were the nausea, severe dizziness (!), headaches, hot flashes, heart

> palpitations, inability to concentrate and " low grade shock "

> electrical sensations (like when you touch your toungue to a

battery)

> throughout my head and upper body. Oh! And head congestion! The

first

> time I tried to quit Paxil I thought the symptoms were due to a bad

> sinus infection... only as they worsened did I put it together with

my

> quitting.

>

> But now I seem to have quit successfully and I owe it mostly to the

> article below! Frank posted this article a few weeks ago... shortly

> after I reduced my dosage from my regular 20 mg dose to a 10 mg

dose.

> I had light symptoms but not unbearable. When I reduced it two weeks

> ago my symptoms became increasingly worse.

>

> I work in a chiropractor's office and had forwarded the article

below

> to the doctor because we've had several patient's with meniere's. On

> one of my really bad days I mentioned to the doctor's wife that I

> needed to go pick up some more dramamine (meclizine) after work

> because the dizziness was so bad. (I'd been taking four to six per

day

> with very limited results.) She said, " why don't you try the kali

> phos? " Well, I had completely forgotten about the article. I was

like,

> " duh!? " I went to the pharmacy after work and they didn't have kali

> phos (potassium phosphate) but they did have potassium gluconate.

So I

> picked up potassium gluconate, niacin and zinc. (I also picked up

more

> dramamine in case it didn't help.)

>

> Well, I've been on the potassium, niacin and zinc for eight days,

and

> seven days ago I completely quit my Paxil. I've had very, very

little

> dizziness and virtually none of the other symptoms (except the hot

> flashes). I've taken one or one and a half dramamine per day.

>

> So, I've been off Paxil a week! Yay! Thank you, Frank, for posting

> such pertinent information (even if you did it unknowingly ).

>

> Have a wonderful day!

>

> Lorene B.

>

..