Posted by Felix Guattari on November 13, 2008, at 22:44:59
First, I want to say that this, from what I've seen, is a great forum. If my psychiatrists had half the curiosity and fidelity to research, logic and evidence shown by many members of this board, perhaps I wouldn't be in this situation.
I'll try to keep the background to my question reasonably short. I was diagnosed with depression and aspergers syndrome at a fairly young age, and was accordingly put on SSRIs; first fluvoxamine, then fluoxetine, then sertraline. I suspect there were at least some ADHD-spectrum issues present as well, but since I didn't respond to methylphenidate, the doctors attributed the symptoms to my other disorders. For all I know, the fluvox. and fluox. were fairly effective, or at least well-tolerated, (though I recall some amount of emotional blunting from the second) as I was on them for around ten years total.
Halfway through high school I asked my GP for something for anxiety, and was given sertraline. My junior year was OK academically, but my ability to concentrate was slowly waning. At the time, I coped with this by spending more time socializing, in lieu of reading, which had been my previous pastime of choice. By halfway through my senior year I had become depressed, and found it harder and harder to read or do schoolwork. I took up smoking cigarettes at this time, as I found it helped me get work done.
I landed a fairly challenging independent-study at a local private college in my chosen major (philosophy) over the summer, but found it impossible to get work done, though I was intensely interested in the subject matter. I also enjoyed socializing less and less, but spent increasing time doing so in order to avoid doing work. I left for college, but experienced a depressive breakdown at the beginning of the year. I struggled to keep up in class, but things quickly fell apart and I was forced to drop most of them and barely scraped by in the rest. I then also started experiencing terrible anxiety, for which I started smoking weed. I would sit in my room and sleep for days at a time, and often missed doses of sertraline. Writing and reading were by this time nearly impossible, but I associated it with depression.
I came home after the first quarter, my parents were upset with me at having failed out of (an expensive) school, and things got worse when my psychiatrist increased the zoloft several times, throwing me into an akathisic hell. I tried several other medications to treat my depression and newly-found ADHD (I couldn't and still can't read), but nothing helped. Worst was fluvoxamine, the akathisia from which necessitated hospitalization.
It has now been almost a year since sertraline, and more than a month since fluvoxamine, and I still experience crippling akathisia, cognitive impairment, anhedonia, embarassingly short attention span, declining memory and fatigue and insomnia. I was never a hotheaded or impulsive individual before, but I catch myself saying mean-spirited things and acting impulsively on a regular basis. I've lost my job, dropped out of school, been kicked out of my house several times and still cannot read and understand more than a sentence at a time. While writing is somewhat easier, this post took nearly a week to compose, and there's no way I could read it all in one sitting.
Before the above came to pass, I was a voracious reader, self-educated on many subjects and relatively happy. I was planning on going into academia for philosophy and/or doing translation work. I am only nineteen. My sometimes-friends are getting jobs, moving out, getting educations... I'm nostalgic for being sixteen.
I apologize for the melodrama, but does anyone else think this looks iatrogenic? It is undeniable that SSRIs made things worse, but can I point to them as a cause of my problems? SSRI-induced tardive akithisia seems like the only explanation for the variety of symptoms with which I've been left; the 'depression', at least insofar as it is dissociable from the akathisia/concentration/reading difficulty complex of symptoms, even seems to lift with every ray of false hope. But the EP-like symptoms don't seem to be going anywhere.
If it is indeed iatrogenic, what might the prognosis be? Is there any hope I will be able to read or go to school or even hold a job again?
Furthermore, is there another possible way of approaching the problem? I left a lot out in order to make the tasks of writing (for my sake) and reading (for others) easier, but feel free to ask for any bit of information that might be helpful.Thanks,
FG
poster:Felix Guattari
thread:862961
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20081106/msgs/862961.html