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Comment by rubicon33 | Hacker News Reader

As much as I want to believe things are over prescribed, and that medications don't actually help, my anecdotal experience is very similar to yours. I've heard nothing but extremely positive things. Comments like "I have my life back". And "I finally feel okay in my own skin".

I've been long skeptical of the pharma industry, and those drugs... But the more I hear personal accounts like that, it's hard to remain skeptical.

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Well, in my case, the result of me taking antidepressants was gaining 120lb, stopping leaving the house, and spending hours a day posting on 4chan and jacking off to porn since I no longer cared about the negative emotions such actions would have previously inspired in me. I also felt like I was going crazy when I stopped taking the medecine. The result now is that I'm very high performing in all areas of my life, and I have lost over 120lb and achieved a nornal weight, but I believe that my stint with antidepressants have permanently taken several years off my life span. They also contributed to significant delays in my economic, intellectual, and social development, as they seemed to bring me from relatively poorly functioning (but functioning) human being to out of control explosion of self-destruction and shit. But maybe it's different for older people who take them.

My anecdotal evidence was closer to yours than everyone else's on here apparently. I'm a 35 year old who acts closer to 22 or 23. I wasted a least a decade going deeper and deeper down a psych-med hole. I was on a large amount of Effexor when I decided I'd had enough and went cold turkey. It probably wasn't smart, but I didn't care about anything when I was on that stuff. Once the world stopped shifting every time I turned my head, my life steadily got better and I started to care others and stopped focusing solely on myself. Maybe it stopped me from suffering some really bad lows, but it also kept me from enjoying any good things in my life (including sex). I was living in a perpetual "Fuck it".

I'm still learning how to cope with missing a very important part of my life, but I couldn't imagine where I'd be if I kept listening to any of the numerous doctors who had nothing for me but more prescriptions. I think all I ever really wanted was someone to care enough to listen and coach me towards making positive steps. I think a lot of people don't know what to do with their lives.

I'm surprised that your primary care, or psychologist didn't take you off the meds after the first 20 lbs of weight gain? That sounds like a horrible experience...

My limited understanding of psych meds is that they're hit or miss, and that you may end up trying a few until you find one that "works". Side effects like weight gain, and not giving a shit about the ramifications of negative behavior, would certainly strike me as the kind of things that would warrant a reconsideration of a prescribed medication?

So I guess it begs the question, what was the role of your doctor in all of this?

Were you talking to your psychiatrist about this at the time? If you were prescribed medication there should have been a doctor involved in the process at some point that could consult you about possible side effects of the given drug and addressing them, probably by changing medication.

Did different doses and added more drugs.

Placebos have been shown to be nearly as effective as anti depressants.

Who would say getting high on drugs could fix lifes instead of destroying them...

A lot of medications have different effects based on dosage. For example, DXM, the active ingredient in most cough medicines is a deleriant at very high doses, and people take it recreationally (robotripping). Does this mean we should ban Robitussin? Another example is that cocaine in small doses is used as a numbing agent. Medications can and do have different effects given the dosage.

The sarcasm flew right over your head...

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