MY TRANSITION FROM CONVENTIONAL TREATMENT OF MENTAL HEALTH TO AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH

This story is about my transition from conventional treatment for severe depression after my divorce. I was prescribed various antidepressants, Benzodiazepams and SSRI's to provide me with relief, but the side effects after long term use were serious enough for me to explore an alternative approach. This undertaking was a long and rigorous journey that involved taking a variety of vitamins to treat and prevent my depression. I also changed my diet, and exercised daily as a tool to improve my mental health. I practiced yoga and used acupuncture to reduce my stress and ease my anxiety.

I cannot thank my family doctor enough for his never ending concern about my health. It was during my annual checkup in March 2002 that he told me that the size of my breast was very abnormal for a man. He told his secretary to book a mammography test at the Toronto East General Hospital because he said that some old Tricyclic Antidepressants like Doxepin, also known as Sinequan, can cause significant breast enlargement. After a period of high anxiety while waiting for the result, I received a phone call from my family physician that everything was ok. He stressed the need that I be monitored by an oncologist. This painful experience triggered in me these fundamental questions:

Were all these medications I have been taking for many years the source of a much bigger problem?

Confused and very concerned, I spoke to two Houselink staff workers. One told me to visit http://www.truehope.com and gave me the name of a book called Your Drug May Be Your Problem: How and why to stop taking psychiatric medications by Peter R. Breggin, MD and David Cohen, PhD.

Needless to say, this book became one of the most important I have ever read. I started to catalogue and research every single Benzodiazepam, TeA, SSRI and Neuroleptic that I had been prescribed in the past decade. What I found made me sick, angry and baffled. The second part of my research was focused on finding a natural product known to be effective as an alternative treatment to depression and other forms of mental illness. My daily diet in the context of the orthomolecular aspect was also very important. Linus Pauling used the term "orthomolecular" for the first time in 1968 in his Science report called "Orthomolecular Psychiatry." It's basically a nutritional approach in balancing body chemistry through diet, nutrition and exercise.

I stopped drinking caffeine, soft drinks such as Coke and stopped eating junk food. Yoga, exercise and Acupuncture played a very important part in maintaining my mental health. The improvement was both noticeable and immediate. I realized that I was on the right track.

In October 2002 I began taking 13 different types of vitamins for eight weeks before I actually started to reduce my 300mg daily dosage of Doxepin. By the end of October, my determination to free myself from the maze of psychiatric medications was irreversible. I spoke to my family physician and my psychiatrist. Both were very skeptical. Their main concern was for my health because the odds of discontinuing Doxepin after long-term use were almost impossible and very dangerous.

I told my psychiatrist that I was fully aware of these risks. I was convinced that failure to try a different approach could also be detrimental to my health. He gave me my monthly prescription of Doxepin in 50mg capsules instead of the usual 100mg capsules.

The week I actually began to decrease my daily dosage to 250mg of Doxepin will go down as one of the most hellish weeks I will remember for the rest of my life. I remained with that dosage for three weeks followed by another decrease of 50mg for three weeks to 200mg. The side effects were less severe but I experienced nightmares. I decreased my dosage again by 50mg to 150mg for two more weeks and then 100mg for three weeks.

Something important was happening and I was determined to stay the course.

The severity of the withdrawal symptoms was at this point very low. Remember that Doxepin contains almost 40% sedative, so my sleeping pattern was reduced from 12hrs a day to six hours. To me this was a trade off that I was willing to take at any cost for the sake of my health. The last sixty days were relatively very easy in terms of side effects. After decreasing to 100mg for three weeks, I decreased to 50mg for one month and 25 mg for two weeks and then took a dosage every other day for five weeks. My goal is not to advocate to people who are on conventional psychiatric medications to stop taking them. I do not believe making that case is ethically or morally right. I am simply trying to explain the best way I can what happened to me and how I overcame it. If talking about my story will help even one single survivor in their own quest for understanding the untold implications of the medications they are taking, it will be worth the World to me. I recently participated in a meeting held at Toronto City Hall, organized by The Ontario Recovery Campaign (ORC). During my ten-minute presentation, I stongly emphasized how education and knowledge about medications are paramount in the quest for recovery. I am also talking about this ordeal to stress the importance of greater communication and openness between the survivor, and their psychiatrist. Equally important is the full support and co-operation of whatever networks they depend upon. Survivors need a lot of support and understanding.

The other reason I am talking about this now is that I was unaware before I began my research that many Tricyclic antidepressants (TCA) and Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) are truly effective only for a few weeks, enough time to address whatever crisis someone is going through. (This does not apply to all cases.)

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Houselink Supportive Worker Ruth Bockner, Liza Soroka and Sandra Russell for their critical help. Without them I would have never been able to achieve this endeavour alone.
Mental illness is not a life sentence. People can and do fully recover from even the most severe forms.