Hell, yes.
Anti-depressants have been over-prescribed for years. Kelly Brogan, MD wrote in “What’s the Harm in Taking an Antidepressant?” that, “Having always represented antidepressants as safe and effective to my patients, I put down my prescription pad after learning 3 facts about psychiatric medications:
1. They result in worse long-term outcomes [1]
2. They are debilitatingly habit forming [2] [3] [4]
3. They cause unpredictable violence [5] [6]”
I can tell you that many, many of my clients have reported similar issues. One talked about the clinical way she approached her impending suicide, which she hadn’t been thinking about at all until she started taking anti-depressants. All of a sudden, suicide seemed like a completely reasonable thing to do. Fortunately, she had the wherewithal to recognize the bizarre shift in her thinking (and feeling), and quickly stopped taking the medication. The thoughts of suicide went away. But she was deeply shaken by how close she came.
This phenomenon also tends to happen more often in kids and adolescents who are on antidepressants. Despite FDA warnings about the risks of prescribing these medications to younger patients, the rate of prescribing them has actually gone up.
Many clients talk about the difficulty they have in getting off the medications once they start them. Almost nobody was told about this ahead of time. “These symptoms include flu-like symptoms, tremors, tachycardia, shock-like sensations, paresthesia, myalgia, tinnitus, neuralgia, ataxia, vertigo, sexual dysfunction, sleep disturbances, vivid dreams, nausea vomiting, diarrhea, worsening anxiety and mood Instability.” Sometimes people just give up and go back on them, believing what the doctor has told them, “You’ll be on this for the rest of your life.”
The thing that is important to note here is that anti-depressants don’t really work. Research has shown that there is a barely significant difference between placebos and antidepressants in depressed patients.
But what if you really are depressed and are having trouble functioning? The overwhelm from that can be devastating.
There are alternatives!
1. Neurofeedback. I would do this first. Very often after clients get some sessions from the Zengar NeurOptimal neurofeedback system I use, they report back that they feel like “someone turned the lights back on” in their life. NeurOptimal helps your brain re-wire itself so that it runs better. Ruts are shallowed, loops are unhooked, connections are optimized. A game-changer. Plus these are long-lasting changes, a new normal.
2. Energy psychotherapy. Energy psych techniques like Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) can teach you how to unstick that stuck energy on a regular basis, giving you tools to use to get yourself moving again, and to get things unstuck when shit happens, which it will continue to do as long as you’re alive. It’s good to have effective tools for that.
3. Check your gut. Google “mind gut connection” and you’ll get millions of results. Do the research yourself or go talk to someone who knows about it. Stunningly, it’s not always your doctor.
4. Get a Human Design reading, or at least get as much free stuff as you can about your own design. I’m biased about this one. Because — maybe you’re not crazy. Maybe you’ve just been trying to be someone you’re not, and feel defeated for failing at that. Maybe it’s time to let that go, and have the map to the brilliant person you actually are, are meant to be, will be successful as, and can relax knowing you can trust yourself, finally.
5. Exercise. It’s usually the last thing you feel like doing when you can barely crawl out of bed. But it really does have medicinal purposes. It triggers all the good chemicals that create a more positive mood, and gets rid of the bad ones that are a result of stress.
a. Note: The key here is not to wait until you “want” to exercise. I never really “want” to get up off my couch when I’m nice and comfy and inert in it. The key rather is to “want” what the exercise will do for you. That’s what the motivation needs to be about. Maybe, just maybe the motivation for the actual activity will come, but I wouldn’t depend on that, especially at the beginning.
6. Make sure you’re getting enough Omega 3’s and Vitamin D. Both have been shown to be connected to mood. Talk to someone who knows about it, do your own research, get your levels checked. Easy and cheap.
You have options to recover from depression – good ones, and way better than antidepressants.
Hugs,
Martha