Depression Understood Forums

Although I will almost always be 1 of the first people to say seek a medical opinion, I am going to admit that I am scared of medication & have a serious reluctance to running for it.

I will explain below. [I'm not trying to be a hypocrite.] Ah, it's long again....

My Question: If you experienced what happened to me, would you be willing to try out different medications to resolve the remaining problems, especially considering there is usually a risk of suicide associated with some medications?

My experiences with getting help have not been good. The doctors kept tossing me around like what's done with a volleyball in a volleyball game. I don't want to think that it was because I am brown-skinned. I'm going to hope that they were simply just limited in their "expertise".

It was back + forth & back + forth & back + forth I went until I decided to stop the insanity. The doctors & the medication were actually having a negative effect on me.

There was only 1 who genuinely wished to help & that was this 1 psychologist I met. I liked his approach. He was pretty alright.

The last straw was when I went to the psychiatrist & told her that I wanted to deal with my issues without medicine. She outright ignored what I had said & handed me a prescription for pills.

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Pills aren't usually a problem for me, but I found I was having a problem with them. I had had a seizure a few years ago in my 2nd to last year of undergraduate study.

Trileptal [oxcarbazepine] was hellish. My mood went to pot. My personality changed, & I pretty much became another person. I was almost always angry & ultra irritable. I was almost always ultra stressed out & functioning in panic mode. Doing that every day is not the ideal. I told the doctor, but he had said that the medicine wasn't causing my mood change & that he had not heard reports of it.

It was dumb of me to listen to him. I figured he knew best, but I was wrong about that.

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Back to the psychiatrist, she handed me the prescription for the mood stabilizer & said I would have to be on it for the rest of my life, even after saying that it was possible that some people can pretty much go batty if Trileptal + other anti-seizure/anticonvulsant meds are not taken with a mood stabilizer. I was never prescribed one while I was on Trileptal until much much later [close to when I was about to be finished taking it]. I refused & stopped putting my life in the hands of fools & idiots.

I believe Trileptal affected my mood. I was okay with a few ups & downs before I started taking it. Surely I had issues prior to my seizure, but I believe that the medication exacerbated them. I hung on for as long as I could with my moods. I was nearly finished with taking the meds & would be off of them soon.

Unfortunately, 1 day in graduate school, my professor got on my case for me not turning in my assignments. I WAS NOT simply NOT turning in my assignments. The problem with my mood finally got to be too much. I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't get any thing done no matter what/how I tried. My memory was bad. I actually stopped functioning & in that moment of my professor talking hard to me, I snapped. No one knew what the hell I was going through & it's not like any one cared either.

I just barely pulled myself away from him. I was so upset because I am a hard working person [a recovering perfectionist] & I was doing all I could & there he was making me out to be some kind of irresponsible student, who was just slacking off for the sake of doing so. [I was a minority in the university I attended. He was too but we were not of the same ethnic background. I was very mad because that is a stereotype I don't like & I am not.]

My mind was not good that day. I got so pissed I wanted to out his light. I was ready to do it, too. As I'm not a violent person, I walked away from him but could not contain my anger & proceeded to break down horribly.

I was like a raging madwoman that day, who kept on raging. It's a wonder I didn't have a heart attack or bust an artery. My mood was fire & brimstone & lava spewing all over the place. There was no 1 to turn to & I suicided that day. I overdosed on the same accursed Trileptal medication I so thoroughly detested for robbing me of my life & creating the nightmare I lived day in & day out. It's possible it could have been worse, though, I guess...

Popping those pills every day was like a death sentence to me. [I'm not trying to be a drama queen, but that was what it felt like to me. I sort of saw myself die/decline while taking Trileptal. It was as though my life was not my own. I was outside looking in at myself & not seeming to have any real control.]

****That's one reason I don't have pills around me much. I OD-ed but survived so I really didn't want them around to be a constant reminder. I freaked out for a long time every time I had a bottle of pills in my hand. I was always tempted to take the whole thing. [I got through it by using those small tubular travel size pill cases.] The death wish remains, but it is more manageable now.

****The other reason I am reluctant to take medication is that the mood stabilizer created a bad dependence in me for it [post-suicide]. Ironically, it's only after suiciding & surviving that that's when all the doctors realized I needed a mood stabilizer. Oh please. They were so lame. No, wait a minute. On second thought, I'm going to say it how I 1st thought it: those lame a*s mf-ers...

Any way, if I recall correctly, the 1 prescribed for me was Lamictal. It worked at 1st, & I felt good. You know, it was like, "YEAH!" Then, its novelty wore off, & I needed more to get the same effect. I kept needing more & needing more & needing even more.

I could foresee having a problem. I believe that if I didn't stop taking Lamictal, I would have abused it or have a bad addiction to it or be strung out on drugs some place. I felt like an addict when I took that stuff. Oh gosh & I've never done any drugs in my life. I don't wish that on any one. I was not willing to keep taking Lamictal or Trileptal, once I got to this point. I was supposed to be coming off the Trileptal any way, so I stopped. I was not going to be a drug addict. Oh hell no. I had had enough.

Since I was taking Trileptal for about 3 years, I went from taking 2 tablets per day to only 1 to half a tablet & finally walked away from it in about 2 to 3 months. I never bothered with the doctors again either. I don't know where I would be now if I had not rid myself of the medication.

Now, I consider & try out alternatives. I have almost recovered/recreated/rebuilt my old self or a little bit of my old self re-emerged & I am happier for it. I still have issues, but they are nothing like what I experienced while being on medication.

Edit: In sum, it was painful--very painful indeed.

Crystal

Don't apologise for your posts being long. They may be long but they are really interesting.

A few questions, to help us be helpful to you:
Do you live in a city big enough to have a few different psychiatrists to pick from?
How many doctors were you going to at once?
Did they know about each other, and what they were all prescribing?
Were they all psychiatrists, or were there any specialists?

You may know this, but the side effects are listed in the insert in order of occurrence. If you go to where the percentage breakdown is, you will see that a lot of the scary side effects happen to less than 1% of test subjects. Suicidal ideation is usually way toward the end - they list it only because in all their testing one person commited suicide. And they list EVERY side effect that anyone has ever reported. Obviously if there was a higher percent of occurence, the FDA wouldn't have allowed them to sell it. So since they have to list all the effects that anyone has ever reported, you can find the same bunch of side effects in almost every drug out there. It's the side-effects that are listed first and are either underlined or in bold type you want to take note of. Nausia is always there. Sleepiness is there. So just because suicide is printed there on the insert doesn't mean that that particular drug caused it. It may have, but I would believe not, since it's on the market. Maybe that one suicide that happened during the test had absolutely nothing to do with the drug. So what I am trying to say is that you can pretty well trust the drugs that are out there, especially the older ones. The risk of you wanting to kill yourself because of an FDA-approved drug is minute.

I think what is happening with you is too many doctors all trying what they think will work, unaware of the other doctors. You could be getting some very dangerous combinations without anyone being aware of it.
Are you taking other medications? Things like antihistamines and decongestants can be very dangerous with certain drugs. Just because they are over the-counter-doesn't mean they are perfectly safe with other drugs.

For your peace of mind, pharmacies have this new computer program out now where you list all the drugs you're taking, and how much, including things like antihistamines, and give it to the pharmacist and he'll run it through and it will tell you if you have any potentially dangerous combinations going. You ought to do that. It's quick, free and easy.

Your suicide attempt is a huge cry for help. You are obviously not getting it from the doctors you are currently using. What I would do before you self-destruct, is start all over. Talk to the nurses in hospitals. They know who to go to. They know a lot! Then find a doctor that has been recommended to you more than once, specifically for the seizures and tell him everything you are taking and start fresh with ONE doctor. Tell those nurses your story and ask which specific field of expertise you should be looking for. Then tell him if, at that point, you feel you need psychotropics. It is imperative the docs all know what each other is giving you. I bet you will function a lot better after you sort them all out.

I bet I can write a longer post than you can. I have to try to stop going over everything five times.

And lastly, if you ask someones advice, someone you trust, if there is such a doctor, do what he says.

Please keep us posted. I've been where you are and I really want to see if it helps you to start from scratch. Believe me, those nurses are gold!

Good luck.


A5

Thanks for your reply!

No one believed me when I told them about what was happening, regarding side effects. I even had this bad weight gain because when I was on Trileptal, I was ALWAYS hungry. I just had to have food & I was never like that in my life. At first, I thought maybe it's just that I was in college, but it was just too drastic. It was crazy! I changed for the worse, due to being on that medication. I'm sure of it.

It is nice to know about that computer program you mentioned. I do feel more at ease. I don't know if they have them where I live.... I don't know if they existed when I started taking Trileptal.... ???

I really never took any other meds--over-the-counter or otherwise--with it, except for if something were really bad. I only had really bad, piercing pain headaches a few times. Otherwise, I just went without it. I had a few feminine problems a few times. I usually wasn't sick. Where I live doesn't have that many psychiatrists to choose from truthfully & it's pretty small. One is even my cousin, so I'm not going to him!

I always only had one doctor at a time or 1 psychiatrist & 1 psychologist. They continued my Trileptal from the neurologist.

In 2008, way after I suicided in 2006, the FDA started coming out with these warnings, specifically for Trileptal & antiseizure/anticonvulsant meds. How absolutely ironic. That started in January. The FDA kept collecting data/gathering information. There was even a group that recorded cases about people dying from antiseizure/anticonvulsant meds, specifically Trileptal. I don't remember the group's name right now. If I recall correctly, that group submitted the cases, which is what prompted the FDA to analyze data in the 1st place.

As far as I know, the blackbox warnings were rejected, but I am living walking proof of those warnings. They came too little too late for me. That's really how I feel.

As far as I'm concerned, the controversy surrounding the warnings is bull. I'm willing to bet they weren't studying every patient taking the medication. What were the nationalities/ethnic backgrounds of the people involved? They weren't studying me. That's for sure. They weren't studying the people who died, which prompted the FDA's investigation to begin with. That's for sure. Those people can say what they want.

http://www.webmd.com/epilepsy/news/2008 ... epsy-drugs

I tried searching on the FDA's web site, but I couldn't find much of any thing about it. Maybe my search terms weren't good/clear/narrow enough.

Here's how it went:

Home

1. Seizure, 2004 ----> Hospital [Treated There, Dilantin--Can you say DROWSY?!] No Prior Drugs [Never Saw Them Again]

2. Neurologist ----> Trileptal [That was the best thing to take at the time.]


School in Pennsylvania, 2001 to 2005

3. I only went to a dermatologist 'cause I got seborrheic dermatitis from the mushroom spores in the air from the factory that was just up the road. [I can't remember what he prescribed; it was a topical hydrocorticosteroid in yellow + white tube with gray writing on it I think.]

Home Again, Summer Breaks for 2001 to 2005

4. Same Neurologist, Same Medication, Check up + Tests by Same Doctor right in his Office [hooked up some plugs to my body to test my brain waves, I think]


Graduate School, Midwest, Fall 2006

5. Same Neurologist, Same Medication, Check up + Tests by Same Doctor right in his Office

6. Suicide ---> Hospitalization [Treated by Different Doctor], Trileptal Continued, Lamictal Begun [Never Saw Them Again]

7. Campus Clinic Treatment, Different Doctor [1 Psychologist, 1 Psychiatrist... Both men, Both Worked in the Same Building on the Same Floor + Compared Notes, Continued with Lamictal + Trileptal]


Home Again, late January 2007 to present I came off of all medications. I got help just as I got back & I was not pleased with what they were doing, so I said later for them.

8. Go to the psychologist I like [No drugs]

9. Get the lady psychiatrist [who clues me in on the fact that I should have been on a mood stabilizer, whom I was referred to by my general/family doctor] Prescribed Lamictal which I did not continue taking

10. My General Doctor, No Medication Prescribed, Helped with getting treatment at home #8 + #9 above
[She was the only one who listened me out & considered the possibility that I was having a problem with the Trileptal, even when I took a print-out of the side effect list & checked off or highlighted every thing that was happening. I don't remember where the folder is right now, but I experienced most of the side effects closer to the bottom of the label.]

I made certain to tell every one what was going on at all times, in terms of what medication I was taking.

I think that a5 has given you several suggestions that might be appropriate to give a try to.

I suppose finding a good pdoc is probably at the start of your list.
I don't know what the situation is (I think you mentioned Australia at some point, so if I got it wrong) in Australia, but there is a terrible shortage of just gp's let along pdcos. Pretty well have to just be grateful with the fact that you got a pdoc at all.

Never worry about writing posts that are too long. Everyone needs to vent here. You can tell by the replies that your posts are being read keep it up.

I just went to this message because it was indicated in one of your other posts. Will go back to the other one now.

Welcome.

At the moment, I don't feel afraid of taking medication or even going to the doctor, especially since I saw this article today, regarding being able to go back to college. (I posted about it on here in a previous thread. If you didn't see it, http://depression-understood.org/forum/ ... highlight=)

I believe that what I felt with the whole thing really is anger.... Maybe once I can put it out, I won't mind meds + doctors.

I believe I've gotten through this to a point. I don't think I'm afraid of medication/doctors any more. However, I do believe that we should all look out for ourselves as much as we can--meaning reading related/relevant material thoroughly, getting help if we need it to understand the material, etc.