Here are a few comments from readers of Seroxat Secrets about the wonderful drug we know as Paxil or Seroxat or Aropax… I must stress this is a small selection from the hundreds of comments I have received over the last two years.
Are you listening Glaxo? Are you listening at the MHRA? Are you listening at the FDA?
It’s about time these voices were heard – a lot of people need help:
I just found this site and am very concerned. I am 48 and have been on Paxil for 12 years. I’ve attempted to get off 3 times and my doctor at the time told me that typically if you couldn’t get off by a 3rd attempt – you will never be able to get off. That was my 3rd attempt. Even weaning down – I was left with the most incredible headaches and was prescribed pain meds. It was so bad at one point my Doctor met me in the Neurologist office where they were going to do a spinal tap to figure out why my pain was so great. Then, instead, they decided it was the paxil withdrawl.
The drinking. I am so happy I found this website today. My drinking has been incredible and now I see it IS related to paxil. That and the insomnia, which I take Ambien for.
I need to get off this and quickly. I’m not getting any younger and I’m concerned about getting older with these issues. I’m going to try to find a Doctor to assist – but don’t know how to find one – I’ll just start looking.
Any suggestions would be great.
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I am 24 and have been on paxil for 9 months now, like all of you i started at a low dose for anxiety attacks which run in the family. Then i moved up to 20mg, then 30mg which i am at now and is slowly becoming not enough.
Paxil has ruined my life, i feel so tired all the time, cant function, cant care for my child and feel down.
i would advise for anyone to take it but when you have those attacks, you’ll take anything. i would not wish those attacks on my worse enemy! on the 30 mg it was working great except the side effects, then maybe every other day my heart starts to race, start breathing deep and have weird pains due to the effect it takes on your brain.
so i can just imagine my dose will be going up, i always said to myself i would not take anything addictive but here i am on this horrible pill that is slowly ruining my life and those around me.
I feel for all of you because i know what every one of you is talking about and i wish to give you all hope and keep your sanity during this crazy ride!
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I was prescribed the junk for PTSD, depression, and anxiety. I was on celexa prior to that for a period of six months. The problem I had with that is I got tired of being completely sedated and never being able to get myself off the courch or stay awake for more than an hour, so I switched to paxil, and it’s worse than crack… It feels good for about an hour and then come the cravings for more as it rushes out of your system. This state of rollerlcoster withdrawal leaves you bent, jaw welded shut, teeth grinding, anxious as all hell, vivid nightmares, completely lost vocabulary, and no short term memory at all.
Doctors of course would not listen, would not prescribe anything for the massive anxiety and I had no access to weed, or money for it if I did, hence a strong urge to drink which I’ve never experienced in my life. I had noticed while having the rare beer that I’d suddenly feel relaxed and more functional or balanced. Of course I couldnt’ afford to drink like a fish and also realized that was a problem I didn’t want either, so I avoided it and just kept with the side effects. The doctor’s answer was always the same=double the dose.
As I sat in the doctors office barely able to put a simple sentence together anymore, but managed to say “I think I need to be taking less”, only to hear “more is definately the answer for you”, I went off it cold turkey.
It’s been two years now and there are still lingering side effects. These drugs are an epidemic worse than cancer, and that includes the lies told to get us and keep us taking them, giving them to our kids and our pets.. it’s criminal.
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Part of me is now thinking if I should go back on the tablets and wean myself off them very slowly, but another part is wondering if that will solve anything at all. After reading the direction leaflet that came with the pills it said that “MOST PEOPLE FIND THAT ANY SYMPTOMS ON STOPPING SEROXAT ARE MILD AND GO AWAY ON THEIR OWN WITHIN TWO WEEKS. FOR SOME PEOPLE, THESE SYMPTOMS MAY BE MORE SEVERE,OR GO ON FOR LONGER” so basically it’s a Russian Roulette situation, you just cannot tell whether or not you will get the best or worst of the symptoms that come during withdrawal of the drug!!
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Hi all, it is a bit of a relief reading some of your posts but also really scary. I was on Seroxat (only 30mg) for about 7 years for OCD/depression. I had several attempts at coming off it and finally did at the beginning of this year. I was so pleased with myself. Since then I have plummeted and have this overwhelming feeling as if I have just ‘woken up’. I have done some awful things whilst on the drug and had wondered if it could have been due to it?! Reading these posts has made me think it’s possible. I don’t know what to think. I’ve been put on Prozac 20mg but it’s doing nothing for my anxiety. Do you think 30mg seroxat could have had effects where I ‘didn’t really know what I was doing’? Sorry to babble on so.
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I am going “Cold Turkey” and this is my 5th week. It is a living nightmare, I cant discribe what hell i am going through. I have tried to take my own life is the very worst thing I have tried to do. My hubby and our 2 kids are also going through hell living with me and my manic mood swings, one monent i am ok the next i have an over whelming urge to sob, next i am just so so mad and aggresive it is just sheer hell on us all. I am dying of the heat one sec then freezin the next, i cant think stright i can just bring my self to eat, and me head is in bits, i have always got this swishy feeling going on ……….. After telling this to my doctor she then priscribed Valium and sleeping tablets!! I will not take those as i DO NOT want to get addicted to another drug to get of seroxat!! I fell like its just me , what can I do?
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ive been on it for 3 weeks…
stopped cold turkey and ive been freaking out on my loved ones…
this stuff is poison… dont take it
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Hi i am 32 year old and been on seroxat for the last 2 years, and ive been cutting the dosage down on the liquid seroxat which makes it easier to come off, or so the doctors say.. i stopped it after 2 bottles, i feel like death, constant crying, shouting at my husband and two children that i love so much. my kids have seen me beeting my self with what ever ive got in my hand at the time, i hate the way i feel, i am so bloody scared. I dont want to loose my family. I feel so sorry for the ppl that have been on it much longer than me. Its so bloody cruel for me and my family 2 go through this.
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I’m a user of 10 yrs…… this drug has ruled my life after being prescribed it like smarties when i was 19. Great at first. Solved all my problems. Now!!!….. the moment i miss a dose, my mood changes. The longer i leave it. SWEATS. SHORT TEMPER. ELECTRIC SHOCKS, in my head and tongue. FEEL SICK. TIRED. FEEL LIKE IM NOT REALLY HERE> like a computer game. ANGER at anything. doesn’t matter. just small stuff. NIGHTMARES. I live with it cause i’ve decided i’ll never come off it, but so long as i take my 40mg dose every 2 days. I’m OK. A fucking slave to GSK. I’ve recently self harmed. THats a new step. 10 yrs now, nearly 11. I’m 30. It scares me what i might do one day. I try control it best i can, and do a pretty good job, but now and then, i slip. Thank you GSK. Thank you doctors. for all your fucking help in making me BETTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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I am trying to wean off Paxil. I have noticed that my craving for alcohol disappears….like COMPLETELY with the continuing decrease in dosage. Last night I missed the half dose (down to 10 mg) that I have been taking by cutting the pills in half. Today, after work, I truly did not want to come home and drink, which has been my habit now for several years while on Paxil. Prior to taking Paxil, I was relatively indifferent to alcohol, could take it or leave it, but my dependence on drinking has become a lifestyle since the Paxil. I’ve also gained an enormous amt of weight.
I would like to be free of Paxil completely, but when I try to go off it completely, I become ill and dizzy. So, I’m doing it slowly. I’m glad I found this discussion group where others have expressed the same problem with alcohol. It sure was nice this evening to come home and NOT want to drink…kind of like a miracle!
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I had a similar experience when I tried reducing the dose of seroxat form 30mg to 20mg. I am a psychiatrist and I thought that I knew a fair amount about the drug. This was back in 1998. When I unsuccessfully tried to reduce the dose again, I discussed the strange sensations that I was experiencing with a professor I knew. I was told that there was no evidence that withdrawl from seroxat might cause problems. The strange senasations were, “all in the mind”. Of course they were….but not in the pejorative interpretation of that platitude. I heard from plenty of other people that were experiencing similar symptoms upon their attempts to discontinue the drug, similar symptoms and similar contempt for theiran complaints about such because “SSRI’s are not addictive”. So implied the literature. I read much and tried to find out as much as I could in my lowly position as a (then) junior psychiatrist. My self-esteem fell as I was met with colleagues who were happy to accept the drug companies ‘facts’ about the drug….and their largesse. I began to use any other SSRI when prescribing for my patients, fearful that they too might have such unexplainable and unpleasant adverse effects from seroxat, despite the apparent lack of evidence. Vindication would come sweet, I told myself; surely so many people’s experience cannot be ignored.
I am glad that you, whoever you are, have set up this blog. I found it through my frequent recent trips to a blog that I have a lot of admiration and respect for – the sidebar links in that blog have been very, very interesting. I look forward to more here. I have become increasingly cynical, sceptical and ultimately dismissive of ‘evidence’ offered from researchers. I cannot now even look at a scientific paper without wondering what is missing. I may just about be able to spot some methodological flaws in a paper, but it is incredibly difficult in a busy life to spend hours dissecting every paper that I come across. I am so sad that the profession that I struggled to enter, that I held in naiive and idealistic esteem as an adolescent, that I had such hopes for has let me down so badly over the years.
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My husband was prescribed Seroxat for mild depression and was on them for about four years. Initially, within first three weeks they appeared to help him but then his behaviour changed. He became irritable, aggressive, and violent. His judgement and response to minor problems became exaggerated. All in all he was frightening to live with. Once he stopped taking the medication he became more calm. I have never liked this drug even before I had heard of doubts over its efficacy.
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seroxat has devastated my mind,body and soul.I have been off it, after 6 years usage, 29 long months and i am still suffering the damage caused,in way of; agitation,headaches,vision problems,severe tinnatus,breathing problems,heart irregularities,anxiety,depression,derealisation,aches and pains,apathy,mood swings,anger,gastric problems,dizziness,nausea,tingling/numbness in extremities,sorry the list is endless.
These symptoms vary from day to day,its like a box of chocolates(forrest gump) you never know what you are going to get next.
My life is on hold as i cannot plan ahead as i never know which of these debilatating symptoms is going to be present.
So for me Seroxat is a prison sentance,only difference is with seroxat you never know when your time is done,if you will ever fully recover.
So is it dangerous? oh hell yes !!!!!
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I will just say i have had almost 9 years of my life ruined by this poison,6 years on it,an attempted cold turkey off it which almost cost me my life,i was obsessed with suicide(never had been in my life before),and then 29 months of severe protracted withdrawal,and also a 9 month taper which i did alternate days as advised by my doctor!!!.
This has been one hell of a journey ,for which i had no choice, as side effects/withdrawal effects were never mentioned upon being prescribed this defective drug.
I think that this is a very high price to pay when my origional complaints were nausea,weepiness and a whole range of gyne problems.It took a doctor 2 minutes to prescribe a mind altering drug and 2 years to send me to a gyne to have my true problems looked at,i wonder which big pharma rep my doctor had seen in his office that week!!!!
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I am just at the start of my fourth withdrawal – some four weeks in – and I am determined for this withdrawal to be my last. I am planning this withdrawal over two years and reducing using the liquid form of Seroxat, coming down from 30mg to nil. I’ve been on this drug for 11 years, since I was 19, and I have almost killed myself on each of the three previous attempts at withdrawal.
I am writing to wish all those who are attempting to withdraw the best of luck and my support. I encourage everyone to inform themselves as much as possible about withdrawal – there are lots of sources of info out there now.
I’m hoping that this very protracted withdrawal will assist in enabling me to finally be free of this drug, which ultimately, has ‘kept me on hold’ for all of my adult life and prevented me from ever getting to know the real me.
Although I’m scared of what the future might hold being off the drug, because I feel so addicted to it, I want to know myself away from Seroxat and be given the chance to live in whichever way I choose.
I admire all those who are committed to withdrawing from this drug.
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I have just figured this alcohol and seroxat thing out for myself. Having been on seroxat for some 3 years now, my doctor said I was to start to cut down my dosage. I have been worrying so much about my alcohol consumption since being on the drug and had tried on a few occasions to stop drinking…….up to a bottle of wine every night…….with no lasting success. I had such strong cravings for alcohol and could not stop myself even though I knew this was bad for me. I also put on lots of weight after having been slim all my life. I also had the feeling of being out of control. Luckily I confided in a few family members but we never put it together that the seroxat was causing these problems. Anyway, after just 2 weeks of cutting down my dosage I have no cravings for alcohol. I can think about having a drink, but don;t have to have one. I feel in control again. I am hoping that as my dosage gets lower I will be much more in control of my whole life. The drug helped me get my life back at a time when I wasn’t functioning and sleeping most of the day but it took me to extremes. Today having realised that I wasn’t needing to have a drink it occurred to me that the only thing that had recently changed in my life was lowering my dosage on Seroxat. I can’t tell you how thankful and pleased I am not to have to drink. I am also feeling lighter in myself, and no horrible side effects yet, but I realise its early days. I wish everyone on here the best of luck with their struggle and remember its the seroxat that keeps you drinking!!
seroxat secrets... 
December 29, 2008 at 10:17 pm
They are reading, of course, and you can bet they are watching..
But are they listening? Do they care about the problems, havoc and damage Seroxat is still causing hundreds to hundreds of thousands of people in the UK and worldwide?
As for the drug regulators, the MHRA, they have no real power to stop this carnage, the pharmaceutical industry wags the MHRA’s tail. It is a lapdog..
They don’t give credence to Seroxat Survivors experiences because to give validation and acknowledgment is to admit wrongdoing and take responsibility.
They will continue their culture and policy of denial and ignorance for as long as it suits them to…
It’s all down to economics, illegal wars, the oil industry, unethical behavior, Big pharma, corrupt banking ect…. as long as they make money and bring jobs, they can get away with whatever they want…
Amongst the thousands of Seroxat related articles online over the past 10 years, I discovered another interesting report from a few years ago, this from the Sunday Herald it’s well worth checking out…
http://www.sundayherald.com/oped/opinion/display.var.2104806.0.big_pharma_really_makes_me_feel_sick.php?act=login
Big Pharma really makes me feel sick
Ian Bell on the drug industry
FOR CLARITY’S sake, remind yourself that nobody at GlaxoSmithKline, Britain’s biggest pharmaceutical company (2006 revenues: $42.8 billion; income $10.135bn), is to face prosecution. The company insists that it did nothing wrong with regard to the anti-depressant drug Seroxat.
The Medical and Healthcare Regulatory Agency believes, on the other hand, that the company withheld the full results of trials, particularly those suggesting that the medication could increase the chances of suicide among teenagers. The government is content, however, to “tighten” rules on information disclosure as they affect an industry that ranks, after oil, as Britain’s second biggest export earner.
Ministers may yet be equally resolute in their treatment of Reckitt Benckiser, makers of Gaviscon, the heartburn treatment. In this case it is alleged – and denied – that the firm’s executives “schemed” to block rival manufacturers from marketing generic copies after the patent had lapsed. The company describes itself as “a responsible firm which behaved honestly and ethically”. Its critics say that it cheated the NHS out of perhaps £40 million.
That is, simultaneously, a lot of money and a trivial sum, at least within the strange universe of health spending. Some £90.7bn is earmarked for the NHS in 2007/2008, up from £34.6bn in 1998. Already, most of the extra has gone on wages, 52% of it in 2005/2006. But in that same period at least 17% of extra funding has gone on what the NHS Confederation defines as “extra drug costs” compared with a mere 7% on capital costs.
But why not? Drugs save lives. The pharmaceutical industry spends billions on research and development to spare us from sickness. We are the healthiest, longest-lived, best-tended generation humanity has produced. Big Pharma surely deserves credit.
That depends on who you believe. According to the anarcho-syndicalists at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the global pharmaceutical market is expected to double by 2020 to $1.3 trillion. This market will depend, as it has for a quarter of a century, on the often-extraordinary prices achieved for pills and potions. But as the industry never fails to say, remarkable profits are required to justify the huge costs of research. Humanity pays, but humanity benefits.
Add further the claim that “innovation” within the industry is trivial, that truly new drugs are few and far between, and often originate in academia and the public sector. Add finally the charge that this is an industry with no sincere interest in producing medicines for those in the third world who need them most. According to Oxfam, the richest 15% of the world population puts away in excess of 90% of its pharmaceuticals. The drugs trade, having fought a long (though unsuccessful) battle to deny the HIV victims of South Africa cheap retrovirals, is still failing to put its famous R&D effort at the service of billions.
Between 1999 and 2004, according to the charity, 163 medicines were “brought to market”. Only three were new drugs aimed at the diseases afflicting the third world. TB is now killing two million people a year. Sufferers require six months of treatment. But according to Helena Vines-Fiestas, author of an Oxfam report, “the most recent medicine is 30 years old”.
According to the Commons public accounts committee, Big Pharma spends £850m a year “marketing” products to GPs. This revelation followed a National Audit Office survey showing that one in five of GPs is “more influenced” by drug reps than by official advisers. Influenced in what sense? To keep pace with the very latest in medical advances? To study the favourable (but not the less favourable) data that the drug firms supply? To attend conferences funded by the pharmaceutical industry? To heed the fellow professionals employed – for their expertise, surely, and not for their endorsement – by Big Pharma, the people who sometimes also manage to serve on regulatory bodies? Or just to take receipt of free samples?
Prefer, for now, to concentrate on all those dedicated GPs who just want to know about breakthroughs. Marcia Angell, a lecturer in social medicine at Harvard and an industry critic, has alleged there are far fewer of these than the R&D propaganda would have us believe.
Angell recorded that between 1998 and 2003, 487 drugs were approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. Of these, 78% were classified as “similar” to drugs already on the market; 68% were not new compounds; and only 14% were “likely to be improvements over older drugs”. Hence the huge marketing effort devoted to mere “me-too” medicines. As Angell noted, “a uniquely important drug would require very little promotion”. The cure for cancer is still awaited, but the me-toos get that precious patent protection.
They need it. Between 2000 and 2004, according to the European Commission, the number of actually new drugs coming to market had dropped from 40 to 29 a year. The stock markets also fret over “thinning pipelines” as multi-billion dollar “blockbuster” drugs fall out of patent. So Big Pharma has turned increasingly to “partnerships” with universities and the public sector. State aid, if you like.
They appear to believe they have no other choice. Angell recalls that in 2002 the FDA approved 78 drugs. Only 17 contained new active ingredients and only seven of those were classified as improvements on older medicines. The rub? Of “those seven, not one came from a major US drug company”.
Still, there’s hope for Big Pharma. If they can’t find new ways to cure us, they can always invent new ways to make us ill. Journalist and author Ray Moynihan will tell you that these days “marketing strategies have focused on promoting illness, rather than simply promoting drugs”. “Female sexual dysfunction”, “irritable bowel syndrome”, “adult attention deficit disorder” and the rest have been discovered as serious ailments, the better to sell pills, while the companies “work” with patients’ groups, medical groups, politicians and the media.
Such strategies make a nonsense of the NHS ethos. The economic power of the industry makes a nonsense of democratic oversight. The damage done to medicine itself by a parasitic trade that is, in essence, robbing the sick is close to incalculable. And the drugs, increasingly, don’t work, not as billed, any more.
GlaxoSmithKline probably isn’t too concerned by British legislation. In January, the European Commission staged raids at its offices, and the offices of a clutch of other drugs firms. “Possible anti-competitive behaviour” to prevent cheap generics from reaching the market is the allegation. Now who would dream of doing such a thing to those who are ill and in desperate need? And which democracies would allow it?
December 30, 2008 at 5:49 am
Thank you for reminding the people who were lucky enough never to have been prescribed Paxil what the victims have suffered.
January 28, 2009 at 4:47 pm
I began to feel depressed and suicidal when I was about 11 years old. I suffered through these feelings, being suicidal almost everyday, until my 15th birthday and just could not take it anymore.
So, after almost 4 years of feeling this way, I finally thought I needed to get help. It was decided that I should go into an in-paitent hospital program (because I was suicidal)
The first day their they began prescribing me Paxil, and monitored me over the next month in the hospital.
A week after I left the hospital, I downed all the pills I had been prescribed, believing it was enough to kill myself. I remember being very calm about the process, and thought to myself “well, it’s done now” and crawled into bed to drift off.
The next morning, the first thing I remember is my mom telling me to go put on clothes (I was wearing a nightie) because the ambulance was coming. Apparently I had woken up and gone into her room, and she could tell something was definetly wrong with me so she phoned the ambulance.
I remember getting the impression that people thought that it wasn’t a real attempt, and that I just wanted to go back to the hospital (I speant 3 nights (maybe 4, it’s a little blurry) in lock-up before I lied my ass off to get out of there, and I definetly did not want to be there) I really had wanted to die.
I was left on Paxil after I left the hospital a second time, everyone thought it was best and that it would help me get better. I stayed on it for about 8 months, with really no improvement, before I was prescribed something else (luckily I didn’t have the horrific withdrawls I have heard about)
Since that time I has tryed a few different anti-depressants, but I stopped when I turned 18 (and had gained a whopping 80lbs while on loxapac). I’m 26 now, I have lost all the weight (luckily) but, all in all, looking back over my experiences, I really believe I would have been better off not taking any pills, but rather just going to cognitive therapy. Loxapac in particular destroyed my body (I have over 200 stretch marks all over me, and have tons of excess skin from gaining weight so quickly) Going through this process left me feeling like there was something wrong with me and has left me with physical scars that will never go away.
Now, I fully understand that it is not “normal” to feel suicidal, but I had successfully fought down these thoughts for almost 4 years by the time I turned 15. Four-five weeks into taking Paxil, I attempted to kill myself (and I really really thought it was going to work) It really makes me wonder……..especially now that I am older, and have more experience to look back on, was it the drugs I was on that caused me to be in a state of mind where killing myself was actually a possibility ? Before then it had only be thoughts. Unfortunetly I still do feel suicidal sometimes……..the feelings have never really gone away, but I’m very passive about it….I think about it……I think about it….and I think about it some more. No actions, no real gestures…..no attempts.
Overall, I wish I had never started taking antidepressants. Taking pills made me believe that I was sick…….actually physically sick. I was told that I would always have to be on pills (4 years on…..7 years off now) that something WAS wrong with me…… that my chemicals were all buggered up.
My diagnosis, for myself, is that I was just to sensitive……I cared about other people more then myself, I was too empathtic. I worried about what other people thought about me to much. I was an underdog…..an outcast at school, and I never moved so I never had the chance to learn from my mistakes and getting a fresh start at a new school, with new classmates. Because my mind was still very much developing when I began to feel suicidal, the thoughts seem more hard wired into me, but, I like going through my days knowing that it was truly me going through the day………
When I was really little there was an anti-drug commercial on TV, a young man is standing in front of his stove and he holds up an egg to the camera and says “this is your head” he then cracks it and puts it in the pan to sizzle, he then says “this is your head on drugs”. I still remember this years later…….to bad I didn’t associate it with all drugs at the time.
February 5, 2009 at 8:11 pm
I have been on Seroxat 20mg for just over 3 weeks now, prescribed by the doctor for anxiety and depression. I have been like a zombie the past few weeks! all I want to do is sleep, I have never felt so constantly tired. I am going back to the doc next week, I want out….
March 30, 2009 at 10:21 pm
I was put on a low dose of Paxil in college while dealing with PTSD and anxiety attacks in public. I did not want to go on the drug, but I figured I would be a cooperative patient and really try to get better. It was like being asleep all the time. I would yawn like crazy after taking it. I had a chem tutor who must have thought he was boring me. And life was all at a distance, removed from emotions and reality. My fiance was very supportive, taking the reduction in my sex drive in stride. But he was unnerved by the fact that I didn’t even want to be hugged. I didn’t fight it, but it was clear I wasn’t enjoying being held. Then one night I was walking back to my dorm on a cold, clear night. I looked up at the stars and thought how nice it would be to sleep out under them to enjoy the view. Another part of my brain reared up in fear, “What was I thinking?! That would be suicide on a freezing night like this!” I realized that I had been thinking over a course of action that would have killed me. I wasn’t put on this drug for being depressed and suicidal. I have never been one to entertain suicidal thoughts. And the way my brain seemed to be tricking me into it really scared me. I reported this to the psychologist I was seeing and she reassured me it wasn’t a problem, that it didn’t count as suicidal ideation. But I know my own brain. I told my fiance and we agreed that I would be getting off the drug ASAP. I wasn’t on a full dose, so I was spared a lot of the issues some have had with withdrawal. Being on a small dose also allowed me to see the change in my thinking and to question it before I did anything harmful. I will never forget the blank feeling I had all the time on Paxil. I was emotionless, detached, exhausted, confused, unable to laugh and yet still able to see what I lacked and how much I had changed and how powerless I was to change back.
Years later my mother went on Wellbutrin to stop smoking and deal with depression. She did not have the gradual dosing approach I had. She began to experience paranoia and became very volatile (although I will admit she isn’t the most balanced person normally). This deteriorated over a few days to the point of her becoming enraged at her husband, going outside with a gun and shooting at her own house, specifically at his hobby room. She also had been fooled by her brain assuring her that this was a perfectly rational thing to do. She talked on the phone to a friend who saw what was going on and intervened. No one was hurt and she wasn’t about to advertise that she had probably broken the law (either a city gun ordinance or those pesky attempted murder statutes), so she simply got off the drug and moved on with her life.
We are the lucky ones.
April 18, 2012 at 8:12 am
I believe seroxat changed my life for the better overall, having said that, i’m drinking alcohol an awful lot more. If seroxat was harmful to patients who suffer from depression/anxiety, it wouldn’t be on the market. It’s not harmful, but like most medicines it’s far from perfect. Guys, don’t give the drug up if you think your life will be miserable without it, it got us all out of hell at days end, and thats the truth whether you realise or not.
April 18, 2012 at 7:12 pm
“If seroxat was harmful to patients who suffer from depression/anxiety, it wouldn’t be on the market”
Got to say that’s a very naive thing to say, but hey, if it works for you…
How long have you been taking it?
January 6, 2016 at 7:10 pm
At the age of 19 my mother died of cancer and my doctor prescribed me 20mg of seroxat[paroxeteine] to help me deal with her death. I was obviously very sad and depressed at the time but looking back I realise that there would have been something very wrong with me if I wasn’t.I was on this drug for a few months until I decided myself I didn’t need it anymore.[it was 1990 and there was no information about coming off the drug].After a couple of days I had all the usual side effects that most of you have encountered dizziness ,feeling sick,head whooshing ,I couldn’t walk in a straight line as I kept missing time and didn’t know where I was,my body went into total meltdown and I felt like a crack addict craving for my antidepressants .I quickly started taking my seroxat again and instantly felt a little better because all those horrible side effects disappeared however I was getting more and more depressed ,to the point I had never experienced before .I couldn’t function at all ,I couldn’t get out of bed to wash , or eat or to do any normal daily chore.I finally made it to my doctors who doubled my prescription up to 40mg of paroxeteine after a couple of weeks I felt normal again .I would just like to mention at this point after experiencing what it is like to be seriously depressed after going cold turkey stopping my 20mg .I was not depressed 1% before I started taking seroxat ,I was sad and upset ,I was not lacking in energy ,I could function daily ,I would cry but i felt normal.This encounter really scared the life out of me and I had no intention of stopping or cutting down on my antidepressant anytime soon.It would be another 10 years before my next try ,I was now 30 years old a sort of numbed down version of what I once was ,very bad memory, loss of libido and sort of an existing half person without many feelings about anything.I decided to try cutting down again it was the year 2001 still not much literature to read about how to go about it so I just started cutting down as my doctor told me cutting my tablet in half down to 30mg then down to 25mg after doing this for a few weeks I started experiencing all those same horrible side effects again the dizzy spells wanting to be sick every second of the day no energy I also had lots of nose bleeds and terrible anxiety .This time though I was determined to get off this drug and so bravely battled on telling myself I wanted my life back and I had to get worse before I got better.I quickly plunged very deeply down into the worse depressive state I could ever get ,I was at rock bottom ,there was nowhere lower to go .I wanted it all to end I carried lots of my antidepressants around with me and looked at them daily wanting to take them all and finish this nightmare I was living .If I had owned a gun I am certain I would have shot myself very easily ,I wanted to die straight away I prayed to die I wanted someone to kill me but I just couldn’t do it myself by overdose.My doctor tried me on every antidepressant but none of them worked a single bit .After a few months I went back on 50mg of seroxat the side effects again disappeared very quickly I no longer felt sick or dizzy but I was still very heavily depressed .It took me 5 years before I could get back on my feet .every day seemed like a year it was ground hog day every day nothing to do ,I could not function so I slept and drank a beer this really helped take away my anxiety it calmed me down so much.It was such a waste of my life time I will never get back .I do not know how I did it but one thing I do know is that I couldn’t do it again ,EVER. I recently heard someone say they wished they could be young again .I DONT .I couldn’t live my life again I couldn’t do another day let alone 5years of being without my antidepressants the side effects when coming off them is hell .I actually believe hell couldn’t be that bad .It has now been 25 years I have been taking paroxeteine I still haven’t properly recovered since aged 30 I am now 45 .I take 50mg a day but I still crave for more I still feel very very low ,no energy i know the only way I will ever get better is to up my dose ,I am addicted to paroxeteine I have accepted this I don’t need a doctor to tell me otherwise I know exactly how I feel I know my body it aches and craves for my medication every single morning without fail, not me , my body ,more to the point , my brain . I feel like an addict if I forget to take my medication it only takes a couple of hours then I’m in trouble . I can feel my brain needs more than 50mg but this is the maximum dose so I live each day just about able to cope . I exist, I don’t live ,that’s how I feel .I know I will be taking my anti depressants until the day I die my body does not function without them .