Date:  Wed Mar 21, 2001 2:52pm

Cynthia, Maybe you can help. I will tell you my story. My expierence with the 
SSRI's is mostly indirect, and will address that in short. A little about me 
first. I have always turned to more natural methods of treating problems and 
illness. Some have worked, some have had little effect. My greatest success 
was my daughter, this also began my strongest persuit of knowledge and 
understanding. She had been diagnosed with Asthma. At one time she was 
hospitalized with Brochial Pneumonia. Doctors insisted on steroids. I flately 
refused and so began the quest. She needed a nebulizer, which I did continue 
as this was a serious issue. I began reading and learning. Although no cause 
for asthma is known both medically or nutritionally, I did note some common 
factors. I changed her diet and began building her immune system. After a 
month I tried a homeopathic medicine to see if this helped the breathing. IT 
WORKED. In less than 10min her breathing was normal as measured by the peak 
flow meter. She has never used a nebulizer since, and she hasn't had an 
Asthmatic attack in over 3 years. This story is only intented to give you 
(and anyone else) an insight, not intended to encourage anyone to blindly try 
and treat serious matters on there own. I had previous knowledge of 
herbs,nutritional supplements, do's and don'ts. Improper use or knowledge may 
have negative results. 

to continue...I am also a recovered drug addict. my drug of choice was 
speed/cocain. I have been clean now for 15years, but will never forget the 
withdrawals I went through. Although my pain and experience was far less than 
that of everyone here trying to get off these horrible SSRI's, I can 
empathize with some of that pain. My Doctor also urged me at one time to try 
Zyban to quit smoking. I reluctantly decided to try it. I had read some 
horrible things, but I was desperate to try and quit, so I tried it. Well 
after taking this for a week, I was feeling depressed, fuzzy minded and 
couldn't concentrate. My mind was feeling like mush. It made me feel awful 
about myself. And it had absolutely no affect on my desire to smoke or not. I 
immediately stopped taking the Zyban and slowly returned to normal. I 
consider myself one of the lucky ones to have escaped some of the horrors I 
have learned about. This is about the same time I learned of a drug called 
Paxil. 

My sister has, for as far back as I can remember, had a problem with her 
temper. We all walked on egg shells around her cause we were never sure when 
she would go off the handle at us for seemingly no reason. We all had to be 
careful of what we said, cause she might blow up at anything. She knew this 
was happening to her, but she couldn't control it. She confessed this to me 
on one of our "good talk" days. She had gone to the Dr. and he gave her 
Paxil, explaining it was a seretonin problem. This was the first time I heard 
about seretonin. She started taking this just before the holidays and for the 
first time we looked forward to the family being together, as we didn't need 
to walk on egg shells. We were all ready to build a shrine to this "wonder 
drug". It didn't take long for the downfall to begin. My mother noticed first. 
My sister lives downstairs at my mother's house. Mom began to notice my 
sister became very forgetful, didn't seem to care about anything and began to 
lose what was once a strong sense of responsibility. She was drinking, 
partying and didn't seem to care about anything else. My mother began 
researching this drug and shared some frightful stories with me. I then began 
the quest. We shared what we learned with my sister and her husband. She got 
a little defensive and her husband didn't seem too concerned. As time 
progressed both my mother and I tried calling her Dr. As you can guess we 
didn't get too far. My brother-in-law had already begun escaping matters with 
alcohol. He is no longer any good in our attempts to enlighten. My sister 
began getting sick and the Dr. put her on more medications. She has a cabinet 
full of them. Anything from allergies, blood pressure, cholesteral and any 
other drug you see advertised (that's a major problem in itself) I even saw 
an advertisement for a drug for people who are SSRI resistant. Another 
pharmaceutical push. Anyway, she was tired of taking all the drugs because 
nothing was helping an illness (cough) that lasted for months. (our first 
step of progress) My oldest neice (15yrs) came to me and asked my honest 
opinion of what was wrong and if I could help. my OPINION was that her immune 
system was shot from months of anti-biotics and all the other meds that 
weren't working. My neice agreed to ask my sister if she would try to go off 
all meds except Paxil (because of withdrawal,figuring we would address that 
drug after I proved my case) and try a natural method. I was shocked my 
sister agreed (she was desperate) she always called me a quack with all my 
supplements. Well, to make it easy for her I put together a regiment and made 
daily packets for her to take (morn, afternoon, eve.) I set her up for a 
month and my neice was going to supervise and make sure she took them. In 
less than a month the cough disappeared, and she admitted to having more 
energy and was feeling a bit better. I thought, finally progress, maybe now 
she will see I'm not a quack and that there is some validity to my methods, 
opening the door for getting off the SSRI.  Well, unfortunately she started 
working and decided that it was her getting back to work that was helping. So 
she stopped taking all the good stuff and I'm a quack again. She is a zombie, 
doesn't care about anything, is not responsible, sleeps all the time, shuts 
herself in the bedroom ignoring the kids and family. Her husband is an 
alcoholic, and I fear most for the 2 teenage daughters. The younger one I 
think see's what's going on and just accepts it and ignores what she can. The 
older one resents her mother and is in denial about her father. I think she 
holds on to that to think she has at least one parent of sanity. My mother 
and I are at a loss as to how to intervene. We feel we must do something, but 
how do you get these people to see the light! What will it take? This is 
where I'm at. Maybe someone out there knows how I can connect and get my 
sister and her husband on the right track. Thanks for listening. 

Diane

Date:  Thu Mar 22, 2001 5:25am

Response:
Diane, buy them the "Prozac Backlash" book and try to
get them to read our stories. I would be more then 
happy to email them and send them my story
and some additional info.
Let me know what I can do.

Cynthia