This is a Survivor story, dated 4/26/98.

I was a white male, 46, no history of mental illness, married, family man. Smoker, social drinker, Coca-cola addict. I worked as a computer technician for a state university. Stressed out at work...I begin 20 mg prozac 2/7/97 for stress relief. Contrary to generally accepted medical belief that it takes 2-4 weeks for prozac to "kick in", I notice my shoulders began to slump 4 hrs after the first dose. At 2 weeks prozac does "kick in." Bigtime...

I continue to take prozac until the end of the 3rd week. I quit cold-turkey 2/28/97. This is not recommended for any psychiatric drug. Most of the symptoms seem to go away after a couple of weeks, except for the first three I experienced: muscle weakness, tremors, and a "distant" feeling, and I go back to work. 11 weeks after quiting delayed withdrawals set in:

At 20 weeks after quiting, the physical symptoms appeared to be gone. I went on a fast, lost 10 pounds, took up a "fishetarian" diet, quit caffeine, reduced refined sugar, reduced alcohol to special occasions, increased my exercising, but still smoke. Family stood by me. I didn't physically hurt anyone. I managed to stay out of jail/pdocs' clutches. I've gotten back to church. And I'm back to more or less sane. Mental facilities seem to be coming back.

Healing has not been a linear progression. At 22 weeks after quiting I have a "flashback" to shakey mornings for 2 days. Anxiety, shakes, tears, depression. These go away as the day progresses. Checking my calendar I discover that it coincides with the timing for the ginkgo I've been taking to kick in. Ginkgo takes 4-6 weeks to take effect. Survivors who have already quit prozac for a period of time may experience flashbacks of being on prozac as the drug is flushed from the brain too rapidly. Flashback goes away after a couple of days, minimized by the fact that I know what's happening and don't let nameless fears compound the problem. I found out about ginkgo from Dr. Tracy's book in the Solutions chapter.

Obviously I've learned to be very careful about what medications I take. This includes over-the-counter drugs. Now I think twice before taking an aspirin. And you can bet your boots I'll read sample inserts after grilling my doctor thoroughly about any prescriptions he thinks I might need. Incidentally he still is our family doctor. My wife and I discussed it and realized that he had been right in his prescriptions over the years when other doctors had been wrong. He is a good doctor. He just doesn't know...but then neither did 3 other doctors and 3 other separate nurses I've seen since then. Probably neither did your doctor since you're reading this. The only doctors who know are ones who have a few prozac patients go bad on them.

I've learned to mortgage the farm and buy stock in drug companies.

I have developed a "healthy" skepticism of medicine. After one session with a psychiatrist, I decided rightly that my 72 year old priest knew more about my mind and spirit than professional medicine. I saved my mind, spirit, and money going for weekly counseling sessions with him instead.

I discovered what it means to be truly depressed. During delayed withdrawals I experienced real live agitated depression to the point of suicidal thoughts. This actually made me feel better. I realized I had NEVER been depressed before in my life. And as the withdrawals went away I became a much happier person for having gained that insight. I now have a real sympathy (as opposed to empathy) for people who are truly depressed. If prozac helps them, I can see why they would put up with almost any other side effect to relieve that particular pit in hell. When you hear a truly depressed person mutter about "black cloud" or "black mist" they are speaking literally. It's a kind of hallucination the best I can figure.

Everyone has thought in the abstract about suicide, and then maybe felt worried about it. They may not like to even admit it to other people. If you should be one of those people, worry not. True suicidal ideation is...this is hard to explain...when it "seems like a good idea at the time." When I say this I mean thinking "I'll go take a shower and shave and then slit my throat" is on par with "I'll shave, shower and go treat myself to a nice meal." As I was standing in that shower, I nearly did commit suicide. Not with a razor, but by the amount of adrenalin that hit my heart when I realized what I'd just been thinking. But I got out alive...

I went on a fast, then discovered I didn't particularly care for cow. Became a semi-vegetarian, discovered some of the herbal remedies (for poor memory and general attitude adjustment, ginkgo has worked for me), lost a few pounds around the middle, and am working at quitting smoking.

The enforced home rest gave me time to begin a major review of my life. What is IMPORTANT in this life? I'm way past the point (at 46) of making any substantial contributions to my field. I'm only mildly successful in my career. But that is simply what one does to pay the mortgage. More important is how I treat my family, friends, co-workers, and most important is how I relate to God.

I got the chance to spend some time with my 8 year old daughter this summer. There will only be this one child and I realize how precious our time is. I got to see her ride her bike for the first time. We've had talks that she started and I got to peek inside her mind and spirit. What a beautiful thing innocence is.

I finally quit ranting about prozac to my wife and we started talking about things we hadn't talked about in years. I started helping out a little more and we have conversations in the kitchen now. We started talking about God. She's treasurer in our church, so she has a good head start on me.

I've renewed my aquaintance with God and my church after an abscence of decades. At the low point I started praying again. My mind was so incoherent I was only able to say "God, please help me." Anything longer than that and my mind would race off to other thoughts. I got inspiration from C.S. Lewis' work. He wrote, even if you don't feel close to God, act like you do, and you will be. Since then I've become active in my church again, reading about Christianity (church history, what it means to be Christian, etc.)

Regardless of your religion or lack thereof you owe it to yourself to read at least one book by C.S. Lewis. May I suggest Mere Christianity for a starter? You will either agree or not, but you will definitely have given your brain cells a workout in deciding. And you will enjoy the process, the man can write very well.

And I went back to work last month with a much better attitude.

All is not roses. I'm still an inattentive father, generally lousy husband, and a sinner with the best of them. There's good days and bad. But the general trend is up. The time spent healing gave me the time to get my priorities back in order, and try to do something constructive about them. And weird as it sounds, I owe this to prozac.

I'm writing this 32 weeks after beginning prozac and 29 weeks after going off it. Last bad morning was almost 2 months ago.
I survived.
So can you.

The interesting part now is where we go from here...

2/28/98

It was one year ago today I quit prozac cold-turkey. At 6 months I thought I was beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. In fact I'm not sure I'm at the end of the tunnel yet. I ended with the statement that the interesting part was where we go from here.

Things have changed, some bad, mostly good. I went back to work at a newly reorganized department. The changes were massive and within 3 months 5 of the 6 members of our original team had quit or transferred. My family has stood with me. That has been a miracle. The loved ones of a survivor go through their own little preview of hell. My faith in God has been rekindled and I've got a little sputtering candle flame of the Holy Spirit that is slowly growing again. Working on web pages for the church. Great therapy.

I recently got email from a lady who started prozac about the same time I did, took if for 2 months and went off cold-turkey. As it happens, I'm a little ahead of her on the healing curve and we've had similar experiences. We've swapped a couple of "war stories." She said she'd been told by a psychologist that things would never be the same and asked if I thought it was true.

In thinking about the answer, it occured to me that some survivors of serious adverse reactions know things about mental agony that words just can't describe.

"You'lda just had to been there... "

It's like when war veterans meet for the first time and discover they were both in combat. Their eyes meet and there's a look. They both know that they know things that other people can never really know. They've had a preview of hell. Their lives have been changed forever.

They've been there...

Survivors have been there...

We know things other people, including our doctors, can never really know. We've had our preview of hell. And yes, I'm afraid our lives have been changed forever.

I think there'll be a scar for a long time. Time is the healer and I expect the scar (like physical scars) will get smaller and may even almost disappear. Completely disappear? No. I will never forget this year.

My email friend also asked if I'd felt "unsure of myself." What she's asking is "has the horror of watching your mind spin out of control left you with less confidence because of a lurking fear that you could lose control again?" I'm afraid the answer to that is also yes. Though I believe time heals that. (It has for me.)

I've learned that statistics don't mean a damn thing to people who are on the wrong side of them.

I very occasionally flashback to one of the first symptoms I had, tremors. I don't feel nervous. I'm not thinking about the past year. I'm stone-cold sober. And my hands start shaking. I just keep doing whatever I was doing and it goes away in 5-10 minutes. It's not painful, I don't dwell on it, it's just there...

On the bright side, I still get the occasional brief flash of anxiety or depression. After a couple of minutes I'll be staring at my floor in a funk and my mind will wander to the fact that I'm looking at a Burber (sp?) carpet. This is supposedly a good carpet. I look up to the walls and ceiling of my comfortable middle class home. I see decorations that remind me of my loving wife and child. And I just laugh out loud. There are people who are living in cardboard boxes. I don't have any problems. No, that's not right. I have the kind of problems some people would love to have. Well, maybe not, but my life could have turned out a lot worse at this point.

The light at the end of the tunnel we are looking for may be brighter than it was back at the other end. Recently the thought has crossed my mind that I'm getting stronger emotionally, maybe even more so than I was before. I've seen hell and I think it's gonna take a helluva lot to get me upset in the future. In short, I think we may come out as much stronger people, and as weird as it sounds, our prozac experience may turn out to be a blessing in (an excellent) disguise.

In the time I've spent communicating with other survivors, I've realized that I'm one of the lucky ones. I've lost a year. I haven't lost a loved one, my sanity or my life. I hope I will remember to thank God for that everyday for the rest of my life.

Also I'm putting the past behind me. All God gives me is today. The first 9-10 months I eagerly spent hundreds of hours getting information, working on my web page, searching the net, checking the survivors newsgroup, answering email. Now I spend a fraction of the time I did before. Days go by when I don't think about prozac at all. I can even meet someone on antidepressants and not go into a hysterical rant! (Though I still have the desire to keep my back to the door while talking with them.)

That light at the end of the tunnel may be very near. Or to put it another way, I may be graduating soon. For those of you reading this who are in the freshman, sophomore or junior classes, take heart! The magic word is patience...

As before, the interesting part now is where do we go from here.

I went back to work at 25 weeks to a redefined job description (complete reorganization of my department) and turned in my resignation at 32 weeks, 11/97. My entire department quits by 4/98. After a year, unemployed, family stress is high. Prozac is a powerful drug...

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