My name is Sean, and I`m currently 30 years of age. In November 1996 I was having problems with a few clients paying up debts to my company, and was also finding it hard to get to grips with the closure of a night club that I used to frequent. Why not go to somewhere else you might say? Well, here in the UK it`s rare to have a club open all of the night, and this one was. See I would not finish my day job until after 01:00am and would have nowhere to go on a Saturday night, but here, and I was also friends of the owners, and worked there as a DJ. The people who came to this club would treat me with the upmost respect and dignity, almost like a god by the regular people who visited there. But to me it was more, for it was a place where I could vent all of my emotions, and totally let myself go. And then there was nothing..

Two of my friends were on prozac, Dave for deep depression due to a split in his marriage, and loss of a custody battle, the other, Robert, because he had heard about it, and wanted to try it for himself, not for any other reason. I saw how it seem to help these friends of mine into a better outlook on life, and consequently off I went to my doctor, to see if I fit the bill and was suitable for this line of medication. On no occasion did I ever mention prozac, or ever asked to be treated with it. But sure enough it was recomended to me as the best course of treatment, as the other older forms of anti-depressants would make me drousy. Now this I don`t understand, because to this day I do not believe I was depressed in any way. Stressed yes, but so is life, and who am I to argue with my doctor?? I feel that it was trust in my doctor that led me to take prozac in the end, and possibly I had also seen it as the easy way out . How foolish could I have been?? I seriously didn`t think that in any way, I could have been prescribed something, that could in the long run cause me so much pain, and loss. I started on 20mg per day.

Two weeks into the course, people were starting to notice a marked difference in me, but at this time couldn`t work out if it was for the better or not. At this time I was not aware of any changes, apart from I needed less sleep, and food tasted ever so slightly different. The longer I progressed into the course, the less sleep I required, and the more my brain would race. I could hold four or five conversations at once on the internet, in real time at 03:00am in the morning!

By this time Rob`s friends had told him that he was far from OK on prozac, and that he was changing for the worse, even though he couldn`t see any problems or differences in himself.. And at that point he stopped. Lucky..

I was starting to develop headaches by this time, and was advised to up the dose, until it subsided. One weekend four months into my treatment I remember taking six to free the pressure which I felt inside my head. Thats 120mg!! By the time Monday had come around, I had decided to drop the dose back to 20mg a day, despite doctors thinking. That amazingly only took a few days. Another month passed without much of a problem, apart from the virtual lack of sleep. Into the sixth month, I didn`t need any sleep whatsoever, and I just had to get off this drug, before it killed me. To show my strength I discontinued using it completely, without tailoring off. What a mistake! I needed to be on Diazepam for weeks to calm me down. It was torturous, but I did it.

Now it`s 29/05/98, 11 months on, and I`m not even half the person I used to be before I started taking prozac. I am starting to take a little control of my life, but still feel that I`m just an empty shell, with all of my emotions, feelings, desires, etc taken away from me. I would give up everything to be just half the person I was. Take my house, my car, my business, everything, it means nothing to me in comparisson to what I have lost mentally. For this reason I am currently seeking legal advice, and aim to make it as public as possible. I also feel this marks a point, of which strength is begining to return back to me, as I once again am regaining control.

How come I couldn`t see these changes while on prozac?? The sort of feelings I can remember is that if someone said "Were going to throw you out of the window", I would just laugh and reply "which one" I didn`t care, in fact I still don`t care, all of my drive has gone.

I have discovered codiene based drugs relieves the symptoms, Co-proxamol`s, Co-codamol`s, Df-118`s etc. In fact I`ve only been out of the hospital for two weeks, due to a codeine overdose which, sent me into respiratory failure. My girlfriend heard me fall off the toilet, and hit the floor! When she rushed up to see what had happened, she found me just breathing, once every twenty seconds, and phoned an ambulance. By the time the paramedics had arrived, I had already stopped breathing, and was turning blue. They brought me around, and rushed me to hospital, where I was immediately admitted, and flushed out with 1500ml of narcan/naloxone @ 300ml per hour intravenously. Even so they still nearly lost me 4 times in the night. Please be carefull with codeine.

Because of this near to death experience I`ve got to see a pyscotherapist in July, which makes a break from the mindless psychiatrists, who really don`t have a clue about what to do with me, as they tried to put me on another anti-depressant moclobemide, 150mg in the morning and another 150mg at lunch. I did try it for a couple of weeks, but needed another prescription of temazepam`s to calm me down. I couldn`t go through it again, so in the bin they went!! Because of this they wiped their hands of me, and made me feel like I was the only one with this problem, of which they reckon is still due to a-typical depression, not to an adverse reaction on prozac. Nobody I have seen yet will admit to a problem with prozac in the UK, "keep an open mind" they tell me, "Are you sure you didn`t change just at that period when you were taking prozac??" In other words whether I was on prozac or not, just a coincidence. "How can you still be suffereing from the effects of prozac when you`ve not taken it for months??" It is they who need to keep an open mind, and do some research of their own, then, and only then can they spout their mouths off on what is and what isn`t happening to people on prozac!!

I have a long road ahead of me, and I don`t at this moment think that I`m surviving yet, just living behind closed doors. But due to the internet, and people like yourself, I now know I`m not an alien, or alone, but have joined a group of people trusting to the latter, to their doctors, that being their only mistake.

One day in the very distant future a caring, loving, adventurous person I once knew, will break from this shell, and laugh out loud. I wish.. But until that day, the battle continues..

I wish all of you all the luck in the world, with hope for the future.

Take care

Sean

You can write to Sean at: sean.moffatt@virgin.net