I don't think one can underestimate the value of visual images, when putting one's ideas across. It gives a human face and a reality to the argument that seeing a couple of lines on the PIL about withdrawal just isn't going to achieve.

If one wanted to encourage others to avoid these drugs, then short of staking out doctors' surgeries and lecturing patients on the iniquities of the Worshipful Company, this is the way to do it, I think.

Matt

Paxil is one of the few drugs our family has been saved from. One of my favorite Paxil stories was the protest a couple of years ago in which people from all over the country surrounded the Glaxo Building in Philadelphia, had a blimp, etc. Though I couldn't attend, I heard all about it from friends in the local press there. Apparently, its effects can stay with you forever. Not that this is not also true of other psychotropics.

Having been on over 50 psychotropic drugs in the past 12 years, I can say, without a doubt, that Paxil was the worst of them. I wasn't on it long enough to experience withdrawal symptoms; however, I vividly remember experiencing akathisia so horrific that all I could do is sit on my bed and rock back and forth. I believe I was on it for less than a week.

Though not with Paxil, I have experienced antidepressant withdrawal. I was on Effexor XR for several years before deciding it the brain fog wasn't worth the benefits. I discontinued it over the course of 2 weeks - I believe I was on a dose of 75mgs - and went through hell. BUT -- it wasn't as terrible as people anticipate. The knowledge that the withdrawal symptoms are finite is a huge comfort. I readied myself with Benadryl (it's supposed to decrease withdrawal symptoms), choline, lecithin, and B-complex and spent 90% of my time on my couch or in bed. When possible, I slept, though it wasn't easy considering insomnia is one of the withdrawal symptoms.

The fact is, the withdrawal sucks but it passes.

It sounds like Lawrence's psychiatrist should have caught wind of his side-effects a long time ago. I have experienced such side-effects on certain medications. Specifically, at high doses of certain antidepressants. While I'm not opposed to the use of psychotropic meds for people, like myself, with severe mental illness, I am opposed to the haphazard "care" of the prescribing physicians.

I hope Lawrence's withdrawal is quick and as painless as possible. I also hope that, if life without the anxyolitic properties of Paxil is unbearable, he will consider a different course of treatment and not dismiss medication entirely.

I hope this documentary makes it to the big screen. First person accounts, while they may be dismissed by many doctors and researchers as anecdotal, put a human face and feeling to the topic. If it can also relate the numbers of people having problems with psych meds, seems to me these "anecdotal" stories should carry more weight than any research studies that claim all these meds are "safe".

Hey SallyT,

"...If it can also relate the numbers of people having problems with psych meds, seems to me these "anecdotal" stories should carry more weight than any research studies that claim all these meds are "safe"."

This is something that has always perplexed me, to be honest. Everything is anecdotal: the results from the clinical trials are anecdotal, because they merely report what was reported by the trialists to the clinicians running the trial. Now, it seems to me that if one is going to accept one set of anecdotes, on the basis that it is what one wants to hear, and ignore the others, because it isn't, then that ain't science.

Matt

I finally had time to watch this. Good stuff. My first experience with anti d's was with Paxil. I always felt like I had a buzz when taking it. As I trace my journey from Paxil to Prozac to Zoloft to Effexor to Zyprexa (okay only took it once) to nothing at all I suppose I need to face how much harm the SSRI's did to that decade of my life, my 30's. I started paxil at 30 and was wrongfully committed at 40 which led me, once the lawyer got me out of the Alabama snake pit, to stop taking all of those horrible psych drugs. Of course at 45 with 5 years clean time off of all psych drugs, I'm doing better than I ever have in my life, happier, more stable relationships, more money, except that the stigma of psych label puts me, like so many of us, at risk of being forced to take these horrible drugs again. All of those years I was in therapy, which in the 90's turned into pill popping for us all, I thought I was doing something positive for myself, when it was my participation in the mental health industry that was the cause of most problems I've had in my adult life.

Sheesh it's wonderful people are speaking out.