FredT,
Thank you so much for your reply. And give Matthew a big hug from me because he was the cutest! I want to listen to music daddy!!!! LOL
Here's a real-life story on what Paxil can do to a person when it is
1. prescribed when it shouldn't be,
2. prescribed by a physician who does not know everything he should,
3. prescribed without adequate monitoring or consultation.
1998:
In the second half of 1998 there was a person who began stalking me. This person was relentless and apparently intended harm to me and the manner in
which they were conducting themselves, and the situations they were setting up was getting more and more threatening to my safety, as well as my loved
ones safety. The cops were ineffectual in getting the situation under control, because you basically have to have evidence some one has hurt you,
before you can prevent them from hurting you *
* - which is a jicked up situation in my opinion.
In September of that year this person went way over the line and caused a series of events that almost got me seriously injured if not killed, and
placed one of my loved ones is a very dangerous situation. After this event occurred, I started having anxiety attacks. I had never had anxiety
attacks in my life, so I didn't know what was happening. I thought I was having heart problems because when this would happen I would have intense
pain in my chest and not be able to breathe.
So I get scared that I'm having heart issues but I didn't even have a family physician because I hadn't ever really needed one since moving from
college to work. So I actually have to go back to my doctor who had been my g.p. through my teenage years and who had delivered my children, because
he at least knew who I was. I tell him about my symptoms and he questions me about if there is anything going on in my life, and I tell him about
what is happening, and the event that had recently taken place. And he tells me I'm having anxiety attacks.
***
We can insert here that 1. that would have been sufficient, because all I was there for was to find out if I was having heart problems. If I know
what's wrong, I can deal with it. At this point I was 34 years old and had never had anxiety issues, so it wasn't like I was dealing with a chronic
problem. 2. Had I been an active participant in my medical treatment I would have at this point said "great! okay, I'll learn to breathe deep and
get through this". But I checked my brain at the door.
***
So without even hesitating my doc writes this prescription for Paxil because it has an "anti-anxiety constituent". I had never even heard of this
drug. So he tells me take this dose for 2 weeks, then start taking double that dose from then on and come back and see me in 3 weeks.
I never made it to three weeks.
The doc did not go over any adverse affects/symptoms I should be watching for - and me the brainless patient, I didn't ask either. It never even
crossed my mind.
Within a week of taking the initial daily dose I started having severe exhaustion. I was a single mom with lots and lots of stuff on my plate, and
still dealing with the psycho person pulling their crap and I just wrote off my unending need to sleep as being worn out from everything. It was so
bad that when I would get home from work I would have to immediately take a nap, and then even with a daily nap I couldn't stay awake past about 9
o'clock. I never once considered it was because of the medicine.
So I take the initial dose for 2 weeks and on the 15th day I double it just as I was told to do. Start taking one pill in the morning and one in the
evening. Two days in to the doubled dose I tried to kill myself.
I've never had any problem with depression. I've never had to see psychiatrist or psychologist. I weathered massive storms in my life and never
felt like ending it, or considering giving up. But on that day - something separated.
I remember going to work and around 10:30 in the morning I absolutely was so tired and sleepy that I had to take off work and go home. I felt so
exhausted that I felt like if I laid down and went to sleep I might not be able to wake up to pick my kids up from school. So around 11 a.m. I called
my best friend and asked her if she would call me at 2:30 to make sure I had woke up.
I barely remember the phone call that woke me up at 2:30. It's just this little bitty faint thing. I do NOT remember picking my kids up from
school. I do NOT remember what I did with my kids once I picked them up, but I learned from my blessed mother what happened. Apparently some time
after returning home from picking them up I called my mother and told her that I was going to have to go to work early the next morning and that I
needed her to come get my kids and keep them over night so that she could get them to school. I do not remember that phone call at all.
I do not remember my mother coming by and getting my kids.
I do not have any idea when the events I do remember took place. But this is what I can tell you.
I felt like I was ont he outside of my body. And what I mean by that is that all emotion that is "me" was removed and I was an empty body that
could think, but had absolutely no emotion. At some point (and you have to assume it was before I called my mother and asked her to come get my kids
because the only reason I could have possibly wanted to do that was to get them out of the house so I could do what I did - but I don't remember that
point), I decided that I was too tired (and by that I mean physically tired) to go on. All I wanted to do was sleep - forever. And there are only
snapshots of that evening that I remember. But all of them I recall are without emotion, as if I was a robot. I was very logical and methodical.
I can remember rounding up all the medications in my house and counting what I had. I can remember going to the internet and looking up the maximum
dose survived by one of the medications I had a lot of. I can remember counting that medication again to make sure it EXCEEDED the dose I found on
the internet. I can't remember taking it. I can remember I did not feel sad, depressed, scared or anything else. I just had a single thought that
I was too tired to go on, and that the only reasonable thing to do was to go to sleep forever...because in my mind it was clear that I just couldn't
get up another day...I was too tired to do it.
I was in a coma for three days.
***
The failures that led to what happened with me, and that almost took my life at my own hands:
1. The doctor should have never have prescribed this drug to me in the first place. I had no history of an anxiety disorder, or depression. And I
had set right there and told him about the extraordinary circumstances I was dealing with.
2. The doctor should have never have sent me home for three weeks on this class of drugs. That's far too long to go on a drug that the pre-FDA
research showed 60% tendency toward homicidal/suicidal tendencies. But he didn't know that. No one knew it.
3. I was an idiot for not just doing what FredT suggested - getting a second opinion; researching what I was about to take; asking more questions, or
just refusing to take the stuff. I'd never been on a maintenance drug in my life. When I look back, I'm supposing that the scary feelings the
anxiety attacks were giving me (that my heart was going to stop) may have led me to do something I normally wouldn't do. But to add insult to
stupidity, I didn't even know what I was taking. I didn't ask any questions, I didn't know that the medication I was being prescribed was a
anti-depressant as well as an anti-anxiety medication. I didn't know anything other than the doc told me this would make my chest stop hurting. I
just put the pill in my mouth. I didn't even bother reading the paperwork that came with the stuff, and to this day can't tell you if it would have
had something that would have alerted me. Hopefully it does now...but you have to have the gray matter to read the darned thing first. All I knew
was that I had something happening that made me feel like my heart was going to explode and my doc told me this stuff would stop that. GULP.
When I woke up and got to talk to the neurologist that had been assigned to me and she started asking the right questions and found out what I had
been placed on and what occurred, she explained to me that "2 to 3% of the general population will have suicidal/homicidal tendencies when placed on
this type drug". Well, that's one way to say it, but the real numbers got divulged around the year 2000 when one of the news shows (48 hours, or
20/20 or 60 minutes) did an investigate report on Paxil. The pre-FDA studies had shown a
60% rate of homicidal/suicidal tendencies in those
studied, and the pharmaceutical company hid those findings from the FDA.
I have been waiting and waiting for some type of action against the company(s) involved in this...and it just doesn't come. But maybe it's because
not enough people are willing to talk about it. Look at me, I've been on this board for 2-1/2 years and I haven't told this story. Why? Because
it is embarrassing! I tried to kill myself! You don't go around admitting that on a normal day. So the very nature of the farkled up situation
gets covered up by shame and humiliation by those who are adversely affected by these drugs.
Every time I hear about a kid who ends up killing himself, or others in a bizarro act and then it is revealed they were on Paxil or such, I think
"yep, he wasn't even in his body anymore". That's what I think.