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Discussion Topic: fluoxetine effects and side effects (long question)
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 Z |
03-05-2004 @ 7:54 AM |
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Member
Joined: Mar. 2004
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I am new to this community. I live in Oman, half way around the world from North America. I am taking 20mg fluoxetine (Salipax) every morning. I started taking it right around Christmas but I don't remember the exact day. So about 8 weeks. I have resisted taking anti-depressants since around 1987, when I moved to Istanbul from NY after my divorce and my father's death, to be with people whom I had known for about 5 years, who were involved with well established tradition spiritual practice. (In other words not a "cult" or "sect" but established for many centuries and well known).
At that time I began to be plagued with fatigue, chronic diarrhea, chronic bronchitis, and I was a Hep. B carrier with active hepatitis. The year before I had survived an unknown infection for which I was on whole blood intravenously for a month at the Bronx VAMC. A physician said I was depressed. I said yes but I was depressed because I was sick and not sick because i was depressed. During the 8 years I lived in Turkey I variously was treated for hypothyroidism, ameobic dysentery, giardiasis, candidiasis, Vitamin B12 deficiency, pneumonia (4 times) and chronic bronchitis, low blood pressure, as well as severe back pain (I have a 50% disability from the VA for back pain). I was diagnosed as asthmatic and prescribed Inthal and Ventoline. I was prescribed Vitamin B12 IM, and synthroid. I resisted anti-depressant medication as unmanly, to put it bluntly, despite the deep depression I was in.
In Saudi Arabia in 1996, I was prescribed claritine for sleep apnea. In 1997 in Oman, I was diagnosed as having PTSD due to childhood trauma, adolescent sexual abuse, medical abuse while in the hospital in the USAF for an RTA (car accident) and secondary abuse from medical practitioners in years afterwards. I have also developed marginally high blood pressure and my liver is normal. I am a carrier and not active HepB. In 2001, I was told to stop the B12 and the synthroid. I gained 20 more kilos on top of the 110kilos I was in 1997. In 2001, I went deeply into depression and was frankly psychotic for a while after September 11th. I was in another car accident, and my liver enzymes were up, and I was in far greater pain then ever. I started to see a psychiatrist last year, 2003 in April. Last winter, DEC 2003, I finally started to take fluoxetine.
I began to experience its effects immediately. What I do not understand at all is the effects. I have always understood depression to be unhappiness and sadness, negative feelings and so forth. The effects I have experienced have been almost exclusively physical. I do not "feel" less unhappy, and less negative. I feel just as depressed. What I do not feel now is tired all the time, weak, confused, and my blood pressure and my liver enzymes are down, and I see better at night, and can even read the speedometer without my glasses, am calmer and have more reserve strength, and my pain levels are way down, and I am taking less aspirin and less dyclofenac and I hardly ever use my Ventoline. Feel PHYSICALLY fit for the first time in a decade, but I am still depressed emotionally, and my PTSD is not much better either.
My question is this: I never really thought of depression as a physical disease but an emotional one. The great Zen priest Rinzai suffered deep depression and went on to become the greatest Zen teacher of all times after his depression lifted in his old age. He was already well over 65 before he began to teach and I believe he lived to be over a hundred. He always was extremely careful of his students who showed signs of depression. I always was convinced that depression had at least some moral component to it. However, I see now that whatever I thought was depression is not effected by the medication and its effects are on physical problems that have plagued me. I love it, and am grateful and not knocking it. I am happy for its effects. I still wish I were less unhappy and had less self destructive acting out and impulse etc.
can anyone enlighten me on this?
Some of the side effects are decreased libido, without effecting my attraction to sexual activity itself, and sometimes headaches, but the effects are better physical strength, balance when walking, less pain, fewer mistakes when reading and writing, easier breathing, good sleep, less asleep apnea, better vision and a host of positive somatic effects. I have lost 12 kilos since December 25, without dieting. This has levellled off in the last week.
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| Susanne, Support Specialist |
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03-05-2004 @ 10:21 AM |
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Moderator
Joined: Nov. 2003
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Hello Z,
Welcome to the Depression Center. There are many people here who are living with and beating depression. Be sure to make use of the 'Tools' on the left of your screen and the support group. With regards to the medication, depression is both physical and emotional, if you find you are having side effects or the fluoxetine is not working properly you should consult with your Doctor. They will be able to help you find something more suited to you.
Susanne
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| Z |
03-07-2004 @ 8:26 AM |
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Member
Joined: Mar. 2004
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That is what I am trying to understand, namely how's it supposed to work? I thought it would lift my spirits, namely I thought it's primary effect would be emotional. I thought that depression was mostly feeling and that the physical things were side effects of feeling lousy all the time. What I am experiencing is completely contrary to my expectations. I feel greate PHYSICALLY, better than I have in decades. Not perfect but a thousand percent better than I did ever since the September 11th depression which persisted over a year. I feel better in so many ways, that it would be nonsensical to say that it isn't working. I mean I can't tell you how much pleasure I get from just walking up a flight of stairs. I thought I'd never do it again without half fainting. What isn't better is how I feel about myself as a person, how I feel about the quality of my life, the feelings of being abandoned betrayed abused misused shamed unappreciated, lied to, alone, ugly, clumsy, inarticulate, unclean, exposed, at the end of my life with nothing to show for it but contempt all around, and nothing left to believe in. Angry, suspicious, untrusting. There is so much I love and so much I have to offer, and I feel so inadequate.
I feel quite upbeat about my depression: since taking prozac I could put so much more effort and energy into it. I couldn't get myself so unhappy before because I got too tired trying. The weepiness and crying jags are gone, but real self disgust is so much better formed, and I could do so much more harm to myself. It seems.
My psychiatrist did not have a clue what I was talking about, and frankly I haven't a clue what he's talking about. It is like he is on one planet and I am on another, both of us watching too different TV programs.
My personal opinion is that he is a lot less than candid and also is a lot less than undefended. I have been on both sides of this business enough to know when some one is full of it. PTSD brings out the worst in shrinks especially when you have had as many physicians commit attrocities on you as I have. E.G. In 1966, I was under indictment for drugs and facing 40 years to life and under legal custody of my shrink and so he raped me violently in the face as a part of his idea of therapy for childhood sexual abuse. You can tell me that I am just oversensitive to BS, but that is just shifting the blame to me. So this shrink doesn't understand my question either. Where do I go to understand if the professionals don't understand.
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| Posted By |
Discussion Topic: fluoxetine effects and side effects (long question)
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