Paxil Free

If you were prescribed Paxil or a similar drug, there is a strong possibility that your doctor didn’t do any research or fact-checking when they told you about the side effects of the drug — and that’s probably why you’re here. Most likely your doctor simply read to you from the Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialities, which is the information source most widely used by physicians in Canada. (The U.S. equivalent of the CPS is the PDR or the Physicians’ Desk Reference.) Here’s a quote from a critical analysis of the CPS:

The Compendium of Pharmaceuticals and Specialities (CPS) is the most widely used source of drug information in Canada, and is heavily financed by the pharmaceutical industry. A close examination of its contents comparing a computer-drawn, randomized sample of monographs from its “White Pages” to standard pharmacological reference works demonstrates certain of its characteristics: it uncritically includes many inadequate preparations; it overstates the benefits and understates the adverse qualities of many preparations; and it contains little or no information on relative indications, efficacy, or price. These characteristics serve to promote the marketing goals of the drug manufacturers and severely limit the volume’s usefulness as an objective source of drug information.

And this is where most doctors get their information about the drugs they prescribe. So please be careful when listening to your doctor’s advice. With all due respect to their training, they may not know what they’re talking about, especially in regards to a drug like Paxil whose manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, has never been too forthcoming about the real side effects of the drug.

September 5th, 2006.

Some of you might actually know who I am from the original version of this blog back when blogs didn’t really exist the way they do today. I first uploaded Paxil Free sometime in 2001; I don’t remember the exact date. I kept the website up for a couple years, then took it down after it became too much to deal with.

I never wanted to become an authority on Paxil withdrawal. My withdrawal experience was thrown in my face, and although I survived it, it made me feel like a different person — except I didn’t ask to feel like a different person.

So it made me angry. I was glad so many people were able to find comfort through reading about my experiences, but I didn’t want to have anything to do with it. I answered all the emails to the best of my ability, but I didn’t feel like a willing participant in any of it — because I was still angry. I was alive and grateful, but I had nothing good to say about the experience. I was not the person to turn to for inspiration and hope. Emailing me to ask how I got through it all, I didn’t have any secrets or words of wisdom to pass on. I was uncomfortable having people turn to me for anything.

I was also embarrassed by much of what I’d written on the site. I subsequently decided to take some time to revise it and get myself out of the loop for a while. So I took the site down, and immediately it felt like a burden had been lifted. I could just leave the whole withdrawal experience in the past and be done with it. I did make some revisions, but I didn’t stick with it. I felt like moving on instead.

So I did.
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February 28th, 2001.

I began taking Paxil, paroxetine hydrochloride, for depression and post-traumatic stress shortly after a traumatic event in November of 1999. By July 2000, ten months later, my doctor and I agreed that I was doing well enough to stop taking the medication. So I followed his medical advice and discontinued the Paxil. Within 24 hours, I experienced such severe paroxetine withdrawal that I eventually became suicidal — and it scared the hell of me. The neurological trauma of paroxetine withdrawal was more physically and mentally debilitating than any kind of depression I had ever experienced.

Most of the records I kept during my withdrawal experience were in the form of messages I posted to Paxil withdrawal support groups similar to paxilprogress.org. Saved on this blog are the most informative of those messages. The postings appear in the order in which they were written, along with all the relevant responses I may have received.

It is a record of my withdrawal experience, not because I’m vain and I like listening to myself talk, but because it’s the only record I kept, and having reviewed all of it recently, I can see that it presents the reality of the experience more accurately than anything else I’d have the energy to put together right now. Along with a support group such as paxilprogress.org, I can’t think of anything more valuable for someone living through paroxetine withdrawal than to read exactly how someone else survived it.

While it’s true that there isn’t a whole lot of fun to be had for someone living through the effects of Paxil withdrawal, the important thing to remember is that you can survive it. That may not sound like much right now, but I have done it and so have many others who had it worse than me. If there’s one thing to learn from the record and testimony on this site, perhaps it’s how to smooth out some of the bumps in the road ahead so that when the worst of it comes at you, it doesn’t knock you so far down that you can never get up again. It can be overcome. As unbearable as it may seem at times, it will eventually go away, and you’ll be all right.

Okay, maybe not all right, but I’m pretty sure you’ll feel at least a thousand times better.

April 7th, 2001.

I was prescribed Paxil (20mg/daily) for depression and post-traumatic stress in November of 1999. At the same time I began to see a therapist who helped me deal with the symptoms of the post-traumatic stress (which included flashbacks; no fun there, let me tell ya). More than Paxil, more than anything or anyone else, the benefits of this communicative therapy (a.k.a. talking) were immeasurable.

However, the Paxil did provide a certain calm which allowed me to deal more effectively with the emotional trauma of the experience I had gone through. (For my own privacy, I’ve chosen to withhold the exact details of that experience.) It seems to me that Paxil regulates one’s emotions so that they are more manageable. How exactly it does this nobody really knows, but there are a few theories out there which I think have some validity to them.
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