Paxil Free

Thursday, January 11th, 2001 (72nd day off Paxil).

Randy said:

I saw a psychiatrist yesterday for the first time ever. Of course he doesn’t know of Paxil withdrawal to any degree. He wanted to talk about my birth experience! He does not agree that my symptoms are due to withdrawal and wants to talk about my early childhood and relationships. F*** off! What’s the point!

My response:

Tell me about it, man. When I began weaning off Paxil, I decided to do it under the supervision of a shrink — not a psychologist, a psychiatrist. As a medical supervisor, he knows what he’s doing. He, like many psychiatrists, knows how to deal with a psychological problem with drugs. If you feel this, take that. If you feel that, take this. Utterly useless. When he actually does have an insight, it seems to be something right out Psychiatry for Dummies. Talking to my dog is more therapeutic.

This guy I’m seeing comes from an older generation of psychiatrists who seem to work under the principle, Give the patient a pill and see what happens. Don’t bother talking to him. Don’t bother really listening to him. Don’t bother trying to understand him as a person.

Our health, diseases, and reactions… can only be understood with reference to us, as expressions of our nature, our living, our being-here… in the world. Yet modern medicine, increasingly, dismisses our existence… seeing our diseases as purely alien and bad, without organic relation to the person who is ill.

The psychiatrist I’m seeing now seems to work with “the idea that one must attack the disease with all the weapons one has, and that one can launch the attack with total impunity, without a thought for the person who is ill.” (Awakenings, continued from page 228, 1990 edition.)

Whenever I show any strong emotion in front of this man, his immediate reaction is, “Perhaps you should think about trying another anti-depressant.” It’s as if he can’t deal with real people. Forget about actually listening to me. Forget about the fact that I’m an actual person and not some chemical reaction gone awry. I’m able to trust this guy (or at least give it a try) and show him my feelings, and he wants to pump me up full of pills — more pills. This was the antithesis of therapy, folks.

Therapy comes from the Greek word therapeia, which means healing. I reach out to this psychiatrist for help, and he wants to give me a bottle of pills. He’s making his hundred dollars an hour off me, but I wonder if he’s doing anything else. Trust me on this one: the ancient Greeks are turning in their graves.

I’ll continue to see him so he can medically supervise my withdrawal from the Paxil, but as soon as I’m feeling raring to go, I’m gone. This man has made a living for the past thirty years by not listening to people who need to be listened to, who are in need of that healing (paxilprogress.org is so much better). People turn to him thinking that he’s helping, but mostly he’s just make a living off them. It’s kind of hard not to think that sometimes.

I’ll be seeing him probably at least another three or four times, and who knows, maybe I’ll get something from it. Perhaps if I can package my problems in an intellectual manner which he can grasp more easily, I might actually be able to get something useful from these conversations.

So, from what I’m hearing from other people, and from my own experience, I’m inclined to believe that psychologists are the best bet, because they don’t rely on medications to solve the situation as quick and easy as possible (easy for doctors, not us). I think a psychologist is more inclined to listen whereas a psychiatrist is more inclined to prescribe. They are two completely different approaches to healing. And in my opinion, one of them works and the other one doesn’t.

You could probably have the same experience you’re talking about with a psychologist, but I think the chances are less likely. I say this from my own personal experience. My experience may be rare or it may be common, but I think it’s probably more common than not.

You said, “What’s the point?” And I say, “I know the feeling.”