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The Antidepressant Solution: A Step-by-Step Guide to Safely Overcoming Antidepressant Withdrawal, Dependence, and "Addiction" By Joseph Glenmullen ( Free Press )
Release Date: 2006-01-09
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List Price: $14.00
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Product Description
With the FDA's warning that antidepressants may cause agitation, anxiety, hostility, and even violent or suicidal tendencies, these medications are at the forefront of national legal news. Harvard physician Joseph Glenmullen has led the charge to warn the public that antidepressants are overprescribed, underregulated, and, especially, misunderstood in their side and withdrawal effects. Now he offers a solution!More than twenty million Americans -- including over one million teens and children -- take one of today's popular antidepressants, such as Paxil, Zoloft, or Effexor. Dr. Glenmullen recognizes the many benefits of antidepressants and prescribes them to his patients, but he is also committed to warning the public of the dangers associated with overprescription. Dr. Glenmullen's last book, Prozac Backlash, sounded the alarm about possible dangers. The Antidepressant Solution provides the remedy. It is the first book to call attention to the drugs' catch-22: Although many people are ready to go off these drugs, they continue to take them because either the patient or the doctor mistakes antidepressant withdrawal for depressive relapse. The Antidepressant Solution offers an easy, step-by-step guide for patients and their doctors. Written by the premier authority in the field, The Antidepressant Solution is an invaluable book for all those concerned with going through the process -- from friends and family members to doctors and patients themselves.
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 Review ( tomrogattr )
The information is quite fascinating and most useful for those who want to "get off" drugs. Excellent book.
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 The Antidepressant Solution
This book has some good suggestions. It is written by telling, "Jane's story" and "Mary's story" etc. etc. I personally find this annoying, especially considering how varied antidepressant discontinuation syndrome is for each individual. Also, the "tapering" or "wean" schedules/recommendations are only good if you live in the US and maybe the UK. Many of the medications recommended to assist you in tapering off your specific medication are not available in the immediate release/ liquid formulations here in Canada. Therefore, when you ask your physician to taper slower it may be a pharmacological impossibility!! If you are Canadian, don't bother buying this book...try to find it at the library if you want to view its content.
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ends hysteria against pshyicatric medicine ( sundance2320 )
Diagnosed bi-polar I was looking for outside help in getting off Effexor, which I felt was not a good drug for me. I have found a huge amount of Online horror stories about the hell awaiting me, and friends on a constant "psychiatrists are Satan and all anti-depressants drugs are poison" rant had me filled with fear. This book calmed me down, helped me see when the "right time" to get off anti-depressants could be, and then how to do it. My psychiatrist was knowledgeable about the tapering off method, and I have had no problem worth mentioning in accomplishing this.
No doubt these medicines are over prescribed, and when given for reasons other than Major Clinical Depression can cause severe reactions, as would giving insulin to a non-diabetic. Finally, solid information. Excellent charts to copy if needed for withdrawal, common sense advice from someone qualified to give it.
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Disappointing ( simonsroom )
Dr. Glenmullen does a fine job of underscoring the importance of carefully tapering off
antidepressants. This is tremendously important because many MDs, psychopharmacologists included,
take a casual, potentially damaging approach to the process of discontinuing these meds.
I found the book very well intentioned, but redundant. Glenmullen makes a set of points over and over again, yet he doesn't deal at all with other relevant issues, i.e. nutritional supplements which have been found helpful to patients weaning off these medications. Although the subtitle of his first book, "Prozac Backlash"suggests that it covers "effective alternatives" there is no mention whatsoever of alternative approaches here. (I haven't read "Prozac Backlash" -- I'm just surprised that that sort of valuable information would be addressed in the author's first work and entirely ignored in the second, especially when it might be highly
useful for people concerned with getting off anti-depressants.
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Courageous and Important Work
Did you know that antidepressant dose reduction and discontinuation can cause severe and debilitating withdrawal reactions? While 10% of the US population are taking antidepressants, most people, including most doctors, have never heard of antidepressant addiction and withdrawal. Glenmullen does a fine job getting the word out about this urgent health crisis. In 2004 Congress had to force the FDA and drug manufacturers to acknowledge the well-established link between antidepressant use and increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Glenmullen shows how severe withdrawal symptoms, which can occur within hours of a missed dose, can actually drive a person to suicide. Many face a horrible dilemma when their withdrawal symptoms are misdiagnosed as relapse. Glenmullen must be applauded for taking on his own colleagues, some of whom have accepted huge fees from the drug companies to suppress and misrepressent the severity of antidepressant "discontinuation syndrome." Numerous misdeeds are revealed in Glenmullen's astute analysis, but the book's primary purpose is not critical. He presents a detailed 5 step method for helping those who want or need to stop taking these drugs. The good news, according to Glenmullen, is that patients are "almost always" able to wean off these drugs if the dose is reduced gradually (according to each individual's tolerance) with the vigilant care of a knowledgable doctor who is willing to put in the many weeks, sometimes many months, required. To his credit, Glenmullen explores the limits to his method in the story of Andy, a 16 year old boy, who after a month on Effexor, decided he wanted off, but had to spend a whole year of his young life in hell caught between the side effects and severe withdrawal, despite a painfully slow dose reduction. Glenmullen would like to believe such reactions are rare, but what if they're not? Just because some people can reduce gradually with few problems, does not prove all people can. I am one like Andy. I too took Effexor. I spent 4 months reducing gradually and became so sick and debilitated, I had to quit my job. It's now been 10 weeks since I took my last dose and I am still too sick to function. I'm worried I may have been permanently damaged by this drug. I'm not depressed, but I have considered suicide. I'm a 53 year old woman with no husband or family to support me financially. If I had known when I started this drug 10 years ago that I could become this sick when I gradually reduced and discontinued it, I never would have taken it--but I couldn't have known 10 years ago because back then, the drug companies denied the existence of antidepressant withdrawal and deliberated suppressed and misrepresented the truth. They can't deny it any longer. Babies are being born addicted to Effexor. Their mothers may have known of the dangers, they may have tried to stop, but they couldn't because the withdrawal was too much to bear. These mothers were addicted by prescription with FDA approval. This is a major health crisis, much worse than crack babies. Glenmullen's book doesn't address addicted newborns, but you can read the horrible truth in Wyeth's most recent drug label for Effexor (June 2006, p24). In the debate over the risks and benefits of antidepressants, Glenmullen identifies himself as a moderate. He is, after all, a psychiatrist whose job is to dispense these meds. He deserves credit for trying to help the thousands of desperate victims, but his "solution" may offer only false hope, masking the problem and prolonging the suffering. Eventually the people will come to know the truth about these drugs and they will be banned or boycotted. Then those who have been profitting from the people's suffering will have to undergo their own painful withdrawal--from all that money.
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Addiction
