hi gabs, Part of my illness is to take all at face value. It hurts too much to delve deep at play with the roots. I need things to follow a consistant logial line. Spontaniete, surprise, and change are very anxiete provoking. I am the worst at a party! If I am there to danse I will till the music stops, and I can't understand why anyone stopped. I ingore the pain inside me so what is a little fatigue? But back to the choices.. i need to know that what I have follows a logical line. Clear up the immidiate issues, clear-up the imbalances, learn to think properly... voila fixed. And what am I facing? Too much life, and too much pain, and too much discouragement. There seems to be an art to all this not a science. And to me that is the equivalent to saying there is no logic, only chaos - the lost and complet logic that only God can decipher. No straight road is no choices, wow. How can we ever expect to travel beyond this illness? Life... relationships, employment, emotion, faith, governing systems. I know why this is a disease. How are expected to find our ease? We wander in the dark bumping into lifeless landmarks we cannot experience and always hope there will be a mysterious object called light somewhere in here.

Thank you for all sharing your thoughts and experiences. There is no one right way to progress and we are here to learn from one another. The program is here for all to assess and we hope that if you have questions and concerns, you will contact us :) Take it step by step and use the knowledge and support at your finger-tips. We are alway here to help and listen. Great support and sharing everyone! Josie, Support Specialist

You are quite right of course, But what to do when the professional you are seeking help from changes the medication. I myself have been on lopeframine, 2years with the addition of clonazepam for 2 months only to change recently when the bottom suddenly fell out of my life. 5 days to come off the meds with 3 days clear before i could try the effexor. Very bad reaction so only took 1 tablet on psychologists advice. I was quite happy to stick with it if it was going to prove helpful in the long term but apparently the side effects were not the norm. So now for the new one Remeron which i admit i am afraid to take as I have no follow up as my medical insurance wont pay and my own Dr is next to useless. The ideal would be to have a professional person that you can have regular follow ups with who would see you through and find what works. In reality the health service here in the U.k. leaves a lot to be desired. Its hard enough to see a G.P but the waiting time to see a consultant on the N.H.S is 3 months. You can only work with the resorces you have available to you. I hope this clarifys a little why it appears that some of us are not on the medication long enough to see if it works. If only! If you have any experience of Remeron I'd appreciate the feedback. after 28 years with a broken back i am pretty used to long term medication. sorry just read this back and it sounds defensive, I just want ed to share the reasons why I have had to swap myself and dont know how to write it how i want to say it.x

Hi Gang, i am so surprised with the choises a lot make. Many are supposed to take important psychiatric medication, myself included. These medication take anywhere from 6 to 12 weeks to take full effect. And I have seem lots of posting concerning irregular schedules, skipping doses, and even deciding to quit without any discussion of follow-up. I have been taking Effexor XR 150mg for the past 18 months. At first I thought it was doing diddly squat and missed a dose. WAS I SICK!?! so I spoke to the doctor and I searched the net for more info... Effexor has a half life of 24 to 36 hours and the XR is a little something to slow down the liver from removing the meds from my system (a longer half life). That's why I was sick right away, I missed the 8pm dose and was sick down-town at 3pm. Depression causes very real physical changes in us. Parts of the brain shrivel up. There is a chemical imbalance that makes to difficult for the brain to function. Yes the medication has side-effects, those that slow down the chemicals from being processed too quickly, slow the rest of the body down... weight gain from a slow metabolism, sleepiness, etc... I have seen posting of meds being skipped and quit. of couse there are changes in moods and energy. I have seen posting of irregular doses, of course there will be some withdrawl depending on the half-life... I find these bad habits very worrisome. Psychiatric drugs have a big potential but with the very low motivation that depressives have to start with... will the bad habits only make the condition worse? It takes months for the full potential to be reached, so how can we decide to use not use, start stop without the patience to stick with it? Finally, I think we need to be better educated to help the people around us need a bit more. If we do not know the basis of out illness. If we do not understand our medications how can we expect our families to jump to our rescue? Our meds do not work like anti-biotics that help us in 3 days and get rid of the infection in 7 to 10 days. they are not instantanious like a bronchdialator for and asmathic in crisis of an epipen for anaphaleptic choc. It is very difficult for me to understand wanting to be better but not knowing how to get there. I was in the dark for a long time about my true illness; but I always sought out help. I always followed the attempts and experiments that werre proposed; art therapie, phobie-zero, meditations, exercises, medications, etc. I now have a vast tool box of self-help items, I have to learn how to apply them once I learn new survival skills.