On Prozac Horror Stories

Posted on January 6, 2003 in Psychotropics

Somewhere in my virtual peregrinations yesterdays, I found one of those Prozac horror stories which some bloggers and others make a point to disseminate without checking the full facts.

I generally stop reading them after a few lines. They all employ the same anecdotal denunciative style. As to their origin, I have heard the Scientologists, various New Age cults, sellers of St. John’s Wort (which is poisonous!), and paranoids accused.

I do not doubt that Prozac can have harmful side effects for some people. This is true of nearly every drug out there. Human bodies aren’t turned out on an assembly line with interchangeable parts as the critics seem to want you to believe: we’re different enough that what helps one person can harm another. Doctors know this. You need to work closely with your psychiatrist to find out what works and what doesn’t. None but a sadist would keep a patient on a medication that was harmful. The people who speak most loudly against Prozac seem to believe that they can live life without the help of anyone else. I’ve learned differently.

Once I had an IRC conversation with a friend that went something like this:

She: Prozac should be outlawed.

Me: Why?

She: It kills people.

Me: Why do you say that?

She: I knew someone who was taking it and she committed suicide after she went on it.

He: Really? What exactly happened?

She: Well, she was an alcoholic, you see. She started taking the prozac to deal with the depression it caused.

He: Um, did she stop drinking?

She: Oh, no, she kept doing that too. Why do you ask?

I ended up explaining to her that you don’t mix alcohol and any psychoactive medication.

I was also briefly a member of a list which had as a rule that you don’t advocate any nonprescription medication. A discussion arose about St. John’s Wort. One fellow was explaining that it worked because it was an MAO inhibitor. He didn’t mention that it was also poisonous. In his opinion, St. John’s Wort was safer than Prozac. I pointed out that if it were an MAO inhibitor as he said, it would be rife with side effects. “Oh,” he replied. “It’s a different kind of MAO inhibitor without any side effects at all.”

When I asked the moderator why she wasn’t intervening, she told me that St. John’s Wort had been “clinically tested” and found to be effective. Within a few months of my departure from that Bedlam, word came out that St. John’s Wort didn’t have nearly enough of the anti-depressive ingredients to do what it’s promoters said it could. Furthermore, it had more than enough poison to kill you if you kept it up over a long period of time. The anti-depressive effect of St. John’s Wort was no more powerful than if you took a placebo.

For all my friends now on or considering medications for depression or anything else, allow me to present a patient’s perspective on psychoactive medications:

1. If someone says a drug has no side effects, he’s either lying or a dupe.
2. Don’t drink alcohol with anti-depressives. It intensifies depression, sleepiness, and could well make you the next Karen Ann Quinlan.
3. The dose you get in herbal medicines is seldom uniform. The same amount of herbal extract or powder taken in one season/locale could be more powerful or weaker than that harvested at another time or elsewhere. Prescription medicines are, by law, required to come in uniform dosages. When they say you’re taking 20 mg of Prozac, that’s what you’re getting.
4. A medication that works for one person might not work for another person.
5. You’re sick. You need to work closely with a psychiatrist and keep her/him informed of what is going on. Let her/him know about any side effects. Also tell your regular doctor what is going on so that he/she can monitor your liver function, etc. Get used to the fact that you need help from other people.
6. Read up on the drugs you use in the medical literature.
7. Support those who require medication. Don’t scare them with anecdotal evidence, even if the person it happened to was you. They are different people.
8. As with any disease, watch out for con men and dupes who promise you a life free of “dependence”.
9. You can always tell your psychiatrist “No”.
10. Never force another person to take medication. The decision must be made by the individual.

Like the c*cumc*sm and ant*-vacc*nnat*ion clans feel the need to expound on the evils of the thing they wish to “rescue” the rest of us from. I’ve said all I need to say here.

For the record, after eight years, Prozac stopped working well for me. I have switched to Effexor under my psychiatrist’s supervision. The anti-Effexor lobby is not nearly as outspoken, yet, but give it time.

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Note: It may break some hearts to hear that I don’t do the c*rcumc*sm debate. As for vacc*c*nat*on, I defer to the Empress who can easily run intelligent and informed circles around a detractor.