In the summer of 2001, after being on Prozac for more than a decade, I made the life-altering decision to go off of antidepressants.

Despite what doctors and nearly everyone else around me were saying – that I had a chemical imbalance and that antidepressants were essential to keep me going – I believed otherwise. Intuitively, I knew that there was a better way to live, yet almost no one in my support system was in agreement with this line of thinking.

For the millions of people facing depression and who have similar doubts about medication being the only answer, a book has arrived that completely validates our concerns.

In the New York Times best-seller A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives, Dr. Kelly Brogan, an MIT and Cornell-trained psychiatrist, gives us the hard facts about antidepressants and busts all of the widely believed myths about this class of drugs.

In fact, the medical community is so terrified of the truth being exposed in A Mind of Your Own that Dr. Brogan and this book have been blacklisted by the mainstream media. Yes, blacklisted!  Why? Read more »

Last week, I was asked by a friend of mine if I ever cheat.

No, she was not asking if I ever cheat on women but rather wanted to know if I ever cheat on my diet.

While I was taken aback by the question and didn’t have an immediate answer, she followed up with “Don’t you ever eat a doughnut?”

“No, I never eat doughnuts,” I quickly responded. That was an easy one to figure out. The thought of putting a Krispy Kreme into my body never ever enters my mind.

The larger question about cheating, however, really got me thinking and this is what I came up with. Read more »

In May of 2006 when I was still living in Miami, I was involved in a car accident — I got rear-ended at a red light and suffered whiplash. Luckily, the MRI showed that nothing was broken or fractured.

After about three months of doing Network Spinal Analysis with my chiropractor, the pain was gone. I had great range of motion and could move my neck to the left and right without any trouble.

Thinking I was fine and acting as if I were 18 years old again, I then proceeded to play two hours of very hard tennis in the blazing hot Miami summer. At the end of the match, I went to take a serve and knew right away that something was really wrong.

I felt an intense throbbing in my neck that I had never experienced before. Needless to say, the pain came back in a much, much stronger way. Read more »

In November, I put up blog entry titled The Repercussions of Going on Antidepressants, and I received a comment on this post the other day that both disturbed me and confirmed what I already knew. I thought it merited its own discussion here.

The woman who wrote the comment calls herself NoRx4Me and left the following information:

I was put on an SSRI at 24 years old during a bad marriage. I needed guidance and support, instead I was told my brain was broken.

SSRI’s led to stimulants, mood stabilizers, SNRI’s, and lithium for a short time. I was a mess. I lost 13 years. I have little memory of those years (especially sad, because I was raising two boys). I didn’t grow as a person at all. I quit dating in 2003 and never developed knew friendships either. I didn’t even realize this was odd until I was off meds.

I probably would have responded like some others on here while I was still under the influence and told you the meds were great. With a clear mind and 20/20 hindsight, I know the facts, my life was destroyed.

And they do cause physical problems; I lost a ton of hair, and my teeth are a mess. I look like I’ve aged 20 years instead of 10. Read more »

I put up a post last week about a date I had recently and it generated a good number of responses. During this date, the woman asked if it bothers me to be with someone who drinks.

In that post, one of the things that I said was that I would “deal with it” if all of the other aspects of the relationship were good and that the drinking was kept to a minimum. This response of saying that I would “deal with it” brought an interesting comment from Tancie, and I thought it was worth addressing in its own blog post here.

Tancie stated that the phrase “dealing with it” would bring up resentment and that I should avoid all women who drink if it makes me that uncomfortable.

For me, drinking is a very complicated issue and is not so cut and dry, especially given the fact that I feel so strongly about other things as well — organic food being one of them. Read more »

This is a very complex question that my father and I discuss from time to time. He insists that it was the right decision for me to go on it and doesn’t regret it at all. He also thinks I should never have gone off Prozac when I did in 2001.  He and my mother were adamantly against this decision.

For me, the question of whether going on Prozac was the right decision brings up many thoughts and additional questions.

* As I talked about in my last post related to this subject, there were tremendous and disastrous repercussions for going on Prozac. There is no doubt about it.

* Was I emotionally and spiritually strong enough to persevere through those dark times during college? Spiritually, I’d say no. Emotionally, I’m not sure. From what I remember, I was struggling in a major way and I didn’t see much hope in it getting better.

Would my grades have suffered? Would I have fallen into a much bigger hole that I couldn’t have gotten out of? Read more »

As I mentioned the other day, there were tremendous repercussions for me going on Prozac during college. Yet at the time, I didn’t have any idea that they would be so disastrous.

What influenced my judgment to go on antidepressants was a real desperation to feel better. And to feel better quickly. Worrying about how this would impact my life 5 or 10 years down the road was of no consideration whatsoever. I wanted relief and I wanted it immediately.

These are the key repercussions:

EMOTIONAL NUMBNESS To be completely fair, Prozac did work in the beginning. The heaviness I was feeling pre-Prozac did go away and getting through the day was no longer a struggle. This improvement did not happen overnight but within the first few weeks I noticed a difference.

Once I was on the drug for a few years, however, a more ominous effect took hold. I became emotionally numb and lived within a very tight emotional range.

I was never happy and never sad. I was emotionally flat and had little feelings for anyone or anything. The only time that I experienced true happiness was when I was drunk. Read more »