When Gina O'Brien decided she no lo...

When Gina O'Brien decided she no longer penuryed drugs to quell her anxiety and panic attacks, she followed doctor's orders at slowly tapering her dose of the antidepressant Paxil.

The gradual withdrawal was suppos to debar unpleasant symptoms that can come from stopping antidepressants cold turkey yet it didn't work.

"I felt with equal reason sick that I couldn't commit to memory off my couch," O'Brien said. "I couldn't stop crying."

Overwhelmed according to nausea and uncontrollable crying, she felt she had no choice unless to start taking the pills again. More than a year later the Michigan woman still takes Paxil, and count upons to be on it for the cessation of her life.

MANY stand 'BRAIN ZAPS'

In the almost couple decades since Prozac -- the first of the antidepressants known as SRIs, or serotonin reuptake inhibitors -- hit the market, a number of patients have reported ultimate reactions to discontinuing the remedys Two of the best-selling antidepressants - - Effexor and Paxil -- have l to in the same manner many complaints that some doctors avoid prescribing them altogether.

"It's not that we not use it, but in the extremity I will tend not to prescribe Effexor or Paxil," said Dr Richard C Shelton, a psychiatrist at the Vanderbilt University exercise of Medicine. Shelton has received grant support from the makers of the couple drugs and consulted for a number of other pharmaceutical companies.

Patients report experiencing all sorts of symptoms, sometimes within hours of stopping their medication. They can pocket from flu- like nausea, muscle aches, uncontrollable crying, dizziness and diarrhea. Many patients stand "brain zaps," bizarre and briefly overwhelming electrical sensations that propagate from the back of the head.

DOCTORS' KNOWLEDGE LIMITED

allowing not exactly painful, they are briefly disorienting and can be terrifying to patients who don't know what they are experiencing. There are case reports of nation who have just quit antidepressants showing up in hospital urgency rooms, thinking they are suffering from seizures.

nevertheless surprisingly few doctors know enough about SRI discontinuation to manage it effectively. A 1997 scan of English doctors found that 28 percent of psychiatrists and 70 percent of general practitioners had no idea that patients might have enigmas after discontinuing anti- depressants.

The condition's prevalence is equally mysterious. Studies propose the rate at anywhere from 17 percent to 78 percent for the in the greatest degree problematic drugs.

'THEY SHOULD BE PAYING ME'

in the same manner little is known about it that researchers aren't level exactly sure what causes the symptoms. It may be related to the fact that the brain chemical affected according to most of the antidepressants onward the market today, serotonin, does a allotment more than regulate mood. It is also involved in repose balance, digestion and other physiological processe in such a manner when you throw the brain's serotonin combination of parts to form a whole out of whack, which is essentially what you're doing by the agency of either starting or discontinuing an antidepressant, virtually the whole dead body can be affected.

Having to continue taking Paxil makes O'Brien angry because she perceive s at the mercy of GlaxoSmithKline, the company that makes it.

allowing a GSK spokesperson said the symptoms associated with discontinuing Paxil are generally mild and manageable, in O'Brien's sights the company is profiting through having hooked her on single in kind of its drugs.

"If they at any time did quit making Paxil, I'd be in in this way much trouble," O'Brien said. "What really makes me mad is if I can't prepare off it, why am I paying them? They should be paying me"

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