It was frightening to struggle with antidepressants, but now I know there is another way

an article by Rachel Kelly for the New Statesman


PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

My argument is not to ignore medication in treating depression, but I would have rather avoided the side effects and the feeling I had to rely on pills over a long period.

Some use scissors. Others prefer a sharp knife. My own weapon of choice was a nail clipper.

Over the six months or so that I took to come off antidepressants, I found that the easiest way to halve and then quarter the pills was to raid the bathroom cabinet. My bedside table became a small pharmaceutical workshop. Eventually, there was nothing but white powder, which I would suck up with a straw when no one was around to avoid looking like a drug addict.

Ironically, I used other drugs, chiefly tranquillisers, to ease the process and reduce the anxiety of withdrawing from antidepressants. Using drugs to come off other pills was not ideal, but it was the way I managed a frightening period. I was terrified that I might fall ill again without medication.

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Is Junk Food Addictive?

a post by Janet Singer for the World of Psychology blog



You’re in withdrawal, experiencing everything from mood swings and anxiety to headaches and insomnia. Perhaps you’ve quit smoking or stopped your regular marijuana usage. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ve cut back on those greasy fries, burgers, and other highly processed food.

A study published in the September 2018 issue of Appetite reported that people who reduced their consumption of highly processed foods experienced some of the same physical and psychological symptoms as those withdrawing from cigarettes or marijuana usage. While studies in mice have shown that reducing junk food can trigger withdrawal symptoms, lead study author Erica Schulte stated that this recent experiment offers the first evidence that these withdrawal-like symptoms can occur in people when they cut down on highly processed foods.

Based on self-reporting, the participants’ withdrawal symptoms were most intense between the second and fifth days after attempting to reduce junk-food consumption. It’s interesting to note that this is the same time span typically experienced during drug withdrawal.

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