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Here where I live doctors prescribe anti-depressants like candies. They robbed me of two years of my life. The worst for me was derealisation and strong hallucinations. I started strongly believing that life isn't real, that what I am seeing is just a dream or that other humans are just objects that happen to move and speak. Hallucinations were crazy scary, like I saw things as if atoms of objects got magnified hundreds of times or everything was constructed of polygons (like you would switch wire frame rendering). Absolutely crazy thoughts like I was convinced that if I cut myself with a knife it will give me pleasure like scratching an itch. I had a couple of suicidal episodes and ended up in hospital. Somehow nobody connected that this could be anti depressants. I then stopped them on my own and few weeks later started CBT therapy. That fortunately was the most I needed to "repair" my thought processes. I am okay, but I sometimes have the flashbacks of what happened. It's just a reminder to stay away from these things. I understand this may help other people but it didn't help me. When I talked about hallucinations with the doctor he just prescribed a different one. Every 4-6 months I had a different one.

Sadly, in a lot of places, antipsychotics from the 50s (i.e. Chlorpromazine) are the FIRST kind of therapy given, even to adolescent patients with "generic" depression, alongside SSRIs.

No consent given or asked for, let alone informed consent. You are told "take this".

This is not in circumstances of hospitalization, let alone involuntary hospitalization, but regular outpatient treatment.

People who are in a bad place generally don't research meds, and if they are not extremely uncooperative, or paranoid, will take them and the doctors' words at face value.

Consequences are severe and long-lasting.

Absolutely shameful and despicable. These doctors should be shamed by the scientific community for [almost] using prehistoric notions of "hysteria" to mistreat ilness by basically showing "see, he's not crying anymore! PROGRESS!" while pointing to a barely awake, sedated patient.

Any and all progress is usually SSRIs and psychotherapy, if available. Why do they give these antiquated meds that are not appropriate for the situation (i.e. CPZ) is beyond me. These are not psychoses, this is Episodium depressivum, gradus moderati .

Sorry, had to get that out. This is from personal experience.

>To the people in this thread advocating antipsychotic medication for anything other than treating psychosis and as an adjunct for severe depression, don't. These medications are serious things for serious situations and can have unexpected effects on you mentally.

The dose makes the poison. A small dose e.g. of seroquel, for a few days, has a great risk:reward profile for panic disorder

As said elsewhere in the thread, there are nuances even in pharmacology. Your situation sounds terrible, and I am very sorry you had to live through that. However, some anti-psychotics lack anti-psychotic properties in very low doses and are safe. But yes, as a general rule neither anti-psychotics nor z-drugs/bzo-drugs should be used for long-lasting sleep disorders.

Agree with this. I’m on antipsychotic medication due to psychosis and insomnia. Works great but there are a lot of side effects, which I take additional medication to correct.

Fear of losing natural sharpness has had me avoiding antidepressants, which I should probably be on. Just too much fear about losing edge for math/programming.

Have you tried CBT therapy or other talking therapies? This helped me more than any anti depressants.

Wellbutrin could fit here, it's energizing and doesn't make your feelings 'flat' but careful with the insomnia. I had to stop it because of that, and after a week or so of stopping it I started having tinnitus (the morning it started I woke up from a dream similar to EHS - exploding head syndrome) Could be related/unrelated, who knows.

What helped you in your 3-4 year recovery?

Honestly, learning to program. I was listless when I got into university, and couldn't cope with the fact I wasn't the smartest person I knew anymore. That hit me a lot harder than I expected, and cascaded into a complete loss of confidence.

Learning a skill from the ground up I couldn't bullshit from random esoterica I'd picked up from high school forced me to confront my lifelong hubris and put aside my ego. Eventually I got decent enough at it that it became my career. It was a slow, grinding, painful process, but it taught me a lot about humility and the value of incremental progress.