Nobody Wants to Hear Good News About Psychiatric Medicine

freddiedeboer.substack.com

17 points·paulpauper··5 comments

The study clearly shows increased incidence of withdrawal symptoms. But, in a semantic game, the symptoms aren't defined as "antidepressant discontinuation".

Freddie got tricked.

The abstract explains, "Individuals who discontinued antidepressants experienced more symptoms compared to those discontinuing placebo or continuing an antidepressant, but the mean number of symptoms was below the cutoff for clinically important discontinuation syndrome."

And the study is "A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis" -- I'm so cynical about any meta-analysis. I would have preferred that he picked one good study to refer to.

But actually the article's point is pretty interesting. Just need to avoid his reliance on the SSRI angle.

Nice, but in my case at least, withdrawal from venlafaxine is extreme. To the point where I simply cannot get off of it.

In my case, it was pretty easy to get off venlafaxine. Not to diminish your experience, which I am truly sorry to hear about. I was on venlafaxine for about a year and a half, with a peak daily dose of 375 mg. I do think it made my suicidality worse at the start, but at least getting off it was easy for me.

>a peak daily dose of 375 mg.

...what in the tar of nation! Such concentrations are not even available here, with 150 being the max dosage for Effexor. I would probably just collapse and die if I tried to wean off of 375 mg of venlafaxine.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com