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Antidepressants
Mountains
Veteran
As of yesterday I'm FREE of them at last! 
So far, so good. My goal is to make this a permanent situation.
Was just reading some interesting research the other day. A fairly large sample size, clinical double-blind, placebo controlled study that showed that placebo was equally effective as SSRI antidepressants in something like 94% of the sample. It's all about what you *think* it's going to do for you.
Gotta go meditate now
Mtns
So far, so good. My goal is to make this a permanent situation.Was just reading some interesting research the other day. A fairly large sample size, clinical double-blind, placebo controlled study that showed that placebo was equally effective as SSRI antidepressants in something like 94% of the sample. It's all about what you *think* it's going to do for you.
Gotta go meditate now
Mtns
0
Comments
I'm a RN also, 30 years now, and I know how that can run a person down. I hope you do well, but for Buddha's sake be careful and watch your symptoms carefully. Nurses are too much like soldiers when it comes to things like this.
Be well, but please be well carefully.
With warmth and metta,
SD
Namaste
I actually discussed my proclivity toward depression and anxiety with HE Jampal Shenpen when he was the 98th Ganden Tri Rinpoche, and he told me not to meditate too much. I later discovered by reading Tara Brach that people with depression and anxiety need to do so with caution, because of the stuff that sometimes comes up from the non-conscious when the "ego" becomes "loosened" through meditation.
Congrats! I got off antidepressants about a year and a half ago, and haven't looked back. Do be careful though...if something bad happens or you find yourself sliding back in the pit, please don't hesitate to resume your regimen.
There's also a study that showed that exercise was more successful in preventing a relapse of depression than either just medication or therapy, or medication plus therapy combined. I thought that was interesting.
As others said tho, don't be a hero - if you need them again at some point, that's OK.
Anyways, day by day!
I hope you didn't just decide to stop, I hear some can have really bad withdrawl simptoms and can be dangerous if you dont slowly take yourself off them. A good way would be to check with your doctor. just looking out for you
also, first post
It is an excellent book, based on scientific principles of depression & meditation/mindfulness. It is well written, practical, & grounded. There are some guided meditations to do on the CD enclosed at the back of the book too which might be helpful to you.
With best wishes to you on your journey
WS
If you keep practicing and changing your thought patterns (stop reacting with negativity to outside or inside events and feelings) your brain wiring will change permanently and so the brain activity and the production of hormones as well so you can keep being drug free.
seems like you already been doing this and getting the benefit of it
you are great!
Can you give us a source for that information please?
Thanks.
You just sound so very sure of yourself, and so solidly specific regarding what you say, that I thought you would have a definitive reference to give us immediately. Having been a nurse for 30 years, I'm familiar with neurology, and having read Destructive Emotions: How Can We Overcome Them? by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Daniel Goleman, I'm also pretty familiar with neuroplasticity. But I gather you're not a great fan of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, so you wouldn't regard that as in any way valid.
I think the way it works is- you make the statement, you provide the reference, rather than making us surf around the internet for whatever authoritative source you might be referring to. I'm interested in knowing specifically what others have read that make them so sure of themselves. I mean, "your brain wiring will change permanently and so the brain activity and the production of hormones as well so you can keep being drug free" sounds like a pretty definitive statement to me, and one with great implications, so I figure if you say it you must be pretty sure of it and have a source at your fingertips so the rest of us can benefit from this as well.
well im not going to give a course about neurology...
it may take all of the available space left for this website.
if you just make a few basic researchs, you will begin to understand what is a thought, physically in the brain. What is a concept, how is the information get processed by the brain, what part of the brain get activate with which kind of thoughts and why etc..
here is a little very simple example of what happen physically to the cells of a brain based on thought
http://petridishtalk.com/2010/01/17/practice-makes-perfect-dendritic-pruning-ltp/
pay attention to things like
"the connections between neurons who don’t often speak with one another begins to atrophy"
short of actually taking a more serious interest in neurology, behaviorism etc... and beginning to buy books for yourself, you can watch fairly accessible videos like this:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1877467554618436978#
which clearly show and predict physical reactions to the brain based on behaviors...
now you've got to understand what is a behavior, where it come from, why certain people act a certain way, why is it possible to change behaviors and react to almost anything with equanimity etc.............
In addition, there is an excellent (and comprehensive) new book by a British psychologist named Paul Gilbert called The Compassionate Mind that focuses on the evolutionary underpinnings of things like anxiety, depression, etc. Gilbert reveals how a large part of our problem is a complex "interference" between our "new brain" and our "old brain" in addition to influences from cultural, social and economic realities. The second half of the book is a self-help plan based on his Compassionate Mind Therapy.
Is that roughly what you're talking about?
Obviously we've had the whole antidepressant discussion before, but I just think that to say with such conviction that "your brain wiring will change permanently and so the brain activity and the production of hormones as well so you can keep being drug free" is a pretty strong statement and requires solid science to substantiate. Having been a nurse, and a psychiatric nurse, and having had my first psychiatrist be a strong Nyingma Vajrayana Buddhist, I can see the benefit of meditation and found great encouragement in reading rather extensively about neuroplasticity in the book I cited above. But to see it said yet again, "your brain wiring will change permanently and so the brain activity and the production of hormones as well so you can keep being drug free", so authoritatively and with such conviction, just fascinates me. My own personal experience and my own personal observation have me somewhere in the middle on this topic, because I have observed the benefits of antidepressant medication firsthand in my own experience, and I have observed the benefits of mindfulness meditation in my own experience as regards depression.
Such statements should not be made with such conviction and so- authoritatively, for lack of a better word, on an internet bulletin board about Buddhism. The OP may or may not be able to continue without antidepressants, and although the suggestion regarding relief of depression through meditation and the resulting effect on thought processes by way of neuroplasticity may be presented as a possibility or even a probability, such a statement should be made only by an appropriately credentialed and qualified professional.
well not really, not the most common form of depression at least. If by changing your thoughts you include (and you should, obviously), changing the way you see feelings, reactive thought patterns, emotions, yourself, the way you understand them and interact with them, then no.
I could have used more nuances.
but then again, we are on the internet, not in a doctor office.
What you are saying will always seem to me a grossly reductionist stance, every bit as troubling as the biochemical reductionists who propose all depression is the result of certain neurotransmitter deficiencies. (It isn't. Some people with depressive symptoms actually have too much serotonin.)
in so far nobody mentionned anything about "cognitive approaches that targeted thoughts specifically".
where did i even mentionned the efficacy of medication?
The problem i see in other people is that they get lost in the seemingly complicated nature of the problem.
while the problem is really not that complicated, if you look with perspective, in the vast majority of people.
As soon as you get out of the delusion of complexity, the path become clear and simple.
people are used to being told that they are hopeless.
that their brain is messed up. deficient. not good enough.
That they need medication because of this, and that they can try all kind of little therapies, "you can have your little meditation", that this stuff may help a bit, but essentially they are doomed because there is something terribly wrong with them.
This is what people suffering from depression have been told for years and now many believe this.
"there is something wrong with you, you are sick, and there is no cure."
People who say this "psychologist" are not lying, they do not have bad faith, they are not being pessimistic, but this is the reality of psychology. They are being honest with their patiens.
This is what a person suffering from depression can usually expect in the wonderfully limited world of psychology.
"there is something wrong with you, you are sick, and there is no cure."
But the reality is that in most cases, there is absolutely nothing wrong with them.
The fact that they suffer from depression is a sign that their brain is functioning perfectly well!
The brain with depression is simply doing precisely what it was designed to do. If, with that same baggage of conditionned reactions, unconscious memory, if they did not developped a depression, then there would be something wrong with their brain.
And the end of depression can be looming just around the corner for a considerable part of people who suffer.
This is what i'm saying. if you suffer from depression, chances are there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Be hopeful because you can make a difference. Yes you can!
This is woefully inaccurate in my opinion. The world of psychology, from my studies, has a pretty good hold on depression, and in cases of acute or situational depressions, have adopted a behavior modification stratagem that rivals 12 step and 8 fold path ideologies.
Your disdain for psychology is apparent, which can certainly be justified by visiting unskillful practitioners... but face it, in every school of thought you'll find that. There are even many Buddhists whose wisdom is about as good as the projected delusions of their word-vomit. Prejudicing an entire scientific community is an unneeded and inaccurate conclusion.
With warmth,
Matt
beside novelties like the essentially new movement toward mindfulness meditation.
or very limited tools in their common use, such as cognitive restructuring which will almost never be used to address the root of the problems, almost always only chop at the branches but never at the trunk... resulting in superficial and short lived results for most.
Something that would be fairly mainstream.
ps: I'm not being sarcastic or having bad faith, if this is indeed true, then i will have learned something and rejoice for those taking advantage of these programs.
The entire field is full of well intentioned people, brilliant people who dedicate their lives for a wonderful cause.
the only problem is that psychology come from the wrong paradigm and the solution is simply impossible to get from psychology alone (psychology in it's current state that is).
Like trying to figure out how to sail around the world when you come from the paradigm of a flat planet earth.
How many psychologists, very well educated, suffer from depression themselves?
How many do you see being eaten by greed, by pride...
How many, if any, did you ever see being extremely peaceful beings, enlighten?
Every time I see one of those threads I remind myself of a passage in Anna Karenina where two guys (a philosopher and a professor) and discussing something about the nature of existence and quoting just about every philosopher and one of the protagonists (Lievin) thinks that they never get to what is most important. Then he asks them both something about the subject they are discussing, something simple yet crucial (can't remember what it was) and the professor acts all snobbish, but neither of them can answer. :-P
I am not sure if you realize this but depressed people come across another group in addition to those telling them that they are innately deficient or not good enough, who instead tell them to "suck it up", "buck up and stop whining" and that they can pull themselves out of it if they muscle through the pain. This is equally counterproductive and shaming. I sensed a bit of that in your own post. Forgive me if this concern was unwarranted and if you aren't saying that depressed people can "sort themselves out" by sheer gumption. This approach is rather like kicking someone while they're down. (I sense that this isn't what you're saying, but your posts tend to read with a dismissiveness and lack of compassion.)
An example of the nexus I am talking about: In this competitive society, we do not look very kindly upon those who are emotionally sensitive and do not like competition, and we are often equally unkind to ourselves if these are traits we see in ourselves. In a vicious cycle, this sensitivity often leads to avoidant behavior, which cements a perception of weakness, which cements further feelings of shame, etc. This is just one way in which we turn against ourselves and one manifestation of the nexus that needs to be unraveled. Sometimes a good friend who accepts us as we are can be all that is needed to stem this particular cycle. At other times, it requires some deeper work to unearth and release this pattern. At all points, one must remain compassionate and understanding -- not blaming and shaming.
I can't name any off hand, can you?
How many psychologist friends do you have?
Of the few that I have, all of them follow many Buddhist principles of thought and actions, even though they are not "Buddhists" They perceive a round world, and the way they have helped people is direct and awesome. I, myself, am a student of psychology, from both the east and the west. Would you consider me lost in my ego, and somehow trying to convince others that the world is flat?
As far as a scholarly link, I have none that wouldn't require you to purchase access to trade journals. If you're a member of a university library, search their Onefile (or similar database) for BATD. I have not found any good free online references, but if you are interested enough to spend money, let me know and I can point you in the right direction.
The direct experience I have is from discussion with members of the scientific community, where we compared and contrasted the Buddhist ideals of the three jewels and the 8fp with the psychological perspectives on the 12 step process within support groups and straight cognitive behavioral therapies. There are a number of synchronized practices, and you can easily see where they have all borrowed from each other or resonate at the same levels of awareness. I would not consider behavioral therapies to be the end all, but certainly part of a well rounded path of self-realization, much as right action is a part of the path to enlightenment.
It is not my intent to persuade everyone to adopt a respectful view of psychology, but simply to say that I am connected into it, both in practice and study, and find your judgement to be directly and unequivocally flawed in this regard. There is ego and false notions within the field, and there is wisdom and compassion. This is true in any field.
With warmth,
Matt
I have not read any Tolstoy actually, but the situation you give seems to me to be quite appropriate and fun
You got it right earlier - we are in an internet forum - not a doctor's office. I don't think that you claim to be a Doctor or a Psychologist? As for your referral to depressed, envious and greedy psychologists - I find it much more skillfull to deal with the beams in one's own eye than to spend time pointing out the motes in others' - that way you will avoid feeding your ego.
Sherabdorje has done an excellent job of responding to your claims.
I'm still waiting for the research that you've mentioned before.
Mountains, congratulations. May you and all beings continue to be well and happy.
Metta
It was a point discussing weather results can be attained, or more likely to be attained from one school of thoughts or another.
To make the point i was trying to convey more clear by exaggerating, Say you have two schools. One where everyone is happy and one where everyone is miserable. If your goal is to be happy, you will obviously want to talk about the result of the schools before joining one of them.
yes, this would fit nicely with the well knowed general results of the people who went through the 12 steps and the cognitive behavioral therapies, which so many of them say things like "I was so miserable before, but now im so happy, im so at peace with the world, i haven't have any depression for so many years, anxiety is gone, i stopped hating myself, now i love myself and i love everyone etc... you should try it, everyone in the world should do behavioral therapies as it is so effective and bring peace and the end of suffering!! my back pain is gone to, so are my migraines that i had since i was a kid! It's wonderful!"
I don't think "work with" as in try to cultivate in one on one therapy, as the program is a community. "Work with" as in have a profound respect for the unique offerings of the program, and suggest, refer and treat simultaneously people who are in the program, yes, absolutely.
Specifically AA, as the archetype that others are modeled after, is something that I only know of working within the program itself. Its not really a one on one thing, its a community of support, and it is the community help in the steps that makes it strong, because there are many who can give testimony.
From what I've experienced, that is. Granted, my eyes are not perfect, but I have a profound respect for what 12 steppers have done for the world. I am also not a drunk, so I can't pretend to have gone through the process.
With warmth,
Matt
[/end thread hijack]
I'm unsure how psychologists suffering from depression has anything to do with the efficacy of antidepressants for any individual. In Europe, psychologists do not prescribe antidepressants - prescription only medications are prescribed by medical doctors or nurse practitioners.
In addition, some psychologists will suffer from depression, just as some buddhists do. Some psychologists will be taking antidepressants, just as some buddhists do. Some psychologists will be buddhists. Do you see the problem with your statement?
There is an excellent article on depression and antidepressants on the Tricycle site. It is written by an experienced buddhist practitioner and interviews several advanced buddhist practitioners who suffer from depression, some of whom needed antidepressants: http://www.tricycle.com/feature/prozac-enlightened-mind
I think that you would benefit tremendously from reading it. It presents both sides of the 'argument' and is balanced in its approach.
I know that you think that you are being compassionate and helpful by posting your advice on this subject, however, as you know, our own perceptions are often deceptive.
By the way, it is nice to see you finally acknowledging the usefulness of CBT and 12 steps as part of the path for some, although the picture you paint is an extreme one in terms of results. Often recovery is far more human and 'messy' with good days and bad days, and the dips in wellbeing that we are all familiar with.
metta
no, i did not acknowledging the usefulness of CBT and 12 steps. (not that i don't think it can be life saving, because it can)
i was being sarcastic about it's results and efficiency.
ps: thanks for the link
No offence.:D buddy
So do you grant that the use of antidepressant medication has its place among the various therapies for depression, or in some combination with these other therapies? I mean, I would not have gotten the impression that you believe that, based on some of the statements made, but if you actually believe that antidepressant medication can be beneficial when used appropriately, that would clear up a lot.
if you care to read what i have to say, then maybe it would be important to understand my motivations.
My effort are not to simply bash psychology for the sake of trashing psychology, to prove that what i do is superior or whatever...
That would be childish and absurd.
My effort are to dissipate the delusion of the efficiency of the almighty psychology in peoples mind; that block them from seing a clear path ahead of them, out of the pitt.
I believe that there is a general consensus, conscious or unconscious, that psychology is the authority and everything else is of lesser efficiency, everything else complement psychology.
People consider psychologist to be wise and to understand their mind.
They believe they are in good hands.
I believe this is a delusion simply because psychology do not understand the mind, and the tools used create far inferior results (if any).
So you end up with many people who simply cannot have sufficient fate in the Dhamma, seeing it as inferior to psychology.
in this way the right effort is much more difficult to maintain, progress slow or nonexistent, so people cannot help themselves properly simply because of this delusion.
I believe this idea should be turned around.
I believe that psychology should be considered a good complement to the Dhamma, not the other way around.
I think, coupled with the thought that antidepressant medication has a valid place (for some people) in the range of treatments for depression, that settles it for me.
My own experience is that the first psychiatrist I ever saw as a patient (I've also worked with a lot) was a Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist, and he was able to practice conventional psychiatry and Buddhism without problems. It has just never been a problem for me.
I think the problem with discussions like this is that a lot of the information is anecdotal and/or is heavily influenced by the writer's personal experience. I think we should seek more objectivity in public forums like this.
Antidepressants have so many drawbacks
1) Memory loss and other side effect in the long run
2) Addiction (Severe drawback. With time you need to put up the dosage as the patient gradually gets used to the drug
3) Drowsiness and vomiting
4) Once off the drugs you suffer from drug withdrawal symptoms
Most therapists/psychiatrists recommend drugs only as a last resort as far as I know. Psychologists do not recommend drugs at all and they normally go for CBT and other stuff which have their own issues such as slow progress. I am not a therapist but I personally think that it is advisable to not go for drugs unless the case is sever that it affects your day to day life.
Technology is so advanced and the blah blah I cannot believe they couldn't come up with a better remedy than this.