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Prozac Mania - Page 4

© John McManamy

In the end, I went with the devil I knew, but it took me another 24 hours to come down off of that terrible high. Who knows what would have happened had I taken that extra tablet. Would my family's lawyers be negotiating with the drug company's lawyers at this very moment? Or would I be trying to convince a skeptical judge and jury that "a pill made me do it?" Perhaps I would have made only a minor ass of myself, and deemed myself lucky as I buried my head in the ground to hide my shame.

Of course, most consumers of antidepressants don't have to worry about such things. Some 40 million people worldwide have used Prozac after all, the vast majority with satisfactory results. Clearly the greater good far outweighs the harm and risk of harm, but users need to be aware of those risks and exercise due care. The drug companies, after all, have been exceedingly less than candid, and the medical profession has largely fallen down in its duties to inform its patients.

Accordingly, if soon after beginning antidepressant treatment you start feeling uncharacteristically hyper, call your doctor at once and stop taking the medication while you still have your wits about you. Your doctor may adjust your dose or switch medications to get you on something that works for you.

A recent study by Eli Lilly has found low dose Prozac (20 mg a day) to be effective against depression, with lower frequencies of "adverse events" compared to earlier studies of patients receiving doses of up to 80 mgs a day. Moreover, there was no difference in discontinuation between the Prozac group and the control subjects.

Those who have had bad experiences with the drug mentioned in this article may have been on high doses. The bank robber cited at the beginning of this piece was on an unusually high dose of more than 100 mgs.

If, after reading this, you feel you are ready to flush your pills down the toilet - hold on. If you have been taking antidepressants for some time, then you will need to be gradually weaned off of them under a doctor's supervision over a period of weeks or months.

If an antidepressant has harmed you or your family, you may have cause for a legal action, but this is something you would need to take up with a lawyer who specializes in these kinds of cases.

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