Stuck on meds: Some can't quit antidepressants

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Not hard for everyone
“I don’t think they’re difficult to go off,” said Alan Schatzberg, chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine. “The vast majority of people aren’t that sensitive.”

Schatzberg recently chaired a Wyeth-sponsored panel of physicians that offered guidelines for how to manage “antidepressant discontinuation syndrome,” the preferred medical term for what a layperson would think of as withdrawal.

Terms like “antidepressant discontinuation syndrome” demonstrate the pharmaceutical industry’s efforts to downplay the problem, charged Karen Menzies, an attorney who has been involved in litigation over the phenomenon.

“Withdrawal is the word that is used in Europe,” she said.

Feels like withdrawl
But drug companies insist antidepressants can’t cause withdrawal because they are not technically addictive. Even so, many patients who have gone through the experience say it feels like withdrawal to them. Some can’t work, drive, socialize or do other everyday things for weeks.

“You just feel awful,” said the children’s entertainer, who has taken a small dose of Effexor for eight years rather than suffer through the withdrawal experience. But he said the inconvenience is worth it for the benefits the drug provided him when he did need it.

Taking SRIs indefinitely is not an attractive option for many patients because it means putting up with unpleasant side-effects such as weight gain and sexual dysfunction. For women who want to have children it’s an especially risky choice; researchers have documented withdrawal in newborns whose mothers were taking antidepressants, and some SRIs have been linked to birth defects.

Having to keep taking Paxil makes O’Brien angry because she feels at the mercy of GlaxoSmithKline, the company that makes it.

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Though a GSK spokesperson said the symptoms associated with discontinuing Paxil are generally mild and manageable, in O’Brien’s eyes the company is profiting by having hooked her on one of its drugs.

“If they ever did quit making Paxil I’d be in so much trouble,” O’Brien said. “What really makes me mad is if I can’t get off it, why am I paying them? They should be paying me.”

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