For most of the last 7 years I have taken an anti-depressant. It started as a last ditch effort by a general practitioner. He just couldn't figure out why I had stomach pain every day. I sat in his office after many invasive tests and he told me that he didn't know what else to try. His thought was that it could be anxiety. He was the doctor and I was in pain. I went with it. I left the office with a prescription (when they still wrote them on paper), got into my car, and cried. The stigma overwhelmed me. Was I really that incapable of living my life? This and many other scary throughts raced through me. However, without the knowledge of other options, I did it.
At no time in the following few years that I was a patient of that doctor was the medicine discussed. Well, it was once, but only to raise the dose. He didn't think it was helping enough. Did he encourage me to see therapy? No. Did he discuss alternative threatment? No. Apparently the thought was once an SSRI user, always an SSRI user.
After moving to Boston I started therapy, but was still taking the medication. After a couple of years I decided that I didn't want to take it anymore. I met with a psychiatrist to dicuss weaning. He convinced me that his plan would safely rid me of these and everything would be fine. This was NOT the case. After following what I later learned was an extremely dangerous plan, I was med free. Med free, yes but also in crisis. I was experiencing a serious withdrawal with both emotional and physical symptoms. In consulting with my therapist we decided that I had no choice but to start taking medicine. However, I switched to something different. To do this I had to return to the psychiatrist. It was in this visit that I informed him of what his weaning plan did to me and how sick it had made me. He appologized and wrote me something new. How easy for him to do having not had to deal with it personally. I decided to not continue receiving "care" from him.
Fast forward to 2011. I took the entire year to SLOWLY wean myself down, spending months at a time between changes. It was also in 2011 that I began bi-weekly acupuncture visits. This therapy has completely changed me on so many levels-more on that later. When I was close to the final dose I began discussing a detox plan with my acupuncturist. Little did I know that this even existed! Auricular (ear) acupuncture is used to detox from any number of things: prescription drugs, illegal drugs, cigaretts, and even sugar consumption. My plan is to come every day for 2 weeks. I get 5 needles placed in ear ear and sit for about an hour. One day there was also a needle in my leg and shoulder. In addition to that there are press tacks that stay in for a few days (look like very small band-aids but have a needle in them, photos 2 & 3).
I have completed my first week. It's been really hard, but I know it would have been so much worse without the acupuncture help. No, the needles don't hurt =)
