Hi all

Most all of us have trouble coming off the drugs, even after the initiating cause/s are gone and we are feeling mentally okay. It is not easy to understand the process of our minds and bodies coming to terms with the withdrawal of the drugs. I have a way of explaining it to myself which helps me to be a bit more patient with the process. It is even based in the actual process which makes it reasonable too

If we look at most drugs we take, such as antibiotics, the amount in our bloodstream is directly related to how much we take of them. If this worked for serotonin we would all just be drinking Serotonin Juice. It would be easy. One glass a day keeps depression away sort of thing. Unfortunately serotonin is unable to be taken, it has to be produced by the body, and there is the tricky bit. This is more or less how it works although I wouldn't put it in a science test and expect an A. I hope you can work with the style of thinking, it is quite abstract

Working with your neurotransmitters.

There are 3 aspects involved in the action of neurotransmitters (including serotonin). These are multiple body chemicals that run the whole nerve system.

Production: For the purposes of the story these all get produced and are dumped in a central pool. Imgaine a factory in the Brain, in our case we are interested in the Serotonin Factories producing Serotonin and dumping it into the central pool. We all have lots of Serotonin factories, some of us fewer due to genetics. The Neurotransmitter factories are all on the end of nerve endings and put out into the Pool. If you get smart you could call the Pool the Neural Synapse.


The Pool: The Neural Synapse - this is the gap between nerve endings. All the various Neurotransmitter factories are dumping into the pool. When they are dumped in the pool this causes a reaction in other nerves leading away from the pool. Depending on the amount and type of neurotransmitter the nerves fire to produce a different response. In totality this pool affects all body functions. In particular, along with Serotonin the other group of neurotransmitters which we are interested in is the Adrenal ones. These regulate a lot of body functions including the Stay at Peace/Flight or Fight reactions.

The Vacuum Cleaners: Alongside the Factories the body has worked out an efficient re-cycling system so it can re-use the neurotransmitters. The vacuum cleaners suck the neurotransmitters out of the pool and recycle them back through the Factory. You may recognise these more easily if they were named Re-uptake terminals.

So, when all is going well, the Factories are producing perfectly balanced amounts of all the neurotransmitters. The vacuum cleaners are keeping the pool balanced and we are happy, peaceful fuzzy wuzzies. Then we get ourselves in a stress bundle, for whatever reasons, and one of the effects is that the Factories cannot produce enough serotonin. Either the Factories get burnt out from overwork and shut themselves down or the drain on the Pool is so much that there is not enough neurotransmitters in the Pool. The result? The nerves feeding off the Pool neurotransmitters don't get enough and we get tired and depression symptoms set in.

Here is where it gets tricky to treat - if we could just inject a top up of neurotransmitters into the Pool we would be set! But.. we have to work on the body systems. We have a choice - Factories or Vacuum Cleaners.

The drugs we take work on the Vacuum cleaners. There name SSRI says it - Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. "Serotonin Vacuum Cleaner Inhibitors in this example" They put a flap on the Vacuum Cleaners so they can't suck up as much. This leaves more of the Serotonin in the Pool and makes the nerves happier. Thus we become more calm and happy again. They say "Selective" as they target the Serotonin Vacuum Cleaners but all of them have some affect on the Adrenal Vacuum Cleaners as well. So we get side-effects from these being inhibited -like tired, less active, weight gain and sex issues.

Got that?

Well here is where it gets interesting. Over time as whatever cause the Factories to shut down gets changed and the body is able to reopen them. The drug is still regulating the Vacuum Cleaners to keep serotonin steady. The body says to itself, hmmm, don't need so many factories as there is plenty of serotonin, might as well keep them on minimum action. The Vacuum cleaners are a bit cross at being limited in only so much being picked up so they are exercising and boosting their suck power to try keep their targets up. So, here we are, closed Factories and Super powered vacuum cleaners. The longer you are on the drugs and the higher the dose the more this happens.

Here is an example. For me, 40mg of drug, 10 years. Say a normal person has 100 factories and 100 Vacuum cleaners. After this time on 40mg, say I have 60 Factories happily producing and the other 40 on standby because the drugs are keeping the serotonin levels up by limiting the Reuptake.

Then I decide to pull all 40mg of the Drugs. Wooop!! Out comes the rug supporting the balance that has been established. Vrrrrrrrrroooooom goes the Super Powered Vacuum Cleaners sucking up the Serotonin out of the Pool. The 40 Factories get a major wake up call. Start up!!! All the staff are out on holiday and there are no resources ordered to start the factories. The system is stuffed for the meantime. Neurotransmitters up and down with no balance or consistency as the system tries to sort out the mess.

Although the drugs are Selective to Serotonin, they still affect other systems. So we get the symptoms of Low Serotonin (depression types of symptoms) and messed up Adrenal (most every other symptom)

Does it start to make sense why we need to go off these drugs slowly? It pays to shut down just 5mg of the drugs, let 5 Factories struggle to regenerate (about a month), reset 5 of the Vacuum cleaners and then move on. The worst case scenario of just cold turkey of the whole does is devastating to the body system. Little wonder a lot of us think we are dying if we try it.

Hope this made some sense to you. It certainly helps me when I feel like tossing the pills.

This post has been edited by Herald: Aug 10 2009, 12:30 AM