Dear Scott:

Zoloft is an antidepressant, but it is prescribed at times, as it was in my case, for the sole purpose of alleviating OCD. Another SSRI antidepressant, Fluvoxamine (Luvox) is used primarily for the treatment of OCD.

You wrote: “I’d like to hear more about your individual experience because it’s probably good for you to talk about it”- are you referring to my last post to you where I wrote to you: “I can share more about my individual experience with these and other drugs”? If so, I offered to share specifically about my experience with Zoloft and the benzodiazepines you are considering. There are side effects to consider as well as addiction, particularly to the latter. Also, these drugs provide relief, at best (which is good enough when the distress is significant), but they do not provide healing. They do not cure a single thing. Quality psychotherapy is the way to heal while you take these drugs or not.

Without therapy, such practices as calming guided meditations, moving meditation (mindfulness), tai chi, slow yoga will slow down the anxious, rushing-to-think brain. These practices do work.

anita

Dear Scott:

My experience with psychiatric drugs (1996-2013):

1. There is no healing in psychiatric drugs/ medicine. At best there is a relief of distress. It can be helpful to be on those, to experience relief, while attending quality psychotherapy. Healing is in psychotherapy.

2. Zoloft is a stimulating SSRI, this is why I took it in the mornings. On the other hand, Luvox was not, and I took it at bedtime.

3. It is difficult for me to determine how hard it was to get off a specific psychiatric drug because I took three kinds. I think that the most difficulty was withdrawing from Klonipin, the benzodiazepine, anti-anxiety drug.  For 17 years taking Klonipin, I slept very well. Not when withdrawing. When withdrawing I experienced more anxiety than I did before I started taking it. The anxiety attacks were very difficult. After a few months of withdrawing and suffering from insomnia and increased anxiety, I went back on it for another year and finally withdrew from it successfully.

4. Having been on these drugs I slept well. I was still as anxious as before, still as dysfunctional as before, maybe even more dysfunctional (not operating for my own benefit, wasting my time and resources). At best, I didn’t feel as bad as before. Meaning, my subjective experience of my dysfunction was not as bad, at times, as before.

5. Anxiety is still part of my life. I am still working on it. As you know, intellect does not resolve anxiety. You can’t intellectualize anxiety away, reason it away… or cure it with any drug- there is no drug that will cure anxiety. It takes a process of healing. Part of healing takes courage- not intellect- but courage to endure fear and believe you can survive it. There is no substitute to the practice of Mindfulness in the process of healing.

anita

Dear Scott:

You wrote that medicine “doesn’t necessarily fix the problem”- in case of anxiety, you can ask the psychiatrist who prescribes Zoloft to you and who may prescribe other drugs for your anxiety/ OCD symptoms if these drugs can possibly fix the problem, or, in other words, cure the anxiety. I wonder if any psychiatrist will answer this question with a yes.

These drugs are at best “very helpful in relieving lots of stress and tension”- and there is a benefit for relief. But there is a price to pay for that relief.

I like your statement: “I will have to see what works and what doesn’t.”

You wrote: “I have noticed my anxiety/OCD… focuses on whatever is present in my life”- it is like fire, igniting whatever is in its way.

Healing is possible, through quality psychotherapy that I hope you will have one day. The practice of Mindfulness will help anytime, before therapy, the retraining of the mind. That is possible for you.

Post again, anytime.

anita