Off the Radar

Throughout all this, in my dealings with everyone from the medical and psychological communities to my family and friends, I became painfully aware of how differently people - even professionals - treat those that they feel are mentally or emotionally unstable. I was no longer a person, I was a disease, and a scary one, because even the professionals only knew so much about it, and most of what they “know” is largely conjecture. Everything I said had to be questioned and examined for validity, because it might all just be in my mind. I was a double conundrum because the arsenal of treatments that the world has thus far come up with to address the kinds of problems I was having were of no use to me anymore. The risks of another anti-depressant tipping the scales for me into psychosis again were too great for me to even consider. Dr. O kept saying, “Somebody’s just going to have to bite the bullet and prescribe something for you.” I just wanted to scream at him and say, “Who exactly should that person be? Are you going to be the one to take responsibility for me losing it if things go sour? Who do you think will really be paying the price if anything were to happen to my kids? What guarantees can you give me that nothing bad will happen? NONE!”
My husband was still afraid to leave me alone with the kids for any length of time. He had avoided working because of this fear for several months now. It was hard for me to reassure him as I felt the fear myself. When it all came down, I blamed the Effexor. As our finances reeled out of control, I contemplated seeking financial redress for my situation. I really felt like somebody in the pharmaceutical industry should pay for having kept secret the fact that Effexor could have such devastating effects if stopped abruptly. There was no indication of this on the labeling, only the usual mumbo jumbo about consulting a physician before stopping or starting any medication. If I had had any real idea of how potentially dangerous it was, I never would have stopped the way I did. A lot of internet surfing led me to discover that Wyeth-Ayerst had indeed known about the potential for severe withdrawal for eight years. I was angry that they couldn’t call a spade a spade, and made such a charade of promoting Effexor as “non-habit forming.” Other searching led me to discover I was not alone in having had an adverse reaction to this drug, or difficulty quitting. I also found many other anti-depressants, including Zoloft and especially Paxil, were not the wonder drugs that had been promised, but instead left broken and wounded people in the wake of their use.
There were law firms who dealt in such matters, but their dockets were filled with Paxil projects, because the drug was higher profile at the moment due to some suicides in the news. Since I had not actually killed myself or my kids, I was not as much on the radar. I had not lost enough to be worth media attention. I also learned that, even if I could find somebody to take my case, it could be years before I got anything out of the drug company, if ever. I alternated between days of thinking that they really owed me a large sum of money for wreaking such havoc in my life, and thinking that I really just wanted them to change the labeling so it wouldn’t happen to anyone else. Eventually I signed a petition for the latter, and hoped I wouldn’t regret it later, that I hadn’t overlooked some fine print that precluded me from bringing suit later on if possible.