“Multiple drugs overload the system in ways we can’t predict,” said Rene Muller, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins. “Everyone metabolizes drugs differently, which also affects how they interact with each other.”
Four years ago, Charlotte Sieber met Jennifer Roeder, who told of her own travails trying to come off psychiatric medications when they failed to help her feel less depressed.
“It was the first time she heard that maybe the drugs were hurting, not helping,” Roeder said.
Sieber began to slowly wean herself off her many medications, tapering the drugs one at a time, according to family and friends, though she often had to stop to let her body and mind recover.
“It’s really hard to withdraw from antidepressants,” said New York psychiatrist and pharmacology expert Julie Holland. In some cases, “people feel like cold water is running down their spine. They can feel their brain sloshing around, or electric zaps in their head.”
By July 2015, Sieber had successfully discontinued all but one of her psychiatric medications.
“One of her worst [side effects] was sleep. She could not sleep,” said Pati Wolfe, who often joined Sieber in the struggle to withdraw from drugs. “This went on for months and months. Maybe a couple of hours a night was all she would get.”
It was so bad that Sieber had to move out of the bedroom she shared with her husband so he could get some sleep. Heart palpitations, obsessive worrying and anxiety clouded her nights. She lost weight and sometimes told friends it was too hard to talk to them.