DEPRESSION DRUGS TURNED ME INTO AN ADDICT
Luke Montagu, 45, is heir to the earl of Sandwich and lives at Mapperton, Dorset. Last year, the father-of-four founded the Council for evidence-based Psychiatry to highlight the risks from psychiatric drugs. Here, he describes the devastating effect the pills have had on his life . . . WHEN I was 19 I had a sinus operation that left me with headaches and a sense of distance from the world.
I saw my GP after a few weeks, who told me what I now realise is a medical myth — that I had a chemical imbalance in my brain.
The real problem was probably a reaction to the anaesthetic, which might have improved itself if left. But I was prescribed various anti-
depressants including Prozac. These didn’t help so I saw other doctors and psychiatrists, but no one really listened when I suggested it had begun with the operation.
All offered different diagnoses and all gave me drugs. I was prescribed nine different pills in four years.
Although the drugs never made me feel better for long, I reluctantly concluded that I did have something wrong with me — I’d tried to come off the drugs a couple of times but felt so awful that I went back to them.
I thought I needed the medication, but in fact I was going into withdrawal each time. In 1995, I was given the antidepressant Seroxat and took it for seven years.
When I tried to come off it I felt dizzy and couldn’t sleep. I was also in a state of extreme anxiety. These were withdrawal symptoms but, thinking I was seriously ill, I saw a psychiatrist.
He gave me four new drugs, including the sleeping pill clonazepam. I quickly felt better, not realising I’d become as dependent as a junkie on heroin.
I functioned OK for a few years, but gradually became more and more tired and forgetful. So, in 2009, believing it was due to the drugs, I booked into an addiction clinic.
My psychiatrist advised me to come off the clonazepam right away and within three days I was hit by a tsunami of horrific symptoms — my brain felt like it had been torn in two, there was a high-pitched ringing in my ears and I couldn’t think.
I now know this was terrible advice: rapid withdrawal from long-term use of sleeping pills is nearly always a disaster. The detox was the start of nearly seven years of hell. It was as if parts of my brain had been erased.
About three years ago, I very slowly began to recover. I still have a burning pi ns and needles s ensation throughout my body, loud tinnitus and a feeling of intense agitation.
But my mind is back, and I’m determined to try to help others avoid this terrible trap.