Positive effects:
- Less stuttering
- Overall good mood
- No depressive thoughts
- Almost no anxiety on any of the previously known anxiogenic circumstances
Negative effects:
- Motivation is significantly reduced
- Unable to motivate myself - need to plan well ahead to execute a simple task
- Concentration is reduced significantly - unable to remain in a task for longer period of time
- Affection towards the family members is reduced.
- Sore throats due to throat infection occurred every month and it spread to all family members. Here, the mechanism may be considered as follows. Fluoxetine has some opposing effects to the stress hormone cortisol in the body. When fluoxetine is taken at the night time, it may suppress the release of cortisol during the night time. Less cortisol means less anti-inflammatory effects in the body since cortisol is a steroid and has good anti-inflammatory property. While taking lectures, due to the loudness of voice and continuous speaking, throat muscles may get injured. This injury will heal normally if there is enough cortisol in the body. Since, fluoxetine suppressed the night time cortisol release, this injury may not heal during the night time thus making it prone to the harmful effects of tooth paste in the next morning. Also, there is a possibility of infection occurring.
Although the positive effects of this combination (fluoxetine and supradyn recharge) is highly beneficial to me, the negative effects did affect my progress in my career and in my personal life. Hence, I decided to try something different. I thought that this is the time to stop my treatment. So, I decided to stop fluoxetine and supradyn recharge completely. I devised a plan to stop these two drugs.
First, I stopped supradyn recharge only. I continued with fluoxetine 1 capsule at night. Initially for two weeks, I had few headaches due to low serotonin. So, I took 4 bananas (2/morning and 2/night) to replace supradyn recharge's pyridoxine HCl (5 mg). Because each banana contains approximately 0.5 mg of pyridoxine HCl. This helped me a lot not to feel any sudden depressive feelings. Slowly I reduced the number of bananas to 1 per day. During this time, I took ginger coffee also to relieve my headache. I took ginger coffee (1 cup in morning and 1 cup in evening) for almost 40 days. Ginger coffee was prepared by adding 1 teaspoonful (~5 ml) of ginger extract (prepared by squeezing cut pieces of ginger in a mortar and pestle) to regular coffee. Ginger coffee helped me a lot in avoiding paracetamol tablets for my headaches. Sometimes the headache disappeared within 10 minutes of taking ginger coffee.
After 4-6 weeks of stopping supradyn recharge, I stopped taking fluoxetine completely. No tapering of doses. This time also I was continuing my ginger coffee. Also, I took green tea in the night. Green tea has EGCG, which has good anti-anxiety effect. I think it enhances the GABA function. So, I could sleep well in the night without fluoxetine. This was really something great for me. So, I had good sleep. I could get up in morning with some refreshed mind and energy. I took green tea for 1-2 weeks. Then I stopped taking green tea also.
After these things, I did not feel any low mood, depressive thoughts and less motivation. I felt good mood, somewhat increased motivation, no head aches etc.
Positive effect of no drugs:
- Good mood
- Good energy
- No significant effect on stuttering - stuttering was there but since no anxiety was there, I could speak to some extent by using filler words like "something like that" "Actually" etc.
- Good improvement in concentration
- Good improvement in motivation
- Good bright night vision
- Apparently no effect on driving
- Libido - initially improved but later stabilized - but better than that observed with fluoxetine
Negative effects:
- Although no appreciable anxiety is there, gasping for breath while talking occurred - indicating oxidative stress
- Frequent dizziness spells - increased while taking non-dairy creamer and decreased while taking milk for coffee.
- Premature ejaculation
Then, I focused on my diet. Because, my last blood check up revealed that I had increased LDL cholesterol, decreased HDL cholesterol, increased total cholesterol and increased uric acid. I used to take more proteins like fish, eggs, chicken and mutton to maintain my neurotransmitter levels. This excessive protein intake might have led to increased levels of uric acid. So, I decided to reduce my protein intake.
I took only rice in the night time. I completely avoided any protein rich food like chicken or fish. Occasionally I took 1 egg. This gave me the following results. I restricted protein intake to my breakfast /lunch time.
Positive effect of no drugs:
- Good mood
- Good energy in the morning - I could get up early in the morning - No residual sleepy mood.
- No significant effect on stuttering - stuttering was there but since no anxiety was there, I could speak to some extent by using filler words like "something like that" "Actually" etc.
- Good improvement in concentration.
- Good improvement in motivation.
Now, since I have gasping for breath while talking, it seems to due to the oxidative stress in the body. So, I am trying some antioxidants like Vitamin E and Vitamin C.
