Moose, I so relate, the side effects certainly for me, can be worse than the illness, almost fatal and I'm sure fatal for other people around the world. I'm an 11 years sober alcolholic in AA and three years after I got sober I surrendered to the fact that I have serious mental illness too. I started seeing psychiatrists and they started medicating me. I got sicker and sicker and sicker over the course of seeing four psychiatrists over 6/7 years. I ultimately lost everything - material and non material things, my career, my house, my family and friends (as they couldn't deal with a person with daily suicidal ideation and a person with mental illness). And two years ago, in a 100% serious attempt to take my life, I nearly succeeded and was just so tenuously attached to life during a 5 day coma.

Fast forward to moving from Melbourne to the town I am now in 20 months ago and my psychiatrist soon established that for me (not for all Bipolars though) SSRI's are CONTRAINDICATED for me and were responsible (along with my illnesses themselves of course) for all the losses, all the years of daily suicidal ideation and finally the near successful attempt on my life.

Parallel to all of that, when I started on psych meds I was 60kg, a very healthy weight for me. I had been up and down all my life but had struck on a healthy way of eating, but that went out the window as due to two classes of meds, my weight ballooned to 114kg - way beyond the highest weight I had ever been in my life before that. One factor was Seroquel, which makes a person ravenous 24 hours a day - I still wake up in the middle of the night from a deep sleep and want food. I am on a huge dose of 800mg at night, which I must take, as I simply wouldn't sleep without it and if I lack sleep, I manifest all the complicated aspects of Bipolar and panic and anxiety disorders and my functionality plummets and I get hopless, and then suicidal really quick. So unless something else comes along that would replace Seroquel, I'm stuck with it - I even have additional night meds on top of that - the chronic life-long Insomnia (coupled with sleep apnea) mean I need that.

Then there are all the mood stabilisers, I have been on - loads of different ones and I am on Lithium now, which works really well, but has all the aformentioned Thyroid problems everyone has discussed. And when the Thyroid is not functioning properly it slows down metabolism and thus affects weight as well. My latest test has shown normal (after years of abnormal) and that is just so fantastic.

Three years ago when I hit the highest weight of 114kg and couldn't do anything about it I had a Lap Band put in but it was a disaster from the start. The physical trauma, and thus psychological trauma it caused was unbelieveable I begged a surgeon to take it out last year. (They call is "keyhole sugery" but that ******** - I have huge slashes across my abdomen). But unfortunately the Lap band sugery, or the band being in for that two and a half years has caused permanent damage to my swallowing function. Even though the band is out I still choke and throw up on food. What a disaster!! I have a new gastro guy who has put me on meds to help my swallowing function and they are helping to a certain extent, but I still choke and throw up at times -and that's without that band being in now.

There's loads more side effect stories in my psych history but these are the most serious ones and I like to post about them because not only does it help me to vent, but they are cationary tales for other patients too. In particular, if I had known that SSRI's are cointraindicated for some Bipolar patients I would have been informed and made decisions based on the facts, rather than being driven by psychiatrists who have an "unholy alliance" with BIG PHARMA, which I believe is part of the problem. It was very clear to them that I was getting sicker on those meds but it didn't stop them prescribing them to me.