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Meta said:
Anyway does anyone else feel that perhaps antidepressants and other psychotropics are addicting? This was a big part of the thesis of Peter Breggin's book "Toxic Psychiatry" where he found people went off their antidepressants and then went right back on because they felt they had relapsed. His counterargument was that people were actually undergoing withdrawal from the antidepressants and mistook these withdrawal symptom for the return of their depression.

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Meta, I think that people's symptoms of depression and anxiety return after they stop the drugs before they never really "cured" these problems. The drugs were helping with the symptoms of depression and masking the underlying condition. When the drugs are stopped, the conditions are unmasked again. I think this is why, especially for depression, psychotherapy can be helpful in addition to meds. In some cases, psychotherapy can help solve the root cause of the depression so that when you go off the meds your depression does not return. I was depressed for years and psychotherapy helped me beat it (I did not do ADs).

I also think there is such a thing as "making peace" with one's brain biochemistry. I recently began taking Buspar, a psychotropic, for anxiety. (It is not addicting.) It makes me feel a helluva lot better, it's very stimulating to me, and makes me feel more "up." When I am through this extremely high stress time in my life, I will stop taking it. I am sure I will in some sense miss the energy and feeling of elation it gives me, but those feelings are not really me. I am naturally a lower energy person with fairly even mood, tending toward depression if anything, and am not prone to mania, like this drug can produce in me. I will miss the drug, but it is just not me, and I am, in general, content to be me. I am at peace with my biochemistry. (I realize others may have more serious problems than I do and it is not that simple for them.)

Anyway, just some thoughts....