[ChangingMyMind]

I am not sure this is the right place to put this but I think it's extremely important to share.

If you've been on this board for a few years you may recognize me. I was here around 2013-2014 posting about my inability to take medicine anymore. I was on Celexa for 11 years and was forced to go off due to medical issues that we believed we're being caused by Celexa. I won't go into all the details about that since that is not what this post is about.

After going off Celexa I got really sick and have been seeing doctors even to this day to figure it out. They threw every antidepressant they could think at me which never helped. They tried benzos, also didn't help. I would get rashes and allergic reactions to every medicine, supplement or herb I would take. After years of trying I knew something else had to be the cause. I was told it was chronic fatigue, fibro, ad withdrawal, IBS, you name it. But I didn't buy into those BS diagnosis so I kept looking. Especially since I've been mostly healthy my whole life until 2013.

Now after 3.5 years of struggling with this I had all but given up. I really thought I was just going crazy or just dying and nothing would help. Well that all changed yesterday when I was finally diagnosed finally with a disease that I was fully tested for.

I was diagnosed with Lyme. I am so grateful now that I have a diagnosis! I can now start to treat myself to get better. I am however extremely pissed off at the medicinal industry. All the doctors I have seen that never tested me properly. I was tested twice for lyme before and it came back negative. What I didn't know and what they didn't tell me is that it's very likely to get a false negative on the standardized Lyme test. But now I know and hopefully this will help some of you.

If you have a mental illness I would suggest getting to a naturopathic doctor and have a Lyme test done! If nothing else at least you can rule it out before spending any time on antidepressants or other mood stabilizers. I personally believe they do more harm than good but I am not a doctor, just my opinion.

Plus the sooner you find Lyme the easier it is to treat. I've had it too long now, so it's going to be a long hard journey for me. I just hope this can help some of you in some way. If not just one of you. Even then it's worth the effort to post this.

No matter what your story is though... Just don't give up! Things do get better.


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[Lost_in_the_woods]

for this post
First of all I am very glad to hear you have found a proper dx I have been dxd w/ severe MDD since well Forever and no ADs have EVER helped...similar to you most made me worse or physically very ill. For myself, my drs and I have been exploring life long PTSD as most likely cause..bc it is environmental not chemical may explain why the med don't help... I also went thru a period of trying to get my GP to help me look into a possible physical or neurological illness as well..still not entirely convinced that I may have something underlying as well, but like you I was thrown all the usual "depression related illnesses" and ineffective med regiments that cooresponed...nothing fit or helped I eventually just gave up and stopped seeing that dr after she apparently decided I must be a hypochondriac...cuz I got to the point where I would come in with a common problem to be chked out like a cough that had persisted after a cold and had concerns it might have turned to bronchitis or pneumonia and if she didn't find 100% conclusive evidence..her response became " I think you really just need to treat your depression"...WTF???!!! So yeah, I basically just stopped going to any physical Dr unless I felt it was absolutely nessecary...
Unfortunately this problem.is far too common.in the USA...in a lot of other countries...it is unheard of to dx a psych conditions w/o ruling out at least more prevalent dieases and illnesses that could better explain any psych symptoms...but here in the good ol US of A.... we almost automatically get thrown over to psych...cuz all the tests and diagnostics and imagining etc =big $$ paid out by insurance and much less $$ paid into BigPharma. ....I am not particularly a,conspiracy theorist...this is to me just an ugly factual truth about our country.

[jake539]

I suffered from Bi Polar for 10 year. Regular Dr. Procs greatly known hospitals the whole range. I think I took every p med invented. I was about to lose hope and my mind. Finally an old Pdoc took one look at me. He spent 20 minutes with me. He gave me a cocktail of medications. I have been perfect since then. It is not the regular treatment for Bi polar, but it works perfect. He has a reputation for working with Bi Polars and having great success. I think it his because he listens. He understands how to treat our disease correctly. Without years of exportation of medications on us. After 10 years it took 1 visit. I lost 50 lbs from the other medications . So look for the right Dr. They are out there. It may be hard to find them. But it is worth it. I suffered for 10 years and dozens of medications without a cure. But there was a Doctor out there. Who knew how to fix me easy. So look like crazy for them.

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[AncientMelody]

What test found the lyme disease when the standard test did not?

[-jimi-]

I've had Lyme but I was mentally ill long before. Lyme did not affect me mentally, but it can really do that with some people. After getting strep throat as an adult, some mental symptoms that I used to have as a young teenager popped up again. So even someone who was crazy from the start can actually have a relapse brought on by an immune system reaction because of bacteria. Quite complicated really. As I slowly healed from strep fully, the symptoms went away (Took over 6 months).

I'm just waiting to be reinfected with Lyme, "everyone" gets it where I live and doctors don't take it very seriously.

[qwerty68]

I have had MH issues since 1995, it was only last fall that a pdoc ran some tests to find an underlying cause. I have had at least 10-12 different docs in that time and have never had any tests ordered by any of them.

It seems really odd not to do that because it is often cheaper to treat the underlying cause then pay for psych meds for years and decades. Plus, it seems more ethical to do so but maybe that is just me.

The thyroid test came back normal but my testosterone was extremely low. I have massively increased my T levels naturally. It is still low but am waiting for another test at the end of the month before I consider hormone therapy. My pdoc thinks it could greatly help my MH issues but my PCP says it is unlikely to help outside of having more energy because she said it is not very likely I have had low levels for 21 years without having more than just MH problems.

It did make me look into why I am having issues. Long story short: early 95 I had a grand mal, but I started having auras in 1992 but I didn't know what they were. A few months later I started having headaches, switching seizure meds didn't help, neither did the septoplasty. A few months after that my depression started and has been downhill since. I have rummaged through my memory and have only come up with one possibility but it is a long shot.

In 1988 I was in Panama at the US Army Jungle Warfare School for 2 months and was on an anti-malaria drug once a week for at least 10 weeks. I can't remember which one, it was a huge horse pill. About 6 months after I had a rash on my arm that looked like ringworm(it wasn't, no diagnosis was made), it went away after a few weeks. Mefloquine can do that and headaches, seizures and depression are long term side effects. I can't say it was that drug but it is the go to anti-malarial for the military. I doubt anything could be proven and I am probably on the wrong track since I was on it so briefly and it was years later when I had all this bad crap start but there has been no reason found for my seizure and I have had lots of CAT/MRI scans and EEG's over the years and nothing came of them. Since my grand mal I have had 3 siblings get diagnosed with epilepsy so I am probably grasping for the weakest tree branch.

[kecanoe]

Mefloquine caused an acquaintance of mine to become psychotic and he killed himself.

[erobern12]

Originally Posted by ChangingMyMind

If you have a mental illness I would suggest getting to a naturopathic doctor and have a Lyme test done! If nothing else at least you can rule it out before spending any time on antidepressants or other mood stabilizers. I personally believe they do more harm than good but I am not a doctor, just my opinion.

Thanks for posting this. I too had a terrible experience with SSRIs, SNRIs, and other classes of medications to deal with GAD and MDD. I became much more anxious and also suicidal, even weeks later after starting a medication.

I realize it's a stressful world these days but do 20% (or more) of us really have a chemical imbalance? I asked a psychiatrist this and her response was it must be because otherwise if the medications didn't work, people wouldn't come back. Ok...