Hi, I am Jeff Thrasher.

 

Here is my story about my history with medications and how I shifted into a position to help people come off antidepressants and pharmaceutical dependencies.

 

In the fall of 1998, I was 21, and had the first of my 3 shoulder surgeries on my left shoulder. This was when I started taking A LOT of hydrocodone to keep the pain at bay. I didn’t know it at the time, I was slowing growing my dependency to pharmaceutical drugs. Just before Christmas of 1998 I underwent my second and much more reconstructive surgery. Again, I was showered in pain killers for months. I had no idea I was physically hooked on hydrocodone until the night I ran out of my pills. That night was horrific. I had never experienced chemical withdrawals like this. My entire body was wrapped in the feeling of not being able to sit still. At the time I was in a toxic relationship. In no way could I confide in her that I was going through these withdrawals out of fear of ridicule and judgment. I was ashamed because I felt like a “junkie”. After a couple of weeks of pure sleepless nights my life started to return to the hydrocodone free days. My mind was clearer, and things were getting better. Shoulder was recovering but not at the speed I hoped it would. But life was better.

 

Less than a year later, my father took his own life, and I was the one that found him. My world was completely shattered. The family doctor heard about what I had gone through and told my mom to have me come in. When I got there, we talked about the feelings of anxiety that I would most likely encounter after going through such a traumatic event. I truly feel like he prescribed me Xanax out of a good place. I really think he thought it would help me. And was he right!!! It made me feel great!! Only problem was my body grew tolerant to it extremely fast!! So, to feel that “good” anti-anxious feeling, I had to start upping my dose a lot. I found that when waking the next morning after a day of taking Xanax that my level of anxiety would be through the roof. Little did I know that what I felt was anxiety and it was the beginning stages of withdrawals of Xanax. My doctor wasn’t willing to fill my script anymore and when my supply ran out it was unreal how bad the withdrawals were. I laid in bed sleepless, fighting off the zombie arms and legs that come along with these types of withdrawals, the never-ending feeling to get up and pace. Fighting a war against my own body and refusing to tell anyone what I was going through. I was afraid of being judged by even my closest friends and loved ones. During my withdrawals from Xanax, I was told that a 3rd shoulder surgery was being planned. When I was told this news I completely fell apart at the doctor’s office. I didn’t want to go through the hell of surgery again. At the same time, the addict in me was sitting there rubbing his hands and feet together salivating at the idea of being handed multiple scrips for pain killers. My third surgery wasn’t as invasive as my second one, but it still came with a couple scripts of hydrocodone. I remember going to see my surgeon for a follow up and I said, “is there any way I can get another script of hydrocodone for the pain, my nephew flushed all of our meds down the toilet thinking it was funny.” He looked at me and said, “I will fill this script for you, but this is it, don’t ever ask me for more painkillers again, you won’t get them from me.” He knew I was abusing them. I should have had at least two more weeks of pills left. When I filled that last script, I knew I need to treat them as if they were precious. This was my first time to teach myself how to taper off a drug. It was still no fun coming off them but not as bad as the times before when I stopped taking them cold turkey. 

​

Once life calmed down after my last shoulder surgery, and I finished with physical therapy, I was slipping into a very dark place. I could feel myself falling into a deep depression. My mom convinced me to go see a doctor about what was going on with my emotional state. I still remember going to the psychiatrist for the first time. One thing to note here, I didn’t have health insurance, so I had to go to a government funded mental facility. The psychiatrist and I talked about what happened with my dad then we talked about my depression. She handed me Zoloft and Zyprexa. I had no idea what these drugs were, never heard of them but was willing to take anything to make me feel better. Must remind yourself this was in 2000, there wasn’t Google and YouTube to pull information from. I had scheduled a follow-up appointment to see the psychiatrist again the following Tuesday. I had been on my meds for an entire 5 days and I was feeling so much better. My mood had lifted, and life seemed to be moving up. I met with the psychiatrist and explained to her how I was already feeling much better and that the pills must be helping. She replied “it’s not the drugs making you feel better. Zoloft can take a couple of weeks for you to feel a change in mood. So, we’re going to add another drug to your daily regimen. You clearly have a chemical imbalance.” I like how they said that without ever taking any blood or doing any brain scans to test for a chemical imbalance. This began doctors seeing me as another one of their dart boards, “let’s just throw stuff at it and see what sticks”. This is an excellent time to also add that NO ONE EVER TOLD ME ABOUT ANY SIDE AFFECTS TO ANY OF THESE DRUGS. Come to find out the reason I was feeling better was the Zyprexa was allowing me to sleep. Since middle school, I have struggled with sleep. After my father’s suicide, my sleeping went from bad to non-existent. It’s amazing how much clearer your mind is when you don’t have the haze of insomnia blocking out the world. I was on the first cocktail of pills for a couple of months. I was also moved from that clinic to another more long-term government paid mental health program. When I started at the new location, I was given a counselor and another psychiatrist. I told the psychiatrist that the meds they had me on wasn’t really helping. I explained how they seemed to help at first but quickly stopped having any effect on my mental state. In my nonprofessional opinion, it’s because I grew tolerant to the Zyprexa. The Zyprexa was also causing me to gain weight scary fast. After talking to my doctor about this he immediately, without tapering me off the meds I was currently on, put me on Effexor and Seroquel. Now that I was on the new medication, things were better at first and I attribute that to being able to sleep again. I never grew tolerant to Seroquel. At the time, I felt it was a combination of the drugs that was helping me manage my emotions better, not realizing that sleep was helping me the most. 

​

My Effexor journey started at 37.5 mg and somehow continued to skyrocket up to 300mg. While on Effexor I never noticed a feeling of being better mentally. Things started sliding in the opposite direction. The higher the doses got, the number I felt to the world. I had no real emotions. I felt like I was just walking through my days completely lost. The only emotion I felt like I could truly feel and express was anger or rage. Everything else was a fleeting memory of a life that once had feeling. In the summer of 2002; I had been on Effexor for over a year and my sister Tammy asked me if I would please go to Europe with her and my 8-year-old niece for the month of August. She thought it would be good for me to get away from my everyday world that seemed to have me wrapped in chains. She was right, something about changing my surroundings helped me realize that I wanted to be better again. I think one of the best things for me during my trip to Europe was that I walked EVERYWHERE!! I lost over 20 pounds in a month. By the time I came home, I was feeling better and looking better too. During my trip I decided no matter what - I was getting off the meds they had put me on. I had a few late nights that kept me from returning to my hotel and this is when I started to discover how much these pills can wreck your world if you don’t take them as you normally would. If I didn’t take my Effexor within a couple of hours of my normal dose, I started having major vertigo issues. Being in a city like Berlin, Germany is not where you want to discover this issue. I also learned that if I don’t take my Seroquel, I won’t sleep AT ALL! At the end of August, I returned to the states and my new mission was to get off the meds that had me feeling like a prisoner in my own body. I tried a few times to simply “miss” a dose of Effexor just to see how bad the withdrawals were going to be. I normally took my Effexor around 9:00am and the longest I could go without feeling like I was losing my mind was about 8:00pm the same day. I couldn’t make it 12 hours past my normal dose without going into full detox mode. Brain zaps, vertigo, nausea, unstoppable thoughts of suicide, uncontrollable emotions; etc. For me, this was going to be much harder than coming off Xanax or hydrocodone. Towards the end of September 2002, I started seeing someone new. Although she was fighting her own demons, she brought a loving, non-judgmental level of support for what I was going through. We started to navigate this world with each other, side by side. She is now my wife. 

​

As we made our way into December, my hatred for being on Effexor was growing ever stronger. Each morning, I woke up and had to force myself to take my meds. I loathed taking them. But I didn’t have a choice, this was my life until I forced a change. My mom said she would be traveling to see my sister in California for a month. This was the window I needed to start my process of coming off this pill. I didn’t want my mom to witness any part of what I was going to experience during my first few weeks of withdrawals. At the beginning of December, I started reducing my dose weekly thinking I was doing things the right way, same as I did when coming off hydrocodone. Effexor was nothing compared to hydrocodone. This stuff was pure evil. I was stepping down much faster than my body was able to acclimate to the new lower dose. I didn’t realize this until many years later, tapering down too fast can cause you to abandon the tapering process and go back on your meds. I just knew I wanted off them now!! The week my mom was leaving, I went to see my psychiatrist to tell him I was coming off Effexor and that I needed to continue taking Seroquel to help me sleep through the nightmare ahead. Let me mention that when I started seeing this doctor, I was suicidal. Little did I know the drug that he put me on was going to almost guarantee me to commit suicide. As I told my doctor that I had tapered down to 37.5 mg and that I was going to stop taking Effexor he said “Jeff, be very careful when you come off this stuff because it has a very high suicide rate. I suggest finding some good weed, it might help with withdrawal symptoms” I remember leaving there mad as hell and also excited because I was drawing the line in the sand. I was hell bent on not being a slave to this stuff anymore. 

​

The day after my mom left, I started my journey. I woke up that morning and made my way as I normally would. That afternoon the withdrawals started. I thought because I had been tapering down, the intensity of the withdrawals would be less than the times I had missed my normal size dose. I was dead wrong. The feelings were the same as before. I look back on this experience and often wonder where the hell I came up with the mental strength to pull through the first month. I couldn’t be left alone for more than a few minutes without me trying to find a way to “accidentally” blow my brains out. The part that was worse than all the massive side effects of withdrawals was feeling as if I was chained to a chair in the background of my mind and someone else was at the controls. I felt like I spent my days SCREAMING for help deep inside my mind and no one could hear me. On the surface these emotions were coming out through uncontrollable fits of rage, sadness, hysterical laughing, and right back to pouring tears. I was fighting a war inside myself that I was battling 30 seconds at a time. I often hear people say, “you’ll be fine, it’s just one day at a time.” One day at a time?? Are you serious!!?? One day at a time, I’m having trouble making it to the end of sentence without thinking how much I want to kill myself in this very moment!! As the months rolled by, my mental state slowly improved. By that summer, I felt that it was time to start coming off Seroquel. I started breaking the pills into smaller and smaller pieces until eventually I was taking an over-the-counter sleep aid. It took a few years for the brain zaps to go away for 95% of my days. Today, 20 plus years later, when I get really tired my brain zaps come back. Not as intense as they were when I came off that stuff, but they still come back. 

 

In the fall of 2021, my wife and I reluctantly got the Covid vaccine. The first round of the shot I was fine. The second shot caused me to have unstoppable nose bleeds for close to 4 days. A couple of weeks after the second shot I had the onset of full-blown neuropathy from my knees to my feet. It took close to a year to finally get myself into a neurologist in San Antonio, Texas. He confirmed my case of neuropathy and said it was permanent, no way to fix it, and he had a pill he wanted me to take to help manage my symptoms. I had explained to him that I loathed taking pills because of my past experiences with pharmaceutical drugs. He explained this was a “non-addictive and very mild drug”. Once again, I was putting myself in the hands of doctor that was supposed to know what was best for me and was going to help me be better. That night I filled my script for 300mg of gabapentin. I had never heard of it and knew absolutely nothing about it. I came home, read some google searches for gabapentin and all I got were the ads saying how great of a drug it is. The first night I took it was the first night I had slept since the onset of my neuropathy. It WORKED!! It really worked!! I was able to sleep! I was so excited. After being on gabapentin for close to a month I started to notice my short-term memory was becoming nonexistent. I would be sitting at my desk working on something, if my phone rang, if someone walked in, if a car drove by, I couldn’t tell you what I was doing before the distraction. About 6 weeks after I started taking gabapentin each night, and having some amazing sleep, I got up for work, walked into the bathroom and I stepped in front of the toilet to pee. I felt a little off. The next thing I remember was my wife April kneeling over me asking me if I was ok and if I had fallen. I couldn’t tell her what had happened, I didn’t have a clue. All I knew was my world was upside down and I was struggling to just form a sentence. April got our son off to school then took me to the ER. They ran plenty of tests on me and felt like I had had a seizure. The doctors also told me to contact my neurologist about what had happened. When we got home, we called my neurologist and informed him that I had a seizure and asked what I should do. Seizures are a possible side effect of gabapentin. My doctor told me that he wanted me to come off gabapentin for a week and see how I felt. Me thinking to myself “well damn, there goes my amazing sleep”. That night I skipped my normal dose at 10:30pm and didn’t think much about it because as my doctor said, “this is non habit forming and quite mild.” That night at close to 1:30am I started having the zombie arms and legs kick in. SO MUCH FOR BEING NON-ADDICTIVE!! I was going into full blown withdrawals. These withdrawals weren’t as intense as Effexor, but they were miserable! They were bad enough that when I realized what was going on, I jumped up and ran to the kitchen where my pills are. I didn’t just take a gabapentin, I chewed it up so it would hit my blood faster. Imagine that - I just had a seizure and thought I was going to die but because my nightmares of coming off Effexor, not realizing that I have PTSD from pharmaceutical drug withdrawals, I was willing to chew a pill that I believed might kill me. I called my doctor back the next day and told them what had happened and that I need a lower dose to help taper off this drug. I loved being able to sleep but I wasn’t going to be a slave to a pill again. I would figure something else out to help my neuropathy. My doctor dropped me down to the children’s dose of 100mg. I tried dropping from 300mg to 100mg and that was too much of a decrease for me in one step. I had the same withdrawal symptoms as before, in the same time frame, just a few hours after my normal dose time I was getting the zombie arms. Once they started, I didn’t wait to see if it would pass or how long it would last. I got up and took another 200mg to get some sleep and then try out another dose. The following night I took 200mg and didn’t have a single symptom one. Feet were happy and no withdrawal symptoms. I stayed on 200mg for a couple of weeks to let my body acclimate to the new dose. Then I tapered down again. This time to 100mg. I didn’t have any withdrawal symptoms this time. The smaller steps were helping. The downside to tapering was my feet were starting to talk to me about 6 hours before my usual dose time. This was the first time I had experienced my feet throbbing in less than 24 hours. At this point I started cutting my capsules open and weighing out my doses. I dropped from 100mg to 90mg and again there were no side effects. I stayed on 90mg for a week then dropped to 80mg. I followed this process down to 60mg. At 60mg I began to experience blurred vision, headaches, irritability, around noon now. And my feet were really starting to act up. I realized this is it, this is where the shit gets real again. My body was saying, “feed me” well before the 24-hour mark and this is as low of a dose you can take and still function. In hindsight I should have stepped back up to 65mg and let my body get used to it before dropping but I was in a hurry to break my chains. I stayed at 60mg for over 2 weeks. I picked Easter weekend of 2023 to cut ties with gabapentin. Being a long weekend it seemed to be the best time. The first night I went without my gabapentin, I loaded up on some homeopathic nerve pills and a sleep aid. The first couple of nights were kind of rough but nothing too bad. My mood throughout the first few days was rocky. I made sure to pay very close attention to how I spoke to April and my son. They didn’t need to suffer because I was coming off a drug. As the gabapentin left my system, the nerve pain in my feet came back. I knew it would. Without going into all the details I was able to find enough information on YouTube to help me find natural ways of combating my nerve pain. For at least a month after coming off gabapentin, my nerves were short. I would lash out at coworkers quick and for very little reason. I was able to catch myself doing this AFTER I had my explosion and made sure to go back and apologize for how I acted. Remember, I had my seizure in October of 2022, stopped taking gabapentin Easter of 2023 and I still don’t feel as if my memory has fully come back to how it once was. April agrees with me on this, as well. It took roughly 6 weeks for me to feel somewhat normal after my seizure. I will never get back the memories I lost during the seizure and during my time on gabapentin. 

 

Thank you for taking the time to read my personal story of pharmaceutical dependency. I must tell you; pharmaceutical drugs are not my only dependencies I had to break. Some have been as mentally addictive as they are physically and sometimes the mental addiction is much harder to break than the physical because the time spent doing these addictions. I’ve had to fight my way off Xanax, hydrocodone, toxic relationships, cigarettes, caffeine, Effexor, Seroquel, gabapentin, alcohol, and marijuana. I wrote a detailed history of my dependencies to let you know, I understand. I understand what you are going through. I understand how you feel. Let me help you gain the mental, emotional, and physical strength to begin your journey of freedom from dependency! From my experience, I now understand how important it is to have that strength because it is a long game. It is a lifestyle change. If I can do it, anyone can.