Hello everyone. I have been reading these forums for months now. You have all helped so very much. I apologize in advance; this might end up as a novel.
I guess to start off I should say that I am the wife of someone who has been through the cymbalta/antidepressant/ anxiety medication nightmare. My husband doesn’t mind that I share our story, but he doesn’t want to be the one to do it. He honestly doesn’t think people will believe it and he is dealing with enough guilt, trauma, and pain right now. But he does want to help others and he wants people to know that they are not alone.
Our story while very similar to most others here also has a few differences. I believe that is because he should never have been prescribed these medications in the first place (He, along with his current therapist agrees). And without having depression/ anxiety what in the world would, could, and did these medications do to his brain.
My husband was in the army for almost a decade. He was deployed several times and on his last deployment was wounded. After that the military medically discharged him. From the time he was injured to his release from the military was 1 ½ years. In that year and a half he suffered very little PTSD symptoms and was not being treated in for it. He has a very live in the now personality. He doesn’t suffer with the flashbacks ,nightmares, etc. that are usually associated with combat induced PTSD. Or I should say he didn’t before the VA put him on medication and he no longer does now that he is off all medication.
Within two months of his discharged the VA had him on a cocktail of medications, some for his physical pain and some for depression and anxiety. We know now that we should have questioned these doctors. We were both naïve and honestly downright stupid. We both believed that he was being treated for PTSD and he was – but we were stupid in the since that we didn’t understand fully that they were treating him for depression and anxiety. We both believed that there were different medications to treat PTSD. We didn’t understand that they treated the PTSD by treated the symptoms of depression and anxiety, symptoms that he didn’t have. He has an extreme startle reflex for loud noises and doesn’t do well in loud crowded places. But he never had depression or anxiety aside for short lived anxiety in the moment if he went to a loud crowded place. But the moment we left that environment he went instantly back to his normal calm happy self.
For thirteen years he was medicated. He changed into a completely different person. The changes were so gradual in the beginning we didn’t notice. Now looking back they are huge red flags, but like I said at the time we didn’t notice.
His current doctors believe that his brain was trying it’s hardest to combat the medication but they were slowly driving him almost insane. He is not bipolar, but he started suffering manic episodes. Manic episodes that his VA doctors didn’t notice even though it is written in his chart that he is telling them that he drives his truck at 120 mph, that he is drinking 4 bottles of wine a week, that he feels like someone else was walking around in control of his body and that he was just there to witness but had no control. In one visit he literally describes it as though he is trapped in his own mind and cannot control what his body and mind are doing. Needless to say he didn’t share any of this with me at the time. He would come home from work, eat dinner, and usually go to bed. He slept a lot these last few years. Whenever I’d ask him about it he would say that he just got so hot at work that he was tired. He worked 10 hours a day so it didn’t seem unreasonable at the time. And when he was awake he seemed happy. Like they say hindsight is 20/20… If only I’d known then what I know now.
The VA thought the best thing to do was to increase his medication and add additional meds to the cocktail. 2018 was our year of hell. Our entire lives came crashing down. I won’t describe everything of last year. I’ll just cut to the end of it. At the end of September, first of October (we aren’t exactly sure) he left his management job and return to the floor then threw out all his medications and quit cold turkey. From the way his current doctor describes what happened next was that his mind literally shut down and went through a hard reboot and more than likely suffered a manic/ psychotic episode which lasted for months. He became so mean and angry. He stopped loving let alone liking me or our children. Luckily our children were 19 and 22 at the time, but still it was hard. He never told me about stopping his medication, until he nearly destroyed our marriage.
He was so out of it that he didn’t remember that he stopped taking his medications because he didn’t even remember that he was suppose to be on medication in the first place. At the time he went cold turkey he was on Cymbalta, Welbutrin, Percocet, Prazosin, Pregabalin, and Gabapentin (for seizures that he has never had…). Our current medical and psychological doctors are having a time decoding his VA medical records. It’s starting to look like someone made a huge mistake and maybe put a different patient’s info into his chart and treated him for things he didn’t have (like a seizure disorder).
November 30th last year he came home and told me that he didn’t love me anymore, that he was having an affair and was in love with someone else.
It was insane… I mean really it was me saying “hey sweetie, how was your day?”
His reply, “I don’t love you anymore, I’m having an affair, and I love someone else.”
From December to February we lived a nightmare. I still didn’t know he had stopped his medication. And I honestly don’t know how we survived it. I am amazed he is still alive. I had no idea what was going on. On one hand he seemed completely out of his mind, but then he could be so calm and matter of fact that I had no clue what was going on. I believed that he had truly fallen out of love with me almost overnight and boom destroyed our lives. I had no experience with these medications when things go horribly wrong with them. I didn’t know what was happening. All I knew was that something was very very wrong and I didn’t let him out of my sight. He took over a month off work. We battled and fought for our lives, our future. He had all the classic withdrawal symptoms we just didn’t know that’s what they were at the time, but with him suffering mania he didn’t even realize he was in withdrawal…He didn’t remember he was supposed to be taking meds.
I called the VA and made him an urgent mental health doctor’s appointment. But they were no help at all. I did learn that he had stopped his medication while there. He even argued with the doctor that he had never been on meds and kept wanting to see his doctor. The doctor that we saw had been his doctor for over a year, but my husband didn’t remember him. Again the doctor’s solution was to prescribe different medications but he refused to see that my husband was in a crisis situation.
We left the VA and I drove straight to our family doctor. Here we got the first ray of sunshine and hope. Our doctor, even though he is just a general practitioner, knew immediately what was wrong. With his help we got my husband to a safe environment to finish the withdrawal process.
Now here we are months later. Things are still rocky at times. It’s hard to have your entire life turned upside down and not carry those scars. My husband remembers almost nothing. The worst part of the memory loss is that it goes so far beyond just last year. He literally is missing years of his life. The affair is another issue – did it really happen, or was it all something he created in his mind. We don’t really know. He did give me a name, but the person seems oblivious. I have actually met her and she seems to be a happily married woman. She seems to be clueless. But then again I’m not sure how exactly I would have expected her to act.
We have complete transparency with all forms of social media, email, phones, etc. He has given me access to everything . There is nothing there, nothing that seems like there ever was an affair. But I just don’t know.
I love my husband more than life itself. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for him. There are days I truly believe the affair was something he created in his mind and then there are days I just don’t know. All I know is that we will get through this. We vowed to love and care for each other in sickness and in health. I have read a lot of threads on this forum and articles all over the internet these last few months. The general consensus I kept reading was that people accept that these medications can cause people to do terrible things both while on them and during withdrawal, but no one accepts affairs. I even read one article that agreed that these medications can drive people to such an extreme form of rage that they can hurt or even in rare cases kill either those they love or strangers. But the moment the word affair is brought up people jump to the “he/she did that themselves, medication didn’t cause that.”
I don’t know if my husband had an affair, but I can honestly say that he was so out of his mind, that he could have. If there is anyone else out there dealing with this, we (my husband and I) want you to know that you are not alone.
There is so much more, but this is already so long that I think I will end it here. We live each day working towards a better life. He has lost memories that are years of our lives together and even though he doesn’t have memories he has the emotions from them. He doesn’t remember being mean, but he sees the sadness I carry and lives each day to try and bring the happiness back. We will get through this, you can get through this too.
Don’t give up…
