ALL MEMBERS READ THIS!!

[davidkachel]

Yeah this is WAY off topic, but VERY important nonetheless.

I got lucky and discovered this the easy way (sort of). Most of you guys are in the same age group as me and are therefore far more prone to this than others.

Last Feb I almost bled to death because an over-the-counter anti-arthritic medication ate holes in my intestines and I had no symptoms until I had already lost half my blood. But that is not the real story...

The hospital gave me medication to reduce the amount of acid secreted by my stomach, for obvious reasons, and the internal medicine specialist told me to take this medication for a year. (I am not going to give you the name of the medication because if you are on a sister med, you may incorrectly assume none of this applies to you.)

The list of side effects for this medication DOES NOT include what I consider to be the most important: depression! As in suicidal depression! DON'T STOP READING. You can be depressed without knowing it! In fact, if you are depressed, it is very likely you don't know it! Sounds silly I know, but not from the other side of this tunnel it ain't, believe me.

If you have been on any medication to turn off your stomach acid, for any length of time longer than a month and you have any symptoms of depression (keep reading), suspect the medication!!!

THE HARD PART IS RECOGNIZING THAT YOU HAVE SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION! There is a LOT of denial involved with depression so it is difficult both to recognize the symptoms AND to admit it.

Let me make this a little clearer; something you guys don't know about me, or at least I don't think I've ever mentioned it... I am a (retired) chiropractic physician, so I ought to be a bit more tuned in to recognizing depression in myself than the average person. Or so you would think. But I never even suspected for ten full months. In fact, it took my father (also a physician, medical) to make the suggestion a few weeks ago, and even then a few days thinking about his remark were necessary before it dawned on me. After that, a few weeks on St. John's Wort (an effective non-prescription anti-depressant without the nasty side effects of the prescription meds) reduced the sleeping problem by about 85% virtually at once, but other symptoms persisted until a few days ago when on a whim, I thought to google the name of my acid med along with the word "depression". The sea of patient complaints that resulted shocked me.

Bottom line, you can be depressed and not realize it, even though you are having thoughts of suicide!
You wouldn't think this possible until you come to understand that "thoughts of suicide" (usually the way the symptom is written) is NOT the same as "contemplating suicide" (dark room, locked door, loaded pistol, etc.). "Thoughts of suicide" are just that, random, fleeting thoughts that are gone as quickly as they come and dismissed by you as nonsense or silly. THIS is what "thoughts of suicide" means! This is why people read "thoughts of suicide" and assume it doesn't mean them. It does!

Other symptoms (you don't have to have these, everybody gets a different mix):
You wake up in the middle of the night and then can't get back to sleep or can only do so with difficulty.
You can't make yourself work.
You just don't give a damn about anything. You're not interested any more.
You don't, well, just look up the symptoms on the internet.

When I finally realized the medication to cut off my production of stomach acid might be the source of my recently recognized depression, I stopped taking it. That was just two days ago. It is like flipping a switch! The first day you tell yourself, "this is silly, it's just the power of suggestion, I can't possibly feel this different, this fast". The second day you realize "that &#%^)*@#_ing medication was trying to take my life!" (I should mention that I have never in my life had the symptoms of depression before and have always slept as if in a coma, so there is no chance of coincidental coinciding events; not to mention all the similar reports on the internet.)

So, if you are taking ANY medication to cut off stomach acid and you have symptoms even remotely similar to what I have described (check the whole list of symptoms on the internet), stop taking the med immediately! You can always start again later if it turns out you were wrong. You won't fail to notice the change. It is dramatic and first-day immediate. You are not crazy, not a nutjob, not a cowardly woos, it's the &(@#%$(&*@$ medication!