“You’re not on any medication?” I feel an inner sigh of relief. This one is going to be easy. It’s just the illness I have to battle. I don’t have to battle withdrawal as well.
“You’re on medication?” My mind starts to run over all the clinical experiences I’ve had taking people off medications, and I begin my line of questions: “What medications are you on? How long have you been on them? What are your dosages?”
Withdrawal . . . who would have guessed that a little capsule or pill could be, upon reduction, so deadly? But since I have begun using certain amino acids and have found certain companies who provide “Targeted Amino Acid Therapy” withdrawal has been much, much easier to manage-at least for psychotropic medications.
The amino acids that have been used at medicinal dosages for the purpose of restoring the patient back to a state of balance and give the patient a fighting chance during medication withdrawal are specialized in their actions. Some calm, some detoxify, and some excite. Which to pick, and how much to take depend on the medication being withdrawn. In helping patients withdraw from anticonvulsants and antipsychotics, I find taurine and theanine to be really indispensable-though I hold a very high opinion about the usefulness of energy medicine techniques for withdrawal. When coming off of an SSRI or a SNRI (Cymbalta or Effexor XR), 5-HTP and tyrosine are similarly indispensable.
Without these amino acids to rebuild deficient neurotransmitters, people who have been taking psychotropic medications for years will have great difficulty during withdrawal with the symptoms that these medications are supposed to treat. These withdrawal symptoms will feel just like the illness, but worse. They will disappear rather quickly as the medication is returned to the original dosage. Of course, it’s hard to tell when this happens whether the symptoms are from the original illness or contributed to a great extent by the patient’s physiological dependence on the medication. The argument is perhaps of importance to the pharmaceutical company, but not to the patient. The patient wants to get off the medication one way or the other, whatever the reason, and it is the doctor’s job to figure out a way to do so without putting the patient on another medication.
The best way to help the patient with the goal of being medication free is to use a generous foundation of supplements that heal the underlying causes which has been contributing to the patient’s illness. By doing so, the patient gradually progresses to a higher level of wellness. At the same time, the patient will need to take supplements to target the specific areas that will need support during withdrawal. For withdrawal from psychotropic medications, the emphasis will need to be in supporting the nervous system’s neurotransmitter system-as thoroughly as possible. For some patients who have been on high dosages of very addicting medications, using supplements will not be enough or the amount needed to ease withdrawal would be too much in volume without also using Tapas Acupressure Technique, Emotional Freedom Technique, visualization, and/or Infinite Intention Technique-all tools within the field of energy medicine.
When dealing with medication withdrawal, all the skills of a practitioner will be called to bear against the withdrawal process. Otherwise, we will fail to see the patient through to the end of their desired journey-inherent health rather than indefinite drug dependency.