NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
Hacking antidepressant doses An online movement is helping people taper their meds to fight withdrawal Clare Wilson
KATHLEEN FINLAY/GETTY
PEOPLE who want to stop taking antidepressants are hacking their dosing regimens to avoid withdrawal symptoms. A Dutch website that sells kits to help people taper their doses has now launched an English-language site, triggering safety concerns among UK regulators and doctors. Around 1 in 10 people in the UK take antidepressants. Many find them helpful and even lifesaving, but some struggle to stop taking them when they are ready. A study in New Zealand found that 55 per cent of people got withdrawal symptoms on stopping antidepressants. “I felt like I had been run over by a bus,” says James Moore, a mental health campaigner in the UK. He experienced dizziness,
nausea and headaches when he tablets and dissolving them in stopped taking the antidepressant water, or breaking open capsules mirtazapine. of beads and counting them out. Others who stop taking But the results of these DIY antidepressants report side effects methods can be variable. “I was such as panic attacks or memory functioning one day, and the next and concentration problems. I would be in bed,” says Moore, Information leaflets that who has tried cutting up his pills manufacturers provide alongside into smaller pieces. antidepressants warn of short“Some people who stop term withdrawal effects, and taking antidepressants doctors usually advise people to reduce their dose slowly. But even report panic attacks or memory problems” if people do that, once they stop taking the lowest dose of tablet available, some still get problems. The Dutch website is part People are often told to start of a project by medical charity taking their pills every other day, Cinderella Therapeutics and but with some drugs this can lead Maastricht University. Together, to levels in the body fluctuating. they have been creating Instead, some people have been personalised tapering kits with turning to online forums to swap precisely weighed out tablets that tips about how to taper their gradually reduce in strength over medication – such as grinding up several months. Since 2014, the
project has distributed around 2000 kits for 24 different medications, the majority for antidepressants or anxiety drugs. Most of these were for people in the Netherlands, where the project is legal, but a few kits have been sent to other countries, including the UK. The Englishlanguage site, launched this week, is likely to make it easier for people in other countries to use the service. However, most medical bodies advise against buying medicines online. “Although prescriptiononly medicines can be imported for personal use, self-medication is potentially risky,” says a spokesperson for the UK’s Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). The Dutch site recommends people use the kits under medical supervision, and only sends kits to those with a doctor’s prescription. The MHRA spokesperson says the agency will be contacting its regulatory partners in the Netherlands to make enquiries. Sourcing pills online isn’t the only other option. David Healy, a psychiatrist in Bangor in the UK, helps people with severe withdrawal symptoms by prescribing liquid formulations of their specific medicine, which can be measured out in small amounts. But these formulations aren’t as widely stocked as their pill equivalents, and Healy says most GPs refuse to prescribe them because they are more expensive. Tony Kendrick at the University of Southampton in the UK says another option for some people is to switch to using the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac), which is widely available in a liquid formulation. However, switching doesn’t work –Looking for a lower dose?– for everyone. n
8 | NewScientist | 15 July 2017
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