- Learn Psychiatric drugs & healthcare
- Prepare Readiness for drug tapering
- Taper Practical how-to information
- Heal Withdrawal survival
- More Placeholder text
- What's known about drug risks
- A primer on psychiatric drug dependence, tolerance and withdrawal
- Psychiatric drug taper rates: a review and discussion
- Introduction: the vital role of good preparation
- Step 1 – How do I feel about the idea of coming off psychiatric drugs?
- Step 2 – Learn about psychiatric drug dependence, tolerance and withdrawal
- Step 3 – What is my withdrawal beacon?
- Step 4 – Managing day-to-day responsibilities and tasks
- Step 5 – Building a support system
- Step 6 – Communicating with prescribers
- Step 7 – Listening to the body and its messages
- Step 8 – Being with pain and darkness
- Step 9 – Is the time right for me to taper?
- Step 10 – Get informed about your psychiatric drug
- Step 11 – Ensuring that a drug is relatively ‘taper-friendly’
- Step 12 – Interactions, reactions and sensitivities
- Step 13 – Taper rates
- Step 14 – Taper schedules
- Step 15 – Taper methods
- Step 16 – Preparatory decisions
- Step 17 – Gather the gear
- Step 18 – Essential skills
- Step 19 – Setting up a taper journal
- Step 20 – Implementing a taper
- Help Hub – Support articles
- Family and Friends – Support your loved ones
- Practitioners – Prescribers, coaches, doctors, etc.
- How "Mental Disorders" are Diagnosed
- An Overview of Psychiatry's Diagnostic Manual (the DSM)
- Unlearn "Mental Disorders"
- "ADHD" Stimulants
- "Anti-anxiety" Benzodiazepines
- "Antidepressants"
- "Antispychotics"
- "Mood Stabilizers" and Lithium
- "Sleep Aids" Z-Drugs
- How Outcomes are Measured in Psychiatric Research
- How Psychiatric Drugs are Researched and Marketed
- Exploring Alternatives
- Exercise: Exploring feelings and beliefs about psychiatric medications
- Reflections: To withdraw or not to withdraw
- Exploratory exercise: What does “support” mean to me?
- Optional exercise: Create an inventory of your needs and possible supports
- Reflections: Anchoring in a sense of safety and security for the taper road ahead
- Reflective prompts
- Tips and troubleshooting around a difficult relationship with a prescriber
- Reflections: To ask or not to ask your doctor?
- Exercise: How much do I let my body guide me?
- Readings: Physical health during withdrawal
- Reflections: Coming off psychiatric drugs is about journeying back to our own bodies
- Exercise: How do I manage deep and difficult challenges in my life?
- Optional exercise: Create an inventory of your strategies
- Reflections: Journeying back to being with ourselves
- Gather the key documents
- Reflections: Getting empowered through self-education
- ICI's guide to the FDA-approved drug label
- ICI's key to withdrawal-related information in the FDA-approved drug label
- Readings: Getting a handle on slow psychiatric drug tapering and finding the right rate for you
- Reflections: Making your chosen rate as safe as possible
- The options: A daily microtaper or cut-and-hold schedule
- Discussion: Comparing the pros and cons of daily microtapering and cut-and-hold schedules
- Reflections: Make a decision – or hold off for now
- Making a liquid mixture
- Using a digital scale
- Counting beads in a beaded capsule
- Using a compounding pharmacy
- Using a manufacturer’s oral liquid
- Reflections: Which psychiatric drug taper method is best for you?
- Making a liquid mixture using immediate-release tablets or capsules
- Using a digital scale to weigh powder from a crushed immediate-release tablet or poured-out powder or beads from a capsule
- Counting beads from a beaded capsule
- Using a compounding pharmacy to obtain capsules and/or liquid
- Using a manufacturer’s oral liquid
- Adapter caps
- Bead-counting surface
- Counting implement
- Digital scale
- Empty capsules
- Graduated cylinders and pipettes
- Jars
- Labels and pen/marker
- Measuring bowl or tray
- Mortar and pestle
- Pharmaceutical-grade powder filler
- Pill bottles
- Pill organizer
- Refrigerator and/or cooler bag
- Slip tip syringes
- Transferring implements
- Counting and making cuts with beads
- Diluting powder when using a digital scale
- Understanding the limits of a digital scale's accuracy
- Using an adapter cap
- Using a digital scale for weighing and making cuts
- Using a mortar and pestle for pulverizing tablets
- Using syringes
- Doing calculations for a taper
- Special tips for calculations and liquids
- Section 1 – Tracking calculations and amounts
- Section 2 – Listening to your body and tracking symptoms and experiences
- Review
- Sample implementation: Making and cutting a liquid mixture
- Sample implementation: Using a digital scale to weigh and cut powder or beads
- Sample implementation: Counting and cutting beads
- Sample implementation: Using a compounding pharmacy
- Sample implementation: Making cuts from a manufacturer’s oral liquid
Looking for something specific?
Preparing to Come off Psych Drugs: A 10-week workshop to help you get ready for withdrawal from antidepressants, benzodiazepines and other psychiatric medications
Beginning March 26th in West Hartford, Connecticut, USA
Are you taking one or more psychiatric drugs that you have decided you want to withdraw from, or are thinking about possibly withdrawing from? Have you already started to come off medication but are finding the process to be more challenging than you thought it would be? If you want to get better informed, centered, supported and prepared before you forge ahead, this workshop is for you.
Over the course of ten weekly 90-minute in-person workshop gatherings, you’ll learn valuable steps that you can take to help get yourself optimally situated for a smoother, more sustainable psychiatric drug taper. You will explore your relationship to psychiatric drugs, develop strategies to optimize your support systems and prescriber relationships, troubleshoot common stressors and challenges, and much more. Through readings, journaling, discussion, meditation, and reflection, you’ll leave each week feeling increasingly rooted in yourself and ready for the road ahead. You’ll also be connecting regularly with others on the same journey as we collectively create space to share our personal experiences and perspectives and build connections and support systems that can last beyond the confines of the workshop.
WHEN
Tuesdays from 5:30-7PM, beginning March 26th and ending with our final gathering on Jun 4th, 2019. (There is no session on April 9th due to the local school holiday.)
WHERE
Essential Health
74 Park Road
West Hartford, CT 06119
https://essentialhealthct.com
WHO
This workshop will be led by Laura Delano, Executive Director of Inner Compass Initiative and ICI’s Inner Compass Initiative, with assistance from Cari Nadeau, ICI’s Community Coordinator.
COST
Free. All workshop costs will be covered by Inner Compass Initiative.
Note: The workshop is based on Part 1 of Inner Compass Initiative’s Companion Guide to Psychiatric Drug Withdrawal. During the course, we will be regularly asking for feedback from participants to help us improve this online self-guided manual.
REGISTRATION INFORMATION:
REGISTER HERE!