Top 11 Myths 

MYTH 1: “If the medication helped you before, it must still be helping you.."

MYTH: You've tolerated a medication for years, so it can't possibly be the cause of your problems / The medication helped your symptoms when you started it, so if you're struggling now, the answer must be more medication.

REALITY: A medication's original benefit does not necessarily tell us what is causing symptoms years later. Tolerance, adverse effects, physical dependence and withdrawal can complicate the picture. Before automatically increasing or adding medication, the possibility of medication-related effects should also be considered. NICE recommends regularly reviewing whether the benefits of a medicine continue to outweigh its potential harms and specifically cautions against automatically increasing the dose when a response that was previously effective is no longer sustained.¹ 

MYTH 2: "If you can't get access to your usual brand of medication, that's ok. All generic versions of a medication are chemically identically and switching brands isn't a problem."

MYTH: Doctors and pharmacisists may mistakenly assure patients that generic drug substitutions are entirely interchangeable because they share the same active pharmaceutical ingredient, meaning a brand change will have no impact on how the body handles the drug.

REALITY: While generic medications do contain the same primary active ingredient, they can differ in inactive fillers, binders, dyes, and coatings (excipients). The FDA notes that differing inactive ingredients can in some patients trigger issues in tolerability and absorption.² 

MYTH 3: "Stopping antidepressants or other psych meds is completely safe and non-habit forming: only benzodiazepines or street drugs cause dependency"

MYTH: The lingering notion among many is that non-benzodiazepine psychotropics (like SSRIs or SNRIs) do not cause true physiological dependence, meaning patients can safely skip doses or stop them without slow, hyperbolic tapering. 

REALITY: These medications cause profound neuroadaptation. The central nervous system adapts heavily to their constant presence, meaning abrupt changes trigger severe physiological distress. True pharmacological dependence and severe discontinuation syndromes can occur across nearly all classes of psychotropic medications.¹ ³ 

MYTH 4:" You're only on a low dose. You can just stop taking it."

MYTH: Because a patient is taking a tiny fraction of a standard dose of a psychiatric medication (such as a micro-dose or a low sub-therapeutic amount), prescribers may mistakenly assume the drug is no longer doing anything to the body, meaning it can be safely stopped abruptly or cut quickly.

REALITY: Due to hyperbolic binding curves, receptor occupancy is not always proportional to dose. Small doses actually occupy a disproportionately large percentage of neurotransmitter supporters.⁴ 

As the dose becomes lower, progressively smaller reductions may produce increasingly large changes in receptor occupancy. Dropping off a small dose can still deliver a massive pharmacological shock to a sensitive nervous system.⁵  NICE recommends reductions proportionate to the existing dose, with decrements becoming smaller as the dose is lowered.⁶ 

"I'm on a micro dose after reinstating to stop withdrawal. I've been stabilising for 2 years. I've been constantly told 'ah, your dose is so small. It shouldn't take you too long'. And yet, according to the up-to-date literature on hyperbolic tapering, and the experiences from members of the withdrawal community, it has taken some as long as 6 years to safely come off." - E.H

MYTH 5: "Withdrawal only lasts for two weeks"

MYTH: A widespread belief across general medical practice is that withdrawal is a brief, acute "flu-like" adaptation phase that completely resolves within 7 to 14 days. 

REALITY: While acute withdrawal can present early, many patients experience protracted, months -or years - long waves of neurological and physical symptoms.³  Because neuroadaptation alters the structural baseline of the central nervous system, full recovery requires time for cellular and receptor remodeling, which cannot be arbitrarily rushed or bound to a two-week timelines.⁷ 

MYTH 6: "Switching directly to a different psychiatric drug at an equivalent dose will seamlessly prevent withdrawal"

MYTH: Prescribers frequently use 'cross-tapering' - dropping one drug while rapidly swapping it for another - assuming that replacing one chemical with another will trick the nervous system into avoiding withdrawal.

REALITY: Because different drugs can act on different receptor pathways, a rapid cross-taper can act as a double shock to a fragile system. A rapid switch between medications can produce withdrawal from the first medication while simultaneously introducing adverse effects or activation from the second.”⁸

MYTH 7: "The medication has left your system. You can't still be having an adverse affect or withdrawal."

MYTH: Based on a simplistic pharmacokinetic view of half-lives (believing a drug is entirely eliminated within days), practitioners often claim that any symptoms that persis past a week or two cannot possibly be related to the medication. 

REALITY: Withdrawal and drug injury are not just about the presence of the chemical molecule; they are about neuroadaptation. The brain and central nervous system undergo structural and functional changes (such as receptor up and downregulation) in response to the drug. When the drug is removed, it can sometimes take a long time for the nervous system to slowly recalibrate and heal.³ 

"After presenting with autonomic instability after an adverse reaction, I was told it couldn't possibly be the drug because it would have 'left my system' days ago" - E.H

MYTH 8: "It's just a relapse of your underlying anxiety or depression"

MYTH: When physical, cognitive, or emotional symptoms emerge after stopping, or tapering a drug, doctors routinely diagnose them as a 'return of the original condition',³ using this as a justification to updose medication or add new ones.

REALITY: Symptoms like severe akathisia, intense burning sensations, autonomic instability (blood pooling), and sudden terror are classic signs of central nervous system injury and neuro-excitatory withdrawal, not a mental health relapse. Masking these iatrogenic effects with more drugs compounds the harm.³ 

"I presented to a doctor with severe akathisia, they took one look at me and said 'It seems you are very anxious' and told me to increase my dosage. I told him I was never put on the drug for anxiety, but for insomnia. He had no idea my nervous system was damaged." - E.H

MYTH 9: "If you're struggling with withdrawal, be positive and push through it! Your body will adjust eventually"

MYTH: Practitioners often advise people experiencing severe psychiatric drug withdrawal to simply endure the suffering, treating it as a sign the body is 'cleansing' or that they need to tough it out through brute force.

REALITY: Psychiatric drug withdrawal differs greatly from traditional street drug withdrawal. A destabilised nervous system experiencing severe neuro-excitatory symptoms or akathisia cannot simply 'push through'. Forcing a damaged system to endure unmanaged severe stress can entrench neurological injury and prolong suffering unnecessarily, whereas intelligent pausing, holding, or micro-adjustments (when indicated) are often required to maintain safety.¹ 

MYTH 10: "Your blood tests and scans look normal. Your symptoms are psychosomatic"

MYTH: Because standard medical diagnostics (like routine blood panels, MRIs, or EEGs) cannot currently image microscopic receptor downregulations, neuro-inflammation, or autonomic nervous system dysfunction, some mistakenly declare "everything is normal" and imply the patient's suffering is psychosomatic. 

REALITY: Routine blood tests and standard imaging do not measure every aspect of nervous-system function. A normal test therefore does not, by itself, establish that a person's symptoms are psychological or imagined. ⁹

MYTH 11: "Natural, herbal, or holistic remedies can help to heal psych drug injury/withdrawal"

MYTH: Holistic or alternative practitioners sometimes suggest that supplements or alternative herbal compounds can easily counteract withdrawal and heal psychiatric drug induced injury wihout risk because they are "natural" and gentle. 

REALITY: Whilst these practitioners mean well, the unfortunate reality is that brains recovering from psychiatric drug injury, withdrawal or traumatic damage can be profoundly fragile. Introducing natural substances can therefore still cause unpredictable outcomes.¹⁰ Due to subjective differences in sensitivity and metabolism, some members of the withdrawal and drug injury community report certain alternative treatments have helped them, whereas others report a considerable worsening of their symptoms. 

I had been stable for quite some time, when I was recommended I take an iron supplement for my anemia. I had taken iron many times before my drug injury, and because I had stabilised, I figured it wouldn't be a problem. After taking the iron, it threw me straight into a wave. I used to be a holistic health junkie before my drug injury...now it has taken me 2 years just to be able to to tolerate magnesium." - E.H

References

1. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2022). Medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms: Safe prescribing and withdrawal management for adults (NG215). https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng215

2.  U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2024). Generic drugs: Questions & answers. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/frequently-asked-questions-popular-topics/generic-drugs-questions-answers

3. (Horowitz, M. A., & Taylor, D. (2022). Distinguishing relapse from antidepressant withdrawal: Clinical practice and antidepressant discontinuation studies. BJPsych Advances, 28(5), 297–311. https://doi.org/10.1192/bja.2021.62

4. Horowitz, M. A., Moncrieff, J., & Taylor, D. (2021). A method for tapering antipsychotic treatment that may minimize the risk of relapse. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 47(4), 1116–1129. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbab017

5. Horowitz, M. A., & Taylor, D. (2019). Tapering of SSRI treatment to mitigate withdrawal symptoms. The Lancet Psychiatry, 6(6), 538–546. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(19)30032-X

6. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2022). Medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms: Safe prescribing and withdrawal management for adults (NG215).

7. Royal College of Psychiatrists. (2020). Stopping antidepressants https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/treatments-and-wellbeing/stopping-antidepressants

8. (Haddad, P. M., Anderson, I. M., & Ferrier, I. N. (2001). Recognising and managing antidepressant discontinuation symptoms. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 7(6), 447–457. https://doi.org/10.1192/apt.7.6.447

9. Salem, H., Nagpal, C., Pigott, T., & Teixeira, A. L. (2017). Revisiting antipsychotic-induced akathisia: Current issues and prospective challenges. Current Neuropharmacology, 15(5), 789–798. https://doi.org/10.2174/1570159X15666170118110138

10. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. (2022). Medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms: Safe prescribing and withdrawal management for adults (NG215). 

Personal experience disclaimer: First-person accounts attributed to E.H. reflect the author's individual lived experience and are included for illustrative and awareness purposes only. They should not be interpreted as clinical evidence, proof of causation, or an indication that another person will experience the same effects. Clinical claims on this page are supported separately by the cited literature and sources.