What is 'self-medicating'? It means to take medication when you subjectively decide you need it, instead of following recommended medical protocol. It doesn't refer to making informed choices about medication that may differ from conventional wisdom. Self-mediating is addictive habit taking medications when you want it or think you need it.
When you wean yourself from an anti-depressant, especially an SSRI, it's very easy to self-medicate. As your body, mind and hormones adjust to an unmedicated state, you may feel "symptoms" that are similar to the symptoms that sent you for a prescription to start with. It's easy to misinterpret these recovery symptoms. Many people become convinced that they cannot get off the meds and can only function "normally" with an antidepressant.
This is what I call fear-induced medication. You continue taking the antidepressant not because you need it but because you're afraid that without it, you'll be a basket case.
As you come off the anti-depressants, you will have times of depression, anxiety and panic attacks. These are normal feelings, typically. But while you were on your antidepressant those feelings were numbed. But they were still there. The anti-depressant did not "heal" them. It made you more apathetic about the issues, that's all.
Painkillers don't cure pain, they mask it. If the pain is emotional, anti-depressants work by dulling emotions. So it only stands to reason that as you begin to live life drug-free, you may notice periods of depression, anxiety, panic and sadness.
If you can remind yourself that by and large, these feelings episodic, transient and temporary, you will be less likely to run back to the antidepressants.
If you do run for the meds every times you feel pain, you will hormonal spikes and drug-induced manic-depressive episodes. So walk through the feelings. Give them time to resolve because moslty, the only way out is through. Take it from me; I was there and am now on the other side. It can be done. You're not alone.
