The simplistic procedure would appear to be: “Avoid doctors who prescribe psychiatric drugs”, but the truth is that the doctor who got you onto a specific drug can also often be the person best placed to help you get off again.

Bear in mind that if you were trying to give up air, water or food, you would die in a matter of minutes, days or weeks.  But you are not attempting to avoid a necessity of life.  You are seeking to abandon the ingestion of an enforced or desired (not vital) poison  to which your body has adapted to the extent that stopping its use leads to a painful re-adaption – known generally as “cold-turkey”, the name given to withdrawal from a drug by just stopping its use.

So the first requirement is that YOU really do want to give up that addiction, because, whilst withdrawal sufferings can be reduced in severity, they cannot normally be got rid of completely.  

The next thing is to prepare your body for the changes you are about to make by getting yourself more fit.  Taking control of your diet and your exercise are excellent ways of preparing your body to take control of your prescription addiction.  Make sure you are eating a balanced diet with plenty of fresh vegetables, proteins and supplements of natural vitamins & minerals, including niacin. 

Cut down on sugars and carbohydrates and start a daily walking routine.  Depending on your age and condition, start with say half a mile and work gradually, over a period of weeks, up to a daily 3 or 4 miles (60 to 90 minutes of walking).  If you have access to a sauna, sweating helps flush drug deposits from the body, and niacin along with other vitamins also helps this clear-out process.

On your next visit to the doctor, tell him you would like to reduce your usage of the drug in question, or even try to give it up entirely.  As he prescribed it in the first place, he may well try and persuade you to continue or offer you an alternative to replace it. 

But, whatever his arguments, you must remain adamant and insist that you want to be placed on smaller dosage units so that you can attempt to cut down very gradually.

If he normally prescribes say 24 mg tablets or capsules, tell him you would prefer to have 12 or 6 or even 3 mg units if they are available.  If he has you on 200 mg units, tell him you would prefer 50 mg or 25 mg.  When you go to the pharmacist to order your prescription, make sure that he or she also understands that you want the prescription filled on the basis of small units, so that you can spread your daily dosage more evenly throughout the day.

INSISTING with the doctor and pharmacist will get you what you want, and in fact normally most of them will give you the lower strength units you request with little or no argument.

Having got yourself fit and having procured the lower dosage units, the next thing is to start the reduction process as follows:

* In the first week, cut your daily intake by one-fifth but not by more than a quarter.  i.e. if you have normally been on say four 24 mg tablets or capsules per day, reduce the dose size to 18, OR cut the number of doses a day from 4 to 3.  See how you feel and if this degree of reduction is uncomfortable, don’t reduce further until there is relief from the discomfort. 

* Stick with your new diet and exercise plan and even increase your exercise as far as you comfortably can.  Whatever you do, do not take something else to replace your medication.  No street drugs, pain killers, sleeping tablets or alcohol.

* Go to your local diet shop, or search the internet to find a food supplement containing Calcium Gluconate, Magnesium Carbonate and Cider Vinegar.  This will probably have a name like “CAL-M” or “Cal-Mag”, and usually comes as a powder which is mixed with water to quickly make a drink.  Taken before you go to bed, this preparation is not to make you sleep, but merely relaxes your muscles and joints to help you rest naturally.

Because it is not intended to make you sleepy, but is merely to help your body relax, it can also be taken once or twice during the day to relieve cold-turkey symptoms.

Having established the above routine, you then develop it further by reducing your daily intake by small amounts (i.e. from 24 to 18 to 12 to 6, etc., or from 200 to 150 to 100 to 75 to 50 to 25) at intervals you find you can comfortably confront.  Bear in mind that some discomfort is nearly unavoidable, so when you make a reduction or extend the time between dosages, stick with the new lower dosage or extended dosage period until that level feels comfortable.  Then decide to confront a little bit more discomfort by going for the next reduction level.

Using the example of a 24 mg starting point, you are eventually going to find yourself on 6 mg or even 3 mg – say 4 times a day.  At this point, if you haven’t already done so, each week you space the doses out more.  Instead of 4 a day, take 3 a day for a week, then 2, then 1.  Then, instead of 1 a day, make it one every 2 days for a week, then one every 3 days and so on until you reach 1 a week, at which point you should find it easy to stop altogether.

Life is full of ups and downs, wins and losses, the vast majority of which will normally without treatment disappear on their own within 3 to 21 days.  As a result, the problem for which the doctor originally prescribed will usually already have mainly disappeared.

Medication for emotional upsets is in reality not required.  In the same natural way that a bruise, a scrape or a cut will heal in a matter of time, so does the mind also heal.  Drugs prescribed to overcome loss, worry, family upsets and so-called youthful “hyperactivity” are therefore more a result of over-enthusiastic pharmaceutical marketing than medical necessity.

Thousands have salvaged themselves from prescription addiction by following the above, so you should remember that whilst ‘cold turkey’ suffering is rather like an attack of flu (which often causes death), stopping a daily addiction to any drug is going to give you a longer and healthier life instead.