Having experienced antidepressant withdrawal syndrome and having lost a friend to opioid addiction. I would say that comparing the two is preposterous.
Thats comparing the effects on friends an family with the effects on the user. Which in turn, is a bit unfair. It wouldnt be much usefull to talk about people who got suicidal because of SSRI side effects either. It is a rare side effect that might happen and not something that apparently happens regularly like withdrawal.
edit: I am not looking for a moral equivalence here but didnt have another example where addiction and physical withdrawal is accepted beforehand for a treatment.
If you take properly prescribed opioids it is unlikely you get addicted, withdrawal symptoms or die. Those are issues stemming from miss use. Personally induced or by a careless physician. The exception is in palliative care and chronic pain where it still beats the alternative.
Apparently you get SSRI withdrawal from normal prescribed use. And its not surprising if you consider how long people have to take antidepressants.
I am a bit shocked, that something as commonly prescribed as SSRI have such severe withdrawal symptoms from normal use. Of the top of my head, i dont know of many kinds of prescription drugs that cause a withdrawal once you finish your regiment.
You view of these things don't converge with my experiences at all. The flue-like 'withdrawal' from ssri's is not nice, but it is peanuts compared to drugs with a misuse potential like opioids. Opioids rewrite your brain's reward system, the withdrawals are excruciating, and your former addiction will be a part of you for the rest of your life.
As I wrote having first and second hand experience with both kinds of withdrawal I think talking the danger of opioids down while talking ssri's up is wrong and dangerous.
And I think its wrong and dangerous to lump together the side effects of opiod miss use and the side effects from proper prescribed regiments. By all means, Opiod miss use is dangerous. Nothing new here, we as humanity have known that for centuries by now. But I think its only reasonable to point out, that withdrawal being an expectable side effect of a SSRI regime is extremely scary. That there is a insane panic about even medical use of Opiods while no one blushes an eye about that kind of severe expectable side effects is worrying.
Sure they are not comparable in risk, but the hurdle for a SSRI prescription is also quite a bit lower then the one for Opiod prescription.
