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PLEASE NOTE: Member also has a Benzo topic here. ________________________________________________________________ This is a simplified list of this member's drug history: http://survivingantidepressants.org/topic/13732-maizenblue81-tapering-zoloft-during-severe-acute-xanax-wd/?do=findComment&comment=264799 ________________________________________________________________ I have now been off Xanax from a CT detox in the hospital for 2 1/2 months and having severe acute symptoms still from that that is a complete nightmare and has destroyed my life! Bad thing is I keep trying to tell the doctors I'm the hospital and my family that what I was going through was Xanax WD and they keep looking at me like I was crazy and blamed my symptoms on anxiety and OCD. So they put me on .5mg of resperdal and 75mg of Zoloft out of the hospital then at my one month checkup I got completely off the resperdal and they bumped me up to 100mg on the Zoloft which I have now been on 2 months. I don't think it's helping as nothing like I told them would help Xanax WD other than another benzo and now I'm stuck with the Zoloft! I want to get off but after 2 months I know I can't quit it Cold turkey so I looked it up online and it shows two ways to either cut down a dose or 25mg every 2-6 weeks or so and even slower taper of 12.5 % once a week too get off in 8 weeks and for me with how bad the Xanax symptoms still are I know slow is probably the best for me in this situation but I actually ran out of my 100mg tablets last night and I have enough of the 50mg tablets to start the taper tonight breaking two pills down to where it's only a 12.5% reduced dose. But I only have enough to do that for about 4 days then I'm out! The 100mg and 50mg tablets are different and I don't know how that's gonna screw me up cause when I get my refill it will be 100mg so I don't know? This is crazy my current symptoms are horrible intense head pressure burning and numbness in my head, confusion, dizziness, DP/DR and horrible evil intrusive thoughts are all the worst! Most of which I think is still acute Xanax WD but I want to get off the Zoloft as safely as possible! Help and advice please

Hi! I read Robert Whitaker's anatomy of an epidemic in June 2019 which started me on my tapering journey. I originally assumed that the rate psychiatrists used to cross taper using the existing doses available was okay. As a result I did a fairly fast taper partly psychiatrist supervised from 160 mg of my ziprasidone to 120 to 80 to 60 mg. I also not at the same time of course, tapered off attarax 25 mg 3x daily to 25mg 25 mg and 20 mg. Than 25 20 20 mg, 20 20 20 mg and than 10 10 10 mg and than 0, 10 mg 10 mg and so on with minimal rebound anxiety which I waited for it to pass before tapering more, tapered off 100 mg of trazodone going from 100 to 75 to 50 to 25 to 0, and tapered down my cymbalta from 90 to 60 to 30 mg. This took me from June 2019 to the end of september 2019 which i understand is fast and im luckily i experienced little to no withdrawal symptoms. At the end of september I came across the withdrawal project, Links on Robert Whitakers website, and this site and realized I'd been going fast. Oct 8th I started a liquid titration of my ziprasidone going down to 50 mg. No problems yet. I am currently at 50 mg ziprasidone, 30 mg Cymbalta and 2 mg of Xanax which I take twice a day but am slowly shifting to spreading the dose to three and than four times a day (half a mg each). The plan if all goes well is to taper off my ziprasidone, wait 2 weeks, start tapering my cymbalta, wait two weeks and start tapering Xanax last. From my research the Lay tapering community reccomends 5 to 10% of the month's previous dose once a month if you are doing cut and hold and psychiatrists who specialize in tapering reccomend 10% of the original dose every 2 to 4 weeks doing cut and hold. I decided to go closer to 10 percent of the original dose for now every two weeks and if I run into any problems I will slow it down and do a smaller taper. So that's my introduction for now! Thank you for being here.