Search the Community

Hello. I’m Brydon age 36 male. I am so happy to have found this site. I really hope someone is able to shed some light on this as my doctor l, er doctors, psychiatrist and every other medical professional has no idea. i had been on citalopram for 9 years. Starting at 10mg and have a bit of a anxiety increase about 3 years ago I was upped by my doctor to 20mg. i seemed to do great on this and it got me back to eating well l, working out and feeling like my old self again. however just this past august I had a long road trip coming up that I have been flaking on for years as my anxiety was still a fear on long trips. I conquered the trip and felt amazing after. When I got home I was so proud of myself. I went out camping the following weekend and had the most liberating time I’ve had in years. Suddenly when I got back home the nightmare started. I was getting bad anxiety, heart pounding, head pressure, in a 24/7 state of panic where even my home was an uncomfortable place. I tried riding it out but it got worse and worse until I was having attacks like never before constantly. I went to the ER. Had. A heart scan and checkup and I was told I was fine and given ativan. I still kept having the same feeling nom stop. A psychatirist I found decided to take me off cipralex and try some new anti psychotics with Ativan daily as well. This didn’t seem to help a lot. The anxiety curbed but I felt so weird and gross on them. I ended up having a mental breakdown going to see my family doctor and he recommended Zoloft at 150mg. Zoloft has been terrible for me. I get an itchy throat when I take them. Head clamp feeling. Throat feels sore, head aches and more. I tapered for a month and a half from 150 to 50mg. Then I stoppped. Today I woke up day 3 of no medications and the zaps were happening anytime I moved a muscle or moved my eyes. I decided to take my pill right in the morning of 25mg being my lowest dose of Zoloft to save me issues. i am still a wreck and now my throat hurts again. can anyone tell me why my cipralex would have crapped out that way? I was doing so well. Do you think it’s worth reinstating the cipralex tonight before bed? The Zoloft has only made things worse for me and I feel like I’m at the end of the road after 6 long months of complete hell. I’ve been eating well taking fish oil supplements and doing push-ups when I’m not on the verge of zapping out but nothing works. Please any advice or thoughts could really save my life right now. if anything what would you do in my situation at this moment? thanks you so much everyone

Hello all you lovely people, I'm a 29 year old, white, cis-woman from Canada. This is my first time posting on any site like this. And, this may be shocking, my psychiatrist is the one who suggested I do it. She is actually a wonderful woman who fully acknowledges the evils of psychiatry and how much damage pharmaceuticals have caused me and others. She acknowledges that she operates from a place of very limited information about the impacts of these drugs, and is very supportive of whatever direction I want to take my healthcare in. Anyway, here is a bit of my history ... - Difficult (yet privileged) childhood - Got into drugs during teen years - Went to residential substance use treatment at end of teens - Given Trazodone and Citalopram in 2011, stopped taking in 2012 with no issues - Abusive ex gets out of jail in 2014, I begin having debilitating panic attacks and agoraphobia. Go to hospital because I think I'm going crazy, they give me Seroquel and Ativan which calms me down but doesn't fix the situation, of course. This was my first experience with any kind of mental health issue, even through addiction I didn't experience anxiety or depression. - 2014 I go to short term, residential psychiatric facility because I couldn't function from anxiety attacks. Had to drop out of school and take time off work. Put on Citalopram, Ativan as needed, Trazodone for sleep, and Wellbutrin to counter side effects of Citalopram. Stabilized and resumed life. - 2017 attempted to taper off Wellbutrin through doctor's orders of "skip a day" tapering. Horrible experience, intense derealization, suicidality, mood swings, feeling like I would lose my mind. Again, time off school and work. Doctor reinstated the Wellbutrin. Derealization has come and gone since this attempt to get off Wellbutrin, even after reinstating. - 2018 panic attacks come back. Put on Clonazepam. Anxiety goes away. After a year on Clonazepam, I realize I'm on so many psych drugs when I don't want/need to be on any. Take a year to taper the Clonazepam in half. Another year to get off it completely. Coped with Neurofeedback, some supplements, exercise, talking. Did experience withdrawal (mostly nocturnal panic attacks) but nothing life-ruining. - 2021 begin tapering Citalopram from 20mg to nothing over the course of 18 months. Tapering Wellbutrin 5mg every 2 weeks at the same time through a compounding pharmacy. I began feeling better on lower doses of these drugs. - 2022, June: off Citalopram completely for three weeks. Feeling great. No anxiety, sleeping well, sex drive is back, feeling more and more present and less derealization. Feeling my emotions, good, bad and ugly, and happy to have them back. Compounding pharmacy couldn't fill my Wellbutrin before I left for a trip and I was already down to 40mg, so I figured I'd be fine to go off that too. Mistake. After being off everything for three weeks, psychiatrist diagnoses me with ADD and prescribes Ritalin. I take a minuscule dose, 5mg, and after it wears off begin feeling the worse derealization I've ever experienced, borderline psychosis. Extremely distressed. It lasts for three days before I caved and reinstated the Citalopram and Wellbutrin at low doses. - 2022, July: the entire month, I'm experiencing the side effects of going back on Citalopram and Wellbutrin. I regret going back on them. Nausea, headaches, issues sleeping, tremors, no sex drive, extreme brain fog... I've been on 5mg Citalopram and 40mg Wellbutrin for 6 weeks now. I feel better than I did in June when the derealization got bad, but still not feeling well at all. The plan is to taper off one at a time in a few months. Currently, I am experiencing these effects from the drugs: - excessive sweating - derealization/dissociation - confusion (I woke up one night and couldn't remember what I did for work for about five minutes) - no sex drive - passive suicidal ideation (I don't want to die at all, but these thoughts pop into my head) - nausea and low appetite - difficulty with self-care or even feeding myself - low motivation - headaches - memory loss - feeling like I'm on autopilot - feeling empty and purposeless despite having a loving family and network of friends and a successful career If you've read all this, thank-you, I appreciate you. Any feedback from any one, and specifically people with experience coming off Wellbutrin (I don't know why, but it's so hard for me) would be really appreciated. I get stuck in the mindset that I'll feel this messed up forever and that I'm doomed. I read the success/recovery/healing stories on here and it gives me a lot of hope.

Hi all, Been struggling for a while with anhedonia ever since I was put on venlafaxine. I’ve been on and off different meds ( citalapram, setraline, quitiapine) and I’m coming off mirtazapine now. All these meds where an attempt to shift the anhedonia/emotional nimbness(although I can cry for the situation I’m in). I have a one year old son who I’ve videos of me playing with him and really enjoying my time with him but now I can’t feel any joy or love when I look at him which is killing me more everyday. So I can’t quite pinpoint when my symptoms started but I have this pins and needles/numb sensation in the right hand side of my head/brain. Don’t think it’s a withdrawal because I’ve had it all the time I’ve been on mirtazapine and maybe before. Hard to tell if I’m still depressed because I can’t feel any positive emotions, I’ve read it’s maybe to do with the reward system. Seems weird that a lot of the time I don’t feel “sad” but how can I not when I can’t feel any positive emotions. can anyone shed any light on what’s going on? My head is like this all the time so it’s not like the brain zaps. It’s like when your gut goes numb when you sit on it for a while but 24/7 on the right side of my head, all around my ear area. And any success stories overcoming anhedonia would be great, I’m trying my best to stay positive but it’s really hard when I don’t feel any love, joy, connection. Even the simple things that don’t have any pressure( I put on myself because I know I should feel these things for my son) like watching sport or tv shows/films don’t promote anything in me. Help

I started citalopram about 10 years ago at 40 mg. I have spent the last four years tapering off. I was at 10 mg. for about 2 months, and then at 5 mg for about two weeks. I felt ok, so then I stopped completely. I was ok for about a week after my last dose, but then started having really, really bad irritability. I have no patience and have a lot of trouble sleeping. At night, when I'm trying to sleep, I feel very jittery. I'm assuming it took a week to get it all out of my body. So I've just read about reinstating it. I just made up the liquid solution. I thought maybe I'd start taking 3 mg each night. Wondering what everyone else thinks. Should I start back lower? If I knew this irritability would be short tem, I might try to wait it out, but it's been five days and I'm having a lot of difficulty. If I start back on 3 mg, what should my taper schedule be? How long should it take. I'm also taking 600 mg. gabpentin and low dose naltrexone. Not sure if that makes a difference.

Please can I get your help, my brother was taking Citalapram 5mg for 8 months for his rare mental condition and stopped taking in July cold turkey (medical insurance ran out and as the meds weren’t helping, he didn’t think it was worth it to go back on when was able to do so and be done with it). For 3 months, he didn’t really feel any withdrawal symptoms and lived life as normal as possible. Then out of no where, he was feeling a huge serotogenic effect from any food he would eat to the point where he has just been drinking orange juice and eating mushed broccoli to avoid the serotonin syndrome like symptoms it’s giving him. Now even that has such a huge serotonin syndrome like effect after he took hydrolysed collagen as a supplement as it has no tryptophan and supposed to reduce serotonin intake but actually did more damage. His symptoms when eating most foods are Numbness in the head and his face, confusion, loss of coordination, his movements feel very light (e.g when raising arms in the air etc). And the increase serotonin gives him many nightmares at night also.) After over a month of trying find answers for this symptoms, we realise through this website (thank you) that he has SSRI withdrawal syndrome. Went to many to many doctors, neurologists and Psychiatrists and it took our research to finally get a Psychiatrist to agree that this is withdrawal syndrome. It looks like his nervous system has taken a big hit and now my brother is wasting away as he is barely eating to avoid further damage. Does he go back on Citalapram but taper slowly? We’re worried that as it’s been over a month of experiencing these symptoms that his brain maybe sensitised to Citalapram but we’re not sure and just very scared by the gamble of reintroducing Citalapram vs the gamble of doing nothing and my bro waste away. Please, any help would be appreciated!