Search the Community

We are helping our daughter, 21, through withdrawal from Zoloft. She had a manic event that peaked approximately 2 weeks ago. She was on Zoloft, for approximately 8 months, starting at 150mg, and down to 100mg. She started taking the Zoloft irregularly, we believe precipitating the event. She was admitted into a psychiatric ward in the city where she lived, and based on the manic symptoms (racing speech, delusional theories, looping over the same topics), they began to treat her for bipolar disorder. She was in the ward for approximately 9 days, and received everything from Olanzapine, Lithium, Ativan/lorazepam, haldol, benzocaine, benadryl and klonopin... She had adverse reactions to all of them (hot/cold chills, swollen tongue, eczema, racing pulse), and she refused to take any more meds. We got her out of the psych ward, and brought her home to where we live outside of Boston. Unfortunately, since any licensed psychiatrist would immediately diagnose her as bipolar again, and put her back into inpatient, we have treat her at home, alone, and cold turkey. When we brought her home, she was coming of 2mg of lorazepam and was still manic (though nowhere nearly as badly as earlier). That night she slept for 10 hours. The following day, the rapid speech was still present, but reduced. However, she could not sleep and spent the entire night talking and pacing. The next day the rapid speech slowed even more, pacing was absent, and she got a good nights sleep. This morning however, she went exhibited severe anger/rage and pacing returned. She also started experiencing hot and cold chills. We are giving her vitamin supplements, including zinc, magnesium, iron and omega 3. We have been avoiding tylenol, and caffeine, though she insisted on coffee this am. We are also avoiding breads, pasta, sugars, etc. Questions. Is this pattern typical? How long does each of the cycles last? Can we expect rapid cycling to continue? Does anyone know how long this rapid cycling will continue. Are there any other supplements or techniques we should consider for managing these cycles. I have taken her for walks on the first two days (about 2 miles each). Any practical guidance will be appreciated on these topics.