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I was on ssris from 10 to 32, (started tapering at 30. I was on benzos for 7 years from 23-30. At 23 I was also put on an enzyme inhibitor (omeprazole) by my PCP that increased both the benzo and the ssri in my body, and doctors were not aware of the interaction. My withdrawal saga actually started with me switching from omeprzole to pepcid. Anyway after tapering from benzos and ssris, I developed some central sleep apnea, and my sleep was so bad I couldn't function. For some reason trazodone increases aurosal thresholds and helps sleep apnea I take 25 mg at night. Is this a really bad idea. I'm still in the thick of PAWS, and while functional, definitely low functioning.

Hi All, Firstly thanks for the excellent site and taking the time to review my post. History is long, so in the interest of time, 20 yrs on SSRI's (i've tried virtually all but had most luck with prozac and lexapro) with a 4 month bout of Remeron (awful w/d not helped by cross taper) and benzo's on/off for 8 years or so. Benzo: I've successfully switched from .5mg of clonazepam/day to 10mg valium and i'm now at 2mg per day. A bit more about this below. SSRI: Was on 20 mg for celexa for the last several months but completely zombified so decided it's finally time to be done with this sh1t I dropped relatively quickly per docs orders with really no impact down to 5mg celexa completely stopping the celexa and valium on May 1. Started 10 mg prozac only May 1, by May 4 really awful DR with anxiety, inability to focus, sleeplesness, headaches. Reinstated 1-2 mg valium which helped a little bit. Yesterday i tested the waters and dropped the prozac down to 5 mg to see if agitation was from that which resulted in bad anxiety, chills,and shaking. Took the other 5 g prozac and an additional 1mg valium which helped a bit. Today slightly better back at 10mg prozac and 2mg valium in the morning. I have a pdoc appointment tomorrow and really don't know what to do and not sure i trust his opinion frankly but do believe he will be fine with what i recommend. I consider these the following my options: 1.) Reinstate celexa at last dose (5mg?), drop prozac entirely after a week or 2, and keep valium, then micro taper off at 10% per 3 weeks or so. 2.) Hold steady on prozac and valium for awhile (how long?) then micro taper 3.) Something else? Any thoughts are much appreciated and i apologize for any incoherence in this post but just got back from work trip and wanted to get this out there for the educated folks to review asap. Many thanks for any input and your time!!! methuselah

This story is intended to be published elsewhere as a human interest article. The author is an occasional freelance writer. I asked for them. That's the part of my 12-year journey with antidepressants and their fallout that really sticks in my head. I asked for them. The drugs that would have such a devastating effect on my life were something that I asked for. I believe in personal responsibility. But then I have to remind myself. When you walk into a doctor's office with a few issues – in my case a touch of anxiety and mildly obsessive thoughts – there's only one adult in the room and that's the person with the expensive embroidered degree on the wall. In 2011, I was encouraged by a counsellor to ask my general practitioner (GP) for antidepressants. The counsellor informed me I would be facing an uphill battle for life if I didn't use them. A 5-minute consult with my GP followed with a few vague questions. 'Are they addictive?' I ask. 'No, not at all' was the response. I was prescribed a low dose of 10 milligrams of citalopram, an antidepressant of the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor variety (SSRI). It stimulates neurotransmitters in the brain to allow serotonin to linger a lot longer. 'Here's your script, the chemist is next door' I was told. Us New Zealanders can be a trusting lot. We live at the bottom of the world, we stick to our own and tend to go with the flow. As an aside, we have major housing issues, social inequalities and a mental heath crisis, but tell us we can't go to the beach for a few weeks due to a pandemic – then we riot! The pills worked for about 6 months, then the old issues cropped up. Fast forward about a year, I'm back in front of my trusted GP, who told me to up the dose to 20 milligrams. It was at this point I was informed that I would likely be on these drugs for life due to my tendency to 'worry'. After this, things settled down for a bit and I sank into my medicated heaven. Now the side effects started creeping in. Some of these were deeply personal (Google it). But the biggest one for me was the jaw clenching or 'bruxism' and to this day I still have the cracks in my teeth from this. Back to the GP. I was told it wasn't bruxism but an ear infection and with a patronising air was given Flixonase nose drops. Yeah, they didn't work. After this, I decided to just accept things and put up with my lot. But by 2018, enough was enough. More side effects were creeping in and I didn't want to be a slave to the jagged little pills anymore. I decided to come off. With only some limited knowledge of tapering and no advice from anyone I reduced dose to 10mg. Big mistake. My world fell apart, my days became nights and I sank into a deep depression. Arguments and confrontations with family and friends became a thing that year. A few weeks later, back to my old friend the GP – you'd think I'd learn by now. I asked about using a different drug with less side effects. Another 5 minute consult. 'Are they addictive!?' I asked 'Nah, not to my knowledge!' I was prescribed Buspirone, a different class of antidepressant. Two days after taking these I was almost housebound with paranoia, agoraphobia (fear of outdoors) and obsessive thoughts. I tossed the latest pills in the bin and reinstated back up to 10mg citalopram, a lower dose than I was originally on. Things improved somewhat and life limped on for a few more years, but still with side effects. 2020 arrived, with all its pandemic issues. My old GP decided to retire. I decided to see my new GP to sound her out about some of my drug side effects. This time I had better luck. She told me the bruxism and other issues were in actual fact a known side effect of antidepressants and she had quite a few patients who experienced it while taking them. Did my old GP not have patients with these effects, or did he not read their notes or listen to the words coming out their mouths? It was at this point I decided I wanted out. No more, never again. I sought advice online about how to taper off SSRIs – I was told by my GP to merely 'take it easy'. I started to take it easy by literally shaving the pill, month to month. Not exactly the most scientific way of doing it. The chemist offered to convert my pills to liquid form to allow for easier dosing – but wanted a 100 dollars a pop to provide this service. Good old New Zealand health system, here's to 30 years of neoliberalism – how's it working out for us? September 2020 arrived and I started experiencing my first withdrawal effects – a visual migraine. Not too bad, I thought. I can deal with that. The tapering and shaving of the pill continued over the next year, all throughout the lockdowns and the world going bonkers. I hit July of 2021 with another lockdown, and my shaving of the pill had got to the point where I couldn't do it anymore. The last crumb was just too small for the knife to go through, so I jumped off. Nuclear level mistake. I didn't know it at the time, but I had just launched a missile a year into the future. These days I know all about how antidepressant withdrawal works. There's an acute phase, where you get a bunch of short-acting symptoms. Then there can be the post-acute phase where new symptoms develop some time later as your brain tries to rebalance itself. That last tiny dose is the one you're supposed to hang around on the longest. Anyway, this next phase of withdrawal crept in, and it was my first experience with chronic pain. Blinding, piercing headaches that wrapped like a band around the base of my skull. Ever had a red wine hangover? This felt like a permanent version of that. This came and went over the next year and seemed to be made worse by certain prescribed drugs, some types of alcohol (hoppy beer) or supplements, but could also pay a wee visit for no apparent reason. Then August of 2022 arrived and all hell broke loose. The missile landed. Sudden widespread chronic pain was delivered to my doorstep. This affected my back and joints. For my sins I also added migraines, exercise intolerance, chronic fatigue, nausea, depression and the intermittent return of bruxism. My first post-pandemic overseas holiday to Sydney happened that month and my wife was dragging a living corpse around with her. No painkiller touches it, you just have to accept it. As of January 2023, after a year and half off the drugs these issues are ongoing. It's important to understand, this is not a relapse of the original diagnosis as many health professionals 'gaslight' this as. This is new, and reflects the experience of tens of thousands of people who are currently withdrawing from antidepressants. These people provide anecdotal evidence and their experiences are supported with a lot of emerging peer-reviewed literature. After discovering a great deal of anecdotal evidence and doing my research my conclusion is this. I got off light. Ironically, thanks to the pandemic, an understanding employer and being able to work from home 4 days a week, I still have my job and can support myself. I came off these drugs because they didn't work as promised and had side effects I wasn't informed of. Staying on them was a bit like a junkie who could no longer get high – staying on heroin just to keep to their version of normal. I've since learned that going back on them may not even be an option as there's no guarantee it will resolve my symptoms due to how the central nervous system has been sensitized. For the record, I believe that antidepressants have their place. If you are actively suicidal or have extreme chronic depression they can be a game-changer. I had none of these issues. I have some of them now, although to reassure everyone I am currently not, nor have I ever been, suicidal. In my other life as I now call it, I was a dedicated martial artist, yogi and rock musician. All this is now gone. I'm now medically retired from everything I love and down to a single 4 kilometer walk per day and I'm only 49 years old. My biggest fear is these issues will now never resolve and I'm stuck with the fallout of bad advice, gaslighting medical health professionals and a hemorrhaging health system. My trust is in ashes. My heart is broken. In January 2023, I discovered this website.

Hi, So quick background.. i took LUVOX (fluvoxamine) a few years ago and was able to come off of it safely and with minimum withdrawal. (I reduced 50mg at a time over a few months) (I know this wasn’t the right way to taper but I didnt know at the time) I took Luvox again this year and as I been withdrwaling, I realize it is MUCH harder. I can BARELY withdrawal 10mg at a time and I strongly feel the withdrawal. I been withdrawing less than 5% to. It just does not make sense to me that I withdrew much faster and easier before and now it is so much harder the second time... I don’t think it has todo with my diet or stress. If you Any thoughts as to why this is, it would be great thanks...

Hi Friends, I went off of trazadone 5.5 months ago after 15 years of use for insomnia, and have been suffering from protracted withdrawal ever since. The most debilitating symptom is severe depression that often manifests physically as pain in my heart, and a myriad of new drug sensitivities. I have a few questions about other's experience's and/or recommendations. · Has anyone had success with st. john's wort, 5 htp, homeopathy, or other approaches? · Will attempting to treat the symptoms with herbs, or ssris prolong the period of withdrawal? · Does anyone understand the mechanism behind the symptoms of protracted withdrawal coming in waves? My preference would of course be to get through this without having to medicate the symptoms, but there are times when the depression feels so intolerable, I need to have another option for my own safety (I've been very proactive of finding alternative methods to deal with the depression, ie, meditation, exercise, support, etc. but they have a limited effect). I have read that in rare cases, protracted withdrawal can last years or be indefinite. Given that I was on trazadone for 15 years, and I tapered much too quickly, I imagine mine may be a slow process. I have included a detailed history of my experience to give context for anyone who is interested. Thank you. HISTORY: 15 years ago, at the age of 23, I went through a healing crisis of sorts, dealing with issues of childhood trauma. I went to a treatment center for depression, where I was put on a number of different drugs (as best I can remember: celexa, risperdal, trazadone, vistaril, and one or two others). The treatment center was beneficial for me - I did intensive therapy, and worked very hard on my own healing. Within a year or two of returning, I tapered off all of the mediations I'd been put on, with the exception of trazadone. I had had insomnia for most of my life and was under the impression that its only purpose was to treat sleeplessness. I was unaware it was an antidepressant for the next 15 years, until after I began the tapering process. Even my naturopath continued to prescribe it without question. Over the last 15 years, I healed myself through intensive therapy, even becoming a therapist myself. I build a successful business in a field I felt passionate about, combining therapy with an artistic discipline. For years I contemplated getting off the trazadone but didn't feel like I could risk not sleeping with my demanding career. A year ago, I decided to take sabbatical and travel the world, starting with an ayurvedic cleanse program in India. A couple years prior, I started to have the creeping suspicion that my medications (benadryl, alegra-D, singular, trazadone) were creating more symptoms than they were treating, and so began the withdrawal process before leaving for India. At first I cut my trazadone from 150mg to 75mg and cut out the Benadryl completely. I struggled with sleep, but more significantly, horrible nausea for about 6 months. I attributed the sleep to the trazadone, but the nausea to the Benadryl (now I'm not so sure that was accurate - it may have been the large reduction of trazadone). Luckily, I was able to treat the nausea with small doses of medical marijuana. I went off my other allergy mediations much more easily - with a week to two of acute symptoms that afterwards subsided completely. When I began my cleanse in India, I tapered the trazadone from 75mg to 0 in a matter of 5 weeks. Way to fast given what I now know, but again, at the time, I had no idea what I was dealing with. Each time I would decrease, I would have acute withdrawal symptoms for about a week which would then subside; mainly night terrors, sleeplessness, and irritability. For the next three months I only managed between 3-5 hrs of sleep a night, but although it was frustrating, it was manageable, given that I was spending hours each day mediating. My nausea went away after I tapered from 75mg to 50mg but for the first two weeks, I suffered from persistent sexual arousal disorder (pgad, the female version of priapism) - a nightmare which caused incredible discomfort as I was barely able to pee for two weeks. Luckily, I figured out it was due to the trazadone withdrawal after some research. That experience only made me more determined to get it out of my system, and quickly. The PGAD disappeared when I tapered from 50 to 25mg. After my final dosage (I had basically just been taking a crumb for a week), I began experiencing the most horrific emotional pain I have ever experienced. I often find myself at a loss for how to describe it as it's never felt like typical depression. It was something like a combination of an ongoing panic attack with a grief stricken/shock-like feeling - like when you learn that your beloved has died and it knocks the wind out of you. I felt a palpable heart pain -though it was clearly emotional in nature. It is not the first time I've felt that heart pain, and may just be how my body metabolizes severe depression - but it was the most extreme experience I've had, and totally devoid of content. At the time, I had never heard of protracted withdrawal and so assumed I was having some kind of spiritual crisis. I was staying at an ashram, and so spent many hours in meditation. The symptoms gradually got a bit better over the first month, but then came back with a vengeance, though usually with some breaks of relief during each day when the heart pain would subside briefly and I'd get a bit of perspective. The odd thing was that this 'depression' came seemingly out of the blue at a period in my life where I felt stronger and happier than I'd ever been before. After some research, and consulting with a colleague who specializes in psychiatric drug withdrawal, I realized I could be experiencing protracted withdrawal. I tried to stay in India as long as possible to heal myself there, hoping it would pass quickly and I could continue my travels, but at some point the pain became too intolerable and I decided to come back to the States where I would have more resources to treat the symptoms (or so I thought). I decided to stay with my family in the midwest while I figure this out, and enlisted the help of a wonderful holistic psychiatrist, who luckily recognized the symptoms (at that time - depression, arthritis, and gum pain) as protracted withdrawal. I first tried supplements, homeopathy, and st. john's wort, in an attempt to stay off SSRIs. The St. John's Wort did provide some relief after week 5, but I was experiencing extreme fatigue and rapid hair loss. My psychiatrist suggested I try a small dose of prosaic after weaning off the SJW in order to get through the protracted withdrawal. Over the next month I tried 4 different SSRIs in miniscule doses (Prozac, lexapro, celexa, wellbutrin) and had horrible adverse reactions to all - sleeplessness, panic, wired/restless leg syndrome, loss of appetite, migraines, nausea, diarrhea. I had to take Clonazepam (luckily only one dose for each attempt at a new SSRI) to counter the reactions. Next we tried SAM-E at 50mg/day. I had some mild reactions, but after 6 days, felt wonderful - depression had subsided though I was a bit wired, but on day 7, I ended up with the same reactions as the other SSRIs and had to discontinue. Interestingly, I've taken almost all of these medications in the past without issue. I was given zoloft twice during my life (once for chronic mononucleosis when I was a teenager and for two years for 12 days out of every month for endometriosis). I had no problem on the drugs, but did experience acute withdrawal symptoms when I was going on and off the zoloft each month. I had horrible dizziness, and only after thousands of dollars of mris and other tests did I realize from my own research that it was caused by my body going into withdrawal for two weeks of each month. A few weeks after my final dose however, I was fine. I swore never to touch another antidepressant - totally unaware that trazadone was one! I also tried SAM-E at one point when I was experiencing depression after a total hysterectomy (for the endometriosis). It didn't help but it also didn't have any adverse effects at the time. The depression subsided when we were able to get my estrogen levels back on track. My psychiatrist works in cooperative clinic, so together we saw the nutritionist there, who tested me for deficiencies and then started me on a regiment of supplements. As far as I can tell, I have not had any adverse reactions to the supplements, but have not felt improvement from them either. For the past three months I have been on a very strict diet: no grains, no dairy, no sugars, no caffeine, no alcohol, and no meat (my choice). I basically just eat vegetables, lentils, lots of fish, and a few nuts. I've also been adamant about making sure I get 1-3 hours of mild to moderate exercise/day. This seems to be the one thing that routinely brings me a bit of relief, though only while I'm walking, moving, etc. I am lucky to have a wonderful support system and minimal external stressors in my life at the moment. I have tried my best to keep a positive attitude and am often successful, though I continue to get knocked out by the intensity of the heart pain when it arises, even with my myriad of coping strategies. Having tried so many ssris, and then the SAM-E (last dose was 12 days ago), it's hard to know what my norm off of meds will be - if there is one.

Please help me. I have experienced much akathisia and distonias, I am still taking benzos and SSRI's but extremely depressed/ suicidal. No appetite. Confusion. Headaches. Lost hope. Don't know who to trust. Brain feels very sick.

Butler Hospital, in association with Brown University in Providence, RI are doing research on a 20 week taper comparing two different taper methods. Is this unusual? Considering the paucity of information from pharma and/or scientific research on tapering I was astonished to see this being done. I've put in a call. The research head is on vacation for week, so I'll need to wait to hear back. I probably won't be eligible as my anxiety is PTSD based, not PD, SAD or GAD! TAPS Tapering Anxiety Pharmacotherapy Support Study TOPS Tapering OCD Pharmacotherapy Support Study

http://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/legal-journal-says-antidepressants-can-cause-violence-and-suicide/ Legal Journal Says Antidepressants Can Cause Violence and Suicide April 18, 2016 Antidepressants have been reported to cause a state called “akathisia,” where people feel extremely agitated and restless and may become preoccupied with thoughts of violence. In a new article, to be published in the latest issue of the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine, researchers investigate the role of antidepressants in three recent murders. The researchers, a medical specialist and a forensic psychiatrist and pharmacogeneticist, suggest that tests may be done to assess the role of antidepressant toxicity in violent events that may affect legal determinations, potentially even absolving people charged with homicide. The “new generation” antidepressants, SSRIs and SNRIs, appeared in the 1980s but, according to the reviewers, “their adverse effects and clinical trial data have not been fully disclosed.” In 2004, the FDA published a public health advisory warning of worsening depression and suicidality in some patients being treated with antidepressants. In 2007, a Black Box suicide warning was extended from just teenagers and suggested monitoring all patients up to age 24 for anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, hostility, impulsivity, and akathisia. Recent findings show an increased risk for violent crime in young adults taking antidepressants and a groundbreaking reanalysis of the infamous Study 329 on the effects of Paxil on teens found a heightened risk for suicide that was not initially disclosed by the drug companies. The authors report that genetic variations in metabolism affect how individuals react to antidepressants and that research indicated that “ultra-rapid metabolizers” may be at an increased risk for changes in behavior. More at above link...