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Hi! I am a new member and found this group as I was searching the best way to taper from celexa. I have been on Celexa since 2017 for anxiety related to insomnia. I successfully tapered from 20 mg to 10 mg after I was on the drug for one year. As my anxiety reduced with getting better sleep, I found that 20 mg made me too groggy in the mornings. I successfully transitioned from 20 to 10 over four weeks with minimal side effects. I stayed on 10 mg for two years before increasing to 15 mg in June 2020 when my daughter was diagnosed with epilepsy. After three months, I felt calmer so I titrated back to 10 I alternating 1510 doses for two weeks with no side effects. I do want to mention that I was on ashwaghanda at that point which I had been on for years. in January 2021 I was feeling really stressed again so I went back up to 15 mg with no side effects. After three weeks my stress was noticeably less and I was trying to lose weight so I decided to go back to 10 mg. I did this cold turkey (as I had done a 5mg change in 2018) and suffered severe dizziness and heart palpitations for a month. I had forgotten how short of time I had been on the new dose and in hindsight I recognize that was much too quickly to change. I saw my doctor after four weeks of being on 10 mg and still experiencing moderate dizziness. He told me to reinstate to 15 mg which I did and again experienced severe dizziness even having my legs go out from underneath me once when I went to get up. The dizziness subsided after two weeks but I was still left feeling groggy in the mornings from the 15 mg dose as well as in the evenings. in late March my doctor told me that after being on 15 mg for four weeks I could again try tapering down using a 15 mg/ 10 mg alternating days schedule. I did this for five days before I felt very strong with drawl symptoms including jitteriness, difficulty finding words, twitching nerve under my eye, increased insomnia(waking up in the middle of the night, etc). I was not on ashwaghanda going into any of the 2021 titrations. I did use the pills a few times during my most recent titration as it seemed to help the symptoms at first but then I became concerned about mixing in this supplement but I was already having strong withdrawal effects. As of 4/1/21, I am now back on 50 mg and intend to stay here for a few months to allow my body to stabilize before trying to taper again. I’m planning to wait 2 months until 6/1 to try to taper again. My doctor suggested removing one 5 mg pill per week every three weeks when I try again. (Eg 10 mg on Monday, 15 mg every other day. Keep this pattern for three weeks. Then have Mondays and Thursdays at 10 mg for the next 3 weeks). i’ve read about the benefit of limiting tapering to 10% and support that idea. This program from my doctor would take me down no more than 10% per month when you average out the doses, but I wonder if it’s better to do a graduated taper like Brass Monkey outlined. Anyone have any thoughts? if I do the brass monkey method, do I literally crush up my Celexa pills into a powder and then weigh them or do I just cut off bits to try to get to the weight? Not sure how to physically execute this. I have 10 mg pills that I can easily cut in half, possibly into quarters. Would I need to get medicine from a compound pharmacy? I think I could go from 15 mg to 12.5 mg doses by cutting my pills. Appreciate any advice.

Hi, You need a taper plan for your antidepressant(s) or benzodiazepine(s) and you don't know how to start? How about create by yourself your own taper plan? If you want to see how your possible taper plan may look like, have a look to the following online planners: - For antidepressants users: http://antdep.alwaysdata.net/ - For benzodiazepines users: http://benzo.alwaysdata.net/ (and the related video - BROKEN video link removed. If you find it please post and provide the link. Thank you.): Have a look to the Help section first. Hope it can help.

I have just started trying to get off Saphris. All these forums and blogs are terrifying me. Especially the story of "acetyl". It was prescribed to me after wellbutrin alone wasn't fixing my depression. I am not bipolar or schizophrenic. I think it was an overly aggressive choice and i wish i had researched it before taking it. I was taking 20mg daily along with 10mg lexapro and 450mg wellbutrin. It put me in a zombielike state. I used to be a high performing software developer, at the top of my field, well respected and capable of great things. After Saphris I was unable to think clearly and lost my ability to design software, ending my career as a software developer. I may as well have been asked to perform Brain surgery so complete was the loss of ability. On top of that my current insurance doesnt cover it and i can no longer afford it. I previously tried going off it when i was only taking 10mg. I went too fast and started to experience anxiety pretty bad before going back on it and eventually ended up going up to 20mg. This time i am going much slower. I tapered from 20 to 10 for two weeks and then to 5mg for the last three weeks. Going to 10 went relatively smoothly. Going to 5 has brought on some anxiety that comes and goes. The worst withdrawal symptom so far has been the sexual dysfunction and this is where things make no sense. Each time i increased the saphris dose (5 to 10 and then 10 to 20) i experienced a decrease in sexual function. I expected things to improve when i reduced my dose but the exact opposite happened. With each decrease in dose my sexual ability is still declining. I am married one year and am not ready for my sex life to go away. I hope this will return once my brain recovers. Anyway now that i am at 5mg i am stopping my taper and waiting for the anxiety to subside. It has actually been better the last two days. Not as intense. Also while i am at 5mg i am going to taper off the wellbutrin since that can cause anxiety, before i continue my saphris taper. I will continue the lexapro. I expect this last 5mg to be the hard part and plan to go very very slowly. At each reduction my plan is to wait until symptoms subside before going on to the next reduction. I plan to hoard saphris over the next 6 months so that i have a multi year supply. My latest rx is for 60 10mg tablets per month expecting that i would be taking 2tablets or 20mg per day. Since i am currently only taking 1/4 of that this makes my rx good for enough for two years. When i reduce even farther it will last even longer (4 years at 2.5mg). Since my insurance will not cover it i will have to pay out of pocket but i think it will be worth it to have a chance to get off this drug successfully. I am seeing a new psychiatrist and he didnt know about saphris withdrawal. To his credit he went right out and researched it. Unfortunately he was unable to find any scholarly or official documentation of saphris withdrawal. The only thing available is anecdotal reports on forums and blogs like these. At least he said i could taper the saphris at whatever rate i feel comfortable. I will report in as the taper continues. Hopefully i can be successful and serve as hope for others. I was unable to find any record of successful withdrawal from saphris

Its only been a week since I started to tapper from 75mg Effexor-xr; am reducing 10% by removing 10 beads at at time. Only problem my memory generally is really bad. So I got a system going blue plastic container so I could see the tiny white beads; a small glass bottle to contain the unused beads. I take my tablet at night. I have just realised this morning that I have missed a capsule. I am shocked. So my question is what do you do when you realise you've missed a dose? Do you just keep on track and be aware that there might be a reaction ? (at some point?) and just keep going, maybe add a few more days to the end before tappering again? Thanks!!!!!

Hi All! Was previously on Lexapro from 2016-2022. Last dose Dec 1, 2022. Severe and debilitating anxiety and panic reared November 2023 and after about a month I asked my family doc if I could start Prozac. After 7 weeks, it is not doing anything, and the side effects (I assume they are) are really difficult to deal with. So I'd like to come off. I am not sure if I will try something else. I am having lots of issues functioning and the physical anxiety is extreme so i may still need help (besides therapy). (Palps, vomiting daily, adrenal surges, shaking limbs, loss of appetite, and on and on) I need advice on how to stop the Prozac. I was on 5mg, went down to 4mg for 10 days, now on 3mg. Since I was only on for 7 weeks and never got above 5mg, do I still need to do the 10% taper? I feel like then the taper will be longer than me being on it and I just want it out of my system. At what point do I just jump? I have liquid version.

Hello everyone! I apologize this will be long but unfortunately doctors played me on a hamster wheel. I now realized how bad I affected my CNS because of writing out a timelines of everything I took. Summer of 2021 I went into depression and actually did not know what was happening to me. Extremely fatigue, could not sleep, could not eat, nothing made me happy, complete anhedonia. I was so scared because of what was happening to me...then came in anxiety when my neurologist friend says I should start AD meds. I was loosing it....so after 2 months of pure agony here it goes: July 2021 - started prozac 20mg, romeron 30mg and ativan 1mg September 2021 - started going down on prozac as I got to 50mg and was having horrible side effects (headache, dizziness, etc.) October 2021 – switched to Zoloft 50mg and added Lyrica 75 with the to drop the Ativan. was taking Romeron on and off, was able to get off it easily. January 2022 – still taking Ativan and Lyrica also, tapering down Zoloft as I got to 125mg and was again feeling horrible. Headaches, zombie, numb no feelings. Went down according to my dr from 125 to 75mg and felt horrible, the dr wanted to put me on Cymbalta. I decided to try to get off meds totally. January-end of March 2022 – by the end of March I was done tapering Zoloft, I had no actual taper rules because I did not inform myself anywhere and I did not tell my dr either. I was just cutting small pieces of the tablet off. The whole experience was horrible, I had bad anxiety, nausea, fuzzy head type of feeling, vertigo, emotional numbness, anhedonia – I was just there and felt horrible physically too. April 2022 – After 3 weeks totally off Zoloft I am back at new psychiatrist and got back on Prozac 20 to take me out of withdrawal. Bad mistake. All this time I was still taking Ativan and Lyrica. May 2022 – Major headaches started again, I got switched directly from Prozac to Cymbalta 30 and from Ativan 1mg to Valium (10mg). June 2022 – upped Cymbalta from 30 to 60 being a therapeutic dose. This increase totally kicked my a$$. July 2022– my dr. started tapering my benzo, she really wanted me off (so did I!!!) She insists I do it like she says and not go to “forums I keep reading”. I told her about Ashton Manual and my Cymbalta hurts worse group and she was not happy. So, I said ok, lets do it like her and started tapering Valium by a quarter every 7 days 😕 August 2022 – by the time I got to the last quarter (2.5mg) of Valium I was a mess: anxiety, complete fatigue I could barely do anything, my whole body hurt, blurry vision, wanted to sleep and lay down all day. I lasted like this 10 days and could not do it anymore. I have 2 small children to look after. Dr says to go back to Valium 10mg and increase Cymbalta to 90 saying 60 is not enough to get me off of valium….. October 2022 – headaches start here and there. I was feeling okish other than headaches. December 2022 – by Christmas time I was so desperate to do something, I was having day and night pressure type headaches that did not go away with any meds for the past 5-6 weeks nonstop, from the minute I opened my eyes. December 2022 – dr. switches me from Cymbalta 90 straight to Effexor 75 without any tapering. I was still on 10mg Valium and 225 Lyrica by now. January – March 2023 – the switch to Effexor was bad: constant faint like feeling, stiff neck and painful neck and skull/head and major anxiety. Got increased to Effexor 112 and the anxiety was much better. Within 14 days headaches started again, I was terrified. April 2023 – had headaches most of the time from January to April when I suggested my dr to back to Cymbalta 60 when I was fine and had no headaches. She agrees and has me direct switch from Effexor to Cymbalta 60mg. The switch was horrendous: bad migraines for days, flu like feeling for days, tired, anxiety and continuing headaches. May 2023 – my doctor makes the wonderful decision of trying to get me off antidepressants to see how my natural state is and figure out this headache mystery. She says go from 60 to 30 cymbalta for 2 weeks and increase lyrica to 300 and then zero Cymbalta and 375 lyrica and 1mg Ativan again (instead of Valium). OMG OMG OMG. I lasted 2 weeks off Cymbalta while I was having mild anxiety and what bothered me most was very intense pain, burning, pins and needles at the base of my skull and going up my skull in the back of my head like someone just hit me with a baseball bat. I called my dr crying and she says to start Cymbalta 30 again and see what happens. I was a little better, the pain was better but still there. I find the Cymbalta hurts worse facebook group and post my story there also. They advised me to go up on Cymbalta (try weighing beads if I can and take less then 60 or just take straight 60). June 2023 – I increased to Cymbalta 50, the first week was great I had such pain relief and I was getting excited I am finally a bit better after everything I have been through. The increase in Cymbalta was rough on my body again, I was having BAD headaches daily, the neck pain returned. I go to the dr again and she wants to switch me to amitriptyline. She says go down to Cymbalta 30 and start ami 12.5 for 10 days then drop Cymbalta to zero and go up to 25 ami. I went down AGAINNN to Cymbalta 30 and added 12.5 ami on June 10th 2023 and have been there since then. I did not go CT on Cymbalta again, I am honestly scared to do any other change. I still take 1mg Ativan and 225 Lyrica. So 4 drugs total…..I am 35 and have 2 kids and psych meds totally ruined me so far. What I have now is a different symptom every week (that s about how long it lasts untill a new one comes or they keep rotating). They are probably still withdrawal symptoms, that is my guess: -neck and head pain/headaches - I am almost sure cymbalta is also causing my headaches -nausea -anxiety especially in the afternoon but not too bad -anhedonia - I could care less that it is friday, monday, vacation or I am at the office. I have not felt happiness, excitement, joy or even sadness in a longgg time. -lack of motivation or excitement to do anything. I was a very active person that loved to do things/go places. What I take now (nothing changed to the AD since June 10th): -0.5 ativan in the AM -75 lyrica at noon -30 cymbalta at 5pm -0.5 ativan afternoon or whenever I feel it necessary (it helps most with the neck pain) -225 lyrica and 12.5 ami before bed usually around 8.30 pm Pls help! where do I start tapering these 4 drugs? I am familiar with the scale method, the bead method for cymbalta. Do I have to wait until completely stable after the cymbalta dose change in june? Tthank you so much. You are honestly my only hope that one day I will be free from all of this. I have been to multiple drugs and they all have no clue....I have been to 2 of the top doctors in Bucharest Romania and I felt I knew more... -

Hey, I'm Kinetic and I have been lurking the Website since around August 2022. This website has served as a source of motivation and inspiration as I have read success stories of those who have walked the journey of recovery. I thought that today I would officially make myself a member. I will try to make this section as brief and consise as I can. Unfortunately, my story starts when I was introduced into the drug world at the age of 17. The gateway drug for me was Adderall, which I succumbed to using through peer pressure. I was over a friend's house and was offered Adderall as a way to supposedly gain an advantage in a video game called Halo. At first I refused, but my friends kept pressing me until I finally give in. I never really got addicted to Adderall, but weed was a different story. I was arrested for weed at a party when I was 19 and could not stop drugs when my whole social life was already revolving around them. I tried psychedelics like DMT and occasionally LSD. Eventually, I ran into problems again around age 23 where I reached the level of drug-induced psychosis. I went to a psych hospital and was put on Seroquel while having the horrific experience of being held down against my will with a forceable injection into my backside by an unknown substance. After about a week into the hospital, I transferred to an in-patient drug rehab and had my medication switched to Risperidone and Depokote. Once I was done with the rehab, I successfully quit the medication cold turkey. The marijuana use continued after only a few months of sobriety. I used weed occasionally with a friend while I continued to attend college. My "system" seemed to work for about 5 years. Then I found myself in a very stressful situation. I was writing my master's level thesis and I felt that I needed the weed to cope. One of my friends ended up being robbed and killed, which I found out through a Google search of his name. I had a difficult time managing the stress of school and grieving the loss of a friend that I had known for over 7 years. Sadly, I turned to the legal channels of Medical marijuana. I qualified for the medical marijuana card by saying that I had PTSD. I finished the master's thesis, however I had one final elective to take to complete my program. This proved to be impossible because my marijuana usage escalated quickly. I was drawn into a world of highly discounted weed and higher THC content than I was accustomed to. Each day I would view the dispensary website for the lastest deal and this routine proved untenable. I ended up back in the hospital where I was given 10mg of Olanzapine. The drug worked right away. After about two weeks of taking Olanzapine, I did some research on what I was actually putting into my body. I tried to cold turkey Olanzapine once I realized the potential dangers of the drug. However, I noticed sleep disruption after only 5 days. My body went into withdraw, something that I had never experienced before in my life. The frightening symptoms of vomiting, temperature deregulation, and akathesia caused me to call the police. Nevertheless, I was still able to hold a coherent conversation and I did not meet the criteria for wanting to hurt myself or others so the police went on their way. I made another attempt at stopping a few months later at 1.25mg, but this proved to be insufficient. I went back up to 5mg and held the dose for about four months. I tried to go back to 2.5mg, but the withdraw symptoms returned. I realized that I need to do more research into tapering in order to be successful. I found the site survivingantidepressants.org through a Google search and I read as much as I could about tapering. I learned about the 10% method and I chose to do the cutting/weighing form of reduction. I received Ketemine treatments and the doctor told me that I could cut once a week instead of once a month since my anxiety was being treated through the Ketemine. I followed his advice and managed to cut to 1.25mg before I experienced withdraw. Next, I held my dose and started cutting once a month. I went back to school and ended up finishing my master's degree in Political Science while tapering Olanzapine. I am currently at .55 mg. I hope to be finally free of Olanzapine and move on with my life.

ADMIN NOTE For tips for tapering your drug , find the link in this list Important topics in the Tapering forum and FAQ You cannot make a liquid from extended-release drugs, such as bupropion SR or XL, or drugs with a protective coating, such as Cymbalta (the type of Effexor XR that comes in a capsule filled with tiny beads is an exception). Many extended-release tablets are held together by a glue to retard their absorption. Mixed with water or other liquids, these tablets become a soggy glob. Otherwise, given variable solubility of drugs, what you're usually doing when you mix a tablet or content capsules with water is creating a suspension, rather than a solution. High solubility is not a requirement for a suspension. Substances that dissolve in solutions will be more reliably distributed evenly throughout the solution, but we have to work with what we've got. A suspension does not require solubility. It's a bunch of particles hanging in a liquid, hopefully fairly evenly distributed. There may be flakes or particles visible in the suspension, some sinking to the bottom of the vessel. We recommend gently shaking or stirring before drawing out a dose from a homemade suspension (avoid creating a froth, because bubbles can throw your dose measurement off), to make sure the active ingredient (the drug) is distributed throughout the liquid. We have many people tapering successfully with homemade suspensions, as well as compounded suspensions and solutions. Also see Pharmacy liquids to make suspensions Questions and answers about liquid medications Compounding pharmacies (US, UK, and elsewhere) Described below, making a liquid from Celexa tablets is only one example of how to do it. Information provided here for Celexa is relevant to making liquids from tablets of other drugs. To skip the discussion about make a liquid with Celexa tablets specifically, jump to "How To Make Liquid from Tablets or Capsules" for more general information about making homemade liquids from many drugs. Also see @Faure's method for making a liquid described here. Also see music321's post about serial dilution of liquids PS Originally, Rhiannon was using a small amount of ethanol to dissolve her Celexa. She later changed her method and was successfully dissolving her tablet in water only. Her topic, Making a Celexa Solution Yourself, has been merged into this topic; the early posts about Celexa have a note added at the top of the posts. Making a Celexa solution yourself A couple of folks asked me to post here about how I dissolve my Celexa and liquid taper it that way. I use a shot glass and dissolve the tablet in a small amount of water (enough to cover it) and a couple of mLs of ethanol (very pure drinking alcohol, I use "Everclear" type, available at the liquor store.) The tablet doesn't dissolve quickly, so I usually leave it there and come back in about twenty minutes. NB: Rhiannon changed her method of dissolving citalopram. She stopped using ethanol. See below quote. I stir it with the pipette to get the drug to dissolve into the ethanol (citalopram is soluble in ethanol). I don't know how well it actually dissolves but as long as it's mixed well it doesn't really matter. Then I add enough water to bring it up to 20 mL total. I mix it well and then draw up my dose for the day, and then pipette it straight into my mouth followed by a pipette full of water (both to rinse the pipette and to dilute the "shot"!) My current dose is 5.25 mg of citalopram, so given the dilution I'm using (10 mg in 20 mL) I measure 10.5 mL as my daily dose. All of this could be adapted easily to using syringes for measurement instead of a pipette. (And if you are more delicate than me you could measure it into a spoon or cup rather than squirting it straight into your mouth.) But using pipettes is really easy too, very simple to learn and do. I'll be seeing my doctor again some time this summer and like I said elsewhere, I may see about getting the citalopram liquid already made up, but it's a $15 copay and the pills are only $5. And I'm already dissolving and pipetting my other meds anyway so it's not really any particular hassle to do it this way with the citalopram. Personally this is the method I would use to taper any med. I've done the dry cutting method using a scale, and I find liquid titration easier to control. I can get my cuts as small as I want by adjusting the dilution. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Making Suspensions Some of the medications we use are insoluble in water. Even with a lot of time and shaking they will not dissolve. What happens is that the powder from a crushed tablet will get mixed with and float around in the water. This is called a suspension. It is a very temporary thing as the powder will precipitate out quickly and not be evenly distributed in the liquid. Medications that have a Dose Strength that is higher than their Solubility Rate will not fully dissolve fully and need to be used to create a suspension. The precipitation of the material can be worked around by stirring the liquid just before measuring the dose and trying to mix the liquid while the dose is being removed. It is not a good idea to shake the liquid because this will introduce many small bubbles that can throw off the accuracy of the dose. Many people have good success using this method, but it can lead to inaccurate dosing. If you have a 10mL syringe and want to use the larger tablets it is possible to mix a suspension right in the syringe. Draw water into the syringe to the 10mL mark. Place the cap on the tip so it won't leak and carefully pull the plunger all the way out of the syringe. Drop in the tablet and gently insert the plunger just enough so it doesn’t leak. Don’t worry about trapping some air in the syringe. Let it sit for an hour or so until the tablet crumbles, shaking it occasionally. When you are ready to take the dose, shake it up good, remove the cap and hold the syringe so the tip is up and carefully squeeze out the air bubbles. Shake it up again and for a full dose you would take the entire contents. When you start to taper you would squeeze out a set amount of liquid before taking the rest. The dilution ratio of the liquid is not important because you will determine each reduction by the marks on the syringe. As the taper progresses more and more liquid will be discarded. When a large portion of the dose is being discarded it is possible for some ADs to save that liquid for two or three days and use it to make up a “free dose”. By using this method there is no need to worry about the powder settling out. Another possibility is to use a suspension liquid that is thicker than water to hold the powder in place for a longer time. Suspension Media Because it is so thin, water is not always the best media for making a suspension. Even though it is quite fine in texture the powder made by crushing the tablets is still heavier than water and can settle out quite quickly. A better way is to use a thicker base material. There are several commercially made “Suspension Medias” available online or through your pharmacist. Ora-plus and Ora-sweet are two of the most common, but a quick online search will bring up other alternatives. There are some ways to make your own which can work quite well also. Believe or of not there are some people who have trouble drinking water because it is too “wet”. There is a product available at many drug stores or chemists referred to as “thick water”. It is thick enough to hold the powder in suspension quite well. Making a homemade suspension media can work well too. A common one is to use maple syrup; you could also use corn syrup or other cooking syrups. There are quite a few recipes available online using a variety of materials. All these media would be used in the same manner as water following the directions given in other parts of this article. Using fruit juice is also popular as a suspension media. Some juices are much thicker than water and suspend the powder quite will. They also taste much better. Because they contain fruit pulp it is hard to see if the powder is well mixed in. However, DO NOT USE GRAPEFRUIT JUICE, it reacts badly with many medications and can create a liquid that is dangerous to drink. It can seem that making a liquid from tablets borders on getting a degree on chemistry. But by following the process step by step it is pretty straight forward, and these techniques are being used by many people to facilitate their tapers.

As you scroll down this link to the medicating normal website you will find links to different resources that are available most seem to UK or Australia. https://medicatingnormal.com/psychiatric-drug-withdrawal/

I was started on Celexa, don’t remember the dose, in 1999 at the age of 19 for “depression” after we moved to a new city, and I had trouble adjusting. No counselling was offered. It was a visit to my family doctor for feeling sad because I missed my friends and family in my old city and then on to a psychiatrist who started me on medication after one visit. Things improved as I made friends and adjusted to the new city. From there I tried to come off celexa due to sexual dysfunction about a year later. I was told to alternate days taking the medication and stop after 2 weeks. The side effects improved but what I now know as withdrawals started within weeks. I saw the doctor again and he said it was my depression coming back and I had a chemical imbalance and I needed to go back on medication. He put me on Effexor, which was later switched to Effexor XR 75mg, and I have been stuck on this medication since then. I have tried to come off Effexor Xr many times over the last 20 years but never make it more than 1 month off the medication before I start to basically break down into a non-functioning human being. I found this site and saw the 10 percent every 4 week of the previous dose protocol here and was eager to start and get off this medication that has numbed me for so long. I saw my psychiatrist, but he declined to follow the plan and said it was extreme, but he would support 10 percent cuts of the previous dose up to 10mg and then cut 1mg from there per week until I was off. I had my reservations, but I was desperate to get off this medication and agreed. My cuts were as followed, and I used a compounding pharmacy here in Toronto Canada called Pharmacy.ca who weighed the beads in each capsule for accuracy. My work insurance covered the medication and compounding service costs. 75mg starting dose Effexor XR - Cut 10 percent of the previous dose every 2 weeks. 67mg 60mg 54mg 48mg 43mg 38mg 34mg 30mg 27mg 24mg 22mg 20mg 18mg 16mg 14mg 12mg 11mg – I did have some mild withdrawal effects on the way doing this 2 week cut of 10 percent previous dose but I was still able to function and get 6-7 hours of sleep most night. I really wanted off this medication and was blinded by that. I should have found another doctor who was more supportive or just done the bead counting myself and stuck to the plan of 10 percent of the previous dose every 4 weeks. - Weekly cuts at 1mg per week from here and this is where a lot off my issues started. My sleep got worse, and it was harder to fall asleep and stay asleep. There were days I was going to work with 3-4 hours of sleep and my mood was steadily declining. I talked to the doctor, and he assured me I would be fine and my body and would rebound once off the medication and I was overly sensitive after being on the medication for over 20 years. 10mg – weekly cuts going down from here. 9mg 8mg 7mg 6mg 5mg 4mg 3mg 2mg 1mg I started the taper November 8, 2022, and ended Aug 30, 2023. September was downhill spiral, and October has been awful. I am barely functioning. I barely sleep 2-3 hours a night and I’m crying at basically a drop of a bucket. I ruminate on all kinds of nonsense and my concentration is awful. I contacted my doctor and he give me his only option of going back on the lowest dose of Effexor XR 37.5mg and told me I had a “chemical imbalance.” I filled the script but before I took the pill I decided to go back on this website and see what I could do as I spent almost a year to get off this drug and did not want to give up without a further fight. I saw there was a way to reinstate a small amount of the drug and hold for stability and then resume tapering once stable. I saw that at 5.8mg Effexor XR affects 50 percent of serotonin activity. No wonder I crashed so hard as the lower dosages are way more important and need to be taken super slow. I watched the video on how to open the capsule and count beads. My capsules were the name brand version, and I counted the beads and did the math, and each bead is 0.28Mg rounded up. I was completely off Effexor for 7 weeks and felt awful. I mulled between 10 beads and 20 beads and finally settled on 15 beads which is 4.2mg and made new capsules to last me 4 weeks and saved the rest as instructed. I am not sure if I went too high or too low with the 15-bead choice. This morning has been my second dose and I can’t say for sure what’s happening, but I think I feel very subtle signs of withdrawal lifting. I know it can take 4 days for the drug to build up in my system and even longer to achieve proper stability. I would like to join this group and receive support for the next steps and hope I can kick this drug once and for all. I have no more faith in the medical system. I hope I can post my story here to help others and eventually come off the last bit of this drug. Am I on the right track with the 15 bead reinstatement dose of 4.2mg mornings on an empty stomach? Should I lower this or raise this? I was planning on holding this dose of 4.2mg, 15 beads, for 6 weeks to stabilize and then resume cutting one bead every 2 weeks. This plan would take me until June 2024 to be off this drug once and for all. Is this a good plan of stabilize and taper? Thank you for providing such an amazing resource, support and community here.

Hi everyone. I’m looking for some advice on two things. I’m on Cipralex drops 20mg/1ml. I’ve managed to wean myself from 15mg to 2mg. But I need to know how I can safely dilute the drops so that I get the accurate dosage of the active ingredient. Also does anyone know why you have to throw away Cipralex drops after eight weeks? If you keep them longer, does this have an impact on the active ingredient? Thank you so much in advance.

Hello fellow withdrawers (if that's a word), I'm Bokart and I'm here on a journey to quit my medication of Olanzapine. Down to 7,5 mg at the moment (see my signature). My story short: back in February 2015 I got admitted in psych ward due to psychosis (due to my destroyed sleep because of my night-shift work). There began my involuntary medication of Olanzapine, which pulled me out of a psychosis, so at least it did some good. I was released from the hospital after two weeks of being there. Now, after jojoing with my olanzapine dose (see signature), I'm finally set to quit it for good. I found this community after searching for succesfull withdrawal stories on the internet and found this community to be great, people being helpful and supportive and giving good advice... I know it can get rough when I approach smaller doses so I do know I will need support. And hopefully I can give support too and offer people hope after and during my taper. I know lots of people are in the same boat as me. Why I want to quit? I got no sexuality anymore, my motivation lacks big time, even personal hygiene is suffering because of that. I can't memorize things like before - learning is difficult. I have very little emotions left in me, basically I'm a dumbed down version of myself nowadays with this drug. I have little social skills - which I would badly need because I plan on working with children in school so some situational awareness is needed (I might have to quit my studies due to me making no progress in my studies... due to this drug). No happines, no enjoying things, lethargy and demotivation... About my psychosis, after it was gone I haven't had any symptoms of it returning (like delusions, paranoia, hallucinations), even after trying to quit my drug cold turkey once, which I see as a good sign. Now I don't want to slip into psychosis again so I need to be extra careful with my taper. After I hit 5,625 mg I will go on tapering by feeling, so no reductions until I feel stable enough. My main concern is sleep. I have a prescribed medication of temazepam (a benzodiazepine), which I can use when my insomnia has hit a threshold of needing immediate attention. I'm trying to limit my use of it to every three days to prevent tolerance and dependence (I know benzodiazepine withdrawals can be bad). But the thing is, lack of sleep led me to psychosis once, so it is a big deal to me. I need at least one night on a while to hit at least 4 hours of uniterrupted sleep, which 40 mg of temazepam does. I've tried many other sleep aids such as low to medium dose of quietiapine (no effect), low to medium dose of levomepromazine (didn't help), low dose of doxepine (no effect), even melatonine and l-tryptophan and 5-htp and none of those helped. One thing that helped me though was phenibut combined with temazepam - I slept 13 hours with that combination! So I know I have an emergency brakes on my train now (assuming that combination works again, haven't taken phenibut in 2 months to avoid tolerance and dependency), but I'm planning on limiting the use of this combination to once a month. On this dose of 7,5mg I'm currently having 2-3 hours of good uninterrupted sleep plus 3-4 hours of bad, constantly waking up kind of sleep So, thank you all for being here! And I wish a speedy recovery to those who are withdrawing from their drugs, we are all here together.

After three misguided (via doctors) attempts at Effexor tapering, I found out the truth in the summer of 2017 and began a very slow taper from 75mg to my most recent taper of August 1st, 2019 when I reached about 50mg. Primarily I experienced fatigue and insomnia but after the August taper I started experiencing a weird anxiety-dread-panicky feeling that came and went. Since December, it's gotten worse. Despite occasional short windows (a couple of hours now and then), it seems I can't get comfortable. My large muscle groups in my upper body are always filled with "tension ache". It's maddening. Trying to take a nap is so hard, because after 15 minutes I get an intense fearful feeling in my chest (cortisol?). I want to think that this is will pass and the pain is just part of the healing process. I'm confused as to why I'm getting this reaction since I've been tapering so slowly. Any suggestions or insights would be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Kingson

I was on Celexa 20 mg. for 10 months in 2015 for generalized anxiety disorder and mild/moderate depression, which hit me suddenly at age 65. Felt good enough to taper off over 32 weeks with no withdrawal problems, but 6 months after last dose, symptoms of anxiety and depression were back with a vengeance. Started Zoloft 25 mg in 2017 (probably should have gone back to Celexa). Increased dose to 50 mg within 4 months. Didn't like the way it was/wasn't working and didn't want to increase the dose. I'm really fearful of what these drugs can do. Tapered down to 12.5 mg over 19 months by 3.125 mg increments. Felt good until I hit 12.5 mg, then felt terrible and had to go back to 25 mg in August, 2019. Admittedly, I wasn't consistent in the tapering intervals. Some were 4 weeks, 12 weeks, 6 weeks, etc. depending on how I felt at each dose. I have been with a CBT therapist since 2017 which has really helped. Anxiety practically gone, depression is mild, but not like before. I really want to be off the Zoloft. Haven't slept well in 4 years and worry about what it's doing to my sleep patterns and who knows what else. I take supplements to help - phosphatidylserine, magnesium, omega fish oil. So.....I am now tapering again. Went from 25 mg to 21.875 over 10 weeks (decrease of 3.125 mg because that's the easiest way to cut my pills into quarters and eighths.) Just reduced again to 18.75 on April 14 and plan to stay there for 10 weeks. (My theory is it can take 4-12 weeks for an INCREASE in the dose to start working, so the reverse could also be true.) I think I'm sensitive to small changes in the doses. My question is - is 3.125 mg too large of a taper? I can slice my pills smaller with a scalpel if need be. Looking for advice about how to make this taper work so I can be successful this time. Any recommendations for doses and time line would be helpful. I don't care how long it takes, although at age 71, I don't want to take forever! Thanks so much!

So may of 2022 I started my SSRI journey I had bad anxiety and my doctor recommended I take Zoloft. I listened and started with a low dose I completely forget what dose I took but I know I had a terrible reaction to it I lasted like 2 months and then got switched to lexapro. Once I was in lexapro I went from 2.5mg to 10mg wayyyy to fast my psychiatrist was terrible and I got so so many side effects from 10mg so she had me taper off within a month from 10mg-0mg and I had every side effect in the book, you name it I had it. (Brain Zaps were the worst). She then switched me to buspar 5mg 3 times a day and man I could only last 9 days on it. It gave such bad intrusive thoughts it was scary. So I decided to get back on lexapro in January of 2023 and go super slow like start with 2.5 mg and I knew I was sensitive because 2.5 gave me side effects so I started slowly upping my dose and the intrusive thoughts got worse, blurry vision, urge to cry daily, dizzy, and after about 5 months in it I became numb. Nothing would give me anxiety but also nothing would give me excitement. So I started tapering very very slow I went from 5mg to 2.5mg to 1.25mg and then 1.25mg every other day and it was definitely a better taper from last time because I got no brain zaps so far. So currently I’m almost 4 weeks in off of lexapro and man this is hard. I’ve technically been on meds for 1 year just not consistently so I do understand that it will take awhile to heal but man these side effects are weird. I don’t feel happy but I don’t feel sad it is such a weird feeling. I have days where I feel amazing like back to normal and then the next day sucks. Just feels like my motivation is low right now and excitement, I thought that would come back after almost 4 weeks off the pill. Another big thing is the insomnia it is so hard to stay asleep at night. It’s like I have an urge to cry but can’t. just wanted to know if these side effects are common with someone who’s been on ssris for a year

Here is a list of all of the psychiatric drug tapering resources that I have found helpful. Some of these are for paid coaches but their YouTube channels have free content and of course I cannot advocate for any one of those services or tell you that you should pay for it but the option is there if you want to check them out. This is the same list I just sent to all of my doctors so the first link on the list should look pretty familiar. Over the last year or two the list seems to be growing everyday so this is definitely catching on and things are changing. 😁 https://www.survivingantidepressants.org/ https://baylissa.com/ https://www.theinnercompass.org/ https://medicatingnormal.com/ https://www.madinamerica.com/mia-manual/medication-withdrawal-awareness-message-psychiatric-drug-withdrawal/ https://psychscenehub.com/psychinsights/antipsychotic-withdrawal-syndrome-tapering/ https://deprescribing.org/ https://www.madinamerica.com /2013/10/setbacks/ https://www.youtube.com/@AngiePeacockMSW https://wittdoerringpsychiatry.com/dr-marissa-witt-doerring/ https://www.youtube.com/@witt-doerringpsychiatry https://www.apeacockconsulting.com/ https://www.lovelygrind.com/ https://beyondmeds.com/ https://www.psychosisnet.com/cause-of-death-unknown-anniken-hoel/ https://markhorowitz.org/ http://www.stuartshipko.com/ https://benzobuddies.org/ https://www.outro.com/us https://www.rcpsych.ac.uk/mental-health/treatments-and-wellbeing/stopping-antidepressants

ADMIN NOTE The 10% rule keeps decreasing the dose but, mathematically, can never get to zero. As you approach zero, when do you simply stop taking the drug? This is a very good question. This site advocates a very gradual taper for greatest safety. You may know of people who quit a drug very easily -- but if you ever had withdrawal symptoms, you are not that person. Everyone's tolerance for dosage changes is different. It could be that you have been tapering by 10% with everything going smoothly. You may also have found you can decrease every 3 weeks or even every week with no problems. Even so, from what we've seen, you will want to taper as far below 1mg as you can. As you go lower in dosage, your system adapts to the lower dosage. Slide off as gradually as possible. If you are counting beads to taper, at the very end, when you are down to one bead, you will be unable to divide your dose to taper. You might want to skip doses to very gradually go off. This is the only situation in which we suggest skipping doses. Sometimes people find that, even though they've quit at a very small amount, they might get slight, occasional withdrawal symptoms. You can take a tiny bit (such as one bead) occasionally until these withdrawal symptoms stop, which should be within a couple of weeks. More clarification: WARNING: DO NOT GO COLD TURKEY AT THE END OF YOUR TAPER Cold turkey is cold turkey. Even though you might be down to a tenth of your original dosage, quitting suddenly may still be too much for your nervous system. You can undo all your tapering by jumping off at too high a dosage, and trigger severe withdrawal syndrome. Ultimately, your tolerance for dosage decreases determines the speed of your taper, all the way to going off. Please listen to your body. If at any point in your taper you get withdrawal symptoms, continue going off very, very gradually at the end. Hi All, (Note from CC mod: member's taper rate is faster than 10%. Calculations have been rounded down, when it is recommended to round up, so that reductions do not exceed 10%. See this post for more details. Also this member was tapering Lexapro which is a very strong drug so stopping at 0.3mg was way too high.) Apologies if this has been done to death... I was playing around in excel with a taper protocol and thought I'd share. The 10% is a good rule and very good at encouraging people to go slowly. Something a lot of us have trouble with. (well me anyway...) But like Achilles catching the tortoise, reducing 10% will never get you to 0. (An aim a lot of us have). I've plugged the following rule into excel (attached) to see how it comes out. Rule 1: new dose = old dose - (9% of old dose) - (1% of original dose). You plug the starting dose in and it will always taper to 0 in 24 months. Now this may be to quick for some which brings us to .... Rule 2: If you feel moderate to nasty withdrawal effects then stop and stabilize. After stabilizing restart taper from current dose. (which will also reset the end 0mg end point to 2 years from current dose). Here is an example of the output for a 20mg taper (though just an example!!) Month Dose 1 20.0 2 18.0 3 16.2 4 14.5 5 13.0 6 11.6 7 10.4 8 9.3 9 8.2 10 7.3 11 6.4 12 5.7 13 4.9 14 4.3 15 3.7 16 3.2 17 2.7 18 2.2 19 1.8 20 1.5 21 1.1 22 0.8 23 0.6 24 0.3 25 0.0 I'll probably look to start this from my current 2.5 mg Lexapro , thus aiming to be at 0 in 2 years. Cheers Damien ssri_taper.xlsx

Hello, I am new to this site and not sure how it works. Need some info and perhaps some reassurance.; I've been having a history depression and anxiety since my teenage years, I am 49 years old, which I have been able to manage it more or less. I attempted to use the antidepressants but also had an adverse reaction that I was not able/ready to put up with. Yet, living with the depression isn't easy either. In short, yet again, I started taking Lexapro last October in order to deal with the painful state of depression, and did seem to work in the past. I increased the dose very slowly from 2 mg and started feeling much better in January, at the 7 mg. At the same time I started some problems with my memory (to the point of a few seconds of blackouts) , persistent fatigue and lingering morning anxiety, and problems with the night sleep. The psychiatrist dismissed my memory problems, attributed my fatigue to the depression and decided to see if my sleep would approve. He also told me to increase my dose slowly aiming for 15 mg at some point. However, when I reached 8.9 mg, I could hardly function: feelings of being very unwell and under the weather allowed me to function only until lunch time, after which I would need to recline somewhere for the rest of the day. I started tapering on the 24 Mars and today is the 2nd day of 4.25 mg of Lexapro. I didn't follow the 10 per cent protocol, and my doses were fluctuating within 0.5 - 1 mg depending on my physical and emotional symptoms. However, in the last 10 days I've started having a strange heavy sensation in my head, it's difficult to describe, They are not brain-zaps, just uncomfortable feeling: a mix of resembling kind of heaviness, fogginess, slight headache and feeling/sensation. I have put this down to cutting down sugar and change in my diet (transitioning to being vegan). However, this sensation 8 days later is still there. In addition, I have got muscle ache at the minimum effort, have been unable to jog and do much of the physical activities for the past 3 days: stopped exercising, want to isolate, difficult to concentrate and get on with my daily activities. I do have "waves" when I do feel better for an hour upon awaking and yesterday, after I spent 3 hours on the sofa! We are in the process of moving , also need to book a holiday but I am feeling incapable of doing anything. So frustrating! Emotionally, I am not depressed though.... In addition, feeling rather scared, is it due to the antidepressants and will my brain heal and gets "remodeled" back? Have I got some other serious medical condition? In ideal world I would like to get off this drugs that do not work well for me and find some ways of dealing with the anxiety and depression, unfortunately, I did manage in the past to taper off the meds without too many problems only to get depressed 4-9 months later and be back on them. If this is what I feel are withdrawals, I am quite surprised why I had not experienced them in my past tapers? I would really welcome and would greatly appreciate any feedback and input! I also would like to know, if I should wait it out and stabilise on 4.25mg of Lexapro or need to updose it? Thank you in advance F47

Full background: I took my first med (zoloft) in 2001. I tried many meds at that time. I was mostly on, sometimes off, a variety of different meds from 2004 to 2013. I was med free 2013-2017. Then I was talked into trying some newer depression drugs. Didn't stay on any of them. Then 2019 was the start of my current history - was briefly on escitalopram. But I couldn't sleep on it. So on to citalopram with a short break in between. Citalopram background: I went on citalopram in about May 2020 and have been on it since then (mostly at 20 mg). I started at 20 mg and quickly went to 30 mg. I've made three attempts to come off and failed each time due to the increased depression being unmanageable. Landed at 20 mg after each attempt. No other withdrawal symptoms besides the depression. Now I understand my tapers were too fast. Each time I decided to go off, it was due to the drug being less effective than the year before, and each time I went back on, I didn't get as much relief as the last time I reinstated. Other info: I started a trial of rexulti in late May. In hindsight I see that my too fast taper made me so depressed that I was willing to try a med again even though it goes against my instincts. I came to my senses recently after some unpleasant side effects and decided to go off it. I will be fully off it by the end of the week. I will never try another psych med again. I have two questions to start with: How stable should a person be to begin a taper? I am working full-time and managing day to day activities, but I am pretty depressed. There are several contributing factors: chronic physical pain and fatigue I've had for years, traumatic childhood, loneliness, patterns of thinking. I have been in therapy for years. Do I just stay on this med forever even though it barely helps me (or maybe not at at all, I'm not sure) because I'm not stable enough to taper? In terms of my recent taper attempt, is it better to give myself more time at 20 mg before trying to taper again? Or is it better to start it now since I only went back to 20 mg on May 7, so my brain may not be fully adapted to this new dose? I wish when I gave up on this taper that I only had gone back up to 10 mg. But I was feeling so desperate. Lesson learned. My tapers have been hard but not insurmountable until I pass that 10 mg threshold.

Hi All, I recently found this forum due to the Antidepressants subreddit and decided to come here for some support from what seems to be such a supportive community. As you can see from my signature, I have been on Lexapro pretty consistently since March of 2016. About a year ago, I got a new job at a truly wonderful place with amazing people and the depression and anxiety symptoms that I had been suffering from for so long started to abate. Throughout the year I considered getting off of my antidepressants because of side effects that I had experienced (fatigue, sexual symptoms, weight gain). I brought up my side effects with my psychiatrist and he wanted me to stop the Welbutrin and Lexapro and change to Effexor. Getting off of Welbutrin was extremely easy for me, but I knew Lexapro would be harder, so I started my taper in April of this year. During the taper, I didn't experience an increase in my anxiety or depression symptoms and started losing weight, lost basically all fatigue, and stopped having ED, etc.. I tapered to 10mg on 5/20/2023 and have been completely off of Lexapro since then. The first few days off of Lexapro weren't awful, but then the brain zaps (which I had experienced the last time I tapered off of Lexapro 5 or so years ago) started and were awful. They have mostly gone away, but my anxiety has been truly, truly awful. My anxiety has always manifested through health anxiety and for the past week or so I have had myself convinced that I'm having a pulmonary embolism and have DVTs in my legs. I've had the whole slew of symptoms of anxiety: increased heart rate, feeling like I can't breathe, random chest pains being on edge, and being completely unable to distract myself from my physical "symptoms." This is, of course, worse at night when I'm alone with my thoughts. After reading through this forum, I'm concerned that going from 10mg (really, I think I took a 5mg piece of a tablet I had left on May 20th) to 0mg might be causing these awful symptoms. I'm a lawyer and spend my whole day having to think logically and I know, logically, that I'm not having a PE or DVT because I've been on hikes, don't have any of the other classic symptoms like bloody sputum, leg swelling, redness, warmness, etc., but I cannot stop thinking about it. Would it be helpful for me to go back on 10mg and taper more slowly from there? Thanks so much for any thoughts or suggestions

Does anyone no longer get any pleasure from music? Has anyone experienced this and then had the joy of listening to music return? After a lifetime of loving music it’s just noise to me now. Music used to evoke strong feelings of pleasure and strong emotions. Now? Nothing. It’s noise. This makes me very sad.

Hello guys, so I began taking Paxil 30mg in Fall of 2020 because of Anxiety. It worked and a year ago my doctor decided to geht me off of the drug. So I went down to 20mg in June of 2022 which worked well. Then again to 10mg last March and two weeks ago to 0. At 20 to 10 I had no withdrawals, but now I do. It started a week ago with headaches and other flu like symptoms. They are better now but I feel emotionally unwell and especially can‘t concentrate on anything which really intereferes with my studies. What should I do?

Current drugs: - 2012-present citalopram, currently steady at 25mg - 2020 lyrica: max 4mg/day. started tapering after 2 weeks and having worse withdrawal than from 225mg This case history must be very unusal given the low dose and short time. Has anyone heard of a similar case? Also unusual is the bad method I'm stuck with to calculate doses. Recent start and tapering of lyrica ----------------------------------- I started a microdose of lyrica January 1 2020, thinking I could test side effects and stop if they were bad. Worked up to a maximum of about 4mg/day. After 2 weeks I decided it wasn't for mej. Reduced to 70% of max dose and held 4 days but got serious withdrawal symptoms. I thought an increase might help so went up to 80% of my maximum for 2 days, symptoms got MUCH worse, then down to 75% (1 day) and 65%. I thought lyrica and citalopram might be interacting and that tapering citalopram might be easier, so I tried 20% less (25->20mg) one day. I got the worst anxiety of my life and haven't changed it again. Following that I stayed on 65% of my lyrica dose for 2 weeks while I stabilised. Now on day 5 down from 65% to 60% which has not been bad. So, tapering slowly seems best. BUT I cannot measure doses accurately because I'm dividing powder with a knife on a plate (see below). Would switch to liquid but I can only guess how much I'm taking in a day. I'd be grateful for any advice on what I should do! Or information about similar low-dose, short-term cases, or how to handle inaccurate doses. I've been advised by some to go cold turkey given the small dose and short time, and that might have been ok when I started tapering after 2 weeks, but now I've been on it 6 weeks total. I could just about handle the initial 30% drop from my maximum dose but I could not handle what happened when I raised it 10%, then lowered it again. Maybe my case will be useful to someone. If nothing else it shows you can get hooked on a very small dose. The rest of this post goes into background a little and a lot of detail about what I'm doing now, so may be of less general interest. Prior drug history ------------------ - before 2010: prozac then paroxetine then seroquel. never any real trouble getting off them. Just some anxiety/irritability. - 2012 lyrica (only) for 11 days max 225mg/day then tapered off over 5 days with bad withdrawal symptoms for about a week - 2012 mirtazapine for a couple of months, after the lyrica - 2012-present citalopram, starting near the end of the mirtazapine Why is withdrawal worse in 2020 than on a much bigger dose in 2012? ------------------------------------------------------------------- It's hard to compare the two but the current withdrawal seemed considerably worse even before I raised the dose again and made it much worse. Some ideas I had: - I'm also on citalopram now. - Use or withdrawal from lyrica in 2012 primed/changed something. - I got lucky when i went off quickly in 2012, just in time (tapering after 11 days of using it) and just fast enough (5 tapered doses) to escape worse withdrawal. - The down/up dose in first week or withdrawal made it much worse. Also changing citalopram dose for 1 day seemed clearly VERY bad. Switching to liquid ------------------- Day 1 of last taper (65->60%) was partly with liquid I got from a compounding pharmacy. I replaced about 23% of the powder with liquid. Symptoms from underdosing have been bad but less bad than raising the dose, so I aimed low, and took what should have been roughly 45% less liquid than needed (using my rough estimate at equivalance - see dosing method below for details). It was much too strong. I got more sedated than I've ever been on lyrica, lots of muscle twitches, then somewhat agitated when it wore off. I switched back to all-powder doses, and decreased the evening dose by 1/3 to compensate for the morning overdose, and from the next day remained 5% of max dose lower. This has gone surprisingly well despite the updose then decrease. I'm tempted to stay on the powder, but I can't divide into smaller amounts than 1/256 of a capsule with any accuracy at all. That means as I decrease the dose, the reduction step size will get bigger. The most recent step down (65->60%) was about 7.5% of my current dose, but that will become 15% of current dose given a few more steps etc. Also, if a shirtsleeve brushes my reference doses away I'm sunk - I'll have little idea how much to take. But if I switch to liquid, I have to guess how much to take, and try to correct for symptoms, and gradually replace powder with liquid. After the first drop in dose (100% to 70%) it seemed to take a few days for the withdrawal to really get going. If that's still true, adjusting the liquid dose up and down could easily get out of hand and be less gentle than the later, and proportionally bigger, powder decreases. So neither option is good. Powder dosing method (details) ------------------------------ The method I use to dose is awful: I divide capsule's powder into two piles of 1/2, then divide each pile agqin and again. Currently I take 1/64 + 1/128th of a capsule every morning and again at night. This has limited accuracy of course, but it gets worse; there is residue left on the plate after the division. The amount of residue has changed over time since I switched from a big knife to a razor blade, and I haven't been consistent about how much residue I leave. At one point I thought measurements would be more consistent if I kept "reference" piles of each key size: 1/32, 1/64 and 1/128. But I realise now the references are not accurate, and I'm basically eyeballing the new piles now to match the reference ones. To estimate how much my 1/128 actually is, I started a new pill, and divided it with as little residue as possible (using a razor blade, which doesn't leave much at allif you're careful). To my amazement I seem to have left about 50% of the pill as residue. Separately I began sweeping residue from another pill into a pile, which I estimated was about 30% of the pill. Another idea would be to weigh my 1/64th, but I suspect it's too little to measure accurately with any scale I can get my hands on. Potency of my powder -------------------- To make matters even worse, the capsules I'm using expired 4.5 years ago. From a short look on the net and talking with a pharmacist this might not be big deal. But also the powder sits on a plate being slowly divided for up to 2 weeks before I take it, so it may degrade somewhat.

Hi everyone, I started Sertraline in 2016, doctors kind of left me alone on them and it wasn’t until last year (2022) that I decided to taper off. I took the advice of my doctor and tapered to 25mg for a month and then 0mg. Which I now know was horrible advice. I started with severe anxiety, racing thoughts, insomnia, nausea, depression, suicidal thoughts, palpitations. I decided to reinstate at 25mg in January and slowly my symptoms have improved. I still get anxiety some mornings (which I think might be related to the cortisol spike) but these are getting fewer and far between. I wondered when I would be able to start with the 10% taper. Do I need to wait until all my symptoms have settled down? It’s only been three months since reinstating so I don’t want to exacerbate the issues I’ve been experiencing. Any advice would be really appreciated! thank you

Hello to all the lovely people in this forum. I am here because I have been experiencing withdrawal symptoms since I stopped taking Venlafaxine eight months ago. I withdrew from 225mg in a span of six weeks as my GP recommended, which is too quickly. After seven months of hell I started taking Mirtrazapine following my psychiatrist’s advice after hesitating for a while. I started on 15mg last month, recently increased to 30mg and now I can sleep better and don’t have horrendous panic attacks as I wake up anymore. But the sheer terror, the absence of positive emotions, the constant negative thoughts, the rapid heartbeat, the chest pain, the hypersensitivity, the lack of energy, the anger, the dread about everything, etc… are still there, especially in the mornings when I just don’t want to live anymore. I am here now because I have lost hope on my recovery. I’ve tried everything and I also feel as if I’d stripped my brain off its own ability to produce “happy chemicals” by tapering off too fast. But that may be just the “depression” talking. I’ve read that reinstating Venlafaxine can help, which brings some hope regardless the fear of taking that stuff again, and my psychiatrist is happy to put me on that (aren’t they always?). But I don’t feel that I can trust doctors anymore, so before making any decision I just wanted to ask real people with real experiences... I’ve got so many questions because I’ve been so alone throughout this process wondering whether my brain can heal on its own or not, wondering if there is any way of living life again. I’ve really tried to keep going but now I am exhausted. I just can’t do it on my own. Maybe it’s worth noting that I’ve been also taking beta blockers, and also Aminoacids (5HTP, Tyrosine, GABA) along with a lot of vitamins and supplements such as Magnesium, Lithium Orotate and fish oil following a book that I found on the internet called “The Mood Cure”. Thank you for your time. All the best x B