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Withdrawal from Antidepressants

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Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#61

Post by mcjiggerlog »

harshreality wrote: post #32
vomitcuddle wrote: post #12

As someone who had to abruptly come off venlafaxine due to side effects, I can tell you that it was complete hell. I experienced vomiting, the weirdest, most horrible nightmares every night, sleep paralysis with hallucinations and a recurring feeling of "electic shocks" inside my head. This lasted about a month. I think it borders on inhumane not to mention possible withdrawal symptoms before prescribing this awful "…

I'm curious... you, and all other commenters who mentioned electric shocks... which I'd previously heard of as "brain zaps"... What difference would it make if the doctor had told you of that side effect before you started the drug? Imagine you have no idea of what brain zaps felt like. Would you have avoided the drug based on such a vague description? Can you describe the sensation? It's not painful, right? The sens…

An electric shock is really the best way to describe what it felt like to me.

Imagine a sudden electric shock to the middle of your brain. It doesn't exactly hurt, but it is incredibly uncomfortable and jarring. It is like a momentary jolt of energy and caused me to feel pretty disoriented for the following few seconds. It is definitely (feels like, at least) a physical sensation as opposed to just sensory.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#62

Post by daveguy »

maxxxxx wrote: post #50
69mlgsniperdad wrote: post #21

I have been on paxil(paroxetine) three separate times. Each was between six months and one year in duration. The first time, I was on a 10mg daily dose. I had quite a few issues when starting the medication the first time; however after a few weeks, I felt great. When I initially discontinued, I had the worst side effects I have ever experienced. Electric shocks in my neck and back of head, depression, mood swings, a…

My girlfriend has this with Zoloft. The doctors are telling her how to withdraw and if it doesn't work they just don't believe it. It seems they are trained to believe their textbooks to the point of ignoring things right in front of them.

I had this too with Zoloft and the doctors didn't believe I was on a high enough dose to experience the side effect. It was bad for a week and was sporadic for another week or two. I was surprised that the doctor was so skeptical about a known side effect. It's not like I was trying to get more of that sweet sweet Zoloft. Medical devices have an incident reporting database that are required to be updated by companies and health professionals. Every pharma product should be subject to the same reporting -- whether the practitioner believes it or not.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#63

Post by hvs »

vomitcuddle wrote: post #12

As someone who had to abruptly come off venlafaxine due to side effects, I can tell you that it was complete hell. I experienced vomiting, the weirdest, most horrible nightmares every night, sleep paralysis with hallucinations and a recurring feeling of "electic shocks" inside my head. This lasted about a month. I think it borders on inhumane not to mention possible withdrawal symptoms before prescribing this awful "…

Most doctors will prescribe a short duration of a longer-lasting SSRI (like Prozac) which will help with withdrawal. Any competent doctor will tell you not to discontinue abruptly or withdrawal symptoms are likely. Unfortunately, too many GPs that don't understand the drugs prescribe them rather than psychiatrists.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#64

Post by hvs »

radd9er wrote: post #46
butterfinger wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Venlafaxine seems to be one of the worst SNRIs/SSRIs wrt discontinuation syndrome. Except for the nausea, I had the same experiences when quitting cold turkey. The most problematic symptom for me were the "electric shocks" when moving my eyes or head to fast. For me, getting off venlafaxine was way harder than quitting tilidine, tramadol or the z-drugs.

To both parent commenters, my wife has been on venlafaxine for years, and has been tapering off it for the past year. She has had horrible withdrawl symptoms from missing a single dose, like you describe. Each time the doses town (tapering), she has a rough few weeks. How long were you on it? Do you have any advice? Thanks.

Have her ask her doctor for a prescription to Prozac. It lasts longer in the system than Venlafaxine so it eases the withdrawal.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#65

Post by numinary1 »

It seems to me that many of the drugs in this category are effective sometimes for some people. People I have known who were suffering acutely often cycled through several drugs, sometimes in combination, dosages etc. It appears to me to be mostly trial and error.

But for some people the results are miraculous. They solve real problems with few if any side effects. For others, they either don't work at all or have intolerable side effects.

The situation would be a whole lot better if we could predict likely efficacy and side effects in advance, especially cases where treatment is more likely to do harm that to help.

Interestingly, I've read a lot (not so much recently) on the subject and taken several SSRIs myself (with good short term experience, minor sides), but I learned a lot from the discussion here. So many people take these drugs — the data necessary to understand and perhaps to predict ... is out there. Not easy to get at, but really plentiful. Reading this made me think about the feasibility of mining message boards for first person accounts of SSRI experience.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#66

Post by phkahler »

agumonkey wrote: post #34
rudolf0 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doctors can be notoriously ignorant and contradictory when it comes to mental illness-treating drugs. There's a lot of literature out there and a lot of them don't keep up. I don't know why it is. Not that you shouldn't trust doctors, but I always do some Googling to get a second opinion about all psychoactive drugs I'm prescribed.

It's very very uneasy when doctors are too handwavey on your issues. You don't know if they're skipping beats because they don't want to explain 10 years of med school so you obey, or if they just don't want to investigate more than what the usual answer is. I tried to nitpick on things that mattered for me, but you cannot easily claim "I'm more up to date than you on illness" to a legal doctor without feeling a litt…

You may or may not be more up to date on a particular illness, but you are the best authority on your specific case.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#67

Post by jrapdx3 »

The effects of abruptly stopping SSRI (and later on SNRI) medications have been well-known since the 1980's. It's considered related to the widespread if individually variable distribution of serotonin receptors in the body.

Having prescribed a ton of SSRI/SNRI meds since their introduction, and taken my share as well, it's a phenomenon I'm very familiar with.

Called a "discontinuation syndrome", technically not the same as "withdrawal", which is associated with tolerance, the need to continually increase dose to get the same effect. SSRIs can produce a D/C effect at low or high dose if more likely with greater dose.

Individual response to SSRI D/C varies greatly. I've been very surprised at times when people tell me they've gone off 200mg of Zoloft and never noticed a thing. Others report D/C effects for weeks even after tapering down very gradually.

Most of the time problems with D/C reflect short half-life of compounds. Effexor is notorious in this regard. OTOH more persistent agents like Prozac are typically less troublesome. In fact it's a common strategy to use Prozac as an means to ease D/C when stopping short duration meds.

Going by reports of (probably) a thousand patients, as well as my own experience of D/C effects, generally they're mild to moderate and dissipate within a few days. However there are exceptions and I never hesitated to go as slowly as necessary to minimize excessive discomfort while tapering off the medication.

As I've commented before on HN, this subject again emphasizes some crucially important principles. One is that any medication can cause any side effect at any time. No free lunch, all medicines have numerous effects, some favorable and some not, so it's important to make sure there's a damn good reason for using any medication and understand the risks and benefits.

Finally, every individual has a unique condition and responds uniquely to the treatments we have to offer. It's a partnership between the prescriber and the patient, communication about what's happening during the course of treatment is vital. Believe me I know, whether in the role of doctor or patient, it's a highly evolved art form.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#68

Post by milankragujevic »

69mlgsniperdad wrote: post #21

I have been on paxil(paroxetine) three separate times. Each was between six months and one year in duration. The first time, I was on a 10mg daily dose. I had quite a few issues when starting the medication the first time; however after a few weeks, I felt great. When I initially discontinued, I had the worst side effects I have ever experienced. Electric shocks in my neck and back of head, depression, mood swings, a…

Sorry you had such experience. I had discontinued paroxetine immediately, because me and my doctor didn't think it was working. It wasn't. After taking 3x20mg daily, for a year, I just stopped, and had no side effects. Neither did I have any effects while taking it. It was useless for me. Zoloft was the same, I just gained a lot of weight, and had some side effects. Currently on fluoxetine, which seems to be working, but it might be placebo because the clinical significance of it in moderate to severe depression was disproved in a study. I officially have bipolar with moderate depression, and take aripiprazole and fluoxetine. I also once was taking haloperidol which was like torture (haloperidol 10mg 1+0+1). I was 14 at the time. What the hell.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#69

Post by faitswulff »

dannylandau wrote: post #57
KermitCole wrote: post #47

As an editor on Mad in America, I appreciate the thoughtful and thorough discussion here. We would welcome any stories or analysis that the commenters here might venture to contribute to MIA. Thanks, Kermit Cole

Are there any comprehensive portals that provide information about the prevalence of each drug's side effect? The only one I know of is HealthBee? - https://healthbee.co/

I was curious how good HealthBee was, so I asked a pharmacist friend of mine. Her response:

"Bad LOL. It could not find the first drug I want to look at- apixaban or Eliquis. Generic name and brand name, respectively"

Apixaban is apparently a common drug. That said, even she was interested in such a portal as well, saying that it just needs more data.

Re: Withdrawal from Antidepressants

#70

Post by thanatropism »

tcj_phx wrote: post #24
thanatropism wrote: post #16

Oh boy oh boy oh boy. The problems pointed out in this article -- which are in some degree real even if heavily editorialized -- must be understood in light of a wider context which includes: 0) The very poor standards of validity and replicability in most fields of experimental psych-whatever. The Popperian method ain't what it used to be. 1) The Viennese Waltz of bad incentives throughout the psychiatry research pi…

> "Mad in America" is obviously not willing to make a fuss of things like bipolar where people will take their lithium for decades and bear the side-effects [...] The creation and promotion of "Bipolar" as a DSM disorder is covered in Anatomy of an Epidemic , Robert Whitaker's followup to Mad in America . > [...] because the alternative is to go actually mad-crazy. The whole point of Whitaker's Mad in America foundat…

Erm, manic depression as distinct from schizophrenia was basically established by Emil Kraepelin in the 1880s.

Dr. Whitaker could be going full Foucault, but as well established by Hollywood, you never go full Foucault.

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