ssri withdrawal syndrome...

[mike_c]

HOLY SHIT! Why don't doctors ever tell you about stuff like this?

I've been taking lexapro for several years, ever since the really bad last couple of years of my marriage. Life is mostly in order, and I've been feeling pretty positive for some time, so I thought summer would be a great time to stop taking it, mainly just to see how I'm really coping. I work on the academic calendar so summer is low stress for me. Should be ideal, so I stopped taking lexapro about 2 1/2 weeks ago.

Call me uniformed, but I really didn't know any better. Believe me, I wouldn't have done it if I'd known what to expect. I'd actually stopped taking it once before, a couple of years ago, just for six weeks or so and had a much less intense experience that I didn't associate with the lexapro at all, and then I started taking it again for unrelated reasons. At least I thought they were unrelated reasons at the time-- now I'm not so sure. My doctor dismissed them, and never associated them with stopping lexapro at all! Sent me for some lab tests, then said everything looked OK. I'd started taking the lex again by then, so I was "cured."

My god. This time my life utterly fell apart. I stopped working, stopped taking care of myself, stopped cleaning up after myself, stopped caring about anything. Things that seemed good just a few weeks ago became massive obstructions that I did not have the energy or inclination to deal with.

And the physical symptoms were AWFUL. Diarrhea and other intestinal pain, bizarre pseudo-hallucinations, vertigo, shakiness, nervous anxiety, insomnia, and that indescribable electric shock feeling in my nervous system CONSTANTLY. I mentioned the symptoms to a therapist friend and he immediately asked if I'd changed my SSRI dosage. He pointed me to info about the withdrawal syndrome.

I started ramping back up on a half-dose again yesterday. The "shock" feeling stopped within hours, and I slept for 11 hours last night!

Now I know better how to ramp down-- EXTREMELY SLOWLY, like over the course of a year-- but I'm not sure I want to. Maybe in a more controlled dose reduction I can see what's happening more objectively.

The moral of this story is that if you're taking SSRIs, do not stop taking them cold turkey. Oh my.

[TZ]

1. I have a friend who had the same problem with Lexapro

and I have a manic depressive relative so I do know very well about SSRI withdrawal. I guess it makes sense since it takes a while to take effect. I thought I heard somewhere that the newer SSRI's like Lexapro and maybe Cymbalta were supposed to have fewer side effects and fewer withdrawal symptoms but I guess that's not the case. I think that doctors assume that people are going to continue taking their medicines and consult with them if they stop so they don't warn people strongly enough about what abrupt stoppage of SSRI's.