pigamadeus: Failed Prozac taper and regret reinstating - please help

[pigamadeus]

I was taking 20mg of Prozac and started my taper in January. I was reducing by 10% of the previous dose every 3 weeks, but in retrospect, this was too fast/too much of a reduction for me. I was down to 4.4mg and failed after a breakdown and reinstated at the full 20mg dose. It's been three days and I regret it and wish I had just done a slight increase back to 5mg and lengthened my reduction schedule. Now that I've taken 3 full doses, what options do I have? Do I re-stabilize at 20mg and try again? Is it possible to go back to my tapered dose since I only took 3 doses? What do you all recommend?

Edited October 28, 2024 by Emonda
Name to title

[Emonda]

Welcome @pigamadeus

 

Jumping from 4.4mg to 20mg is not recommended at all.

 

If it's only been three days, and it was me in this position, I'd revert to the 4.4mg.

 

If you want to up-dose, small increases are best. Then sit back and monitor for a while. It may take three weeks to see a change with this AD.

 

Hope this helps.

[pigamadeus]

4 hours ago, Emonda said:

Welcome @pigamadeus

 

Jumping from 4.4mg to 20mg is not recommended at all.

 

If it's only been three days, and it was me in this position, I'd revert to the 4.4mg.

 

If you want to up-dose, small increases are best. Then sit back and monitor for a while. It may take three weeks to see a change with this AD.

 

Hope this helps.

Thank you so much for the response! Unfortunately I wasn’t aware about up-dosing methods, and didn’t think it through long enough before caving and taking the full dose. 
 

My plan now is to revert back to my last stable dose (5mg) since it was the reduction that made me spiral. I’ll hold 5mg for 6 weeks and then try to continue the taper with the brassmonkey method instead of the 10% every 3 weeks taper I had been doing. 

[Emonda]

Keep us posted 👍

[pigamadeus]

I'm having a really bad couple of days, I think it's due to the drop from those 3 full doses catching up to me. Just awful feelings of dread and depression with crying spells, and it doesn't help that the weather is pretty gloomy today. I feel awful for "ruining the day" for my husband, I just want everyone to be happy. 

 

Trying to tell myself that this is only temporary and I'm on the road to healing my brain, but it's hard.

[Emonda]

12 hours ago, pigamadeus said:

Trying to tell myself that this is only temporary and I'm on the road to healing my brain, but it's hard.

 

You are telling yourself the right things. It is temporary, and better days are ahead.

 

Recovery from ADs and tapering is not linear. There are good days and not-so-good days/weeks/months. This is referred to as the Windows and waves pattern of stabilization. We all experience this.

 

12 hours ago, pigamadeus said:

Just awful feelings of dread and depression with crying spells,

 

These sound like typical WD symptoms: Daily Checklist of Antidepressant Withdrawal Symptoms (PDF) 

 

12 hours ago, pigamadeus said:

I feel awful for "ruining the day" for my husband, I just want everyone to be happy.

 

Sometimes we just need to accept what has happened on our tapering journeys, learn from any mistakes we may have made, and listen to our body moving forward.

 

Hold your dose until you feel stable for a month or so.

 

You're going to be just fine with time and patience.

 

Keep us posted...Emonda

[pigamadeus]

Thanks @Emonda. Today is a better day. Hope it's a good one for you too.

[pigamadeus]

So, now that I’m out of the panic of my initial post, I wanted to give some more history of my story and SSRI use. 
 

I became severely depressed when I was 15 years old and struggled with suicidal ideation. My parents took me to the emergency room but I wasn’t admitted and I tried a couple therapy sessions after that but I mostly just sat there and cried, so the therapist recommended a psychiatrist to my parents. Went to the psychiatrist and was immediately started on Prozac 20mg. 
 

It helped immensely, I had more energy and was no longer having suicidal thoughts. I took the Prozac for about a year and then went off of it for a while. However, I started having bad migraines again and the Prozac had helped with those, so back on it I went and stayed on for quite a while. 
 

I don’t know if this can really be attributed to the Prozac, but after going on it l, I feel like I lost some of my drive and started giving up on things easily. I finished my last year of high school taking online classes because I couldn’t deal with going to school. I went to college with high aspirations of becoming a neuroscientist or neurologist. I took an internship in a neuroscience lab that I quit before the semester was over. I ended up dropping out of my college and finishing an Associate’s degree in an unrelated field at community college. 
 

So I feel like I was somewhat robbed of what I “could have been” without the drugs. But then again, had I not taken them, I might not be here today. 
 

Things continued pretty well and I got married and decided to taper off the Prozac before getting pregnant because I knew I definitely didn’t want to expose my unborn child to it. I tapered myself in not the best way, taking a pill every other day for a few weeks, then removing some powder from the pills, then stopping. I got pregnant pretty quickly after I was totally off of the Prozac and was pretty much fine while I was pregnant. I think the hormones helped me get through it. 
 

Well, after I gave birth I struggled with PPD pretty badly and went back on Prozac 20mg two months after giving birth. I had stopped breastfeeding as well, so at least none was passed to my baby. 
 

I stayed on for another two years and now I’m in my current taper attempt where I’m going about it much more carefully, and following the recommendations on here. I’m feeling pretty good now besides vision issues and random aches and pains. 
 

I have worried for a while that taking this medication while my brain was still developing would affect me forever and I’d never be able to function without them. But I have hope that I will be able to heal. Thank you for reading ❤️

[Emonda]

On 11/13/2024 at 5:03 PM, pigamadeus said:

I’m feeling pretty good now besides vision issues and random aches and pains. 

 

Good news

 

On 11/13/2024 at 5:03 PM, pigamadeus said:

But I have hope that I will be able to heal.

 

Great attitude. With time, patience and a very slow taper, you will succees.

[pigamadeus]

So, haven’t been feeling great since my last post 3 weeks ago. I’ve been dealing with really bad fatigue, muscle aches, and this feeling of heaviness/pressure in my head. It’s not painful, but it’s almost like tiring to hold my head up because it feels so heavy and I just want to lay down. I have a 3 year old so unfortunately I can’t just lay in bed all day. 
 

I had my thyroid tested just to be sure that wasn’t causing any issues and it’s fine. So I’m assuming it’s withdrawal symptoms. I decided to start increasing my dose until I feel some relief, so I increased from 5mg to 5.4mg today. If I don’t feel better in a month I’ll do another small increase. 
 

What I’m mainly looking for right now is some motivation to continue the taper. Does anyone have any resources explaining the benefits of getting off the drugs and WHY I should continue tapering instead of just continuing to take the Prozac and feel better? Personally I’m trying to go off because I’m worried about long term neurological disease like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s when I’m older. But I wonder if there’s anything else you guys have explaining why we should try to get off of these drugs. My husband says “maybe you’re just one of those people that need it” and I don’t know what to say to that.

[pigamadeus]

So after my last post I stopped taking all my supplements and I noticed that my head heaviness and tiredness were greatly reduced. I think I was taking too much magnesium. I was taking 100mg 3x a day. 
 

I’m slowly reintroducing my other supplements one at a time to make sure that was it. Fingers crossed!

[Jane318]

On 12/3/2024 at 5:53 PM, pigamadeus said:

What I’m mainly looking for right now is some motivation to continue the taper. Does anyone have any resources explaining the benefits of getting off the drugs and WHY I should continue tapering instead of just continuing to take the Prozac and feel better? Personally I’m trying to go off because I’m worried about long term neurological disease like Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s when I’m older. But I wonder if there’s anything else you guys have explaining why we should try to get off of these drugs. My husband says “maybe you’re just one of those people that need it” and I don’t know what to say to that

@pigamadeus - I will share what cemented my decision to get off my AD.  Learning that the chemical imbalance theory is a myth; learning how they cause physiological effects in my brain and central nervous system; becoming aware of the many side effects of these drugs and reflecting on they affected so many aspects of my adultlife, including how they stunted my own emotional growth; experiencing more than once that they eventually stop working and so you have to go on another drug, etc., etc.  Further, the research shows that long term outcomes are better for those who don't take the drugs than for those who do!  ("Anatomy of an Epidemic" by Robert Whitaker).  You might check out MadInAmerica.   That said, this is a personal decision.  It is HARD to get off these powerful drugs, you have to want to do it because YOU want to, not because anyone else thinks you should.