LookingforPeace: Really Depressed And Looking for Help in My Withdrawal / Restarting Mess

[Altostrata]

Your husband should see a sleep medicine specialist as soon as possible to have the apnea evaluated and treated. The ER can't do much about this.

 

It sounds to me like the agitation you are calling akathisia started with the switch from Zoloft to mirtazapine. This suggests it is from Zoloft withdrawal syndrome.

 

A very small amount of Zoloft, such as 5mg, might help. Zoloft comes in a liquid, or you can make your own, see Tips for tapering off Zoloft (sertraline)

 

For now, I would stop changing the mirtazapine dosage.

[LookingforPeace]

Thank you all for your support and advice. After my husband continued to experience intense sleep disruption in late July he left to live with him mom in DC and see a psychiatric nurse and neurologist there. She put him on a higher dose of Zoloft and added back the Doxepin. His panic attacks continued and still he wasn't able to sleep. She added Lithium and Deplin for his continued anxiety. He came back home two months later. He is much calmer and can sleep much better now. Altough, I worry because of everything we've learned from reading Dr. Breggin's book Withdrawal Symptoms, Dr. Shipko's book and all that we have read on this site. I am really concerned of all the side effects but hopeful that if he decides to taper off of them he will now know how to do it more safely and he will be able to get guidance from you all. Thank you so much!

 

Looking back at all the advice from you I see the mistakes we may have made like going up and down on the meds so drastically and taking a few different kinds of sleep medications. I didn't like the sleep meds one bit, I argued with the MD about them and increasing the Zoloft. I was also kicked out of one of the psychiatric appointments when the nurse told my husband to start Mertazipine. She said he "may need to take meds the rest of his life" and that infuriated me. I just felt so strongly that he was almost off of everything and what he just needed was sleep not all these other drugs. My husband was fine for over ten years on just 25mg of Zoloft and also a small dose of Dexepin. His psychiatrist that recommended he get off them three years agao didn't think he needed them anymore since according to her "it wasn't even a therapeutic dose" Unfortunately she didn't give him much guidance on tapering very very slowly. He got off the Doxepin fine over a year but then decided to go from 25mg of Zoloft down to nothing in one day. Part of the reason he got off of Zoloft from 25mg to nothing was that he had missed his second appointment with his psychiatrist and she wouldn't renew his prescription. According to him she also couldn't see him anymore because she dropped him as a patient. He had missed too many appointments. After this I decided maybe I should be more involved with his medical care.

 

Although, because my husband and I also argued some in the past about the drugs, for right now, I am trying not to talk to him about it and let him make his own choices. I have always felt that he doesn't need them. When I first met him he ate a lot of candy and drank a lot of coffee. He also didn't have a regular sleep schedule and often stayed up late. He is a musician and back then performances often went late into the night. However, my husband feels strongly that depression runs in his family and that he has some sort of chemical imbalance. I am now realizing that this is just a theory. Anyway, we have our differences about his depression and the medication and sometimes it is easier not to talk about it. But he is exhibiting symptoms, now, that concern me. He has a rash all over his body now. He twitches a lot in the night. He also isn't totally himself during the day. He is much quieter, reserved and less energetic. He has gained some weight but he was pretty thin around the time he started with his insomnia and withdrawal symptoms. In fact, he had lost so much weight I was concerned he was diabetic especially with the constant peeing at night and insomnia. But his blood sugar after fasting was 98mg. and the doctor said this was normal.

 

I am no longer going to my husbands session with his counselor and I may not go to see the psychiatric nurse with him, but I feel really torn about this. I want to be there to support him but it seems our differences about the meds really get in the way of our relationship. I get frustrated though because he also tells the doctors about his family history of depression but leaves out the fact that he was not very healthy when he was first diagnosed with depression. His father also has a strong sweet tooth and doesn't take very good care of himself. He started antidepressants in his 40s after his second wife (my husband's step mother) was admitted to a psychiatric hospital and given shock therapy. His father experienced a great loss during this part of his life and this is when he started antidepressants. My husband's mother who he was married to before for about 20 years, told me that she didn't remember him being a depressed person during all the years they were married. They divorced when my husband was five. My husband remembers his father often being sad. Sleeping a lot and loosing jobs, being kicked out of rentals and going through manic and depressed periods of his life, but most of this was while his father was on medication. We didn't see much of my father in law for the five years we lived very close to his home town. He doesn't answer his calls and often just avoided us. Once in a while we would get calls usually when he was in manic moods. We heard from his debt collectors more than we heard from his dad.  When I read Anatomy of an Epidemic I began to understand my father in law so much more. 

 

Yikes, sorry for such a long message. I just want to reach out to others...I feel very isolated with this and wish I could go to a support group of relatives who;s loved ones deal with depression and side effects of the medication. 

 

Should I go to the doctor visits with my husband? 

 

I wish there was a way to talk to Dr. Breggin. It is frustrating to read his book and then see doctors here that don't believe anything he says.It is so frustrating to sit in on sessions with his psychiatric nurse and ask her how she knows my husband has a "chemical imbalance" and she not being able to give me a response that is based on science. 

 

Well, thanks for listening. I look forward to reading your responses.

 

 

Wife of LookingforPeace