Dazrecovery: came off citalopram 5months ago, WD symptoms make me want to go back on

[Dazrecovery]

Hello dear SA Forum people, 

 

first off thank you for all the information on this site...I was truly feeling like I was slipping back into depression and not realising it's most likely WD until I read some of the stories on this forum. 

 

I was diagnosed a few years ago with depression, after a long recovery in ACOA and from PTSD which some awesome therapists helped me through...this bout was precipitated by a job that completely messed up my health - night shifts mixed with day shifts, no daylight in the work place, carer for someone who had untreated mental health issues on a zero hours contract, mainlining coffee...

 

 After having tried Sertraline unsuccessfully a year or so back I was hesitant but agreed to go on Citalopram. The Sertraline had made me tired with a worse feeling than I had while depressed so I stopped it as soon as I noticed the adverse effects, which was pretty much immediately.

 

Citalopram on the other hand felt like I had a slight buzz permanently..the intrusive thoughts turned down in volume in my head and I was able to do more and recover slowly, all the while feeling pleasantly high. 

 

It worked- I was even able to support my significant other during his own bout of depression and anxiety, all the while still on a stable maintenance dose of 10mg of Citalopram. In fall I was ready to come off and discussed with doc, but we agreed that towards winter wasn't the best time for me as I'd been worse towards wintertime.

 

Then came setback in form of bereavement that threw my body into complete disarray. 

 

In May, I was starting to feel so much less depressed, that my doc and I agreed to come off the meds- no real instructions given as I'd already gone down to the 10mg dose, but this was to be done  in conjunction with me seeing a counsellor. Been waiting since May with the NHS, having been put off and forgotten (just what I needed!). 

 

Shortly after coming off the antidepressants I started to get overwhelmed a lot. I got overwhelmed going to the beach. I got overwhelmed by my own birthday plans, and ended up cancelling them. Starting a new job now and feeling a bit overwhelmed by the training. 

 

My main symptom is irritability- I am sensitive to sounds, sensations and my body feels ready for a fight all the time, like permanent road rage about all things. I also have proper waves (waves and windows certainly is true for me) that carry me to very dark places, which makes me doubt if I've improved. 

 

Rationally- I know I have improved. I can wake in the morning and do things instead of dragging myself to the nearest cushioned place again to numb my brain with TV. I don't need to nap any more. I can sit and meditate for a while.

 

I'm wondering if going back on a tiny amount of Citalopram (2mg or so?) would help alleviate my symptoms while I'm trying to get back to working? Or whether to just grit my teeth and power through, focusing on the social support network and self-care?

 

The reality is- that half the day is overtaken by emotional overwhelm that takes me until about 14:00 every day to try to manage with food, exercise, journalling, meditation... and that's just me in a relaxed, non-pressurised environment. I'm just so afraid of not functioning in the world any more after all of this madness...the idea of facing the city centre and all those people every day is scaring me shitless. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated! 

 

Thank you for listening.

 

 

[Gridley]

Welcome, Dazrecovery.  Thanks for doing your drug signature.

 

It's possible that reinstatement could help you.  Reinstatement of a very small dose of the original drug is the only known way to help alleviate withdrawal syndrome.  The only other alternative is to try and wait out the symptoms and manage as best you can until your central nervous system returns to homeostasis.  Unfortunately no one can give you an exact timeline as to when you will start feeling better and while some do recover relatively easily, for others it can take many months or longer.  Please read:

 

About reinstating and stabilizing to reduce withdrawal symptoms. -- at least the first page of the topic

 

Reinstatement isn’t a guarantee of diminished symptoms for everyone, but it’s the best tactic available.  At five months, you’re a bit outside the time period where reinstatement predictably works, up to three months after last dose or dose reduction.  We usually suggest a much smaller reinstatement dose than your last dose.  These drugs are strong, and when updosing/reinstating it is better to start with a small amount and increase of symptoms remain unbearable.  If you take too much it may be too much for your brain and can cause you become unstable.  Sometimes it can be hard to regain stability after this happens.  If you do decide to reinstate, I would suggest 1mg.  

 

Then, once you have stabilized (which can take several months) you can taper the reinstated dosage down at a 10% per month rate.  Why taper by 10% of my dosage?

It takes about 4 days for a dose change to get to full state in the blood and a bit longer for it to register in the brain.

 

At what rate did you taper the Citalopram?

 

To help you understand the symptoms you are experiencing, here is some information on withdrawal.  The withdrawal time doesn't necessarily correlate with the time you were on the drug.  These drugs alter the architecture of the brain, and the time necessary to heal the brain and return to homeostasis is, unfortunately, impossible to predict.  

 

What is withdrawal syndrome.

 

Glenmullen’s withdrawal symptom list.

 

 The Windows and Waves Pattern of Stabilization

 

When we take medications, the CNS (central nervous system) responds by making changes over the months and years we take the drug(s). When the medication is discontinued, the CNS has to undo all the changes it made. Rebuilding the neurotransmitter production and reactivating the receptor and transporter cells takes time -- during that rebuilding process symptoms occur.  

 

Youtube video, 4 minutes: Healing from antidepressants

 

We don't recommend a lot of supplements on SA, as many members report being sensitive to them due to our over-reactive nervous systems, but two supplements that we do recommend are magnesium and omega 3 (fish oil). Many people find these to be calming to the nervous system. 

 

Magnesium, nature's calcium channel blocker 

 

Omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil) 

 

Please research all supplements first and only add in one at a time and at a low dose in case you do experience problems.

This is your introduction topic -- the place for you to ask questions, record symptoms, share your progress, and connect with other members of the SA community.  I hope you’ll find the information in the SA forums helpful for your situation.  I'm sorry that you are in the position that you need the information, but I am glad that you found us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dazrecovery]

Hi Gridley, 

 

thank you so much for taking the time out to reply to me in my cry for help. 

 

Reading your response has made me feel a lot better-in fact being in this forum has made me feel better. I could finally put a name to what's been ailing me. The next day there was an article on the BBC news page about how the medical community is starting to realise that they've been sold lies when it comes to ADs. Definitely didn't feel so alone any more and maybe a bit more positive about facing this withdrawal. One of the big things for me was feeling out of control and ashamed which was impacting my friendships IRL but this community has helped me enormously (after i got over the rage at the irresponsible way ADs are prescribed). 

 

Regarding your question how I tapered- I was left with close to no guidance when tapering off..I'd done a fairly ok taper from 20mg to 10mg, but towards the end started slipping on my compliance anyway, just taking 10mg every two days for a while, then every three days and in the end I just stopped. My doctor was one of dozens that work in the clinic and when she took me off I was at that stage of "tapering" ...taking 10mg of Citalopram every two days; it was the first and last time that I saw her as she went on maternity leave the next day.

 

I'm starting a new job so will see how it goes...I've also cut out a lot of drama out of my life, which has helped. If in a month's time I can feel that things aren't improving I might go back on 1 mg and then taper down from there at the proposed 10% per month rate...

 

Thank you to the community- already you've made a massive impact on me and my recovery. I hope we all get well again. 

 

[Gridley]

Sounds good, Dazrecovery.  We're glad to have you with us.

[jozeff]

Hi dazrecovery,

 

Hoe is your new job going?

 

I recognize a lot in your story about anger, anxiety and just feeling blah the first half of the day.

 

I started a citalopram taper in April 2018 and decreased 0.1 mg every day after being on it for 2 years

After 85 days of tapering I crashed so I stayed on 16.5 mg for a couple of weeks. I felt so bad that I updosed to 18 mg to feel better. That didn't really help because my body had to get used to that dose also. I'm on 18 mg citalopram now since August 14th 2018. Feel pretty stable....not good but stable. Some good days, some bad ones. Symptoms are always different.

 

I want to start brass monkeys slide method soon. I'm thinking about 2.5% per week with a 3 week hold. But, I need to be absolutely as stable as possible before I start tapering again.

 

I hope he reinstatement did some good. 

this medication is a tough one that's for sure.

 

good luck and happy healing!

 

jozeff

 

 

 

[Dazrecovery]

Hi Jozeff thanks for asking. 

 

Honestly in the training I was doing alright but I've gotten worse now. Most days when I get home I just break down. Interactions with people are difficult-I am not the same person I was before depression and grief, every little thing makes me hate hate hate. I even hate my cat-he recently got fleas and is acting up going into closets and jumping on kitchen worktops.. I swear it's to wind me up. 

 

Been feeling really suicidal and it doesn't help that my friends have all run out of patience with me. Still have my husband by my side but not sure how long he'll be able to put up with me. It's never been as dark as this. 

 

Today I got so overwhelmed with the emotions that I had to vomit.. Even though I'd had no food, nothing but bile coming out. 

 

Feel let down by just about everyone at the moment--the NHS for cocking up my referral to a counsellor when I came off antidepressants after having left me to recover from a serious back injury with a paracetamol and nothing else. My remaining family for asking asking me to take care of them when I'm barely holding it together. 

 

It's coming up to the anniversary of a bereavement that shook me to my core but more than that I do not enjoy my new job. It's so tedious and I'm earning so little with it, it's making me want to die more than when I had no job prospect. 

 

I've been making decisions recently that I don't want children for a while yet and am getting a lot of resistance from friends who are pressuring me to become pregnancy buddies or tell me that I'll change my mind soon enough (which is to me so insensitive as they've not been part of this road through hell that I've been on the last few years). I feel like I'm losing my friends to their idealistic idea of what having kids will be like.. When I've been caretaker to my siblings when I was young and know what kind of massive 24/7 responsibility it is. I don't get any respect for my life experiences from them, or for my decisions. And worst of all these are the last few remaining friends I've got. I feel incredibly lonely. 

 

I've spent the last 6 waking hours crying and in absolute agony. 

 

My husband is probably the only reason I've resisted taking my own life but I constantly wish for an accident or terminal illness to get me to end this pain. 

 

I'm afraid to go back on antidepressants although I have made such huge strides on them. I'm afraid that it might be too late to reinstate any dose as it's been 6 months now since my last Ad dose. 

 

I hope that your taper works out Jozeff, if I could go back I'd do a slow taper, too. I hope you feel better more soon. 

[Dazrecovery]

Hello All, 

 

i just wanted to say thank you again for listening to me in my hour of need those months ago. 

 

I've had to start seriously looking at my recovery again after the WD---found a book that cleared things up for me immensely. It's called "The Body keeps score" by Bessel van der Kolk and it's about Trauma. I believe that there are different types of depression- some come out of seemingly nowhere, some are precipitated by illnesses such as diabetes or by pregnancy  but I believe that mine is what is known more as C-PTSD... a depression stemming from Trauma in my childhood. Which kept on getting triggered by work dynamics and led me into a deep depression and  to go on antidepressants.

 

I started treating my WD more like PTSD and from then on my symptoms started getting better. I journaled, started working out, meditating, taking very hot baths every day. Tips from this forum helped- the baths one was one of them.  Later on I started going back to ACOA, a 12 step fellowship and a few months ago to a counsellor. I started getting serious about recovery.

 

The exercise was a biggie- I started to get release from almost every exercise session- and when I say release I mean that I released tears and pains that were years worth of pain coming through in my body. I used methods that although rooted in psychotherapy are popularised by healers such as Teal Swan and went and dug into some past trauma and reintegrated the parts of myself that split off and that was a difficult process- like a mental equivalent of expelling bits of shrapnel one by one. I would go jogging and be in tears at every run, but I soon accepted that this is part of me healing without drugs...it's me feeling parts of myself that I wasn't strong enough to face before the meds. I'd journal and feel past pain and trauma and keep on writing until my adult self came through with the wisdom and healing. 

 

The biggest transformation has been for me in a re-awakening of my own spirituality and using rituals to ground myself. For me those are pagan  but I have lots of brothers and sisters that are more mono- or atheistically inclined in the fellowships that find those practices helpful (prayer, some kind of exercise or social routine etc). It's been necessary to root myself in my faith and values again, I think the meds held me off from thinking about this while I was in the throes of dark thoughts, but with light came space to create new values and practices. More than that, I think I needed that- it was another side of me that needed healing.  

 

Another book that I first found infuriating but now find quite helpful is "Feeling good; the new mood therapy" by David Burns which is helping me in the phase I am in now...the phase that CBT treats (the book is a basic intro to CBT)... the reassessing of thoughts. I wasn't able to do this before, because my physical trauma was too overwhelming, my body was too full of the pain- I think my nervous system was too overloaded. I think now I'm able to examine negative thoughts.

 

To those who are still feeling like turd- keep on going, it gets better. It's slow going, but it's not easy to come back from the brink of death, as I said to a cancer survivor friend of mine the other day. We can honour ourselves in believing that what we went through was really serious- and for me it was...it was suicidal ideation and self-harm, and I'm lucky that I survived by the grace of the people that love me, some people don't survive. 

 

If you're reading this know that you're pretty damn strong. I know this because YOU'RE STILL HERE. Despite all the pain, you're still here. And that's testament to that something inside of you that's fighting, that's winning even if it doesn't feel like it's in control.

 

Depression is a huge re-adjustment- for me it was an excising of patterns that didn't work for me any more. A losing of harmful things- a career that wasn't in line with my desires any more, perfectionist thinking, some friends that were using me, some family who were dismissive of me. It meant learning to honour myself and live life on my own terms again, with the help of people who truly wish me well...even if it's not the people i expected to be by my side when I set out the journey. And like changing directions on the Titanic, it required enormous amounts of effort under the surface.

 

From the bottom of my heart thank you fellow people on this forum and people that run it. I think I would not have made it through my dark times and the info about tapering and the effects of WD on here were so insightful, it helped me understand what was going on when the medical community had utterly failed me...leaving me to deal with the worst feelings I'd experienced in my life without any help. Thank you.