leoxx: Pristq

[leoxx]

It's been a while. I'm using a different account. My other one seems to have been disabled or something. I can't access it, but the email I was using for the previous account was available for some reason.

 

I mentioned alcohol in my previous post. After that incident, I stopped drinking alcohol all together. I never drank much anyway, but it's not worth the potential as a trigger. I wonder if I'll ever be able to drink again though.

 

So back around November I reduced my Welbutrin dosage from 300mg to 150mg. I didn't really see much effect from that. Then around January I stopped taking it all together. I know that's a dramatic drop, especially for a drug that I'd been on for a long time. Most of my reasoning is because Welbutrin never seemed to affect me much. Not much more than a placebo would have I feel. It was always the drug they kept me on cause I was concerned about weight gain and junk and they put on the lower dose SNRI's on top of it to "balance it out". Anyway, because the 300mg to 150mg drop went well, I figured I'd test the waters with removing it and reinstate if I started to have any real problems. If there were lower doses available for taper that were practical, I would have done so. Because my finances are extremely limited, I didn't feel other options, like going to a compound pharmacist, were practical for me.

 

Anyway, removing the drug seemed to go fine. I had a slight drop in mood after, but overall I feel I tolerated it pretty well and had no other acute symptoms from removing it. However, about a month ago I had a really bad mood crash that I like to think of as the "2 weeks of hell". My anxiety ramped up, I had very bad derealization, dysphoria, and depression. Was getting frequent panic attacks. Worst I've had since the beginning. My entire outlook on life was very dysphoric and not my normal self at all. It was terrifying to feel that way. That lasted for about 2 weeks. My mood improved for about 10 days after and then I crashed hard again 4 days ago. This last one caused me a total meltdown and was in-part due to life stress, but I was definitely on a downtrend prior to that and wasn't recognizing the signs of it at first. The extreme emotions triggered my PTSD and caused me to spiral very fast. It's amazing how that kind of thing can sneak up on you and take advantage of any vulnerability

 

This last episode hasn't involved my depression much at all, which is different. It's mostly been intense anxiety throughout the day. I've also been having a lot of the full body tremors I mentioned in my last post. Those are intermittent and seem more related to stress in general than to the anxiety (that is, it's not just the adrenaline. I've been getting them when I'm not feeling anxious, but stressed). That said, I still have things like suicidal thoughts and whatnot, but I feel this is because of the trauma from the anxiety, not because of something withdrawal induced.  I don't know if the severity of those mood swings were a result of removing the Welbutrin or not, but if they were, they were very delayed (by about 3-4 months). Either way, I plan to fight my way through it.

 

At present, I'm only taking the medical cannabis and in the same doses I have before. If I feel I can manage without it, I don't take it. In addition to that, I try to get some sunlight every day and have started walking at least a few miles almost every day. I'm also trying to improve and vary my diet with the hope of making it easier for my mind to recover. I'm not perfect with this. I really only have myself to rely on to get through this. I live alone, the family that can help me has moved out of state, and the rest of the people I know, I can't really rely on them for anything major. That means, sadly, I have days I have to push myself way harder than I'd like.

 

I had a bit of a health scare in the middle of the "2 weeks of hell". I was getting a frequent pain in the area around my pancreas. I went in to the instacare to get it checked out. They did blood work for pancreatitis and whatnot, but that came back clean. They also did a full abdominal CT scan with an IV contrast dye and didn't find anything wrong. At that point they didn't know what it was and basically said, "maybe muscle? You should see your primary care physician". I don't currently have one, so I haven't followed up on it. I mostly seem to get that pain when the anxiety is up and I start getting all the GI symptoms from it. Anyway, I had to do all this by myself while I was in some of the worst withdrawal in my life. I don't know how I managed to do that, but it hurt a lot.

 

Right now I'm just trying to recover from the meltdown I had a few days ago. That really scared me to be that out of control. It was very intense.

 

Going through all this, I've had a lot of emotional and neurological pain, and it makes me wonder if I'll ever get better. I tell myself I will, but when I'm in the heat of those awful waves, it feels like it will last forever. If for any reason, just because I can't control the emotional/physical reaction even a little. It just does its own thing until it stops and I'm left to pick up the pieces. This all has gone on a lot longer than I had expected. It's been about 17 months now I think.

 

I know I'll eventually get through it. I've overall felt better and better, despite these recent hiccups. I do wonder about my preexisting depression and anxiety and how I'm going to have to manage it moving forward. Obviously most drugs are off the table at this point. I only really allow the cannabis because I've tolerated it well, it helps with my autism symptoms, and helps to alleviate some of the anxiety from the withdrawal. I'm not worried about withdrawal or anything like that from it, though I do worry how it might be affecting my recovery overall. There's a lot of unknowns there.

 

I think, if anything, I just wish I had more social support. The symptoms can be crippling and some days I just need respite. I wish I could go somewhere that's quiet where I can focus on getting better and not have to worry about noisy neighbors and grocery shopping and whatnot. My life was hard enough dealing with autism and the depression/anxiety that comes with it, but throwing this withdrawal into the mix has been a complete nightmare that has robbed me of my dignity and some of my sense of self. I've made it this far though and that's no small achievement. I've never fought so hard to stay alive in my life and that's saying something after all the stuff I've been through before the withdrawal.

[Shep]

@leoxxI've merged your two accounts. Please set up a new signature. 

 

How to Summarize Your Drug History in Your Signature

[leoxx]

I went back and checked my journals on dates. Looks like I reduced the Welbutrin in September, not November. I don't have a specific date for stopping the Welbutrin, but it was around January of 2022, if I recall correctly.

[leoxx]

I wanted to apologize for some of my reactions when I first joined this site and created this introduction. At that time, I wasn't aware of severity that going cold turkey could present, nor entirely the purpose of this site. That's something I think I understand better now. So for that, I'm very sorry if I upset or offended anyone.

 

That said, while I'm not sure much of what more can be done at this point, I'd like to ask what your thoughts are on how to proceed with my situation at this point.

 

It's been about 17 months that I've been off of Pristiq and 3 or 4 months since I've been off the 150mg of Wellbutrin (which I don't feel affected me much unless the symptoms of removing it were delayed several months). The dosage I discontinued from with the Pristiq was effectively 50mg with a really shoddy, ill-advised, hack job of a short taper. Since going off the Pristiq, the withdrawal symptoms have been pretty extreme, especially in the beginning. For several months there, while I was having some mood swings, overall I was functioning better. However, in this last month, I've had 2 weeks of really intense anxiety and depression, followed by an okay mood for a week, and then back into an even worse week of anxiety and depression.

 

With how intense these emotions have been lately and considering the length of time I've been off the Pristiq, I'm wondering what, if anything, can be done for me at this point to help alleviate symptoms. Are there support groups that I can get involved with to help me cope? My doctor recommended l-theanine to see if that helped, but I haven't tried it. I'm reaching for any kind of hope at this point. Dealing with this condition is terrifying.

[Shep]

6 hours ago, leoxx said:

It's been about 17 months that I've been off of Pristiq and 3 or 4 months since I've been off the 150mg of Wellbutrin (which I don't feel affected me much unless the symptoms of removing it were delayed several months).

 

Yes, these drug are notorious for delayed withdrawal. Many people are fine for several months and than all of a sudden, they're slammed with withdrawal symptoms. It's this delay in withdrawal that leads most doctors to assume it's the return of some so-called "mental illness.". Psychiatric drugs differ from most recreational drugs in the length of time that withdrawal can show up. 

 

6 hours ago, leoxx said:

My doctor recommended l-theanine to see if that helped, but I haven't tried it. I'm reaching for any kind of hope at this point.

 

We don't recommend a lot of supplements, as many members report their nervous systems are simply too fragile to handle them. However, magnesium and fish oil tend to be calming to the nervous system and many people report they do help. Please only add in one supplement at a time and at a small dose to see if your nervous system can tolerate it. For more, please see:

 

 King of supplements: Omega-3 fatty acids (fish oil)

 

Magnesium, nature's calcium channel blocker

 

You can research l-theanine here:

 

L-Theanine for anxiety, insomnia

 

Please use the search feature of the website or google "surviving antidepressants" + [name of supplement] to research supplements before you take them. 

 

For non-drug methods of handling your symptoms, see:

 

Non-drug techniques to cope with emotional symptoms

 

6 hours ago, leoxx said:

Are there support groups that I can get involved with to help me cope?

 

You may want to check out The Inner Compass to connect with others. 

 

6 hours ago, leoxx said:

For several months there, while I was having some mood swings, overall I was functioning better. However, in this last month, I've had 2 weeks of really intense anxiety and depression, followed by an okay mood for a week, and then back into an even worse week of anxiety and depression.

 

Whether or not you'd benefit from reinstating your last AD (Wellbutrin) is unknown because it's hard to tell if you're dealing with withdrawal from your other psych drugs, from the most recent one Wellbutrin, or if the cannabis is causing problems. I'm going to leave some links for you to read over:

 

Cannabis, marijuana, hashish, THC, & CBD (cannabidiol) or Hemp oil

 

About reinstating and stabilizing to reduce withdrawal symptoms

 

Tips for tapering off buproprion (Wellbutrin, SR, XR, XL)

Why taper by 10% of my dosage?

 

 

6 hours ago, leoxx said:

I wanted to apologize for some of my reactions when I first joined this site and created this introduction. At that time, I wasn't aware of severity that going cold turkey could present, nor entirely the purpose of this site. That's something I think I understand better now. So for that, I'm very sorry if I upset or offended anyone.

 

Thank you, Leoxx. This is very sweet and good to hear you're understanding things better.

 

Please read over the links and let us know your thoughts. If you think reinstating a bit of the Wellbutrin will help, we can help you set up a starter dose (which will be much smaller than the 150 mg you stopped at) and take it from there. 

 

You may also want to clean up you diet, if you haven't already. That can also cause pain in the stomach and since you got a clean bill of health from your doctor, diet would be the next obstacle to tackle. It may also help with anxiety or other withdrawal symptoms. Avoiding alcohol, caffeine, and sugar go a long way to helping us heal. And make sure you're drinking plenty of water throughout the day. Everything matters during withdrawal.