Withdrawing from prozac, 5 years of torture and still running the boat

[tomsterhi]

Hey guys,

 

Was put on prozac for lots of anxiety and depression due to difficult life circumstances.

Developed manic symptoms, severe restlessness/akathisia, severe emotional blunting/numbness, slight difficulties with errection/numbness slightly, headaches, dififculty concentrating, change in personality, loss of accurate feeling for time, disconnected from reality after being put on the 20mg dose.

 

Immediatly was put on 10mg which helped but symptoms still ongoing. Found the german adfd ssri withdrawl site and started withdrawing slowly. Severe withdrawl symptoms, windows and waves, restlessness, burning in brain, confusion, mania, severe depression, numbness, agitation, apathy, the whole package. 

 

This medication is hell and was hell for me. I could have never thought that this could happen to me. I am quite traumatized by the experience and still sometimes think if this will continue i am going to be dead because i cant cope with this state. This puts me in a existential crisis every now and then. 

 

I pretty much stopped caring about living, i want to be healthy again but if this continues i wont be able to live. I still have hope that it might go away since i am only 1 year off. If not i am comfortable in asking for euthanisia. 

 

Pretty much the worst experience of my life. Have never felt so isolated from the world, lost my full faith into justice and goodness in this existence. Psychiatry has been the biggest dissappointment with ignoring me, trying to drug me more, quite literally being hostile. 

 

I do have windows but they do not justify the constant pain i have since years. I am quite young (25) and i have this since my whole adult life. 

 

Still fighting hard and dont want to lose hope. If this is still there when i am 35 i will get on benzos forever/try different meds or ask the doctor to end my life with as little pain possible. 

 

I am sorry for everyone going through this. 

 

I stopped taking any rescue medicaitons since a few months, now recently took 2.5mg propranolol just to take off the edge, it does help a bit but sometimes i feel makes the rebound even harder. What do you think of my strategy?

 

I also tried stuart shipkos method of taking benzos once per week but was afraid i might get dependent long term so i stopped that method. 

 

Pretty much nothing to help me, just healing and time. 

 

Greetings

 

Tomster

[Onmyway]

Welcome to SA Tom, 

 

I am so sorry you are going through all this and for such a long time. I can absolutely understand your despair. 

However, I would also encourage you to not act on it. These drugs and withdrawal are "liars" - they change our emotions and are not a good indicator of what the world is like or what the future might hold or who we are even. When we are in withdrawal it seems like it will never end. But it will. How long it will take we never know - for some it takes a long time, for others less, heck, there are people who never have to deal with this even after being on ADs. 

What is more, I have found that ADs and WD create urgency to act. It's understandable given how miserable we feel to want to take action - try supplements, try all kinds of methods and it feels like it's now or never. Yet what is needed is keeping still and letting our body heal itself as it knows how to do. If I understand correctly, you have been off of prozac for 1 yr. If so, I would suggest that you just be patient and let this experience go through your body as it will. Don't try any more benzos, don't try any more drugs. It is really hard to do but remember the windows you are seeing, they are indications that things are resolving, albeit very slowly. 

 

In the meantime, I would encourage you to please create a signature of all the meds and supplements that you have taken or are still taking with the dosage and when you started and stopped them. That will help us refer to your history quickly when advising and help us understand what may be causing what. 

How to List Drug History in Signature - Introductions and updates - Surviving Antidepressants

 

What are your current symptoms? Have any symptoms resolved or changed? 

 

Here are a few links with non-drug techniques to help manage some of the symptoms. 

 

Non-drug techniques to cope with emotional symptoms - Symptoms and self-care - Surviving Antidepressants

Important topics about symptoms, including sleep problems - Symptoms and self-care - Surviving Antidepressants

 

And most importantly, Success stories: Recovery from psychiatric drug withdrawal - Surviving Antidepressants

This shows that people who had horrible WD symptoms have healed. Also remember that the majority of the people who heal do not return here because they never want to remember this hell and want to just live their lives instead so there are many more success stories out there. I am hoping that some time in the future we will see yours as well

 

For now though, hang in there!

 

OMW

 

Edited August 5, 2021 by Onmyway

[tomsterhi]

Thank you for your quick reply, it really means a lot to me that people understand this situation, thank you OMW.

 

What you wrote is exactly also what i think, this is why i just survive the day and do anything to stay alive. I know my perception tricks me and i am aware of it. In the midst of it i am just so afraid that i will never be able to do anything again in my life and just suffer endlessly. Especially in the waves i feel like i am in this state since 5 years and it actually never changed. Thats the most horrific. I feel like my nerves have just been damaged, i feel stuck inside my head. Its like you are thrown in a prison in your brain. Just sick ****. I also feel nothing then, just a hurtful blunting, apathy and restlessness. Its awful but also you dont feel awful, you just feel like your nerves are game over. 

 

Benzos help like heaven but i am very well aware of the dependence issues. Last year i used like 2mg lorazepam one evening and then waited at least 5 days and took another dose. I did that 3 times and then waited a month to repeat. This gives me something to look forward too and i thought i circumvent dependence since i calculated the half life time and took an extra day to let it get out of my system+ a longer break after 2 to 3 weeks of this strategy. But since i loose track of time i felt like it was time to stop taking anything for a while so on the 27.5 i stopped taking any emergency meds. 

Diazepam almost brings me back to baseline for a few hours and i feel calm for 2 to 3 days. I only took 5 pills or so and then never again. I dont think i got dependant on any benzo, not even on lorazepam since i took big breaks. What do you think of that?

 

This morning i tried 2.5mg propranolol again, doesnt help much? Do you think doing that is bad? 

 

Whats even more weird is that i have chronic constipation because i feel like my releasing muscle is chronically tensed due to the akathisia. There is a connection definitly. I do have waves where i feel way more alive, i feel like literally nerves are forming again in my brain and sometimes a strange flooding as if i took some drug. Sometimes i feel like i am in love and i notice its my receptors being faulty again. 

 

Sometimes i have severe aggression, i thought a lot that i wanted to hurt the doctor who prescribed me the drug. I have deep rage, then i feel embarrased for my rage, its insane  At least sometimes i can have some humor again and laugh but sometimes i just want to die in my sleep too. 

 

What i am especially afraid of is that if this stays nobody will help me die and i have to live like this until i am old and insane. 

 

I also tried medical weed with my GP for some days, it really helped in the beginning but then increased my agitation very much. I stopped it and never used it again. Only benzos help for a short time.

 

I read some succes stories now and then but then i think i am different and i wont get back to baseline. 

 

 

 

Thank you for your time reading this. 

 

Greetings to all of you out there

 

Tomster

[Onmyway]

Hi Tom, 

You are doing the right thing by focusing on survival minute by minute and day to day. That's all you can do now and that's enough.

 

Regarding benzodiazepines, I understand completely your reasoning. I did it in the very beginning to be able to deal with the akathisia before I reinstated. My worry with them is not that you will get addicted but that they will interfere with the withdrawal itself. 

 

Contrary to the simplistic model of recovery, our issue seems to be not lack of serotonin but down regulation of receptors AND the interdependency that exists among the many chemicals/hormones/receptors in the brain. Our brains are incredibly complex and as one system recovers another one needs to adjust to the new state, so needs to make changes and so on. Every time you put in a psychoactive substance in that incl alcohol, benzos, supplements etc. You're basically adding complexity and we just don't know how the rest of the system will change. Hence the advice on keeping it simple and stable.

 

There is an excellent analogy to this that I will try to find for you and that may help make sense. 

 

 

Edited August 5, 2021 by Onmyway

[tomsterhi]

Thank you for your reply. I thought about that aswell and came to the same conclusion as you, thats why i gave it also weeks of breaks to not add anything to my system.

I am just so afraid that the akathisia may be permanent, i guess i can only wait. I never took any hard Antipsychotics which are usually associated with tardive dyskinesia/akathisia (promethazin not a real antipsychotic as far as i know) but i still have hope of healing. 

 

I have quite the severe allergys also before i took the drug and sometimes take histamin blockers like loratadine. Do you see this as a problem? 

 

I just checked your bio i see your xanax a day strategy  Im sorry you have to go through this buddy. It insane what these drugs can do. I studied psychology the last years and its astounding how easily they are prescribed under the seretonin imbalance myth and that one can take them as long as one wants. Even professors of the uni argued for their legitimacy. My personal oppinion is that there is a lot we dont know and its not possible to reduce it onto some receptors and chemicals. Recently a study came out showing antidepressive effects in rats where the seretonin system was removed/didnt exist. I cant believe the official Seretonin theory anymore considering some people have the effect after a few days (i felt the effect on day 1) and some wait weeks with nothing happening. Its really just trial and error. I liked Peter breggins videos about psychiatric drugs. 

 

I see you are on 1mg, during covid my medication was not possible to be delivered so i jumped from 1mg to 0mg in one go. I stayed on 7,6,5,4,3,2, for several months, especially when i went lower i took more time. From 2 to 1,5mg as an example. I used the liquid method aswell but then got capsules from the pharmacy. I dont really trust the liquid method being accurate although many swear on it. I also feared that i constantly add too much or change the dosis. I dont know if i did it correctly, my severity might also be from not doing the liquid method correctly. I really dont know.  Maybe for some months i always took 1.5 a day and then 1.6 the other due to doing the method incorrect. Too late...

 

Greetings 

 

Tomster