success ☼ Hudgens's story

[Addax]

Hudgens, I just saw your post in the thread regarding whether Sarotonin receptors restore themselves (or something like that).

 

Just wanted to swing by and say "yay for you!" Your post made me smile. :-)

[Hudgens]

Thanks. Today's 4 months post taper and still just fine.

Sleeping much better (5-6 hrs).

Very mild anxiety from time to time and short lived (1-2 hrs)

Same for dysphonia.

No mental confusion or brain fog since end of taper.

Eating right and exercising, too.

Mood excellent.

This is a boring post, and that's the way I like it.

Post again in a month, unless everything suddenly goes south.

[Martina23]

Hudgens, hello, how long did it take until you had no obsessional thoughts & scary pictures? I am still by tappering, hopefully it is not an obstacle. You know,  I want only to know so that I can imagine how long it takes in general by various people. Did it stop first when you were on 0, or it healed also during tapering?

 

Tschuss Martina

[Hudgens]

It happened 3-4 times during tapering. Maybe for a month each time. I had to stop meditating at one point because these images of awful looking faces would suddenly pop up. These were always up close, as if I was almost touching noses with them. Not a real hallucination, but very vivid. I haven't really been able to meditate since, out of fear, though I don't think it would happen again if I did.

Anyway, The thoughts and less often images were with me soon after about the middle of my tapering (at 2years out), then quieted down for a while, then came back though less strong several more times, once in the 3rd year and once during the 4th. I don't have them anymore, maybe for 7-8 months now. I also got something like them several times in the form particular hypocondriacal (sp?) obsessions.

 

Remember, this all happened to me with a slow tapering. There's no way of telling how long any symptom will last, just that it will finally fade and then be gone eventually. None of these things lasts forever.

[Martina23]

I would so much like hypochondriacal obsessions. But I got harm OCD and now I am afraid to go home. But today we get a visit, so I have to go home from office earlier.

[Martina23]

Today we are going to Philipin´s restaurant with friends and my children, I am already looking forward. I feel outside much safer, but I have to learn to handle these things, because in other case I can only start with medicaments again. But my symptoms are so strong, I dont know if I manage it. If I were alone, it would not be the problem, but with the children you   have be to consider their interests always first.

[Altostrata]

Very happy to hear of your progress. I added our cheerful "here comes the sun" symbol

☼

to the title of your Intro topic, to show you're recovering.

Please continue to let us know how you're doing. I hope you will add your story to our Recovery Success Stories eventually!

[Hudgens]

Can you add the real sun to our weather, please?

 

Of course I'll eventually be making a success story. Could be as soon as the end of July.

I'm already almost half way their (10 days).

[LoveandLight]

Yay! Delighted for you.

[DLB]

Wow Hudgens, your taper insomnia is exactly as mine through this ordeal. I hope i have the same outcome soon. I cant believe you had those issues on that small amt., being that min theraputic dose is like 100 mg. Or so. I am pretty stable at .25mg. now and will drop next week. Hope it goes like yours. By the way did you get weakness and muscle joint pains that i get?

[Hudgens]

I think 75 mgs is considered the lowest therapeutic dose, but it doesn't mean much, it, and I'll bet a lot less of a dose is enough to radically change brain structure in a very short interval (a couple of weeks). I remember a psychiatrist smiling and saying that 75 mgs was what they called a "baby dose". What a mischaracterization! It's truly scary how stupid the "experts" are about these drugs.

 

I think you're dropping way too fast. What you're doing is the equivalent of a cold turkey. In 2008 I tapered in 2-3 months and felt fine the whole time and for exactly two months after I felt better than even before. Two months to the day after stopping, I suddenly felt as though a building had fallen on me (no exaggeration here). If something similar happens to you, you maybe able to reinstate and begin a very slow taper. I didn't have any trouble reinstating. At any rate, if you run into problems, don't make the further common mistake of trying to wait it out. CT's can suffer for years before things get better.

[DLB]

Thanks Hudgens, I'm not sure if you read my sig right, I have tapered for 14 months off 10 mg. and am holding below 1 mg. since the end of Nov. I hope this is not too fast because I did the doctor recommended taper 2 times and got hit by what felt like a train 2 months later and now only a few little blips along the way and am holding good at .25 now so I hope it's ok. I read most of your posts today and it is real encouraging. Yeah, it is 75 mg for the so called min. dose. Paxil is between 10 and 20 depending on where you read and I felt good until below 3 so they are dead wrong about these min. doses. Anyway, congratulations on your sucess coming off this garbage.

[Hudgens]

Yes, read signature wrong. Brain fog's coming back, I guess.

It really is the lower doses that slow a taper way down.

So just take as long as you need.

Try not to drop according to a specific amount of days, but by how you feel.

You may need more than the time you're taking (2-3 weeks?) after a drop to ascertain this. Your last few drops also seem too precipitous.

I know from experience (as you probably have read) that too many too rapid drops can catch up with you.

Don't be afraid to reinstate at an earlier dose if that happens.

I've seen many instances of people on this sight who need to do this and yet don't, seeing it instead as a defeat of some kind. They make one of the most common mistakes in trying to "ride it out".

Unfortunately the time it takes to ride it out can turn out to be months and even years of awful suffering.

I tried to do this initially myself and went through a month and a half of the worst hell.

But I felt fine pretty quickly when I stepped back to an earlier dose. I'm sure I saved myself a whole lot of suffering.

[Hudgens]

5 months post-taper and no real changes to report. That is, still doing just fine: mild, short lived withdrawal symptoms: insomnia 4-6 hrs a night; irritability; anxiety and flu-like symptoms. All very manageable.

 

Exercising (walking twice a day plus light weight training every other day).

Beginning to eat according to the new MIND Diet-(purportedly for Alzheimer's prevention, but I think it works for brain fog too). 

 

One difference I should mention-my brain zaps are fading and sometimes gone completely. Now they've never been of the intensity that bothered me much, but they were always present when I turned my eyes to the right..  More recently, they don't always happen. So something's changing.

 

My mood is also still generally good, and although it may sound strange to say, I'm glad I don't feel Too good. I remember (as I've mentioned several times before in this thread) feeling that way after a 3 month taper in 2008 (that "better than ever" feeling) just before getting run over by withdrawal. So it's very reassuring that I simply feel good in a normal sort of way.

 

If I continue on this positive trajectory I should be writing a success story in 5 more months.    

[alex]

YAY!!!

[DLB]

Great to hear , more good days to come I'm sure....

[Lexy]

You've come a long way baby!!

[Hudgens]

Today is 6 months post taper. Everything's the same as last 5 month report with one exception, I stopped the MIND diet after 2 weeks due to very terrible gas. Still I'm maintaining a very healthy diet.

 

My main withdrawal symptoms now are brain fog, random bouts of  confusion and irritability. Short and fairly mild episode of each. The irritability happens the most often, then the brain fog-for an entire day about once a week. The confusion happens once or twice a month and now involves trouble understanding complex ideas, or anything to do with numbers. Doesn't last more than a half hour or so.

 

Last night I had one of those sleepless nights when every regret and doubt I ever had in my entire life seems to have lined up for my close inspection, one by one. After about 8 hours of this I'm convinced I'm a horrible person and must do the world a favor by becoming a hermit for the rest of my life. I finally did fall to sleep for 3 hours. All of the doom and gloom are now gone. This sort of thing is so typical of withdrawal. I wouldn't even call it soul searching-it's too sudden, exaggerated and time limited to be genuine. It's just an exaggeration of normal regrets and memories. Remembering to stop as much as you can while this is going on and to just notice your feelings rather than the actual thoughts, and, at the same time forcing yourself to think of the good parts of your life to help balance out the bad, really helps mitigate the effects.

 

Still have short periods of time when the brain zaps (when moving eyes to the left) are gone.

 

Looking back over the last half year since I took my last dose, I'd say I was slightly improving overall. Yet even with a very slow taper that got me down to only 4-5 finely ground grains of generic Venlafaxine (had to use a lighted magnifying glass), after 20 years of antidepressants it's still no walk in the park to get clear of these things once and for all.          

[cymbaltawithdrawal5600]

Wow, Hudgens, I am just amazed.

 

Thank you for the update!

[alex]

Great post.

Thank you.

[Hudgens]

Today is 7 months post-taper and I can report that I did much better this month than the previous 6. I'm down to two symptoms: insomnia and the mild brain zaps (so mild, in fact, that I go for days at a time without noticing them). As for the insomnia, I get adequate sleep (4-6 hrs sleep) about half of the time, so there's a lot of room for improvement there. Still, the situation is such that it rarely ever really gets to me. Not sure why, but I now feel as if I'm getting to the months that are most significant. If I can get through months 8-10 and still feel the way I do right now or better, I'll really begin to think I'm out of the woods. I don't have a real sense as to how realistic this is, but I must have gotten this general idea from reading others' experiences on this site.

 

Well, that's it until the end of June. Happy summer, everyone! 

[Hudgens]

8 months post taper today. Been getting some stomach upset for a few hours each day for past 4 days. Unusual for me. Some irritability and exaggeration of emotions, kind of over the top reactions to things. Sleeping patterns very changeable: 2 full nights of sleep followed by a night with one hour of sleep. Everything else good. And the things that are bad seem pretty manageable, not much more than mild compared to how bad it has been. Oh, I've noticed I'm forgetting words for things that I really should know. This happens about once a week-for example several weeks ago I could not for the life of me remember the word "trombone". It finally came to me after about 15 mins.. Yesterday I couldn't remember the name of a favorite actor for about the same amount of time. Could be age related of course, but I have a strong intuition it's withdrawal. I guess it's good that I can remember eventually. Other than all of that, I feel like I'm doing fairly well. Exercising, eating healthy about half of the time. Mood's good majority of the time. Will post again at the end of 9 months, unless things get significantly worse. Everyone have a great summer!

[Hudgens]

9 months post taper and feeling good, mood good. No withdrawal symptoms to report other than brain zaps, which I have fewer of lately, and less insomnia, too. I think it's important to note that I'm in the middle of battling a bad ear infection, because neither it nor the treatment (antibiotics) have brought on any withdrawal symptoms. So, I mean, I'm even experiencing disease in a normal way. Looking back on the last few months, I can see that I'm doing a little better really. I know a lot on this site have experienced problems at the 9th month post taper and am happy to see that maybe I won't. I'm going to give it all one more month to be on the cautious side before closing this introductory thread for good and writing a success story (well a month and a week or so after that), just to be more sure. Of course, you never can be absolutely sure, but I'd like to write a success story and not have to come back to report that later things went South after all. There are so few unqualified success stories, and I'd like to be able to say that I got through this and am completely OK again. That is to say, I want everyone to know it's absolutely possible. I'm feeling more and more like this is going to be the case with me.

[Jlynn]

Awesome! I am so happy for your success! Keep it up, you are an inspiration to all of us!   

[pug]

9 months post taper and feeling good, mood good. No withdrawal symptoms to report other than brain zaps, which I have fewer of lately, and less insomnia, too. I think it's important to note that I'm in the middle of battling a bad ear infection, because neither it nor the treatment (antibiotics) have brought on any withdrawal symptoms. So, I mean, I'm even experiencing disease in a normal way. Looking back on the last few months, I can see that I'm doing a little better really. I know a lot on this site have experienced problems at the 9th month post taper and am happy to see that maybe I won't. I'm going to give it all one more month to be on the cautious side before closing this introductory thread for good and writing a success story (well a month and a week or so after that), just to be more sure. Of course, you never can be absolutely sure, but I'd like to write a success story and not have to come back to report that later things went South after all. There are so few unqualified success stories, and I'd like to be able to say that I got through this and am completely OK again. That is to say, I want everyone to know it's absolutely possible. I'm feeling more and more like this is going to be the case with me.

 

Wow, that is awesome news.  I hope you continue to do great and can post a success story for us all to read on a regular basis.  We need more success stories!  Please keep us posted.

[Hopefull]

Hi Hudgens,

Your story is inspirational and bringing hope to all of us. It is nice of you to update your progress and give other people hope. Thank you for that, Hopefull.

[Hudgens]

If it's true that the new "Viagra for Women" is an anti-depressant, we can expect to see a giant increase of traffic on this site. As all here well know, the vast majority of people and doctors do not know the dangers involved in the starting and stopping of antidepressants.   

 

9 1/2 months post taper-I'm feeling  perfectly fine.

[pug]

Very glad to hear you are doing well!

[alex]

9 1/2 months post taper-I'm feeling  perfectly fine.

 

Very happy for you.

I'm still struggling..

[Hudgens]

10 months post-taper. My sleep is back to normal after close to 3 years of insomnia. I still get a tiny brain zap (so faint at this point I can hardly call it a zap anymore) when I turn my eyes to the left-but not even every time now. 2-3 times a week I get the lightheadedness for about 3 hours in the evening. Other than that I feel absolutely normal-mood very good, feeling for a long time now what some others here have referred to as a sense of "inner sustainment."  an overall feeling difficult to explain, but it's something that's definitely missing during much of withdrawal-and yet it's so obvious when it comes back, either temporarily or, as for me-more permanently. This feeling of inner sustainment is the foundation of feeling normal again. I'll be writing my success story very soon. Not sure if I should wait for what little withdrawal symptoms are left to disappear or go ahead a write the success story now. Although I'm leaning towards the idea that it would be a more complete success, and for that reason more valuable for others here-if my recovery were complete. On the other hand, what if it takes another year to get past all residual symptoms? (Though I'm very good at being patient after all of this.) 

[LoveandLight]

Very good

[Lexy]

I always look forward to reading your updates. You inspire me to go slow and be patient.

 

Regarding insomnia do you think even if one tapers slowly can one still have insomnia or sleep issue ?

[Hudgens]

I certainly did. My insomnia began in October 2012 soon after a third consecutive 50% drop. After I reinstated to an earlier dose I began to feel OK again except for the insomnia which continued for the next 3 and a half years. I've only recently gone back to  sleeping mostly (5-7) hours a night.

 

It should be noted that, although I did do what I consider a generally slow taper, I most likely did not stick to a strictly 10% reduction schedule. I very often made what I thought were 20-30% reductions. Of course it should also be said that my method of measurement was a very inaccurate one.

 

Here's something else-during the worst of it you feel as though if you ever get passed it all and feel good again, you'll never take feeling normal for granted again. But it seems that part of feeling normal IS taking good health for granted. I find myself completely forgetting all the bad times and those awful feelings, and just living to some extent "unconsciously", as I did before tapering. The only thing I seem to retain is some extra reassurance that I can stand a lot more suffering than I thought I was capable of in the past.  

[oskcajga]

Here's something else-during the worst of it you feel as though if you ever get passed it all and feel good again, you'll never take feeling normal for granted again. But it seems that part of feeling normal IS taking good health for granted. I find myself completely forgetting all the bad times and those awful feelings, and just living to some extent "unconsciously", as I did before tapering. The only thing I seem to retain is some extra reassurance that I can stand a lot more suffering than I thought I was capable of in the past.  

 

That's a very good point.  Part of being healthy does seem to be taking being healthy for granted - even as I heal from my abysmal terror state, I tend to find myself taking my health for granted, although I try to remind myself how grateful I should be. 

 

I'm really happy to hear that you're feeling better, it gives me hope - and it's also nice to know that one less life is not screwed up as much from the psych meds. 

[Hudgens]

Just wrote a success story. 10 and 1/2 months post-taper.

[LexAnger]

Found your thread saw your successful story first.

Thanks!

LexA