clayface: Anxiety and obssesive disorder - clomipramine and paroxetine

[clayface]

Hi everyone. It has been more or less complicated on the last weeks and I decided to wonder for help on the web, and finally came here. I'm from Argentina, 29 years old (about to turn 30), have a history of mental disease so to speak, and a big genetic charge i suppose, as most of my family members (mother, father and grandmother) have their own mental issues.

 

On my 20's i started having anxiety crisis situations and became obssesed on this happening again, so i was diagnosed with a generalized anxiety and obssesive-compulsive disorded. As a child i remember having random, weird and troubling thoughts... but it was a few years ago that i became obsessed with the things i saw that were necessary to live, so one day it ocurred to me "what would happen if you have a anxiety crisis whenever you eat or try to sleep".

 

This changed my life forever, and from that day over i have thought about it everytime i eat or get to bed. This let to a few nights without sleeping at all, and to digestive problems, gases, diarrhea and the unstopable sensation that there's something wrong on my stomach.

 

I thought i would never be able to eat or sleep again, and that i would die of starvation or physical weakness. None of this happened and with the help of medication (clomipramire first with a lot of ugly side effects and then paroxetine much more confortable) and phycological therapy i managed to go on with my life and followed a "normal" life patron.

 

If i have to rate my treatment, i would say that by the time i was on clomipramine i had a 30% recover status and then with paroxetine around 50%. The thoughts were never gone, but they turned manageable and i was able to achieve some goals i set (traveling abroad, i went to the United States with my couple and we had a very good time there).

 

Then, seeing that i was on a expectable state and having resigned the thought of being on a fully recovered status, i talked with my doctor and we decided to stop taking paroxetine (which i toke for 1 year) and see what happened. The first months were ok, as if i continue taking it, but then i started to feel as i felt on the beginning as those thoughts gather streght again.

 

Now a day i'm trying to hang on, have talked to my doctor and he indicated to start taking paroxetine again... but he doesn't know until when, he said "if you feel better with it, take it for as long as you need it, we'll see then". So i'm at the dilema of start taking something that i know will surely make feel more relieved but not the way i would really like to be, all of this knowing that this treatment (since the clomipramire) have started around 4 years ago and i thought i would see more concrete results.

 

But then i remember this is not a flue, and the mind is not a simple matter of treat. What would you recomend me to do? Have you ever heard of such obsessive thoughts? I have no compulsions at all... just the repetitive idea of dying for stressing when i do those things...

Edited March 26, 2013 by tezza
Added paragraph breaks for readability

[strawberry17]

Hello and welcome to the forums, perhaps you could tell us more about when you finished the Paroxetine and how fast you came off it? it's possible that you're feeling withdrawals from coming off this too fast, also withdrawing from antidepressants too fast and being in withdrawal can lead to obsessive thoughts/anxiety being amplified. If you can tell us more about how you came off the Paroxetine we might be able to give you some thoughts about whether it's worth reinstating some to alleviate your horrible feelings and to taper off slowly and safely.

 

Also, it might be worth looking through the "Symptoms and Self Care" section on here for ideas about coping with your obsessive thoughts and anxieties.

 

You will find lots of support here.

[Jemima]

Welcome to the forum, Clayface. You'll find lots of solid information and gentle, friendly support here.

 

It sounds to me like you may have gone off paroxetine (Paxil) very quickly, and the symptoms you're experiencing are withdrawal syndrome rather than something that's wrong with yourself. Paxil is one of the strongest of all antidepressants and difficult to discontinue. It should be tapered off in small amounts, no more than 10% of the current dosage over many months. Here's a discussion about tapering off antidepressants that may be informative:

 

Tapering

 

If you do go back on paroxetine, it would be wise to start with a very small amount and see how it affects you. It looks like you've been off of it for several months, so your system is probably sensitized to the drug and reinstating may do more harm than good. If possible, get the paroxetine in a liquid form so you can take tiny amounts. If you can't get it in a liquid, here's how to make your own:

 

How to Make A Liquid from Tablets or Capsules

 

I'm sorry that you're feeling so badly. There are lots of helpful ideas in the 'Symptoms and self care' discussion if you feel up to doing some reading.

[clayface]

I indeed left paroxetine quite quick, i was taking 20mg a day. I started taking just half the pill (10mg) and in a week i stopped taking it at all. I didn't know it was so important to planify a controlled quiting.

The weird thing is that only the first week when i was leaving the pill i felt kind of dizzy and that was it, the next three months i felt well, i even travelled on vacations and i was fine (at least as fine as i got to feel when i was under the pill). But now after these months i have started to have those ideas strengthen. I feel kind of disappointed with the treatment overall, because i feel i never got to reach a real recover from what is happening to me, and as son as i leave the pill it's just a matter of time for the things to get to the start point.

I just wish i could understand what is happening on my head and why i feel this way, i have never read people having the kind of obsessive thoughs that i have and that's why i feel like being put on a diagnosis instead of doing some exhaustive analysis in order to clarify all the situations that could be leading me to this.

[clayface]

Hi everybody. It's been a long time. I decided to stop taking paroxetine and i've been taking it for almost 2 years. The problem is i did it very fast: i was at 25mb and reduced the dose to half a pill for a week or so, then for a few more days to quarter a pill until i ran out of medication, and that was it. I lost my job a few months ago and I'm really trying to save some money for my daily expenses.

I started feeling dizzy the firsts days, and the classics brain zaps everyone describes. That was tolerable for me... the thing is, since last saturday, i have been unable to sleep (practically, sleep at all). I go to bed and I simply can't fall sleep. Of course, my physician told me it was unwise to stop the medication like that, and prescribed 10mg zolpidem at night. He also said that if this continues it would be better reinstate paroxetine and see how it goes, or switch it to sertraline (my diagnose is OCD).

I have to recognize that once i tried quiting paroxetine even faster, and 3 months later it was hell. I lived a month strugling very hard with a lot of symptoms...

What advice could you give me? I'm also looking forward to learn about natural medications that can be helpful in this process. By the other hand, what happens if one continues to take a SSRI, say, for the rest of life. Could it be bad?

Thank you very much,

 

[Wildflower0214]

Hey there!

Welcome. I'm sorry you are struggling.

Alto or one of the others will be along shortly. They will be able to advise you further. Hang in there. In the mean time, look around the site. There is some really good information here.

[Rhiannon]

Hi clayface, welcome to the forum. I'm sorry you're struggling with WD symptoms.

 

It sounds like you've been here before. If so, you'll know that your taper was way too fast. In my experience, if it didn't work for you in the past, it's not likely to work for you again. The withdrawal experience generally gets worse each time people do it, not better.

 

My advice would be to reinstate immediately to something like 10-15 mg, to stop the withdrawal; stabilize for a while; then taper at a safe, conservative pace. I know you're wanting to save money, but I think you can get paroxetine really cheap at Wal-Mart (like four bucks or something). And going through another bout of withdrawal now or three months out or (most likely) both is not going to make it easier to find a new job and get your life together. In fact I would say that right now is probably a very BAD time to be coming off meds, better to wait until things are less stressful.

 

We suggest reducing by no more than 10% of the current dose every 4 weeks, this reduces the risk of withdrawal symptoms arising.  Please read through this post which will explain why:

 

http://survivinganti...0-of-my-dosage/

 

 

Please see:  Keep it simple. Keep it slow. Keep it stable

 

Reinstatement of a small amount of the drug can often work well to alleviate withdrawal symptoms.  According to medical knowledge, reinstatement is the only way to alleviate withdrawal symptoms.  Reinstatement is best done immediately upon appearance of withdrawal symptoms. The more time that passes, the less likely it is to work.  Here is some information about reinstatement to help you decide if its something you would like to try:

 

http://survivinganti...rawal-symptoms/

 

I'd highly recommend reading Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker, to get a sense of the long-term outcomes on ADs. Psych meds can be pretty perilous over the long term and in my opinion should only be used for short times and very cautiously, if at all. I know that I myself, after 20 years on these meds, am amazed now, as I am getting myself back, at how much they took away from me: my mind, my emotions, my original personality, my ability to connect with people, my overall love of life. Plus the effects on my physical health.

 

Other resources you may find helpful are Your Drug may be you Problem by Dr. Peter Breggin and Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry

 

Also, please put your drug and withdrawal history in your signature.  Putting a short version of your drug history in your signature helps people understand your context, it appears below each of your posts.  Here are instructions for how to do it:

 

http://survivinganti...your-signature/

 

It looks like you've been here before. I'm not very good at combining threads, but hopefully one of the mods who is good at that will come along soon and hook this up to your original thread. That way we'll have all your history together, which is much better for us as far as knowing what advice to give.

 

Welcome back, although I'm sorry you had to come back for less than happy reasons.

 

Please stay in touch and let us know what you decide.

 

Please stay in touch and let us know how you are doing.

 

Once you get back to us with more details about your drug history and situation, we will be in a better position to offer support and suggestions.

 

[Altostrata]

Merged clayface's Intro topics.

[clayface]

Thank you for merging, it didn’t occur to me to write on my previous post.

I will try to update my medication history right now. By the way, I’m in Argentina. Waltmart here doesn’t sell medication. However, I have the chance to get some generic paroxetine at a lower price. The thing is I need to get a prescription, and since I’m currently unemployed I have no medical care… I will call my doctor because he said he was going to give me the prescription just in case I didn’t feel ok, and he forgot last time I met with him, when he prescribed the hypnotic.

Honestly, it doesn’t sound good to feel hooked up on something like this… but I truly don’t want to go where I was a few years ago on my last attempt to quit the medication. Now that I think of it I don’t know exactly why I decided to quit a few weeks ago… I guess I just wanted to give me the chance to see if I can have a regular life without it.

I will keep you posted. I forgot to say last crisis motivated me, with the help of a psychologist, to go back to the university and retake my psychology studies. I have advanced quite a lot and I have started to investigate on third generation cognitive therapy, I’m currently reading a book by Stephen Hayes called “Get off your mind and into your life” and I find it very useful.

Something else: If I take fish oil and / or magnesium, could it help with withdrawal?

Thank you very much.

[clayface]

Hi there, just to let you know that this is not getting any better... i'm having GI issues as well, plus sleeping is getting harder even with the hypnotic, and worst of all is this dread feeling. I think I will have to go back to paroxetine and see how it goes. Any suggestions on how to cope with this?

[bubble]

please read what Rhi wrote for you a few posts back. This is the best advice we can offer.

[clayface]

Hello there… I’m still here, finally my psychiatrist recommended that I start taking sertraline. I started at 25mg for 6 days and then got it up to 50mg. Since I’m still unemployed and finished my studies for the year, I have a lot of free time and I don’t know what to do with my days. Sertraline only gets my mouth dry and I have lots of thirst. Nor my depression or my OCD seem to have improved.

Since I left paroxetine about two months ago or so, I started to feel this doom feeling that is the worst part of what’s going on. Nothing seems to be interesting, and life seems like a torture almost every walking hour. I feel suicidal and when I remember situations that I believe were happy, I now see them as invalid or always ruined by something I was worried or thinking at that moment.

My mind is alerted all the time, and I still have problems sleeping.

My plans are going to another city, where this therapist has her office. She has been recommended by the International OCD foundation. I hope she’s willing to do ERP without putting me into another cocktail of medications.

Here in Argentina doctors are a lot more conservative that in the USA when prescribing medications. If I’m feeling this way just for taking a few psychiatric drugs for a few years, when I read the posts of other people and see what they had been going through with 10 or 15 different medications over several years, I can’t imagine what it would be like to feel that way.

I hope peace come to all of us. I will let you know if I have any new.

Thank you.

[Broken]

If you decide that Sertraline isn't helping, please taper very slowly.

 

Myself and a few other members on the forum have had a severe reaction upon withdrawing from Sertraline after only a few days/weeks on it.

 

I sincerely hope that you get some benefit from it.

 

I apologise if this comes across as scaremongering in some way, shape or form however I wish somebody had pointed this out to me.

 

Hope you're feeling better.

 

Regards

[Altostrata]

clayface, has sertraline helped your withdrawal symptoms at all?

 

Since it is making you thirsty with a dry mouth, my guess is the dosage is too high. If I were you, I'd reduce it very carefully by 10% a month and see if these adverse effects disappear.

[clayface]

Not at all, sertraline doesn’t seem to be working.

I can’t get my sleep right since I left paroxetine, and I also have GI issues (diarrhea three or four times a week).

My psychiatrist insist that we should give sertraline a few more days for it to produce the desired effect.

I’m only sleeping on 2mg clonazepam and 10mg zolpidem. In fact, My OCD didn’t seem to have improved with sertraline, when I try to get some rest my mind is full of running thoughts, and it’s been about 25 days now I’m on.

I need to get my life straight, I’m having jobs interviews and since I’m not sleeping properly it’s hard to give a good impression. I need to get to study too, and with my brain praying for help it’s really hard to find the will or to concentrate.

Also, since I left paroxetine I went down a few pounds. I think the diarrhea has something to do with it.

I don’t know why the hell my psychiatrist thought sertraline could be better than paroxetine. GlaxoSmithKline should be praised, as for me they seem to have developed something that cannot be left….

I have two options on the road:

1-      Follow my psychiatrist advice and go on with the sertraline, he’s surely going to increase the dose to 100mg next Monday when I see him. He also mentioned that he could add some aripiprazole, but there’s no way I’m taking an antipsychotic again.

 

2-      Follow the “family” doctor advice, leave sertraline and immediately start with 40mg paroxetine.

 

Maybe number 3 would be tamper it all and never try a psychiatric medication again. I don’t know if that would be achievable. Is there any story of OCD which successfully left medication?

Also, I want to do a full blood test to see what my overall physical condition is (the diarrhea, the sleep issue and the weight loss worries me).

Thank you.

[chicken]

Yes my aunt was on cocktail of meds for years with ocd. She is off all meds now and doing fine.

[Broken]

25 days and no sign of improvement? I think it's unlikely that you will see any benefit from sertraline at this stage, just my opinion.

 

I wouldn't switch back to paroxetine. Even though you have only been taking sertraline for a short time I would strongly advise you follow alostrata's advice and wean yourself off responsibly and slowly.

 

Good luck and yes OCD can definitely be controlled without the aid of medication, I did it myself from the age of 7 to 24. I commenced AD's for depression and regret it immensely.

[Altostrata]

clayface, what is your daily symptom pattern? It helps to keep notes on paper to track it.

 

It may be the Zoloft is too activating for you at the present dosage.

[clayface]

Sleep completely disrupted

 

Hello everybody. It's been a long time. I just changed my signature and I'm still surprised of the amount of psyquiatric drugs I was put on.

My diagnosis changed entirely, from OCD and GAD to discovering I was sexualy molested as a child and understading about CPTSD and how it impacts your life.

Being on Clomipramine 75mg + Quetiapine 100mg + Clonazepam 2mg for about 6 months and feeling kind of "stable", I cut the Clomipramine half for a month and then discontinued it.

Short after that, my cronic insomnia got worse, to the point of sleeping just a few hours after 5am with vivid dreams mostlly realted to my traumatic childhood.

I was instructed by my current psychiatrist to add 100mg of Quetiapine to help sleep, so I'm currently taking Quetiapine 200mg + Clonazepam 2mg (which, of course, after taking it for almost 15 years, it does absolutely nothing, same with Z drugs due to cross tolerance, I suppose). My sleep hasn't improved and now i'm undergoing 3 or 4 insomia days in a row and then I have a night where I sleep a little better. I have started to feel its physical and mental consequences. I have trouble concentrating at work, and I'm starting the final project of a coding course next week and honestly idk how I'll deal with it being in my current state.

So, basically, I told both my psycologyst and psychiatrist that I don't want to go back to Clomipramine and actually would like to discontinue Quetiapine and Clonazepam, since after my long experience with psychiatric meds I've learned that some of them just work for a brief time and mostly don't work at all. I'm looking forward to develop some resources on my own to deal with my daily symptoms, which in fact, never got any better no matter how many of the drugs listed in my signature I was put on.

What I would need right now are tips to help recover my sleep. I don't know if I should have continued my previous post with this information, but surely you'll let me know.

Thank you very much.

Edited July 17, 2023 by manymoretodays
title added, merged from second Introduction

[manymoretodays]

Hi clayface and welcome back,

I did merge your most recent post in Introduction's back with this one.  Just one introduction per member.  And it has been awhile, since you have posted or updated.

 

On 7/14/2023 at 9:50 AM, clayface said:

I cut the Clomipramine half for a month and then discontinued it.

 

I'm not seeing this ^ in your signature, it looks like you are still taking it.  And generally, physiological dependency develops in a months time, with a drug like clomipramine, and so we would have advised a harm reduction taper of 10% or less.

Why taper by 10% of my dosage?

And the ^ will apply for any future tapering off your current drugs.

 

On 7/14/2023 at 9:50 AM, clayface said:

Short after that, my cronic insomnia got worse, to the point of sleeping just a few hours after 5am with vivid dreams mostlly realted to my traumatic childhood.

 

There may have been some WD symptoms mixed in too, relating to the insomnia after the 50% clomipramine reduction.  Sorry to hear about the traumatic childhood and more recent discovery that that is at the root of some of your difficulties.  Hugs.....virtual.

 

Symptoms and Self Care is our forum dedicated to coping, especially non-drug coping.  Take a look, and start with the top pinned topic on Sleep and Insomnia.

 

Do please go ahead and check your present drug combination for interactions, then copy and paste the results in a reply here for us.  Thanks.

Drug Interaction Checker

 

All for now.  Welcome back.

 

Love, peace, healing, and growth,

manymoretodays(mmt)