Goldensun - my Avanza withdrawal nightmare

[goldensun]

Alto I feel better in the morning if I have had some sleep, whether I have taken Ambien or not. I was thinking maybe I should say take another 2 or 3mg about 11am because that is just before I start to feel the full on Akathisia kicking in. In the morning it

tends to be anxiety, but I don't always follow this pattern everyday.

[Bellisimo]

Hello!

 

Ive read your story and im suffering with you thru all this! trust me , i tried also for a long time quit my medicine, over 4 years i was struggle on and off my medicine , i wanted to come off, doc always put me back on , until one day i realised, there is only one way get rid of this and that is the hard way , sadly.

 

The one thing that make me upset is when your doc say that you have to take this or another if ur not happy with this and so on, what kind of docs are they? What the heck is this? This not so bad, all my docs ive been too have tried the same until i told my doc last time now from suffering real bad i said clear NO, you are NOT putting me back on ANY medicine again, and the best thing is as long as u are not suicidal and things docs cannot force you to anything, thats illegal. Say no. i have many many days thought " is this how my life will be for the rest of my life during my withdraws" but then i read story after story about ppl recovered, everyone , almost everyone say , hang in there, it will be a hell of a ride but when you are once recovered it will all be worth it, i guess its like having a baby, its so painful but all worth it.i have such love to life that im fighting everyday and the things that keep me fighting is my hope and i have a great will, that also helps.. but i agree this really test ur strength,.

[wulfgar]

Hi,

 

I have ploted your blod serum levels if you take 3 mg att 11 and the rest at 20:00 in contrast to taking all your dose 23mg at 20:00.

 

Taking 3 mg at 11 you should reduce your evning dose to 20.43 mg to get the same nightly serum level. 3 mg does not do much but is still helping you not fall as low in the evening.

 

The math for this is found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life

 

I put it in excel to calculate what the maximum serum concentration for a continuous dose of 23 will be. I then add 3 mg at 11:00 and adjust the 20:00 dose so the serum concentration gets the same.

 

With serum conentration i mean the one dose equivalent, as the actual ng/ml can only be measured and not calculated.

 

 

 

[Altostrata]

1) You may be suffering rebound from Ambien when it wears off in the late morning.

2) You seem to attribute some adverse effects to the propranolol, but it's unclear why.

3) Inconsistent dosing of mirtazapine may be adding to symptoms.

 

If you want to test hypothesis 1, you need to hold everything else steady, decrease Ambien slightly, and see if that helps the akathisia in the late morning.

 

(If you've been taking Ambien occasionally, you need to find out if the akathisia is better or worse when you don't take it.)

 

If you want to test hypothesis 2, you need to hold everything else steady, decrease propranolol slightly, and see if that helps your symptoms.

 

If you want to test hypothesis 3, you need to hold everything steady and track your symptoms.

 

 

All of the above require keeping notes on paper.

[Petunia]

I've been following your thread the past couple of days, trying to think of something helpful to say, to make this easier for you.

 

Something which keeps occurring to me is that many people here and on other forums have experienced the same symptoms in random patterns while holding on a low dose of a medication or even after having been completely off medication for a while, following ct or a too fast taper.

 

This leads me to think that your symptoms are more related to general nervous system destabilization, rather than the effects of any one medication.

 

I've been completely off all medication for 6 months, and still experience a daily pattern of symptoms starting from when I wake up, there are no drugs causing this, so it has to be my own nervous system still out of balance.

 

Rhi wrote this on another thread, but I think it applies to your situation too:

 

 

.... But over time, with much observation of people going through this, I have increasingly come to believe that tweaking the meds, once a person is already destabilized and experiencing withdrawal, is likely to do more harm than good. Once everything's destabilized and chaotic it's hard to predict what a med will do. They just aren't that precise, they don't have such predictable effects.

 

 

Goldensun, I think that you will start to recover when you understand that these drugs don't cure anything, they only mask symptoms when taken by someone with a stable nervous system.

 

But over time, they cause imbalance, so it becomes very tricky. 

 

I still don't know what to write because I want to help, like everyone else here, but all I can do is tell you what I did.

 

I stopped taking Lexapro in 2010, a very fast taper and then cold turkey.  I had been on AD meds for 13 years, had tried to quit 4 times previously.  I had symptoms, but after a couple of months, didn't realize it was still withdrawal, at first it wasn't too bad.  I actually had about 2 months where I felt quite good, so when I started to feel worse again, I had no idea it was withdrawal.  I got diagnosed with ADD and went on stimulant medication.  I got a whole lot of new symptoms, in fact some of them were so bad I felt like I was going insane, but I didn't connect it with the Lexapro withdrawal.  I spent the next several months tweaking and changing ADD meds, trying to get adjusted to them, my symptoms just got worse and worse.  I was also adding in St Johns Wort, Propranolol, Xanax, various herbal supplements, all in an attempt to find some kind of 'balance' of substances.

 

Nothing was regular or routine, I was desperately trying to juggle things so that I could achieve some feeling of peace in my mind and body, but it got worse and worse and eventually I 'crashed' in November 2011.  I haven't been the same since.

 

I came to the conclusion through research and various perspectives that my nervous system was 'broken', but I still didn't know it had anything to do with Lexapro withdrawal and irregular medication use.  It wasn't until I found this site, in April last year, that the final puzzle piece got put into place.  I spent about a week, reading here and then I got it.

 

I stopped trying to fix myself with drugs.

 

I started to understand the difference between symptom relief and recovery.

 

I'm sorry for writing about my story in your thread, but maybe its because I understand some of what you are going through, I spent several years desperately adjusting dosages of medications, adding more, stopping some, trying to find some relief so that I could get my life back under control.

 

It doesn't work.  Not with these kinds of drugs.

 

I still can't write anything which will make it easier, but as Bellisimo said, a few posts up,

 

"hang in there, it will be a hell of a ride but when you are once recovered it will all be worth it"