12to27: 15 years and counting!

[12to27]

Hi! I was, "diagnosed," with depression when I was an extremely shy and moody 12 year old, and prescribed anti-depressants. Throughout my adolescence, I would mistake normal teenage sadness/moodiness for depression, which would either result in a high dose, or different drug, which never resulted in any difference in my feelings. I have always been described as, "sensitive," which scared me from trying to taper off earlier. I have decided that 15 years of messing with my mental chemistry has been enough. I tried cold turkey in December of 2012, which resulted in intense flu-like symptoms, and extreme lethargy for a week before I started taking 20mgs of Celexa again. November of 2013 I decided to seek help from a lovely psychiatrist who has been vital to my taper off process. She recommended we taper off over 3 months, but I insisted on doing it slower in hopes that it actually works this time, which might have been a bad idea. I went from 20mg, to 15mg, to 10mg, to 5mg, to 2.5mg over 5 months, and took my last 2.5mg 9 days ago. Throughout this process I started to have instances where I felt hostile, then frustrated, then got hurt feelings. This has been exacerbated over the past week, and I have developed the same flu-like symptoms and lethargy I had last year, in addition to dizziness, weird headaches, nausea, decreased range of motion in joints. My work performance has decreased, I am offended by everything and react combatively. I feel so dramatic, and I am afraid my fiancé is going to leave me. I read online that the worst of it starts after the drug is mostly out of your system and lasts up to 3 weeks. Do you find this to be true?

[MrAnxious]

Check ur inbox I can help

[Karma]

Hi 12to27, welcome to our community.

 

I cannot confirm the information you found online.  We see members who start withdrawals during initial weaning and also those who experience significant withdrawals after discontinuing the drugs.  We recommend a slow taper of no more than 10% of the previous dose to minimize withdrawal symptoms while discontinuing these drugs.

 

While your original thought to slow down the taper to avoid withdrawal symptoms was good, you still discontinued more rapidly than we would advise, especially in light of the many drugs you've been on and off of.  The symptoms you describe from discontinuing celexa are withdrawal symptoms.  I recommend that you re-instate at the last dose where you were stable, which appears to be 2.5 mg.  Monitor your symptoms and if you don't experience some relief in about a week, then increase to 5 mg. 

 

Once stable, you will do a slow taper of no more than 10% of your previous dose and hold for about 4 weeks to minimize withdrawal symptoms.  Here is our thread on tapering off of Celexa: http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/2022-making-a-celexa-solution-yourself

 

Thank you for including your drug withdrawal history in your signature.

 

You'll find lots of support here.

 

Karma

[12to27]

Thanks MrAnxious, I replied!

 

Thanks Karma! I have pretty much never felt that stable, I have always been super sensitive, which is why I want to try not being on drugs. The physical side effects of vertigo, muscle spasms, headache and lethargy are what I presume are my withdrawal symptoms. I worry that since I put up with it for a week, I don't want to go through it again...

[dalsaan]

The emotional stuff is likely to be withdrawal as well. No one can say how long it will last and toughing it out is no way to treat your nervous system. So I agree with karma on the reinstatement at whichever level you were at and not in withdrawal

 

Dalsaan

[Rhiannon]

First: For someone who was on psych meds from age 12 to age 27, with multiple drug and dosage changes, I have never seen a taper of less than a year succeed, and usually it takes longer. So I'm not surprised to hear you're having trouble. You tapered very fast.

 

Second: Please take a look at the charts in this paper (the charts start at about page four). You will see that from 2.5 mg to zero is a much more drastic change than from 20 mg to 15 or 15 to 10 or 10 to 5. It's under 5 mg that the receptor occupancy really starts to drop and from 2.5 mg to zero is a drastic decrease. Here's the link: http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/6036-why-taper-paper-demonstrates-importance-of-gradual-change-in-plasma-concentration/

 

Third: How fast the drug is out of your system is irrelevant. Your brain has been shaped and modeled around the chemistry that these drugs create. It has grown around the drugs the way a plant grows on a trellis. This happens to people at any age due to normal neuroplastic adaptations, but when you take a growing, developing young brain, I suspect the effects are very deep. Genes that would normally be expressed have been turned off and left dormant, and others have been turned on. Receptors that should have been present, never grew at all. Cells grew differently than they would have without the drug. All of those changes must be gradually reversed, and that's going to take some time.

 

Here's something to read about that:

http://beyondmeds.com/2011/03/31/trellis/

 

and this: http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/6447-best-of-sa/?p=89767

 

Please reinstate, give your brain the support it needs, and learn about tapering. Then take your time and taper at a rate that allows you to safely regrow a brain that's designed for your natural chemistry. If you were my kid (and mine are your age) I would insist you take at least three years.

[Jemima]

If you think one week of this is bad, I can almost guarantee that there will be many more like it and even worse without reinstatement. I "tapered" off of Lexapro, a very similar drug to Celexa, over three and a half months and it's taken two and a half years to get close to normal again. I was disabled for about the first four months, unable to do much beyond getting out once in a while to get necessities, unable to sleep for two to three days at a time. Yes, I definitely mean to scare you. I hate to see anyone going through this hell unnecessarily.

 

Please read our topic on reinstatement: http://survivingantidepressants.org/index.php?/topic/3079-about-reinstating-and-stabilizing-to-stop-withdrawal-symptoms/ You have approximately thirty days to go back on the drug safely, so please don't delay.

 

Welcome to the forum. I hope you'll listen to the advice here and save yourself months to years of misery.

[Rhiannon]

In my experience the people who are able to get off ADs with just a few weeks of WD symptoms generally have been on them for a relatively short time, did not take them when they were young and their brains were developing, and have no prior history of previous tapers or CTs. 

 

What seems to be typical is that someone with an uncomplicated history (less than a year on the med, no prior history, no other psych meds, and an already adult brain) can go on and off two or three times with tolerable initial withdrawal, although they often have a delayed "relapse" effect down the road (actually a delayed withdrawal, but it's diagnosed as a relapse). Then after the third time or so everything is just too destabilized and they get hit with protracted withdrawal.

 

I know it's a lot to take in, what we're saying to you, when it's so different from what you were expecting and hoping. We have all learned this stuff over many years working with hundreds and hundreds of people (some of us into the thousands), so we've had lots of time to absorb it all.

 

I'd highly recommend reinstating at 2.5 mg now and then taking some deep breaths, and then taking a few months to really learn about psych meds and tapering. If after reinstating and doing some learning you decide you want to CT at 2.5 mg after all, you can do it three months from now just as easily as right now.

 

If we're right and you're in for hell, then you'll have saved yourself a lot of suffering for many years (well, or more likely, what I would predict, would be that you'll end up back on meds, probably stronger ones, and headed towards a predictable course of worsening disability, which is what usually happens.) If we're wrong, all you've lost is three months. Not much given that you've been on meds for 15 years. And you only get one brain.

 

Your call.

 

I strongly recommend that you read Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker, as soon as things settle enough and you have the time.

[Rhiannon]

Oh, and check out this website: http://cepuk.org/

 

It's new and I keep forgetting to mention it, but it's as good as the Whitaker book and has videos. I like videos. :-)

 

This one is very short and bottom line:

http://cepuk.org/2014/05/16/video-research-show-effects-long-term-use-psychiatric-drugs%E2%80%A8%E2%80%A8/