success ☼ DLB Winning The Fight

[mattage]

HI DLB

 

 It's Mattage from PP here. Wow, looks like you're nearly done! Well done you!  

 

I was interested to read that you struggled just under 1mg, cos I'm having the same problems (currently at 0.9mg and still really struggling after each drop). 

 

I look forward to reading your success story soon. 

[Altostrata]

DLB, it's a good sign you're doing so well at such a low dose. Just remember to taper very gradually even now, Paxil is a bear to exit.

[DLB]

Well, i cant jump yet, this is awful. My muscles are like jelly, sleep is awful again and forehead pressure and some fog is back again and for the first time i woke up with fast pulse rate somewhere about 90bpm. I am so damn weak though.

I am wondering if i should try going back up to.25 maybe. Any advice??? Im hoping this dont get worse because i need to support a family and this is so hard. This feels like where i have been from cold turkey withdrawal.

[DLB]

Got to remember i have felt like this before a couple of times, but it is hard. The 3 hour nights are rough and i am just so worn down. I suppose this will remit also as before but the extreme weakness is new.

[Altostrata]

Can you hold at .25mg for a while? That might help.

[DLB]

Thanks Alto, i was at .16 and i upped it to .25 yesterday and I'll hold for a while. I would love to know how they come up with what the theraputic dose should be because it these tiny levels something is still going on. Min. Theraputic dose should prb be 5mg. For paxil!!

[DLB]

Ugh, I can't seem to get through this micro dose. Feel ok at .14 and when i drop lower i now feel like my blood is on fire heughtened anxiety and some sound sensitivity. I'm wondering if i should just jump from here now. Would this be considered CT? Not doing well these past few days..

[mammaP]

Don't jump! I honestly feel like I am going to try and talk someone down from a bridge, this is such a tiny dose but if you feel so bad after a tiny cut imagine how 

quitting will be. You have been feeling great, so far this year according to your sig,  but cuts have been quite big. I know that sounds ridiculous when they are such tiny amounts but I mean large percentages. If you are fine at .14 I would stay there for a few weeks, or even a few months and enjoy it. Maybe your nervous system is feeling those cuts and telling you it's time to hold while it catches up, I would listen to it and stay put for a while. There is no rush, my favourite saying here is that even snails get where they want to be eventually! 

[DLB]

Thanks mamma, i know i have been here before feeling like this but I cant imagine this at this dose. For the first time ever I woke with a heavy heartbeat but that dont bother me. Its just a constant anxiety for the past week. I have gotten better before so i guess it will happen again... just need some reasurance now. This feels like my horrible few weeks in sept. Also lots of bathroom visits going on!!! This is crazy. I just want ME back for my family...

[Aeroman]

Hang in there DLB, I have been there before, way before Cipro.

 

I tapered way too fast off Lexapro and remember the months of akathasia, morning anxiety, panic attacks.  I didnt take anything for it...just rode it out and sure enough, it was gone.

[DLB]

Ahhhh, what a difference a day can make! Feel alot better.almost afraid to say, but sleep seems to be changing a little and now I am fighting to stay awake at 10:30 but wake a few times and can get back to sleep easily , except for the 4:00 wake up where I cannot return to sleep again. About 6 hours a night, I can't complain. Thanks Aero!

[Fresh]

Wonderful news  DLB.  Are you sitting at 0.25 for now?

 

Fresh

[DLB]

Wonderful news  DLB.  Are you sitting at 0.25 for now?

 

Fresh

Thanks Fresh, I am somewhere between 0.10 and 0.15 this is too small to measure accurately now. I think I have found out now what lots of people call "morning dread". Mornings are pretty tough with what feels like adrenalin rushes at the slightest sound while lying in bed. Then just worry.... These days are all over the place. I hope this is a sign of healing.

[DLB]

Ugh, forehead pressure, fog, weakness. Is it normal to cycle through windows and waves on a daily basis? So damn unmotivated too..

[Fresh]

It is "normal"  DLB , but not what we want to hear.    

 

Can you get a more precise dose by making a liquid?    Everyone seems to find these tiny doses pretty tough.

[DLB]

Thanks Fresh, I made it through. Great day today, NO weakness and NO knee pains and severe leg weakness!! At least I know things are happening. Still having a broken 4 -6 hour sleep but I have no problem with that, sometimes it's enjoyable to sit and just be alive and hear slight sounds of my little guy in the room next door sleeping nicely tossing every now and then and hearing my wife getting a good nights sleep is nice too because early in withdrawal I would keep her up all night with me going to the bathroom every hour and jumping awake starved for air. The air starvation can be scary and it no longer happens.

[DLB]

Hope i didnt screw up too bad by drinking st.johns wort tea the past 3 nights because last night i got all night insomnia from it and just a wide awake anxious feeling all night. As i was falling asleep i repeatedly got startled awake and nausea. Then wide awake all night. Will this be better tonight? Any experiences anyone? ?

[DLB]

Hope i didnt screw up too bad by drinking st.johns wort tea the past 3 nights because last night i got all night insomnia from it and just a wide awake anxious feeling all night. As i was falling asleep i repeatedly got startled awake and nausea. Then wide awake all night. Will this be better tonight? Any experiences anyone? ?

[DLB]

DONE, FINISHED,FERTIG,FINITO, TERMINADO,AFGEWERKT, 完. I have decided that my15 month taper from 10 mg. paxil is now OVER. Symptoms still there and my sleep is always up and down and I have anhedonia still and weakness. I am nowhere near the horror that I see some of you poor souls in but I also have SEVERE pain brought on by psoriatic arthritis to the point every step I take hits my feet terribly. This I believe was brought on by the initial poopout which is when this autoimmune disease started. Unfortunately the medicine which I have to go on is pretty serious stuff. Humira, embrel, stelara or one like them. The side effects are frightening, lymphoma, sepsis, bad infections, MS, lupus and more including weakness and muscle issues and insomnia. These are rare but I am one of the "rare" people with a horrific reaction to fluoroquinolone antibiotics so that I why I have been putting it off for a year. My wife is reassuring me that it doesn't mean I will have these reactions to ALL meds. There is one that I may start first called Otezla which does not have all the horrible sides that the others have but it does have the side of depression and insomnia. Now I NEVER had any hint of depression until this anhedonia in poopout and withdrawal which I think is slight depression? I believe 50% of this anhedonia is caused by me not wanting to do anything do to every movement with my feet is a horrible pain so I tends to limit my abilities. Previously I was someone who would work like a bull all day outside without tiring or pain and barely able to do 10% of what I used to is contributing to this place that my mind is in. I also certainly DO NOT need any more insomnia so if this safer drug does not work or if the insomnia sets in badly, I will try one of the more frightening drugs.

 

The pain from the swelling in my foot ligaments and tendons is not helping my withdrawal and I feel this is the next step to help me along.

 

Thank God for insurance though. The biological drugs are about $65,000 a year and the safer Otezla pill is $22,000 a year! Totally crazy!

 

If anyone has had to go on other drugs while in withdrawal I would love to hear what the effects were. I would love it if the side effect was better withdrawal symptoms. These drugs are metabolized by completely different enzymes in the liver so I hope it will be ok. I'll keep this updated when I start in a few weeks.

 

The ironic thing about this is back in September of 03 when I was first given paxil, there was a recently approved drug on the commercials all the time for rhumetoid arthritis explaining the horrible side effects that could happen and when they would come on TV I would tell my wife that I'm glad im on only paxil and not that drug they were advertising. Well, now i am going on it, life is sure strange and I will never forget looking at that sample pack of paxil with the cool graphics on it that day that changed my life forever in 03. I can still see the box in my hand in the waiting room as I felt so horrible from what I later found out to be poisoning from antibiotics thinking that I will take anything to feel better. Wow what a life changing mistake. I look back and notice now that I stopped playing with my children as much after that day and less doing what I love and I never really realized it. Oh and the really weird thing is that for some strange reason I would not run anymore, I don't mean for excersize but for fun I to this day for some strange reason can't run to play or chase my kids and that was something I did with huge enthusiasm up until a week before paxil in 03. I CAN run but I don't want to EVER, it just feels so uncomfortable. This is coming from someone who ran to get everywhere he was going all day every day at work and play. It is so weird the things you notice while coming off this poison.

 

Wish me luck.....

[clearday]

Congratulations on being off SSRIs -

 

I bet you can't even believe it !

 

Best of luck as you heal further.......

[DLB]

Thank you, i have been here before but only after 1 month tapers and it didnt go well. Now i know what to expect and im gonns make it this time. Especially because I never needed this crap to begin with.

[Songbird]

Congrats on getting to zero! 

 

Have you looked into any natural treatments for your psoriatic arthritis?  It is an inflammatory condition, which might respond to an anti-inflammatory diet and natural anti-inflammatories.  If you could make some headway with it using natural approaches, you might be able to avoid the nasty meds.

[DLB]

Thanks songbird, i have been using curcumin and a host of other natural anti inflammatory natural herbs and vitamins and i tried as hard as i could with the diet but it is soooo hard to avoid stuff like pasta and bread and it never really worked for me. I have seen posts where people actually came from a country that didnt gave any junk food and all the person ate was vegetables and fish and had this disease and they moved to USA and ate like we do and it cleared up for them. The body is just so weird. For some it worked though.

[DLB]

Day 1 without paxil feel fine, well withdrawal normal anyway... This CAN be done...

[brassmonkey]

Way to go on hitting the bit "0".  It's taken some doing but you finally made it. Congratulations.

[DLB]

Thanks Brass, i see you are at 1.8 now. Keep on sliding!!!!

[Songbird]

it is soooo hard to avoid stuff like pasta and bread

 

You could try going gluten free for a few months, apparently this has helped in some cases.  It seems a shame for you to have to take more heavy duty meds.

[DLB]

I do try, and i even bought sime gluten free snacks recently. I dont even eat bread during lunch. Just so weird that something i ate so much of in the past could do this now. I do notice more pain after eating potatoes so there may be something to it. Well day 2 and all is well on WD.

[Songbird]

I do try, and i even bought sime gluten free snacks recently. I dont even eat bread during lunch.

I think to really test it, you'd need to cut gluten completely, at least for a few months. I read the labels on all food products now because wheat and gluten hide in just about every food product out there.  Luckily gluten free products have become much more readily available.

 

 

Just so weird that something i ate so much of in the past could do this now.

I agree it is weird, I don't think I was gluten sensitive in the past, either.  It was just something I began to notice getting gradually worse over time, until the day I ate a scone for brunch and then had to lie down for an entire afternoon.

 

 

I do notice more pain after eating potatoes so there may be something to it.

That is interesting. There shouldn't be any gluten in a plain potato, so possibly your system is reacting to something else in potatoes.  It might be worth keeping a food journal, documenting everything you eat and your reactions, maybe some patterns will emerge.

[DLB]

Ok, been 1 week off my miniscule dose and doing fine although sleep still sucks. I read about everyone waking with horrible anxiety, when i wake there is nothing that is there, just wide awake at 3:30 AM. No startling no anxiety just awake!! Is this still a cortisone thing or just my sleep cycle disturbed? Fall asleep really not much of a problem. Any guesses? Also, getting some more ambition at times to do things but not even close to the me of a decade ago.

[Songbird]

I read about everyone waking with horrible anxiety, when i wake there is nothing that is there, just wide awake at 3:30 AM. No startling no anxiety just awake!! Is this still a cortisone thing or just my sleep cycle disturbed? Fall asleep really not much of a problem. Any guesses?

 

Sounds like more of a sleep cycle thing.  I guess the bright side is that the plain insomnia is more tolerable than the anxiety insomnia.

[DLB]

Hi Songbird, I had 4 hours of broken sleep for the past 2 nights. I cant believe how the sleep constantly changes from week to week. Few weeks ago was 6 hours and now terrible 4. Still no anxiety or racing thoughts though so i hope it is just the sleep cycle and it will correct one day.

[clearday]

Sounds similar to my insomnia wave last summer. It lasted a month or so, but slowly corrected. Once my brain readjusted, I sleep better now than during all five years while on Lexapro. My sleep has been very good overall for 7 months now. But the insomnia wave was brutal. 

 

One way to deal with the insomnia is to wake up at the normal time, regardless of how little sleep you got, forget about how lousy the night was, and push yourself through the day. That approach helped me. Easier said than done. But to dwell on how lousy the sleep is can be distressing. 

 

I was amazed at how well I could function with two hours of sleep on some nights. It absolutely sucked, but I got through it. And my body adjusted.

 

Sleep was my major problem during Prozac WD. I was able to sleep, but it was non-restorative due to the changes in sleep patterns induced by SSRI usage. For me, it resulted in a couple years of bad fatigue.

 

Now that you're drug free, I hope your body settles down to a natural restorative sleep pattern. Eventually your body should realize that it needs some sound sleep, and will adjust itself. 

[DLB]

Thanks Clearday, i actually feel better on those 2 or 4 hour nights. Last night i took an otc sleep aid and felt like crap until 12 today and i got 6.5 hours. I just worry that im harming myself with all this lack of sleep and not to mention i soon have to start a medicine that a side effect is insomnia and depression. Now i never had depression before but this withdrawal coupled with my extremely painful autoimmune arthritis is getting me down. If this med works maybe it would actually help my withdrawal by relieving my painful walking problem. Or, it can go the other way and cause depression. But for quality of life and to keep me working i have to get on something to stop the progression of this psoriatic arthritis. Ive seen hell with paxil so i guess i can handle more if i have to.

[DLB]

WOW, feeling 90% me lately and doing real well, anhedonia slowly lifting lately and still pssd ( he works but not for long LOL) can do a little more physical work without feeling symptoms and sleep is 4-5 hours a night, also leg muscle issues seem to be a lot better. Being a pessimist, I am waiting for the ball to drop and get hit with crap but I am certainly enjoying life more lately . Now if only my autoimmune condition gets better from this total cessation of mind altering body harming crap I'll be real happy!!! Hang in there everyone, it gets better !!!!!! 

[clearday]

90% is a GREAT number !

 

Enjoy -