I was prescribed by my UK Gp 200mg straight away of sertraline (brand Zoloft in US), the stuff is EVIL. I suffered immediate side effects within 3 days, such as paranoia, memory loss, diasociation sydrome, muscular tremors, headaches, panic atacks, nausea, loss of emotional control, slurred speeach and mania. I immediatley went back to the GP and he insisted i STICK WITH IT FOR AT LEAST 5 YEARS!!!.
Now I've been on Cirtraline and Fluoxitine in the past( none of them worked at all and I had no problem tapering off them). I told my GP to i wanted to stp taking the sertraline and started to taper off it...I know resonably how to do it. 5 weeks later I'm down to 75mg and suffering HORRENDOUS side effects. Black outs, memory loss and insomnia; plus all the others side effects I mentioned. My main worry is that I have a 4 week old daughter and agression is one of the main withdrawerals. I'm very worried. I've sent her and my fiance to her mothers for the moment. How long before the withdrawrals stop. I'm not taking any more serteraline as I can't stand to put the [censored] in my system anymore.
Can anyone give me advice to help me out naturally or theraputically. The ER prescribed me on saturday 4x5mg Valium to help me sleep for the insomnia and Cyclizine 50mg 1x 3 aday for the nausea. Can anyone offer me advice. I'm deperate and very concerned about my family and my job and my future. I've been recommended 5HTP; which I realise I can't take until the sertraline have left my system for good. Is there any interim solution to help me cope. How to keep busy. The nausea is very bad at the moment.
Anyway sorry to wax lyrical for so long but perhaps someone can be of assistance to me.
Best Matt

You have been on fluoxetine and citalopram I am assuming in the past. You should have nevertheless been started on 50mg sertraline, and slowly ascended to the 200mg max by 50mg increments over several weeks.

You are probably still suffering from the side-effects of the medication itself; it is difficult to withdraw slowly when the smallest dose pill is 50mg, and no liquid preparation is available.

The maintenance dose for the drug is 50mg, so you should have been tapered anyway once the drug had taken effect (if it ever would).

I don't know where this 5-year business comes from; it is not ethical to expect patients to spend decades of their lives trying to find the right SSRI.

I think you need referring to a specialist.

If the cyclizine doesn't work, you could buy some domperidone (Motilium-10) OTC. It is better than cyclizine in my opinion, and works by a totally different mechanism.

ok, no expert here. but let me say. swim in the U.S. was put on the ssri, snri?, antipsychotic, etc... merry go round for 10 years. zoloft was the default med. 100mg.

i know that these are some of, if not the most prescribed drugs in America. the amounts are incredible. and the 10 year ride led to a person who became a zombie. i would estimate it took at least 1 year to recover/withdrawal from these antidepressants... sad. they never worked in the first place.

now swim maintains well being with benzos... just a little input...

Yes, long-term treatment with antidepressants may require 6 months of gradual withdrawal, and as you say, it takes a while to see if they are going to work. Tricyclics tend to have a more immediate effect, and probably worth the side-effects if introduced slowly.

It is a shame they are overlooked virtually all the time now.

out of my field here, but, in U.S. Tricyclics? were never introduced to swim. but you have pcps prescribing everything else from prozac to zyprexa and everything in between. with no tapering. disaster. took a heavy tool on swim brain. 10 years of like lost time/memory...

Any idea about 5HTP, when I finally rid myself of these sertraline tabs.
By the way I was on sertraline for 8-9months and suffered side effects almost immediately. The GP increased the dossage from 50mg...straight 200mg (maximum) I protested and he insisted. I've since changed GP as my new one could not believe the negligence of the GP in the same practice.
Is there anywhere that anyone knows of that I can compose a non personal (GP) complaint ABOUT THE RIDICULOUS USE OF SSR'S: ESPECIALLY Sertraline and Lexapro et al.

My Gp never warned me of the withdrawels at all and as such for i feel that he was negligent in his position of responsibility.
I don't want to blame him as such because I believe it's wider issue.

Funnily enough the nurse who treated me in the ER yesterday fro my withdrawrals was suffering from the same type from Celexa (Citalipram) LOL

Best
The Wind Up Bird

better talk to the pros on this one (nephro)?. all i know is 50-200mg is a heavy move imo. some pcps think 100mg is pretty heavy. most docs in the U.S. like to throw these meds around like candy. they have no problems prescribing anything you want in this class. but from what Ive witnessed, the wds from LONG TERM use were worse than anything ive ever seen. it just seems to never end, and they never really helped for swim after like 2 weeks...

good luk.

Just out of interest whats, 'swim'?

I can understand you wanting to make an anonymous complaint but you really don't need to, and it would be impossible for the Practice Manager to investigate your complaint without looking at your notes. It is the issue of the rapid increase of the sertraline you need to complain about; keep the issue at that.

So, you first port of call is the Practice Manager. Just go to the surgery and ask to speak to him/her. They will then probably ask you to put your complaint in writing. You've changed GPs anyway, so there's no more contact between you and the previous doc. You owe it to yourself to make yourself heard, and others could benefit from your complaint. Imagine if he's doing this with other patients?

The NHS take patient complaints really seriously. I was recently invited to a meeting with a consultant in A&E at a local hospital regarding complaints about treatment of acute arthritic crises. The whole department was re-trained as a result.

This is yet another example of a doctor misusing their discretion and making patients suffer as a result. He should have followed the instructions which are clearly laid out in the BNF:



As for 5-HTP, I wouldn't. More problems with serotonin and how to manage it aren't what you need. See your new doc, and maybe ask about tricyclics or the reversible MAOI moclobemide. Or, ask for a referral to a specialist. State your anxiety levels, and say that the 4 diazepam pills helped you, but you want any higher doses. You deserve treatment with an anxiolytic based on what you have said.

Thanks Nephro. Knowledgeble and concise.
Regards

I totally agree with this.
Another thing to remember is that while some meds like benzos will help at certain stages of withdrawal from things like Zoloft, they can also make things feel worse at other certain times of the withdrawal.

I personally found morphine the best thing for me to help the withdrawal off SSRI's.(Even then I still had symptoms).

Some dr's forget occassionally, that a med like Zoloft may work well for a particular individual for 3-6 months and then become an actual problem.For other people,once they are on it, they seem to be better off on it indefinitely.

Internet gibberish for Someone Who Isn't Me.
I guess it is supposed to be some secret "code" that is meant to throw off any sleuth who might otherwise suspect that the poster is actually talking about themselves rather than another person.
Very clever, huh?

sorry if not appropriate here. thought someone could benefit from my observation. my bad.

How on earth do i aquire morphine in the UK? Prescripsuons are like Nazi documents.

When I came off 8 years of Paxil, I requested to be hospitalized. I had tried to go off of it several times before with disastrous results. One psych told me that I could just switch Paxil for Lexapro without coming off the Paxil. I fired him shortly after that. Horrible, horrible mess.

My reasoning was that I didn't trust myself coming off this awful drug. I had no idea who I would become - would I go crazy and start throwing things and breaking things? I had a 4 year old son at the time. I was crying ALL the time, sick all the time, awful headaches, what have you. I simply told my new psych I didn't trust myself and was scared, and I spent one week in the psych ward (which wasn't that bad, actually - we got to play Wii all we wanted to, and at night, the staff would give us snacks and rootbeer floats LOL). I came off Paxil and went on Effexor which has been WONDERFUL FOR ME!!!

So that is maybe an option??

I have no idea.ER maybe.At least it will help for a day or 2.
Maybe codiene or Dhc might help.

I feel for you.It's a horrible feeling when dr's don't understand how bad the withfrawals can be from SSRI's (and other anti-depressants).

I can believe that morphine may help, but they wouldn't give it in the UK for anything other than severe pain, or rarely, as maintenance (in MR form).

It is horrible, but getting stable on a certain dose is the starting point. Then it's a case of slow reduction.

Where would I get a prescription for morphine?
Brendan

A dr.

Yeah,I wouldn't want to take it long in this situation.Dependence can be hell for some.
I would also want to be just about off the SSRI before taking morphine.

It definitely helped me.

i quit cold turkey off 200mg of zoloft that i took for months, it sucked.

That's crazy, you must have been an electric shock guru IrockUJock. haha It's crazy how the w/d's of this med set in. Very sneaky and hard to pin point at first, but after you know what to feel and look for, it's easy to tell what Zoloft is doing and not doing.

The best way as I've stated before to get off this med is a verrry slow taper. I'm only on 25mg at this time and started shaving off bits over the last month, so I guess I'm at about 20mg now. No noticeable side effects yet, but sometimes it takes a week to figure out my mood has changed because of the decrease. Good luck everyone.

unfortunately, i've been through this nightmare with SSRIs myself. the electric shocks, disorientation, feeling "sick", anxiety.

i've read about using prozac as a substitute for paxil/zoloft/etc. because prozac has a longer half-life, so when you substitute and slowly cut down, you don't have the immediate "shocks" etc.

This is one chart I found for a withdrawal schedule; it's incomplete, but gives you a general idea:

Suggested Withdrawal Schedule

Fluoxetine (Prozac) - Reduce by 5 mg every two weeks until dose is 5 mg/day, then by 2.5 mg every two weeks

Paroxetine (Paxil) - Reduce by 10 mg every two weeks until dose is 10 mg/day, then 5 mg/day every two weeks.

Sertraline (Zoloft)- Reduce by 25 mg every two weeks until dose is 25 mg/day, then 12.5 mg every two weeks.

Venlafaxine (Effexor)* - Reduce by 25 mg every two weeks until dose is 25 mg/day, then 12.5 mg every two weeks.

*For Effexor XR, decrease by 37.5 mg every two weeks.

...and, here are some sites that talk generally about how to do it.

about.com site

healthyplace.com site

dr. bob

i've gone though it - it is terrible. i won't ever take them again. hope this helps anyone going through this....

Jesus Christ dude, my experience was nothing like that. A few years ago, I was started on Zoloft. I started at 50mg, which gave me GI cramps and insomnia for a few days and some brain zaps, then I was fine. Then the next week I went up to 100mg, again I got some mild side effects but they subsided in a week. This was all under my GP. After 2-3 weeks, I had no more side effects. And Zoloft really worked for me then for my severe Anxiety. I stayed at 100mg for a few years.

Then when I decided I didn't need it anymore, it was a simple taper. I did 75mg for a week, 50mg for a week, 25mg for a week, then none. And I was perfectly fine. I didn't have of these nasty symptoms you are describing. Could it be possible that you are prolonging this taper too long? Despite what a lot of people say, I found SSRIs to be pretty mild. The absolute worst side effect I got from quitting were the nightmares. Horrible, gory, disgusting, unforgettable nightmares. But they only lasted a few days. I think I had 4 days of nightmares when I finally went from 25mg to 0mg.

Maybe you are prolonging this misery too long? Don't take anything I say as truth, always follow your doctor. But for me tapering from 100mg of Sertaline was a non-event. It didn't effect my life at all, and most of the day I forgot I was even quitting it. The only time I remembered I had stopped taking it were those few days of nightmares and the occaisional brain "Zaps". Throwing around and altering different amounts of serotonin in your brain for long periods is never good. My GPs recommended taper of only 3 weeks worked fine for me.

But everyone responds to these drugs differently, so I probably got lucky and you got unlucky when it comes to SSRIs. Just stick with what your doc suggests, and use the benzos very sparingly, only when needed. It will pass, just give it time.

matt -

if nothing else, let us know how it's going. many of us have been there. you do recover.

take care and do it slowly (like the taper i posted earlier).