Citalopram going up and down dosage!

[sophlew]

Hi everyone,

So I have been on Citalopram for about 4 years now and last January went from 20mg up to 30mg after a rough patch. Since then I have been up and down but more stable. About 2 weeks ago I was feeling good and was fed up of being on the medication so made a rash decision to drop down to 20mg. For about a week nothing changed but then I started to feel really bad - severe anxiety, racing and intrusive thoughts, lack of interest in anything or motivation. So I went back up to 30mg last week and I'm still not feeling good - my sex drive has completely dropped, as has my appetite and the anxiety and 'low' feeling are just as bad. Are these side effects of going back up a dose? Or just generally from messing around with the dosage in such a short space of time?

I was wondering if anyone had experienced similar or had any advice?

Thanks very much,

S


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[portugalthecam]

I have had a very similar experience as of late. I was at 40mg for many years and decided I wanted to try and go off of them.. Big mistake. I went from 40mg to 20mg within a month, and then 20mg to 10mg after another month, but then started not feeling right, so jumped back to 20mg, and then after a week at 20mg went right back to 40mg because I was feeling awful. This was about 4 weeks ago, and I've been back at 40mg for about two and a half weeks. I am still really struggling. My anxiety has started to waver again, but I have had terrible sleep disturbances, which is awful. Up until this, I had always slept just fine, and now I'm wreck because I can't sleep properly.
I am assuming and hoping that this is just from the change of dosages and that my brain will level out again soon, but every day is a struggle to stay positive.
I would definitely agree that with your situation, you are also experiencing adverse effects from the dosage increase/decrease. I think we have to just do our best to stick it out until the meds settle in our system again.
We're all in this together, hang in there!

---------- Post added at 12:49 ---------- Previous post was at 12:47 ----------

Also, I know sometimes people get prescribed things like Xanax to help in the short-term until the SSRI builds up again, but you just have to be careful with meds like that in that they are addictive. I've used it a little bit in the meantime and has helped somewhat.