off Citalopram but lost my memory

[chickpea]

I was quite a regular poster on here last year when I started taking Citalopram for severe anxiety.

Since then, I've been diagnosed with Crohn's disease (which was actually the cause of my anxiety in the first place...long story) and advised that the pills weren't doing my colon condition any good - so I decided to get myself off Citalopram.

When I first started on the pills, I had the most horrific SE's - truly, truly awful - so I was prepared to suffer similar.
Luckily, even though I went against all advice and came down from 30mg to nothing very quickly, I have had very little in the way of SE's.

The most noticeable thing is my short-term memory...it's all but gone.:ohmy:
I feel like I have lost half my brain. I can't hold a thought for more than a few seconds, I can't remember things people tell me, I lose things all the time and I feel like my brain has frozen if I try to think about several things at once.

I saw a psych from my mental health team on Monday and told her all this - and shockingly, she told me that it's a SE of being on Cit and may never fully return.:weep:

Has anyone else experienced this?
I have searched the net and can't find anywhere that it warns of this. Had I known,I would NEVER have started on medication.:lac:

[LucyR]

I just wondered how long you were on the Citalopram for?

[chickpea]

Hi,
About a year at varying doses - started on 10mg, and stepped up gradually to 30mg, which I was on from February to about September this year.
The psychiatrist I saw this week wasn't in the least surprised when I said I can't remember things - she was very frank and said it may never return, as a result of the medication.:unsure:

[NoPoet]

I've never heard of this as a side effect of citalopram! And I spent a year writing an article (the Citalopram Survival Guide)! I'd be very interested to hear more about this supposed memory loss side effect, as I have not found one reference to it on Wikipedia, the NHS database, countless research articles, talking to countless citalopram users and also personal experience.

What I have discovered is that clinical anxiety and clinical depression can, if severe enough and/or over a long period of time, cause small-scale damage to the brain that affects cognitive function - eg confused thinking, poor decision making, slow speed of memory recall, etc.

The brain is constantly regenerating itself (neurogenesis) and is capable of repairing non-severe damage. Regular physical and mental exercise, healthy eating and so forth are just a few of the ways to strengthen your memories and keep your brain working at close to its maximum capacity.

While I accept it's possible that citalopram could have some effect on this, you have to understand I did a crapload of reading about this and I never once saw "SSRIs including citalopram have been linked to permanent memory loss", nor do I know anyone who suffered memory loss as a result of antidepressants.

It's more likely that your mental cloudiness is the natural and very, very common result of what you went through. High level depression and anxiety come as a terrible shock to a person and they will certainly screw you up until you learn to cope with them and move forward in life.

Also, factor in the very unpleasant memories of what you've been through. Your natural mental defences will try to scrub those out or guide you away from them in order to protect you from the pain they would cause if properly remembered.

I am VERY shocked at what your psychiatrist has told you and I am actually quite peed off that she does not appear to have told you about anything I've mentioned in this post. She sounds like she's doing half a job.

[joannap]

how long have you been off them? i have been off them 5 weeks and feel my brain is not working to some degree lol - i am sure it is just discontinuation effects - they can last for several months. your body/mind will have got quite a shock coming off the cit even if you felt it was relatively easy x

[suzy-sue]

Hi Ive never read or heard that in twp years of reading about it or looking on the internet .I have even asked someone in my family who is a perscribing Nurse in Mental health .It does seem to be a discontinuation effect as Joanna suggested .Try taking some 1000mg omega 3 fish oil ,it hels with Brain function .Its been proved it improves performance .Im sure you will find it returns to normal eventually .All the best Sue x

[chickpea]

Wow! Thanks for your replies, guys.

I have to say, I was pretty shocked by her very blase attitude about it all.:ohmy:
I had never seen her before, and have now been signed off from the mental health team (yay!!), so won't get a chance to go back and take it up with her.

I've been off the cit for about 6 or 8 weeks now, I guess. I did ask her whether it would take some time for my own brain chemicals to kick back in and she agreed that anti d's can take upto 6 weeks to work - therefore I could expect 6 weeks of readjustment once I was off them BUT that I may fnd I never get my memory back fully because of the medication and it's effect on the balance of the body. She did also say that of course, depression can dull the mind - but that wasn't the case in my case at the moment.

I am finding things doublly hard because I was put on massive amounts of steroids for my Crohn's over the summer and they made me feel invincible - but I have had to come off them at the same time as the cit, and feel physically deflated too.

I took the Edinburgh scale test this week, and it indicated no depression and slightly raised anxiety - but the psych said that I was almost certainly just someome who would always read above average for anxiety as that's the way I'm built. I agree with her, actually - I am a natural-born worrier, but it's not the same as anxiety in the form I've recovered from.

I do remember reading a couple of articles online written by "survivors" of Cit, where both people said that cit had had a profound negative effect on them and they had taken upto 2 years to fully recover from the after-effects.:ohmy::ohmy::ohmy::ohmy:

Let me say this - I am definitely not the person I was before I took it. In the same waythat I felt "artificial" when I was on the steroids, I feel out of synch chemically atm.

I guess I'll just have to sit it out...:shrug: