Just thought I'd let those of you who wish to withdraw and those who will withdraw in future that I have had a relatively pain free withdrawal from mirtazapine. I've been off it now for about two and a half weeks. I was on 15mg for approximately 10 months.
I went down to 7.5mg and stayed on that for six weeks, then decided to try and come off it completely.
The withdrawal week went like this:
Tues. 23rd Oct. No mirt
Wed. 24th Oct. a quarter of a zopiclone sleeping pill
Thurs. 25th Oct. 7.5mg mirt
Then none whatsoever after that. I was very surprised that I had hardly any withdrawal symptoms. I've had a couple of nights where sleep was difficult, a couple of 'shivery head' moments, but overall sleep has been better than I expected.
My overall experience of this medication has been positive. It helped me enormously last Winter when I was absolutely worn down both mentally and physically by anxiety and some depression. I've had blips on it, but stuck it out and they passed.
The reason I stopped taking it was that I began to experience recurrent flu like symptoms after about the eight month mark. This is a rare but well known side effect of mirt. I just couldn't take feeling so physically bad on such a regular basis anymore. This has completely cleared up now, so it was definitely caused by the medication.
I am not out of the woods emotionally yet because I still have a very stressful situation going on (those who know me here know what I'm referring to) - no need to explain really. But I am feeling stronger because I can now see light at the end of this long dark tunnel. Mirt helped me to break the vicious cycle of anxiety which had me spiralling downward probably to a nervous breakdown. On it I began to remember better times when I didn't feel like that and began to have hope that I could endure and get the strength needed to rescue myself from utter despair.
Some of the very good people on this forum helped me enormously with good advice and encouragement to stick with the med in the early weeks:
Jo (JT) - thank you for your very kind and encouraging words.
And Ingenious and Oldtime's threads inspired me and gave me hope.
I believe this med is worth a try. It will not work for everyone because we are all have different brain chemistry. If we all had the same, then one medication would help us all. Some will find some of the side effects unacceptable and that's ok, try something else... there are others that may suit you better.
A big thank you to all my Mirt Buddies!! I'll still be sticking around.
Belle xx
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I hope you'll be feeling better soon 
