Cipralex 10mg to 20mg - increased anxiety?

[karenp]

I'm about to up to 10mg Daniel but not looking forward to it now and it's so near Christmas too. Has your doctor not given you anythign to help at all? At leats mine has and I keep just telling myself most people actualy start out on 10mg's so it can't be so bad, where a syou are upping to the biggest dose you can be on though when I did that on normal Citalopram and went from 20mg's to 40mg's I was 100% well after a fortnight of feeling a bit rough so I hope that's what you find happens for you (:

[Danielsun]

Hi Karen,
my doctor gave me Urbanol to cope with the anxiety and I do use it but don't want to overdo it, as I tapered myself off it about 3 weeks ago, so I felt like a failure for going back on it again, plus, it was hard to taper off it...
having said that, the urbanol does not really make me feel that much better
I wake up in panic in the mornings, take an urbanol, but by the time it kicks in the tone has already been set for my day. I usually start to feel a bit better towards the end of the day, but this week I just felt bad throughout the whole day.

I wanted to ask you: did your doctor prescribe you a specific dosage? the reason i'm asking is that i'm wondering if it is not prolonging the agony of slowly upping the dose if you are going to have side effects every time you go up?

[karenp]

He gave me 5mg's to start but I only took half for 9 days and to be fair haven't really had that many problems, I had a few worse days earlier on this week after I'd increased to the whole 5mg's for a couple of weeks but seen totally fine again now but not better obviously as I still very much wake up very anxious still but do go MANAGABLEY ok around 10am time which is brilliant really on only 5mg's. I'm so scared to just double up my pill but wonder if you are right, going up by halving might just draw out the side effects?????

[Danielsun]

my story in short on escitalopram:
my doctor prescribed 20mg to start off - he did not know i suffered from anxiety and the prescription was for depression beacause i had to cope with witnessing my father's death as well as struggling with giving care to my mother who has altzheimers.
well... i took that 1st 20mg pill, not knowing at all about the side effects. i ended up in ER...
after all that, i also started on 2.5mg for 8days, then 5mg for 7days, then 10mg for 7days.
at that stage i had weened myself off the urbanol and then I upped to 15 mg.

Going from 10mg to 15mg was the easiest and i didn't even take other calming medicine!
That's why it's so perplexing to me that going up to 20mg is so hard now.

[karenp]

With any luck you should be over the worst soon though hey darl...so so sorry to hear about your Dad btw and Mum. Well done you too for being strong enough not to take nay calming meds increasing from 10 to 15. Really do hope you feel better soon.

[Danielsun]

thanks karen, I hope we can pull through this tough time together

[karenp]

Have you felt any calmer today Daniel? I really think you'll be ok in couple more days now the extra Cipralex should be settling down. I've still wimped out of increasing to 10mg's but I am going to do it on Monday when my little boy goes back to school and the house is nice and quiet if I do get more anxious, I'm usually very good during the day now but haven't come off Lorazepam/avtian yet. The 5mg's isn't quite doing it for me though so I do think I need to increase.

[Danielsun]

no, today still the same, apart from the fact that i now also have a tooth ache!
thanks for asking.
funny thing about these meds - my fiancee takes 10mg for mild depression and she did not have one single side effect from it, nor any anxiety....

you should ask your doctor to assist you with a plan for tapering off your calming meds when you are ready.

[karenp]

AW sorry to hear you are still getting side effects, they have to pass any day I am sure now so keep hanging on in there Daniel. You don't think the 20mg's is just too high for you do you though???
I'll be ok coming off Lorazepam, I've done it all before but though I am feeling much better I do feel I probs need at least 10mg's of Cipralex to fully stabalize (:

[karenp]

Hope the heightened anxiety is calming down