Tapering off sert after 10 days

[Sands]

Pleased to hear u have decided to jack it in. When I started suffering with anxiety I went to the doctors and he basically said take these fluoxetine 20mg and in a couple of weeks u will be better. I went seriously downhill from there. I have 2 little kids and a father that I care for and I remember calling the docs saying look I'm losing my mind should I really feel this bad. Yes they said give it time. I remember the most horrible feeling of needing to escape myself I couldn't bare to b around my kids and I couldn't even lie in bed.
Luckily my bro who was taking mirt and told me to ask the doc for that instead. My doc will dish me out anything I ask for as it appears he didn't have a clue what was wrong with me.
Anyway I just wanted to say that I agree totally with u about mirt and luckily was off the ssri fairly quick. Also I have to keep remembering that it wasn't me in those early days it was the drugs that made me feel that bad.
They obviously do help a lot of people but I think if they make u feel as bad as I did then get off them as soon as.

[bellathevamp]

I agree with what you said about moving from mirtazepine to an ssri! 4yrs ago I was moved from mirtazepine to Citalopram and oh me I felt awful for the 1st few weeks. Life was one big panic attack, I lost a stone in weight and looked awful :( x

[Emphyrio]

I've had a fairly rough day on the fluoxetine, not helped by the fact that I had a coffee earlier (funnily enough, to counter the sedation that I experience when first starting fluoxetine). So I'm in the funny situation where I'm both tired/sedated yet anxious/restless.

I'm not going to stop it just yet though. But mirt may be a possibility in future, who knows? was just wondering how you found the cognitive effects of Mirt compared with citalopram? I experienced some cognitive effects on both citalopram (moderate), clomipramine (moderate), and sertraline (fairly strong) - none with fluoxetine though. I don't like the idea of becoming a zombie I guess!

[NoPoet]

Hi everyone, thanks for sharing your experiences. Let's point out that sertraline does help millions of people and those who experience bad side effects are probably intolerant to the sert or SSRIs in general. Just so people don't get scared off about trying sert if they've never had it before

Today is day five after dropping the sert and I have felt a bit wobbly (physically) which I recognise from coming off citalopram. The anxiety has not increased since I came off sert and I seem to be having slightly more "clear" patches ("glimpsing" recovery), but it still gets severe, tapering to a feeling of well-being as the day goes on. Basically, it's the same experience as Bellathevamp describes - one big panic attack.

My appetite still hasn't returned. I have felt a bit depressed most of the week but with such a low appetite, the emotional exhaustion of so much anxiety, only getting about 6 hours sleep a night and of course fannying around with my meds last week, there is no way to know how much of it is real depression and how much is created by circumstance.

Sands - getting through medication-induced anxiety is one of the hardest things we can experience, so feel proud of yourself for being able to eventually get out of it. You are clearly sensitive to the SSRI class but your body seems to tolerate mirt just fine.

Emphyrio - if you got over your initial side effects from the SSRI meds, stick with what you're on. If they made life difficult for a long time, or the side effects never went away, your body just might not be able to tolerate that type of med so consider a switch - but taper very gradually.