Hello everyone, I'm new here. I've been reading things on the forum for a while but never joined until now, when it occurred to me it might actually be a useful thing to do! Googling things often doesn't work; hearing the stories of people who've been through the same as you and understand is so much better.

By way of introduction, I'm 30 and suffer from anxiety tinged with slight OCD tendencies (my compulsions are mental rather than manifesting themselves in actions). I had a patch of anxiety in my early 20s and was put on citalopram, which I took for years after that even though I was ok. About a year ago I stopped the citalopram; I was happy, happier than I'd ever been really and didn't see the need for them. However, I came off them too quickly and then the problems started. I had a horrid anxiety flare up in January and was put back on the citalopram. The start up side effects were indescribably terrible. I was so anxious I was utterly terrified and had no clue what was happening to me. I got over that in a couple of days and things settled down a bit. I was fine from about February to June and then things started going wrong again. The GP decided in his wisdom to switch me to sertraline but I believe made the switch far too quickly with not enough tapering/titrating. Cue more horrendous anxiety. I went to a different GP who told me to come off everything as SSRIs clearly do bad things to me. I then went to see a specialist as I was sick of poor advice. The long and short of it is that he ended up putting me on amitriptyline. I've been increasing the dosage slowly, 10mg for three days, 20mg for three days and so on. I was by this point feeling SO much better, very much like my old self again and often actively happy. However, after I'd been on 40mg for a couple of days I had a big anxiety spike, along with the dry mouth that TCAs are known for. This lasted a couple of days and then I was fine again. I've now been on 50mg for a couple of days and am experiencing the same. I'd been fine all day today then suddenly I was an anxious wreck. I also feel like my head doesn't belong to my body and my hands and feet feel strangely sensitive and tingly (that's not quite the right word but I can't think what is). I wonder whether when I reached 40mg I had some kind of reaction as I was then at a dose which was making some impact on me mentally, rather than being on 10/20/30 which really doesn't act on the brain at all. And perhaps I'm going to get a bit of a reaction every time I increase it.

So, has anyone else experienced anything like this? Has anyone had a period of increased anxiety after either starting or increasing amitriptyline? My doctor seems to think I have a brain which is extraordinarily sensitive to any chemical change and I can't seem to find anywhere on the web which suggests my experience is common. At what dosage did people start to feel a benefit, and how long after reaching that therapeutic dosage did it take? I'm feeling pretty fed up as I was so good compared to how I was a couple of months back. I hoped I'd never have to experience an attack like this again!