Sertraline withdrawal

[Garystealth]

Hi guys, I'm gary, 32 years old, I have been on sertraline for half of my adult life. Back when I was first put on sertraline I accept now that maybe I needed to be on it to get me through the the turbulent time I was going through. I will make another thread going into my story at some point, I'm trying to keep this topic purely on sertraline.

So, I have of late come to the conclusion that I no longer wish to pursue this course of treatment and over the last 6 weeks I have started another anti depressent mirtazapine, which I won't go into on this thread. Basically the consultant told me to taper off my sertraline 150mg to nothing in 2 weeks, then going to mirtazapine 30mg. However I have not been able to stop the sertraline, I have however come down to 25 mg over the last 6 weeks. I take 30mg of mirtazapine before bed.

Over the last few days I have went from 50mg and split my pills to 25mg, however I am now feeling pretty awful, cold and flu like symptoms, anxiety in waves, especially when I am trying to rest/sleep. I feel like a brain fog is coming over me, and like I'm coming down with a fever, it's not great, but I have made the decision to get off this drug and doing so I wanted to share my journey with you, and also maybe find some support from others who are going through similar experiences with this. I am choosing a more holistic approach and have now got a private therapist who will be working with me on cbt and emdr. But I need to get to some stable solid ground before we can start with the emdr as my thoughts are pretty much all over right now.

I would like to be off medication period, and like I mentioned go down the therapy route which wasn't offered to me back when I was 18 and put onto sertraline in the first place. I feel I have matured now and I am ready to do things naturally at some point. Right now the withdrawal is pretty bad, I feel sluggish, lethargic, anxious and just generally unwell, I am still doing my best to keep my days filled and exercise in the gym regularly. The agitation I'm feeling at the moment is horrible, like anything is annoying me, whilst I typed this on my phone, my girlfriends dog jumped up at me and it really annoyed me, like I just feel so snappy.

Any messages and support would be hugely appreciated, and I hope that this message finds those in a similar boat to myself.

Thanks for listening.

[zacman777]

Hello Gary!

I too am going through the journey of approaching my anxiety with a more holistic style. I was on Sertraline since I was 18 or 19, just turned 28, and have been off of it for 3 months now. It was a long taper process. I believe it was about 5 months. I was on 75 mg at my highest. I went down in increments of 12.5 mg. After each taper down I would notice a little heightened anxiety for about 3 days after but then it felt like it leveled out. The drop from taking 12.5mg to nothing has been a different story all together. I was getting the twitchy eyes, head rushes a lot, way higher anxiety, more panic attacks in the last 3 months than when I was on the Sertraline for 10 years. These last three months it has come in waves. I feel like I can see the light at the end of this tunnel, then I get these sensations again. This ends up being hard for me because 95% of my anxiety is health related, so my mind always things that there has to be something wrong with my heart or brain because of all of these symptoms. Just yesterday even I had some chest pain while jogging for the first time in about 4 months and I knew in my head that that was probably normal after not working out for so long, but that didn’t matter. I worried about it all night. Then after stressing about it most of the evening, laying down in bed I got what I thought was light headed and that freaked me out more. I know this sounds all bad but I wanted to share that with you so you know you are not alone. It’s been three months of this junk and I am determined to stay off of the medicine for good this time. I can cry when I’m supposed to cry again, I feel like I’m remembering things better, the stuff in the bedroom that was non existent before has now come back and my relationship is thriving because of it. I want you to know you’re not alone, and no matter how much this may challenge you daily, you can get through this if it is ultimately your goal. It may be harder than you thought, or easier than you thought for that matter but you can get through it. Look at how far you’ve come at this point? Isn’t it amazing? Think about what you’ve delt with in a day, and here you are, still pursuing your goal. We can do this my friend, it just takes time and will 😊