Second Dawn: coming off citalopram

[NoPoet]

Hi all, merry christmas and a happy new year to everyone. I thought I'd rejoin the NMP gang to let you know what's been going off with my battle against anxiety.

Basically, I have now held a job for 6 months, I've got that sports car I always wanted and I'm starting to get somewhere in life. Granted, I hate my job and my sports car is knackered, and if I had my tarot read they would draw the Tower card five times in a row, but that's no reason to sulk.

I've decided that I am gonna reduce my dose of citalopram with a view to coming off the stuff altogether. This is day 2 on 20mg (down from 30mg). Last night I had a horrific dream so my body is obviously aware of the change. Other than that everything's ok.

I am sick of always being tired. I sometimes have early starts at work and trying to drag myself out of bed earlier than 11am is a serious chore. Apart from that I'm receiving cut-price therapy courtesy of Anxiety UK, and everything else in life seems to be ok at the moment.

I'm having a course of regression hypnotherapy starting soon which will help me go through my life from beginning to present in order to smooth over some bad memories and build some self esteem.

I'm hoping this will give me some stronger foundations in order to get through life without medication.

Well anyway I will let people know how it goes and I'll no doubt be adding this to my Citalopram Guide some time soon!

Take care!

[JaneC]

Good luck Adam, will be interested to hear how it goes xx

[Turquoise]

ooh, I feel a bit like I'm talking to a celeb - I have read your guide countless times since I started on Cit. 2.5 months ago (most recently today because I'm on day 4 of a blip), and it has been endlessly helpful. Thank you so much and good luck with bringing your relationship with Citalopram to an end, I'll watch with interest!

[bluejeans17]

Good for you PsychoPoet! I think we went on the Cit around the same time - I remember the posts well and how they helped get me through the rough days! Glad to say I started my reduction last week - just from 20mg down to 15mg. I am taking it slowly but happy to report no withdrawal systems! I will give it another couple of weeks and cut down to 10 mgs. Hope it goes well and look forward to the day we are Cit free!

BJ

[NoPoet]

Hi everyone, thanks for the messages! It feels like the end of an era by reducing my dose of cit. There were times when I felt I would be trapped on it forever.

It's now day 6 of my reduced dose. There has been a bit of messing about as I ran out of cit, so I took 10mg on Sat night and nothing at all last night. I am aware this contradicts my own Survival Guide and I have had bad effects from reducing cit before.

On the other hand, I can rationalise it by using it as a chance to test my emotional strength, cos if I can't deal with a few discontinuation effects, how the hell am I going to cope with the rest of my life?

So, here is a list of the horrible and painful discontinuation symptoms I have experienced by reducing my dose:

Nothing.

That's right. I have had no serious or intolerable side effects at all. Do you know what the worst part about dropping my dose has been?

The initial anxiety that I would have symptoms or a relapse!

That anxiety started to die away by the third or fourth day, when it became increasingly obvious I was not going to suffer as expected.

The only thing I had to fear was fear itself!

So what effects have I noticed? Well, I am slightly less tired in the mornings. I've got a growing, but tolerable, sense of disorientation if I move my head too fast, and I feel a pressing in my temples. All of these effects are the same as I used to get when I messed with my dose.

However, none of the effects are as bad as they were before, and I am already on day 6 of the dose reduction. In days gone by I would only last 3-5 days before I started to feel ill and scared.

I know somehow, within my heart, that this is the right time not only to reduce my citalopram dose, but come off it altogether. I am too strong and too experienced to fall back into the old ways, even though there may be blips and bad weeks along the way.

So from tonight I am going to be taking just 10mg per day. By this time next month I will be looking to come off the stuff altogether provided nothing bad happens.

It's not all easy street: I have noticed my temper flaring up, but that is probably because I have worked long hours recently and a colleague has been annoying me a lot - I tend not to say anything to people until I'm ready to explode into a rage, and I have managed to keep this under control.

I joined Anxiety UK and am now arranging telephone-based counselling with their therapists at £20 per session. (They also do CBT and hypnosis, the latter on a face-to-face basis, along with neuro-linguistic programming and other therapies, all of which are available at reduced prices to members.)

In the meantime I am also arranging a series of sessions with a current-life regression therapist, who is going to use hypnosis to help me rebuild my life and unlock memories that have long since been buried, so that I can remember them in a positive and life-affirming way.

This will lead into confidence and assertiveness building in later sessions.

So it's all going better than expected, and I'll keep reporting back.

[heavenly]

Good luck to you, your guide has helped me so much so thank you for that. xx

[NoPoet]

Thank you That's good to hear!

I thought that I should point out I have been taking around 6g of inositol when I remember to, which might be blunting any feelings of anxiety that might have been kicked up by reducing my dose, and I'd be lying if I didn't say the extra energy I've had lately is not nervous energy. The sensation of almost dizziness is annoying on the odd occasion but is nothing I can't handle.

I was sweating a lot this afternoon but that stopped after a couple of hours and I was fine after. Increased sweating is a major sign of discontinuation. The sweating hasn't started again.

On the whole things are going vastly better than expected.

I'm having to tell my team leader about coming off citalopram tomorrow - the reason being, a colleague is annoying me at work and with my increased readiness to fly off the handle (a feeling which only comes about when I'm being provoked), I am scared that I might lose my rag with this person. Also if I do get any noticeable side effects I need someone who will understand.

I'll tell you all about my annoying colleague later but for now, suffice it to say he's being a prat!

[NoPoet]

Hi all, I have only taken a total of 20mg in the last 6 days and apart from a sense of dizziness and slight unreality (and increased stress, which might just be a response to my current situation), there are no worrying or intolerable side effects at all. My hypnotherapy starts next Saturday so hopefully that will give me an extra weapon to win this war.

My team leader STILL hasn't seen me yet - I have a number of things (not anxiety-related) that I need to make her aware of, and I have mentioned that I am coming off some tablets which may cause some side effects, but she is very busy and she keeps putting off seeing me - this is typical of her, and it's apparently tough if any of the things I'm dealing with affect my work. The only time she does seem to come to me is when I'm on the phone to a customer and cannot speak! If she was like this with just me I'd be really annoyed, but she's like it with everyone.

In other news I am taking a car dealership to court and this, along with a lot of financial worries, is getting to me a bit. There is five grand at stake here and I have already had a number of warnings that dodgy car dealerships can get away with any trick they want, even declaring themselves bankrupt, just to get out of paying what they owe.

The colleague at work who's been annoying me is constantly challenging and criticising my work rate, even though he is under investigation and on a warning for call avoidance himself. I have raised it with the management as he seems to be trying to influence people into thinking I never do any work. Bear in mind that my stats and my customer feedback are always better than his (often massively so).

While I'm coming off the cit, working crap hours, worrying about money and stressing about my court claim, the last thing I need is some 19 year old brat (yep, he's nearly half my age) going on at me about stuff that is none of his bloody business.

Ah well, at least when the court case is resolved one way or another, I can get rid of this shitty Impreza and buy a real car.

[NoPoet]

"Dee twelve in the Si-ko Pooet hoose, and Si-ko Pooet is feelin the burn."

Well it's been nearly two weeks and while the side effects are still tolerable, it is starting to grind me down somewhat when you consider it's been happening for two weeks on the trot.

The dizziness seemed to reach its peak over the last couple of days - it feels like when you're so shattered you practically fall asleep, and it reduces my energy and makes me dizzy and weak while walking around at work.

My friend and I also got mild food poisoning on Saturday - from a cheesecake. So that hasn't helped. I feel pretty bad today but work won't help me out because I've got no holidays left until my allowance resets on the 1st of February, and they won't give me a day's unpaid leave, so I would have to bugger up my stats to have a sick day.

I'm doing exceptionally well at work, it's the best I've ever performed anywhere, which is quite impressive when you factor in what I'm going through.

As for any advice, lessons learned etc, I would say this: definitely don't stop taking cit altogether - while I haven't had any anxiety attacks or any kind of relapse, the physical symptoms are taking their toll over a prolonged period, so it's obviously not ideal for people who have got a lot on their mind or who are dealing with a tough job.

[NoPoet]

Hi everyone, a month has passed and I'm still off the citalopram.

While there have been some good points, there has been a lot of bad. I've had more work to do towards my recovery over the last 6 weeks (is that all it's been?) than I have in the last 12 months.

I have had two major blips, including one last night, where I had a terrible night's sleep thanks to a nasty anxiety attack. It has been a while since I felt like that. I came over a bit breathless then I found all my thoughts were dark.

Now when I say "dark" I don't mean suicide or violence or anything - I mean that everything I thought about seemed bleak and depressing, which made me feel a lot worse and my anxiety went through the roof.

I wonder how many other people who say their thoughts are "dark" are actually misinterpreting things, like I realise I was. Are your thoughts really just taking a negative turn - influenced by your current mood - or are you actually thinking about seriously going ahead with self-harm or worse?

I'm willing to bet lots of us simply think negatively about our lives and events within and have no actual intent to self-harm.

Also, I can half-understand why people might contemplate suicide or self-harm -- they see it as a release from the constant bad feeling. It's the thought of carrying on feeling like this that is the catalyst for self-harm or suicide... so maybe self-harm and suicide rates would drop if people were able to seek appropriate support and act on the positive advice they receive?

As many of us will know, it's the thought that you're going to wake up in the morning still feeling anxious and distressed that does the most damage... when in reality, we might actually feel a bit BETTER in the morning after a night's rest, ESPECIALLY when we're up and doing something.

In general my temper is dying down but I'm often melancholy and I get stressed very easily, far more easily than normal. It has not been easy at all: I keep reminding myself of everything I've been through and I remember that inositol is my friend!